Brownbag seminars 2009
Thursdays @ 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library
Third Floor, John Medley Building
University of Melbourne
Semester 1, 2009
"He got a child on his servant": circumstances of illegitimacy and illegitimate child care in England 1350-1500
5th March 2009
Philippa Maddern, Professor in History and Medieval and Early Modern Studies, UWA
By and large, historians of late-medieval England have found the study of illegitimate children intractable, largely owing to the somewhat arbitrary recording practices of medieval manor courts. Our research, however, shows that using different sources (ecclesiastical court records, papal dispensations) allows us some insights into the circumstances into which illegitimate children were born, and sometimes their life-course afterwards. The results could help to overturn some long-held orthodoxies in English social and family history.
Thursday 5th March 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library, John Medley Building
Law and identity: historical methodology and the practice of a historian
12th March 2009
Richard Pennell, Associate Professor, School of Historical Studies
In 2003 a refugee, apparently Algerian, claimed political asylum in Britain. After lengthy deliberation, his claim was rejected. He then revealed that his initial story was fabricated and revealed another (true) account that linked him to Tunisian elements in an international terrorist ring, although he claimed not to have been involved in that ring. That claim of non-involvement was implicitly accepted by the British authorities, who nevertheless decided to deport him back to Tunisia on the grounds of his initial fabrication and that he was not at personal risk if he did return. It was at this point (in 2007) that his British lawyers contacted me to provide expert witness testimony on the question of his personal risk. This testimony involved an examination of the recent history of Tunisia and the evolution of the repressive regime there. The paper focuses on the nature of the historical evidence and arguments I employed and the relationship between an academic study of a foreign country and the practical requirements of the legal case.
Thursday 12th March 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library, John Medley Building
Matthew Perry and the Possibilities of Digital History
19th March 2009
Susan Smulyan, Professor, Department of American Civilization, Brown University and Faculty International Scholar, School of Historical Studies
This paper describes a website, "Perry Visits Japan".
The website, based on a scroll painted by an anonymous Japanese artist, portrays Commodore Matthew Perry‚s visit to Japan in 1854 as the first official U.S. emissary. Students, from the United States and Japan, have commented on the scroll‚s images. In considering how to expand the website, the paper discusses the collaborative, interactive, and inconclusive nature of digital scholarship.
Thursday 19th March 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library, John Medley Building
The Multiple Combatants of the Bloody, Bureaucratic Battle in the Soviet Occupation Zone of Post-War Germany, 1945-46
26th March 2009
Filip Slaveski, PhD candidate, School of Historical Studies
Soviet occupation organs operating in the zone were assigned contradictory policies and battled against one another for the resources and jurisdictional power to pursue them. At its height, the battle for resources and power could no longer be contained to denunciations, threat making and sabotage, but spilled over into the street as fistfights and shootouts between officers and men from competing organs became commonplace outside the bars and theatres of eastern Germany by late 1945. The failure of the literature to sufficiently explore the battle has inhibited both a more comprehensive understanding of the central fissures in the structure of Soviet governance from which it emerged, and of the consequences that it engendered for relations between occupiers and occupied; a problem the paper seeks to address.
Thursday 26th March 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library, John Medley Building
The medieval refugee: displacement and memory after the Albigensian crusade
2nd April 2009
Megan Cassidy-Welch, Lecturer, School of Historical Studies
This paper will consider the intersections between space, memory and the ‘refugee’ experience in mid- to late- thirteenth century France, with a particular focus on the experience of those displaced during and as a result of the Albigensian crusade. I consider a range of testimonial sources to unpack the ways in which those driven from their homes during this ‘war on heresy’ narrated and bore witness to the trauma of war.
Thursday 2nd April 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library, John Medley Building
Small-scale Industries and Major Developments in France, Switzerland and Sweden 1780-1930
9th April 2009
Jean-Marc Olivier, Professor at the University of Toulouse 2-Le Mirail, Director, Framespa (CNRS) laboratory
During a long 19th Century (1780-1930), small dispersed industries, very different from craft activities, corresponded to business employing less than one hundred workers on a single site and capable of producing large quantities of finished manufactured goods for distant markets. It is clear that whole sectors of industrial production were based on this type of structure: edge-tool industry, cutlery, clockmaking, luxury goods, timber yards, fine furniture, hatmaking, clothing, haute couture, shoemaking, corkmakers, certain sections of the food industry, plus bicycles, automobiles, aircraft and many other activities. The sectors described made a major contribution to the excellent performance of the French, Swiss and Swedish economies, in terms both of exports and productivity. The competitiveness of this proliferation of workshops and homeworkers was based on known factors such as downward pressure on salaries, division of labour, partial mechanization and ruthless elimination of the weak. However, one can also note a social dynamic specific to such enterprises: first of all, there is the hope of social ascension motivating a pool of "micro-bosses", a pool constantly replenished following the abolition of the old corporations, and morally impervious to bankruptcy cycles. Secondly, there was a phenomenon of local paternalism, an imbrication in local society and an awareness of the "local industrial place" that both softened and complicated socio-industrial conflicts. The final point to notice is that vast regions of France, Switzerland and Sweden industrialized differently and very early on, foregoing large factories, from the first half of the 19th Century. Furthermore, the scattered production facilities identified in these three countries were an essential part of their overall industrial revolutions, which were enhanced by the accumulated and conserved skills of smaller-scale industry. It is also clear that such small-scale, scattered industries showed themselves capable of innovation and reactivity towards changes in the world market as long as they retained their independence and avoided the temptation of sub-contracting.
Thursday 9th April 1 - 2pm
Jessie Webb Library, John Medley Building
The speakers in the second half of the semester will include Stephen Wheatcroft, John Griffiths, Damien Williams, and Claire Mclisky. A full program will distributed once all the topics and abstracts become available.