New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

In his new book, Teenagers: The Rise of Youth Culture in New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2017), Chris Brickell, Associate Professor of Gender Studies and Head of the Department of Sociology, Gender & Social Work at the University of Otago, explores the lives of teenagers in New Zealand from the 19th century through the 1960s. While most histories of New Zealand grant young people only a marginal role in the story, Brickell draws on their diaries, letters, and photographs to illuminate the larger-scale changes going on in New Zealand society, from work and school to leisure and social mores. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, Dancing with the King: The Rise and Fall of the King Country, 1864–1885 (Auckland University Press, 2017), Michael Belgrave, Professor of History at Massey University, tells the story of the negotiations, or diplomatic “dance,” between the Māori of the Rohe Pōtae (the King Country in the western part of the North Island) and the colonial Europeans. Belgrave traces the negotiations through successive stages, culminating in an agreement in 1883, which, by being the first written down, marked a diplomatic turning point. But the dance continues. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, The Expatriate Myth: New Zealand Writers and the Colonial World (Otago University Press, 2018), Helen Bones, a Research Associate in Digital Humanities at Western Sydney University, presents a new look at late nineteenth and early twentieth century New Zealand literary culture. Contrary to the stereotype that New Zealand writers were “exiled” overseas, Bones follows the lives of a set of writers who, even as they may have been mobile around the colonial world, should, in fact, be recognized for their contributions as New Zealand writers. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Polly Plum: A Firm and Earnest Woman’s Advocate, Mary Ann Colclough, 1836–1885 (Otago University Press, 2017), Jenny Coleman, a senior lecturer and Director of Academic Programmes in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences at Massey University, explores the life and letters of early New Zealand feminist Mary Ann Colclough, who wrote under the name Polly Plum. Coleman offers a biographical portrait of a too-long forgotten advocate for girls’ education, women’s rights and social reforms in New Zealand and around the world. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, The World’s Din: Listening to Records, Radio and Films in New Zealand 1880–1940 (Otago University Press, 2018), Peter Hoar, a senior lecturer in radio and media history at Auckland University of Technology, explores how new technology shaped how New Zealanders experienced the very act of listening in the late 19th and early 20th century. Hoar traces how this cultural revolution in sound reflected new global possibilities in recordings, radio, and film that New Zealanders made all their own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Heroes, Villains and the Muslim Exception: Muslim and Arab Men in Australian Crime Drama (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Mehal Krayem, a sociologist and researcher at the University of Technology Sydney, explores the representation of Arab and Muslim men in Australian film and television crime dramas. In a series of case studies, including the television show East West 101 and groundbreaking films like The Combination and Cedar Boys, Krayem investigates how race and ethnicity, religion, gender, and class intersect in contemporary Australian depictions of Arab and Muslim men. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In Wild Articulations: Environmentalism and Indigeneity in Northern Australia (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Tim Neale examines the controversy over the 2005 Wild Rivers Act in the Cape York Peninsula of Northern Australia. Through detailed analysis of the role of traditional owners, prime ministers, politicians, the media, environmentalists, mining companies, the late Steve Irwin, crocodiles, and river systems, Neale reveals the ways in which the future of the north was contested. In the process, Wild Articulations reveals the overlapping, contesting, and sometimes surprising relationships between environmentalism, indigeneity, and development in Northern Australia. The book shows how the Act both revealed and fundamentally altered the politics of environmentalism and indigeneity. With implications stretching far beyond Australia, Wild Articulations asks questions such as ‘Who is or should—ethically or legally—be recognized as rightfully interested in indigenous country? What attachments to wild spaces are we willing to recognize as legitimate? What futures do those living in “wild” places want, and what can they expect?’ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, The Battle Within: POWs in Postwar Australia (NewSouth Books, 2018), Christina Twomey, Professor of History at Monash University, explores the “battle within,” the individual and collective challenge of rehabilitating Australian prisoners of war in the post-war decades. Using a variety of sources, including memoirs and the archives of the Prisoners of War Trust Fund, Twomey argues that the commemorations of the 1980s and more recent decades were actually a change from the quiet decades of mid century, when the country struggled to address the needs of its returning servicemen. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, A Free Flame: Australian Women Writers and Vocation in the Twentieth Century (UWA Publishing, 2018), Ann-Marie Priest, a lecturer at Central Queensland University, explores the literary lives of four Australian women—Gwen Harwood, Dorothy Hewett, Christina Stead, and Ruth Park—who challenged the 20th-century notion of artist as distinctly male. Priest offers biographical and cultural insights into these pioneering women whose urgency to write (their “vocation”) would not be denied. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In this special episode of New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies, we are joined by two fantastic Australian poets. In her new poetic narrative, Walking with Camels: The Story of Bertha Strehlow (UWA Publishing, 2018), poet Leni Shilton takes us back to Central Australia of the 1930s to tell the story of Bertha Strehlow, one of very few white women living among Aboriginal people at the time. In her new collection, The Sky Runs Right Through Us: Poems from the Edge of the Indian Ocean (UWA Publishing, 2018), poet Renee Pettitt-Schipp recounts her time working with asylum seeker and islander students on Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an experience that can never be forgotten, even after her return to the Australian mainland. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In Deadly Woman Blues: Black Women and Australian Music (NewSouth Books, 2018), Australian writer Clinton Walker presents a group biography of the black women who made Australian music. Through his graphic portraits of 100 black women who have shaped Australian music, including Indigenous music, jazz, country, gospel, soul, R&B and hip-hop, Walker explores issues about gender, race and genre in the industry. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Cleansing the Colony: Transporting Convicts from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land (Otago University Press, 2017), Kristyn Harman, a Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Tasmania, explores the little-known story of 110 convicts transported from New Zealand to Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania) in the 1840s. Harman argues that the story of these cross-Tasman convict laborers sheds light on the efforts of colonial New Zealand to “cleanse” itself from its burgeoning criminal underclass during a time of political change. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Alexandra Dellios, a Lecturer in Heritage Studies at the Australian National University, provides a critical reassessment of Bonegilla, which received and temporarily accommodated about 320,000 post-war refugees and migrants from 1947 to 1971. Using a series of four cases studies of controversy, she argues that rather than being a simple story of progress, the center’s history is actually one of containment, control, deprivation and political discontent. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, Disposable Leaders: Media and Leadership Coups from Menzies to Abbott (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), Rodney Tiffen, Emeritus Professor in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, explores the historical and recent leadership coups in Australian politics, and the role of media in them. As leadership in Australia has become more precarious in recent years, political instability has taken its toll on the parties and the democratic system more broadly. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, The Broken Decade: Prosperity, Depression and Recovery in New Zealand, 1928-39 (Otago University Press, 2016), historian Malcolm McKinnon, adjunct associate professor at Victoria University, explores the critical decade of the 1930s in New Zealand’s history and national memory. Utilizing archival records, statistics, and artistic representations, McKinnon details the efforts of New Zealand’s government and people to cope with the unprecedented conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Australian Gypsies: Their Secret History (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), award-winning writer Mandy Sayer explores the neglected history of Gypsies, or Romani people, in Australia, from the earliest European settlement until today. Utilizing historical sources and contemporary interviews, Sayer shares the real stories, not stereotypes, of a diverse ethnic group that has found refuge in Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, Hidden in Plain View: The Aboriginal People of Coastal Sydney (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), historian Paul Irish debunks the myth that local Aboriginal people disappeared from Sydney within decades of the arrival of Europeans in 1788. Instead, Irish argues, Aboriginal Australians adapted and maintained a strong bond with the Sydney and tried to live on their own terms. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians (NewSouth Publishing, 2017), Jayne Persian, a Lecturer in History at the University of Southern Queensland, explores the history of mass migration of 170,000 Displaced Persons from postwar Eastern Europe to Australia in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Utilizing archives and interviews with these migrants, Persian tells the story of a people looking for a new life after the horrors of World War II, and the challenges and opportunities they found in Cold War Australia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Beyond the Silver Screen: A History of Women, Filmmaking and Film Culture in Australia, 1920-1990 (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Mary Tomsic, an ARC Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Melbourne, explores the history of women’s engagement with filmmaking and film culture in Australia. From early women in film, like Lottie Lyell, to feminist filmmakers of the 1970s, Tomsic charts women’s involvement with film as political and cultural action. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Politics, Media and Campaign Language: Australia’s Identity Anxiety (Anthem Press, 2017), Stephanie Brookes, a Lecturer in Journalism at Monash University, explores the power of election campaign language to offer a window into the Australian national mood and national identity. Using a variety of political and media sources, including speeches, interviews, press conferences, and debates, Brookes investigates how campaign communication can help us understand Australia’s identity security: what kind of country Australia is and ought to be. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Asylum by Boat: Origins of Australia’s Refugee Policy (New South Press, 2017), Claire Higgins, a Senior Research Associate at the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales Law School, explores the origins of Australia’s refugee policy. She investigates the Australian government’s response to the arrival by boat, in the late 1970s, of thousands of Vietnamese refugees. Unlike today, however, while boat turn-backs and detention were considered, these policies were rejected. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, Jewish Anzacs: Jews in the Australian Military (New South Press, 2017), author, journalist and historian Mark Dapin explores the little-known story of the thousands of Jews that have fought in Australia’s military conflicts. Through archival research, military records, private letters, and interviews, Dapin tells the story of the Jewish servicemen and women that have fought—and died—for Australia in all of the nation’s wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, After the War: Returned Soldiers and the Mental and Physical Scars of World War I (UWA Publishing, 2017), Leigh Straw, a Senior Lecturer in Aboriginal Studies and History at the University of Notre Dame, explores the history of repatriation and return of WWI soldiers to Western Australia. The soldiers’ physical and mental scars, including tuberculosis and what we today call PTSD, did not end with the armistice, as soldiers and their families struggled with the consequences of wartime trauma well into the 1920s. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In Slow Catastrophes: Living with Drought in Australia (Monash University Publishing, 2017), Rebecca Jones, a senior research fellow at Monash University, explores the natural and cultural dimensions of drought in southeastern Australia. Utilizing diaries from the 1890s through the 1950s, Jones investigates the range of responses farmers and graziers have developed to drought. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her new book, Race, Tea and Colonial Resettlement: Imperial Families, Interrupted (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), Jane McCabe, Lecturer in the Department of History and Art History at the University of Otago, explores the tale of the “Kalimpong Kids,” 130 Anglo-Indian adolescents who were sent from the tea plantations in northeast India to New Zealand in the early 20th century. Their stories were for decades silenced, but using a wide range of archival sources, McCabe fills in the gaps of these family histories, including her own. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, The Pilbara: From the Deserts Profits Come (UWA Publishing, 2017), Bradon Ellem, Professor of Employment Relations at the University of Sydney Business School, explores the Pilbara region of Western Australia, a mining region central to the Australian economy and the Australian imagination, but one that few Australians truly know in depth. Focusing on the workers of the Pilbara, Ellem argues that despite the region’s history of unionism, the significant power-grab by companies in the 1980s meant that the great mining boom of the early 21st century favored company profits over union prophets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In New Treaty, New Tradition: Reconciling New Zealand and Maori Law (University of British Columbia Press, 2016), Carwyn Jones, Senior Lecturer in the School of Law at Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand, explores Māori law and legal traditions with an eye on how they ebb and flow with changing social, environmental, and political circumstances in New Zealand. From the Treaty of Waitangi to recent land claim resolutions, Jones argues that genuine reconciliation needs to take into account Indigenous traditions in the settlement process. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his new book, The Search for a New National Identity: The Rise of Multiculturalism in Canada and Australia, 1890s-1970s (Peter Lang Publishing, 2016), Jatinder Mann, an assistant professor of history at Hong Kong Baptist University, offers a comparative look at the policies and politics of multiculturalism in Canada and Australia. He explores how the two countries navigated the transition from Britishness as the defining idea of community to multiculturalism as the defining idea of the nation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his book, A Powerful Influence on Australian Affairs: A New History of the AWU (Melbourne University Publishing, 2017), Nick Dyrenfurth, Executive Director of the John Curtin Research Centre, explores the history of the nation’s oldest and most influential trade union, the AWU. Over 131 years, the Australian Workers Union has had a significant impact on Australia’s national identity and its center-left politics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In his book, Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt (University of Western Australia Publishing, 2017), Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Associate Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia, explores the work of 11 writers who lived in the wheatbelt of southwestern Australia. Delving into the creative writing of authors like Albert Facey, Peter Cowan, Dorothy Hewett, and Jack Davis, he helps us understand the human effects of this massive-scale agriculture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her book, The Fiction of Tim Winton: Earthed and Sacred (Sydney University Press, 2017), Lyn McCredden, Professor of Literary Studies at Deakin University, explores the sacred and secular themes in the writings of Western Australian author Tim Winton. By tracing ideas of class, gender, place, landscape, and belonging in Winton’s numerous works, she demonstrates how his writing eludes easy classification. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In Animal Welfare in Australia: Politics and Policy (Sydney University Press, 2016), Peter John Chen, a senior lecturer in political science at the University of Sydney, explores the issue of animal welfare in Australia through the lens of political science. He examines how the media, interest groups, government officials, and the Australian public engage in debate and construct policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her book, Smile, Particularly in Bad Weather: The Era of the Australian Airline Hostess (University of Western Australia Press, 2017), Prudence Black, a Research Associate in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney, explores the history of the airline hostess profession. From the early days of the 1930s until the 1980s, when airline hostesses became “flight attendants,” the issues of work, gender, and identity have been at the heart of the profession. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In Australia’s Defence Strategy: Evaluating Alternatives for a Contested Asia (Melbourne University Press, 2017), Adam Lockyer, a Senior Lecturer in Security Studies at Macquarie University, explores how to use theory to evaluate defense strategies. He applies his analytical framework to several options facing Australia’s defense strategists. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In her book, Into the Heart of Tasmania: A Search For Human Antiquity (Melbourne University Press, 2017), Rebe Taylor, the Coral Thomas Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, explores the life of Ernest Westlake, whose fascination with remnants and antiquity led him in the early 20th century to Tasmania, the southernmost Australian state, where he collected over 13,000 Aboriginal stone tools. But Westlake was surprised to find not an extinct race, but living Indigenous communities. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

The 2017 Six Nations rugby tournament concluded this weekend. England successfully defended its championship, despite losing the last match against a strong Ireland side in Dublin–England’s only loss of the competition. Meanwhile, the new Super Rugby season just began, with clubs traveling between Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and now Argentina and Japan. Later this year, women’s sides from twelve countries, including Spain, Canada, and Hong Kong, will compete in the Women’s Rugby World Cup. Meanwhile, here in the US, rugby for women and girls has boomed in recent years, with more than 400,000 participants on club, high school, and university teams. And of course, that is all rugby union. Theres also the separate code of rugby league, which is most popular in northern England, New Zealand, and areas of Australia. As historian Tony Collins explains in The Oval World: A Global History of Rugby (Bloomsbury, 2015), rugby not only has a worldwide reach, it has been influential in the development of other sports. American, Canadian, and Australian football all developed from rugby in the 19th century. Even ice hockey can trace its roots to the sport. Tonys award-winning book offers a raucous and readable account of how this game that began among students at Rugby School in the 1840s has become the global, commercialized sport of today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In an activist application of her scholarly discipline, Dr Liz Conor’s Skin Deep: Settler Impressions of Aboriginal Women (UWA Publishing, 2016) acknowledges its dual potential to disturb and to incite a reckoning – giving life to Audre Lorde’s famous quote that the learning process is something to be incited, like a riot. Using travelogues, cartoon strips, missionary diaries, paintings and lithographs, just to name a few, Dr. Conor’s consultation of a vast colonial archive challenges the amnesia in our national record and, accordingly, the racism and misogyny of our cultural imaginary. Recreating the settler-colonial imaginary and the tropes and stereotypes it projected in the imperial enterprise of knowledge production about Aboriginal women, Skin Deep exposes the interlocking oppressions of gender and race that manifested in the 18th, 19th and 20th century. From the innocent native-belle, to the beaten captive bride, the cannibalistic mother to the bare-footed domestic worker, the sexualised metonym of the virginal land to the unsightly, malevolent matriarch, the Aboriginal women was reduced by the settler to a canvas – recklessly painted with the ideologies, expectations and ambitions of the empire – making the Aboriginal women devastatingly skin-deep. Taylor Fox-Smith is teaching gender studies at Macquarie University and researching the gender gap in political behaviour and psychology at the United States Studies Centre in Sydney, Australia. Having received a Bachelor of International and Global Studies with first class Honours in American Studies at the University of Sydney, Taylor was awarded the American Studies Best Thesis Award for her work titled The Lemonade Nexus. The thesis uses the theme of marital infidelity in Beyonce’s 2016 visual album Lemonade as a popular cultural narrative of institutional betrayal, and parallels it with police brutality in Baltimore city. It argues that the album provides an alternative model of political formation which can help to understand redemption in the wake of an urban uprising. Rewriting the traditional protest to politics narrative with an iterative nexus named after the album, Taylor’s research continues to straddle political science, gender studies and popular culture. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Owning property. Being property. Becoming propertyless. These are three themes of white possession that structure Aileen Moreton-Robinson’s brilliant new inquiry into the dynamics of race and Indigeneity in “postcolonizing” societies like Australia.The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) collects and expands over a decade of work that speaks to key dynamics both at the heart, and sometimes obscured, within critical Indigenous studies. A Goenpul scholar from Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island), Quandamooka First Nation (Moreton Bay) in Queensland, Australia, Aileen Moreton-Robinson is the author of numerous previous books and articles in the fields of law and sovereignty, whiteness, race and feminism, and is a Council Member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

For almost 100 years, it seemed like a good, even wholesome and optimistic idea to take young, working-class and poor British children and resettle them, quite on their own and apart from their families, in Canada, Australia, and southern Rhodesia. The impulse behind this program was philanthropic: to bring disadvantaged children living in crowded cities a better future by settling them in pristine, wide-open spaces, introducing them to nature, and letting them feel the sun on their backs. Yet the program was shot through with eugenic ideas and the racism of the age. British children were emissaries of the “kith and kin” empire, sent to “whiten” its outposts. But they could also be subject to repatriation–sometimes years after having been sent away in the first place–if their “racial fitness” was called into question. Race, nation, and identity form one of many themes Ellen Boucher examines in her fascinating, and sometimes painful, book Empire’s Children: Child Emigration, Welfare, and the Decline of the British World, 1869-1967 (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Others include the rise and evolution of child psychology, changing ideas about the meaning of family, and the politics of empire. One kind of big picture in Empire’s Children is the shift from a unified British imperial identity to the rise of independent nationalisms throughout the empire. Another kind of big picture, though, comes from the stories told by those who grew up as child migrants and how they later came to perceive those experiences as they reflected back. When you study history you are perennially confronted with the fact that a thing that seemed wonderful not too long ago can later come to appear deplorable. Tracing the influences that produce shifts in moral conscience–whether psychological, social, economic, political, or emotional–is one of history’s chief tasks, and it is a task that Boucher accomplishes with great sensitivity and narrative elegance in Empire’s Children. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

In 2012, a young Cherokee girl named Veronica became famous. The widespread and often coercive adoption and fostering of Indigenous children by non-Native families has long been known, discussed, and challenged in Indian Country. Now, because of an interview on Dr. Phil with the white South Carolina couple seeking to adopt Veronica, the issue went national. Veronica’s mother had agreed to the adoption, but her father, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, wanted to raise her. And according to the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 (ICWA), Indian children should grow up in Indian families whenever possible. The Supreme Court disagreed. In a 5-4 decision in June 2013, they remanded the case to the South Carolina Supreme Court, who promptly placed Veronica with the white couple. This story opens Margaret D. Jacobs’ new book, A Generation Removed: The Fostering and Adoption of Indigenous Children in the Postwar World (University of Nebraska Press, 2014). But instead of trading in the shallow myths that characterized mainstream media coverage of the “Baby Veronica” case, Jacobs offers a nuanced and often troubling history that puts such incidents in context, documenting the mid-century explosion of adoption and fostering of Indigenous children by white families, not only in the United States but other settler colonial countries like Australia and Canada. Jacobs’ book is one of trauma and violence, but also of courage and resistance, as Indigenous families struggled to reclaim the care of their children, leading to the ICWA in the United States and to national investigations, landmark apologies, and redress in Australia and Canada. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Mark Standen was a hero to drug enforcement police. Not only was he a great guy but he was an extremely effective police officer. Unfortunately, he also became a partner in the illicit drug industry. Deception is a book that tells the story of how Standen turned to the dark side and how the Australian Federal Police were able to catch him. In his new book Deception: The True Story of the International Drug Plot that Brought Down Australia’s Top Law Enforcer Mark Standen (Allen and Urwin, 2012), Charles Miranda provides us with a very detailed story of greed and its consequences. Standen uses his knowledge of policing and techniques of investigation to put together a system that should have defeated the efforts of the police. However, he was also protecting his partners and left clues that exposed his operations. This is not just a cop who goes rogue but a professional who builds a sophisticated process of communication. Unfortunately for Standen, the underground world is inefficient and, ultimately, corrupt. He discovered that when you play there you cannot trust anyone and eventually you can be a victim. I recommend this book for anyone interested in the field of organized crime. It is a sobering story for police and gives academics an insight into the details of the industry that we rarely see. But above all that it is a great read! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Jarrod Gilbert is very lucky that he comes from a country the size of New Zealand. With only 4 million people he could carry out a project that would be beyond the abilities of someone from a large nation and beyond the scope of a single book, namely, the history of all the gangs in a country. Patched: The History of Gangs in New Zealand (Auckland UP, 2013) is, as you will hear in the interview, partly a history of society and politics in New Zealand. Gangs arise from influences of culture and demographics. People form and join gangs for reasons of security and belonging but once in them develop strong in-group behaviours and out-group prejudices. All of this is evident in this book. Jarrod traces the history from the 1950s when the locals copied the Hells Angels through to modern gangs where again the locals are copying American culture and creating imitations of the Bloods and the Crips. It is also interesting to see the responses of government and police in dealing with stereotypes and real criminal activity. I think anyone who reads this book will see familiar practices acted out by the gangs, the authorities and the community. This is a very human story and well worth the read. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

The Atlantic magazine recently asked its readers to name the greatest athlete of all time. The usual suspects were present among the nominees: Jesse Owens, Pele, Wayne Gretzky, Don Bradman. Given that these were readers of The Atlantic, there were some more thoughtful answers as well: Canadian athlete and cancer-research activist Terry Fox, Czech distance runner Emil Zapotek, and Milos of Croton, the six-time wrestling champion of the ancient Olympics. If we put that question to historians Peter Westwick and Peter Neushul, their likely response would be someone who rarely gets a mention on best-athlete lists, but certainly deserves a place: Duke Kahanamoku. A five-time Olympic medalist in swimming, Duke traveled the world to give swimming exhibitions, drawing thousands at each stop. And wherever there was a beach and a break, Duke also demonstrated the sport he had mastered at Waikiki Beach, where he had grown up. The surfing cultures of Southern California and Australia have their origins in visits by Duke Kahanamoku in the early 1910s. In the words of Westwick and Neushul, the Duke was a combination of world-champion swimmer Michael Phelps and world-champion surfer Kelly Slater (both of whom appeared on The Atlantic’s greatest-athlete list). Duke Kahanamoku is one of the main characters in Westwick and Neushul’s book The World in the Curl: An Unconventional History of Surfing (Crown, 2013). Kelly Slater and Laird Hamilton also appear, as do Gidget, Kahuna, and the Beach Boys. But as the sub-title indicates, this is a history that goes beyond the great surfers and the sport’s influence on pop culture. As historians of science and technology, Westwick and Neushul look at the developments that have fueled surfing’s popularity, such as the invention of foam-and-fiberglass boards (easier to manage than Duke’s 16-foot-long wooden boards) and the neoprene wetsuit, which has allowed surfers to enter waters around the world. Westwick and Neushul are also scholars of environmental history, and their history of surfing looks at how beaches have been transformed by developers and engineers. A customary part of a vacation at Waikiki is a surfing lesson. But the shoreline and even the waves that tourists encounter today are completely different from those of the Duke’s childhood. As Peter and Peter argue, the changes that took place on the shore are just as important to the story of this sport as what the surfers accomplished in the water. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

A number of modern sports are credited to a particular 19th-century founder. The inventive work of some of these figures, like basketball’s James Naismith, American football’s Walter Camp, and judo’s Jigoro Kano, is firmly planted in history. But there are others, such as Abner Doubleday and William Webb Ellis, who are certainly historical figures but whose moments of sporting genius are wrapped in legend. And then there is Tom Wills, the man now credited as the primary inventor of Australian rules football. There are statues in Wills’ honor, commemorating his work as a drafter of rules, a player, and an umpire in the mid-19thcentury. But as Greg de Moore discovered when he set out to learn about this distinctly Australian sport, the circumstances of Tom Wills’ life have been largely unknown. To start, Greg learned that Wills had taken his own life, in a horrific manner, by plunging a scissors into his chest. As an academic psychiatrist with a research interest in suicide, he set off to investigate what drove Wills to this act. Starting at its troubled end, Greg went on to research the whole of Wills’ life, producing the first serious biography of this important figure in the history of Australian popular culture: Tom Wills: First Wild Man of Australian Sport (Allen and Unwin, 2011) The subtitle of Greg’s book is appropriate. Tom Wills was a 19th-century example of the prodigiously gifted, narcissistic, and ultimately self-destructive male athlete. Like Mickey Mantle or George Best, Wills could not maintain a relationship, manage his fortune, or hold a job after he left the field. Nor could he handle his drink. Although his end was shocking and unusual, the downward spiral is familiar to those who follow sports, in any country. At the same time, while this is a story common to all sporting cultures, Tom Wills’ life opens a window to the history of colonial Australia. His life intersected with episodes of violence between white settlers and Aborigines, as well as moments of reconciliation. He took great pride in his English education, yet his father was committed to the idea that Australia distinguish itself as a separate nation. As Greg explains at the start of our interview, the first spark of this project had come when he was living in New York City and wanted to learn what was distinct about his homeland. Certainly, Tom Wills is a representative figure of Australian history. But he also should be viewed as a compelling character of modern sport. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies

Despite its focus on education, Sally Ninham‘s recent book, A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian Postgraduate Students and American PostgraduateDegrees, 1949-1964 (Connor Court Publishing, 2011), covers a lot of ground: the waning of Australian-British ties, the rise of Australian identity, post-war Australian-US relations, and much more. The book is also personal: it details her own family’s experiences as young professionals studying in the United States after the Second World War. The discovery of a cache of family letters led her to consider how and why Australians went to study in the United States, and how the experience transformed Australia’s own higher education system and politics in subsequent decades. For the Australian students, American education opened the prospect of an Australia less dependent upon the United Kingdom. For the United States, then fighting the Cold War, Australian students opened the prospect of closer ties to Australia, an important ally. The book, which is built on an impressive body of oral history interviews, personal letters, and memoirs, is both an important cultural document and a very readable intellectual history. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/australian-and-new-zealand-studies