Assoc Prof James Curran

Associate Professor
Department of History
Rm 885 Brennan Macallum Building A18
The University of Sydney NSW 2006
Ph: +61 2 9351 2988
Fax: +61 2 9351 3918
Email:

Dr Curran teaches political, intellectual, cultural and diplomatic history. His current research, funded by an ARC Discovery Project (2010-2012), explores the history of the Australia/US Alliance from Nixon's 1969 Guam Doctrine to the early 1980s, with a particular focus on how each country formulated Asia policy in that period. In 2010 he was the DFAT/ Fulbright Professional Scholar in Australia-US Alliance Studies, based in Washington DC.

Prior to joining the university, Dr Curran served in various roles in the Commonwealth Public Service. From 2002 to 2005 he worked as a Policy Adviser in the Department of The Prime Minister and Cabinet, serving in both its Social Policy and International Divisions. From 2005 to 2007, he was an Analyst in the Americas and Europe Branch of the Office of National Assessments.

Publications

Books

Curtin’s Empire (Cambridge University Press, 2011)

The Unknown Nation: Australia After Empire (co-authored with Stuart Ward) (Melbourne University Press, 2010)

The Power of Speech: Australian Prime Ministers Defining the National Image (Melbourne University Press, April 2004)

Book Chapters
‘The New Line in the Strand: John Armstrong and the “New Nationalism”’, in Frank Bongiorno, Carl Bridge, and David Lee, (eds) The High Commissioners: Australia's Representatives in the United Kingdom, 1910-2010, Department of Foreign Affairs, Canberra, February 2010).

Journals
‘L’Australie, le Japon et l’héritage de la Deuxième Guerre Mondiale: conciliation politique et doute publique', Vingtième Siecle (September 2010)

'"An Organic Part of the Whole Structure": John Curtin’s Empire', Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History (March 2009)

'"Australia Should be There": Expo 67 and the Search for a New National Image', Australian Historical Studies 131 (March 2008)

Entry on 'Australia-Britain', Oxford Companion to Australian Politics 2007.

'"The Thin Dividing Line": Prime Ministers and the problem of Australian nationalism, 1972-1996'. Australian Journal of Politics and History, vol. 48, no. 4 (December 2002)

'Bonjoor Paree: The First AIF in Paris, 1916-19' Journal of Australian Studies, No.1, 1999.

Areas of Teaching

• HSTY2687: Alliance: A History of Australia/US Relations
• HSTY2677: Australia: Politics and Nation
• HSTY2676: Australia and the World

Conference Activity

2009:
'The Monarchy in Australia', University College Dublin Seminar Series, November 2009

2008:
‘Past Matters: Australia, Japan and the Legacy of the Second World War, 1945-2008’, Shanghai. A Conference organized by the French Embassy, Beijing, on ‘War and Reconciliation in Europe and Asia’.

‘Australian intellectuals and the post-imperial void’, University College Dublin, October 2008.

2007:
‘The Fourth Empire’: John Curtin’s proposals for closer imperial cooperation, May 1944, British World Conference, Bristol, 11-14 July 2007.

2004:
‘The End of Identity?: Reflections on political leadership and the national self-image in post 1960s Australia’, Address to National Archives of Australia History Week, 12 September 2004

‘A crisis of national meaning: Prime Ministers and the dilemma of Australian nationalism’; John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library Visiting Scholar Lecture, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, 19 April 2004.

2002:
‘Prime Ministers and the problem of Australian nationalism, 1941-1996’, ANU History Seminar Series, October 2002.

‘Prime Ministerial rhetoric and Australian nationalism’: An Address to the Australian Academy of the Humanities, Australian National University, November 2002

The ‘kind of nationalism that every country needs’?: EG Whitlam and the ‘new nationalism’; Thirty Years Later: The Whitlam Government as Modernist Politics, Monash University – National Key Centre for Australian Studies, Parliamentary Studies Unit, Canberra, 2-3 December 2002

2001:
‘Challenge and Response: Malcolm Fraser and Australian Foreign policy’; The Liberals and Australian Foreign Policy, Menzies Centre, School of Australian and International Studies and the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London, Melbourne September 25-27, 2001.

‘The Prime Ministerial Persona: aspects of the intellectual history of R. J. L. Hawke’; Someone Special: The Bob Hawke Prime Ministerial Library Inaugural conference, Adelaide, 19-20 October 2001.

2000:
‘Visiting Rites’: Britishness in Australian Prime Ministerial Speeches: From Mansion House to Ballarat, 1972-1996; ‘Comings and Goings: Britain and Australia, Past and Future, BASA Conference, Menzies Centre for Australian Studies, London, 12-14 September 2000.

1999:
‘Australian Prime Ministers and the British Myth in a changing world’, Panel series: Sentiment and Self Interest in Anglo-Australian Relations, AHA Regional Conference, Hobart, 29 September – 1 October 1999.

Book Reviews

• W David McIntrye The Britannic Vision: Historians and the Making of the British Commonwealth of Nations, 1907-1948 (Australian Historical Studies, forthcoming)
• Political Tourists: Travelers from Australia to the Soviet Union, 1920-1940 (eds Sheila Fitzpatrick and Carolyn Rasmussen), Australian Historical Studies (June 2009)
• Joint review of Sally Warhaft, The Speeches that Made Australia (Melbourne, Black Inc, 2004) and Rod Kemp and Marion Stanton (eds) Speaking for Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2004), in The Australian Book Review, November 2004.
• Review of Geoffrey Bolton, Edmund Barton – The One Man for the Job (Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 2001) The Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society, vol. 87, pt. 2 (December 2001)
• A response to David Malouf’s ‘Made In England’ Quarterly Essay 13, April 2004