Associate Professor Richard White

BA DipEd (Sydney)
Associate Professor
Room 847 Brennan Building

+61 2 9351 4511

Associate Professor Richard White is a graduate of the University of Sydney and after teaching at Monash University and the University of Western Sydney, joined the Department in 1989. He teaches in all areas of Australian history, as well as the history of travel and tourism.

Research Areas

• Australian cultural history
• Nationalism and national identity
• History of travel and tourism

Current Projects

• Touring the past: tourism and history in Australia 1850-2010
  ARC Discovery Grant, 2010-2012
  History (and heritage) tourism has long been a feature of international tourism, and is a rapidly growing niche within the Australian industry. This project seeks to explain the origins and development of history tourism in Australia, a poorly understood activity with surprisingly long history. In the process, it will analyse the ways tourists have contributed to the popular construction of Australia’s past. A by-product will be the identification of new sites of history tourism: those sites that past tourists themselves have made significant. Finally it will contribute to wider theoretical understandings of history tourism as a phenomenon.
• Cooee: its rise and fall (contracted with Melbourne University Publishing)
• Driving to Australia: overland journeys between Europe and Australia 1888-1972

Selected Publications

Symbols of Australia University of New South Wales Press and National Museum of Australia, Sydney 2010 Melissa Harper & Richard White (eds)

Australian Travel Writing special number of Studies in Travel Writing 11(1) March 2007 Richard White (ed)

On Holidays: A History of Getting Away in Australia Pluto, Melbourne, 2005 (with Sarah-Jane Ballard, Ingrid Bown, Meredith Lake, Patricia Leehy, Lila Oldmeadow)

Cultural History in Australia University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2003 Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White (eds)

Memories and Dreams: Reflections on twentieth-century Australia: Pastiche 2 Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1997 Richard White and Penny Russell (eds)

The Oxford Book of Australian Travel Writing Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1996 Pesman, Ros, David Walker and Richard White (eds)

Pastiche 1: Reflections on Nineteenth Century Australia Allen and Unwin Australia, Sydney 1994 Penny Russell and Richard White (eds)

Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980 Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1981

‘A Short History of Beach Holidays’ in Hosking, Sue, Rick Hosking, Bec Pannell & Nena Bierbaum (eds) On the Littoral: Something Rich and Strange, Wakefield Press, Adelaide, 2010

‘Cooee’ and ‘Sydney Opera House’ (with Sylvia Lawson) in Melissa Harper & Richard White (eds) Symbols of Australia University of New South Wales Press and National Museum of Australia, Sydney 2010

‘Australian Tourists in Britain’ in Carl Bridge, Robert Crawford and David Dunstan (eds) Australians in Britain, 1901-2001: an exploration Monash e-press, Melbourne 2009

‘Popular Culture’ (with Hsu-Ming Teo) in Deryck M Schreuder and Stuart Ward (eds) Australia’s Empire (Oxford History of the British Empire Companion Series) Oxford University Press, Oxford 2008

‘Symbols of Australia’ in Martyn Lyons and Penny Russell (eds) Australia’s history: Themes and Debates UNSW Press, Sydney 2005

‘Imagining: Representing Australia’ in Graeme Davison and Kimberley Webber (eds) Yesterday’s Tomorrows: The Powerhouse Museum and its Precursors 1880-2005 Powerhouse Publishing in association with UNSW Press, Sydney 2005

'Inventing Australia Revisited' in Wayne Hudson and Geoffrey Bolton (eds) Creating Australia: Changing Australian History Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1997

'The Outsider's Gaze and the Representation of Australia' in Don Grant and Graham Seal (eds) Australia in the World: Perceptions and Possibilities Black Swan Press, Curtin University of Technology, Perth, 1994

'The Shock of Affluence', introductory essay to Judith O'Callaghan(ed) The Australian Dream, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney 1993

'Passing Through : Tuscany and the Australian Tourist' in Gaetano Prampolini and Marie-Christine Hubert(eds) An Antipodean Connection: Australian Writers, Artists and Travellers in Tuscany Geneva 1993 (Biblioteca del Viaggio in Italia: Studi, 47)

'Boyd, the Suburb and the Australian Way of Life' in Karen Burns and Harriet Edquist (eds) Robin Boyd Melbourne 1992(special issue of Transition no 38, 1992)

'The Imagined Community : Nationalism and Culture in Australia' catalogue essay for Jonathan Watkins (curator), Stories of Australian Art Commonwealth Institute, London 1988

'War and Australian Society' in Margaret Browne and Michael McKernan (eds), Australia : Two Centuries of War and Peace Australian War Memorial, Canberra,1988

'Overseas' in Bill Gammage and Peter Spearritt (eds), Australians 1938, a volume of Australians : A Historical Library Fairfax Syme Weldon, Sydney 1987

'The Importance of being Man: The Australian Magazine for Men' in Peter Spearritt and David Walker (eds) Australian Popular Culture Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1979

‘Australian Journalists, Travel Writing and China: James Hingston, the ‘Vagabond’ and G. E. Morrison’ Journal of Australian Studies 32 (2) June 2008

‘Travel, Writing and Australia’ Studies in Travel Writing 11(1) March 2007

‘Adventures in Collaboration: Writing History with Students’ History Australia: journal of the Australian Historical Association 1(2) July 2004

‘National Days and the National Past in Australia’ Australian Cultural History 22, 2003

‘Cooees across the Strand: Australian Travellers in London and the Performance of National Identity’ Australian Historical Studies 32(116) April 2001

'The Retreat from Adventure: Popular Travel Writing in the 1950s' Australian Historical Studies vol 28, no. 109, October 1997

'Australian Identity post 1980: Whatever happened to the Typical Australian?' in P H Peters (ed) [[i||Australian English in a Pluralist Australia: Proceedings of Style Council 95] , Dictionary Research Centre, Macquarie University, 1995

'Getting Civilised: the arrival of the First AIF in Europe, 1915' Australian Studies (London) May 1991

'Sun, Sand and Syphilis: Australian Soldiers and the Orient, Egypt 1914' Australian Cultural History no.9, 1990

'The Soldier as Tourist; The Australian Experience of the Great War' War and Society May 1987

'Motives for Joining Up: Self-Sacrifice, Self-Interest and Social Class 1914-1918' Journal of the Australian War Memorial October 1986

'Bluebells and Fogtown: Australians' First Impressions of England 1860-1940' Australian Cultural History 1986

'A Backwater Awash: The Australian Experience of Americanisation' Theory Culture and Society Spring 1983

'"Combating Cultural Aggression": Australian Opposition to Americanisation' Meanjin October 1980 v.39, Oct 1980

'"The Australian Way of Life"' Historical Studies (now Australian Historical Studies) v.18, Oct 1979

'"Americanisation" and Popular Culture in Australia' Teaching History August 1978 v.12, August 1978

Areas of teaching and research supervision

Australian history generally – particularly cultural history, nationalism and travel – and the history of travel and tourism.

Postrgaduate supervision

Completions

Samantha Frappell 1996 Building Jerusalem: Church and society in New South Wales, 1940-1956

Deborah Edward 1998 Sydney's suburban Catholic community: mission and parish, 1860-1890

Julia Baird 2001 Housewife superstars: female politicians and the Australian print media, 1970-1990

Ana Carden-Coyne 2001 Revenge of the body: modern classicism in postwar culture, 1918-1933

Angela Macdonald 2001 Hollywood bound: a history of Australians in Hollywood to 1970

Melissa Harper 2002 The ways of the bushwalker: bushwalking in Australia, 1788-1940

John Tebbutt 2002 Through Australian eyes: a cultural history of the foreign correspondent

Sascha Jenkins 2004 Our Harbour: a cultural history of Sydney Harbour 1880-1938

Anne Vidal 2005 Representing Australia Identity 2000-2001: the Sydney Olympic Games and the Centenary of Federation Celebrations (co-tutelle with Paris IV-Sorbonne)

Laina Hall 2005 The Long Way Home: A History of Motor Touring in Australia 1925-2004

Olwen Pryke 2006 Australia House: Representing Australia in London, 1901-1939

Alex Roberts 2008 Beyond the Kerbs and Gutters: the Development of Community Facilities in Sydney and Melbourne since 1945

Caroline Ford 2008 The First Wave: the Making of a Beach Culture in Sydney, 1810-1920

Tony Moore 2008 Australia’s Bohemian Tradition

Meredith Lake 2009 ‘Such Spiritual Acres’: Protestantism, the land and the colonisation of Australia, 1788-1850

Agnieska Sobocinszka 2010 Personal Engagements: Australian Travel to Asia 1941-2009

Mathew Trinca 2010 Part of the Pageant: Australian Tourists in London after World War 2

Toby Martin 2010 ‘Yodelling Boundary Riders: Country Music in Australia’


Current

Justine Greenwood The Migrant's Holiday: Tourism and Migrant Settlement in Australia, 1945–2010

Geoff Howarth The Role of Professor R G Howarth in the Australian Literary Network

Maya Le A Cultural History of Buddhism in Australia

Katy Nebhan Australian Muslim Masculinities

Zoe Pollock A History of Australia Day

Louise Prowse After the Dust: New South Wales Country Towns in a Post-agricultural Environment 1946-2006

Alexandra Roberts A History of Food Tourism in Australia

Conference activity

Recent Keynote Addresses, Public Lectures

‘Time Travel: Australian Tourists and Europe’s Past’, Keynote Address, Australians Abroad: An Interdisciplinary Conference, University of Queensland, 10-11 Feb 2011
‘Nation and Recreation in the First National Parks’, Public Lecture, Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change, Leeds Metropolitan University, 23 April 2009
‘The Empire and the Emporium’, Keynote Address. Travelling the Colonies, Centre for Colonialism and its Aftermath, University of Tasmania, Bruny Island, 25-27 June 2008
‘Learning Nostalgia: History Tourism in a Settler Society’, Keynote Address. Time in Travel Writing and Tourism Studies Borders & Crossings/Seuils et Traverses University of Melbourne 16-19 July 2008
‘When the Bush Rang with Cooees’, Russel Ward Annual Lecture, University of New England, 30 Oct 2008.

In 2010, Richard White gave papers in both Newcastle-upon-Tyne and Newcastle-upon-Hunter, as well as Perth (Australian Historical Association), Norfolk Island (Professional Historians Association), Sydney (Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand and International Association for Australian Studies) and Byron Bay (Cultural Studies Association of Australasia).

Other Professional Contributions

Co-editor, History Australia (the journal of the Australian Historical Association)

Bureau member, International Commission for the History of Travel and Tourism (affiliated commission of the Congrès International des Sciences Historiques)

Editorial Advisory Boards:

• Journal of Social History
• Journal of Tourism History
• Studies in Travel Writing