News and Events

Empire and International History: The 4th International Postgraduate Intensive. University of Sydney, 26-27 July 2012

The Postgraduate Intensive 'Empire and International History' invites graduate research students to reflect on the significance of empire in modern history, in international and transnational contexts. The remit is broad, and we are interested in students working in cultural, social, political, economic, and intellectual history, and in any of the many international contexts in which questions of empire have been of importance, whether the history of internationalism, or development, nationalism or trade, slavery, or anti-slavery, or indeed the history of ideas of liberalism, or colonialism, or decolonization, human rights, or women's rights, race, class or gender.

Students accepted into the intensive will be required to contribute a written paper for pre- circulation, and presentation at the meeting to take place over two days, from Thursday 26- Friday 27, 2012. Each paper will receive a commentary from an allocated Faculty respondent.

For further information click here.

Southern Crossings: Australia and the Cape Colony, c. 1750 – 1850.

This fourth-year Honours seminar is run jointly by Professor Nigel Worden at the University of Cape Town and Associate Professor Kirsten McKenzie at the University of Sydney in 2010 and 2011.

Southern Crossings explores the history of the Cape Colony and Australia in the period c.1750-1850. In particular we discuss in what ways writing about one region might be applied to the other and how current interest in transnational and imperial history approaches might be used in Cape and Australian research. The seminar connects students internationally through a designated website, video conferencing, and cross-institutional visits by staff. For a report on Kirsten McKenzie’s time at the University of Cape Town see the Department of Historical Studies, UCT blog

What History tells us about why benefactors like universities

Wednesday 8 June, 2011
Professor Sir David Cannadine (Princeton)
introduced by
Dr Michael Spence, Vice-­Chancellor of the University of Sydney
Keynote address

Panel Discussion

• Emeritus Professor Alan Atkinson on learning, piety, patriarchy, nostalgia: why men and women gave money to St Paul’s College
• Dr Ann Stephen on J W Power’s vision ‘…to bring the people of Australia in more direct touch with the latest art’
• Dr Julia Horne on Samuel McCaughey’s gift to the nation

Constitutions and Global History, 1780-2000

Thursday June 9, 2011
Professor Linda Colley (Princeton)
After the American and French Revolutions, a written constitution came progressively to be viewed an an essential symbol and component of a modern state. Britain however both resisted these revolutions, and has retained an un-coded constitution. Despite this, Britain’s impact on the writing of constitutions in other countries – both inside and outside its former empire – has been more extensive than that of any other power. In this lecture, Linda Colley explores this apparent paradox and what it reveals about global, imperial and British history, and about the meanings of constitutional design.

Global Networks in an Imperial Age

27 July, 2011
Public Lecture
Professor Antoinette Burton and Professor Tony Ballantyne
‘Imperial Frictions: Thinking through Impediments to Global Connection.’

27 – 29 July 2011
WUN International Network in Colonialism and Postcolonial Studies
Postgraduate masterclass with Professor Antoinette Burton and Professor Tony Ballantyne.

This masterclass will explore the intersections between the imperial and the global from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries within the Indian and Pacific Oceans and their borderlands. We consider the movement of ideas, people and goods through various networks, personal itineraries, transnational connections, and the transport and migration of cultures. We are especially interested in connections between different areas – between continents, oceans and imperial domains. By presenting their current research projects, participants will interrogate the possibilities and the constraints of transnational imperial studies.

As part of the Worldwide Universities Network, this masterclass will host students from the University of Sydney as well as from the University of Cape Town, South Africa, the University of Otago, New Zealand, the University of Illinois, United States and the Universities of Leeds and Bristol, United Kingdom.

• Antoinette Burton is Bastian Professor of Global and Transnational Studies and Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Amongst her sole-authored works are The Postcolonial Careers of Santha Rama Rau (2007) and Dwelling in the Archive: Women Writing House, Home and History in Late Colonial India (2003)
• Tony Ballantyne is Professor of History at the University of Otago. Amongst his sole-authored works are Between Colonialism and Diaspora: Sikh Cultural Formations in an Imperial World (2006) and Orientalism and Race: Aryanism in the British Empire (2001)

Windows of Empire: Colonial Celebrations & the Imperial World, 1780 – 1950

15-16 September 2011
This conference aims to bring together postgraduates and early career academics from a variety of disciplines to explore the theme of colonial celebrations. Participants will be encouraged to think broadly about celebrations, considering topics ranging from colonial subjects’ private parties to empire-wide festivities, from triumphant international exhibitions to celebrations of empire presented in print and on film.

Professor Robert Aldrich of the University of Sydney will present a keynote address and teach a masterclass.
Click here for registration and further information