New Books in Australian and New Zealand Studies

In her new book, Globalisation, the State and Regional Australia (Sydney University Press, 2018), Amanda Walsh, associate director of government relations at Australian Catholic University, explores the political and economic consequences of globalization across Australia nationally and in regional Australia specifically.  Using a series of case studies on the manufacturing, dairy, and ethanol ind...

In his new book, Empire and Asian Migration: Sovereignty, Immigration Restriction and Protest in the British Settler Colonies, 1888–1907 (UWA Publishing, 2018), Jeremy Martens, a senior lecturer in History at the University of Western Australia, offers a comparative look at the tensions that arose in settler colonies like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa as white settlers protested Asian m...

In her new book, Wild Sea: A History of the Southern Ocean (NewSouth Publishing, 2018), historian Joy McCann explores the history of the vast Southern Ocean, from icy Antarctica to the southern coastlines of Australia, South America, and South Africa.  From the journals of navigators centuries ago to scientific instruments today, the ocean has been more than just a scientific lab or food source, b...

In her new book, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (NewSouth Publishing, 2018), historian Meredith Lake explores the various, often surprising ways Australians throughout history have read, utilized, and fought over the Bible. In ways both religious and deeply secular, the Bible has played a contested but defining role in the country’s political, social, and cultural debates. Learn more a...

In her new book, Dynamics of Difference in Australia: Indigenous Past and Present in a Settler Country (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), Francesca Merlan, Professor of Anthropology at the Australian National University, explores a variety of relationships between indigenous and nonindigenous people in Australia since Europeans’ arrival.  Based on archival research and extensive fieldwork i...

In her new book, Sunburnt Country: The History and Future of Climate Change in Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2018), Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist and writer from the University of Melbourne, explores the long history of Australia’s climate, centuries before official weather records began.  As the world’s climate continues to change, Australians will especially feel the more extreme c...

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 m...

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 negotiatio...

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...

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...

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 i...

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 1...

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...

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...

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 cultu...

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 ti...

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 th...

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 sh...

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 controv...

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, p...

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 Ne...

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 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 a...

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...

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...