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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Congratulations to the John Barrett Prize winners - catch up on this award-winning scholarship here! Open winners: Emily Yu Zong & Daisy Bisenieks explore how Australian dark humour uses parody, absurdity and laughter to respond to the eco-social phenomenon of invasive species. tinyurl.com/mc4bwyn

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Dark Humour and Invasive Species Storytelling in the Age of Extinction. Authors: Emily Yu Zong and Daisy Bisenieks (Hong Kong Baptist University). Abstract: This essay explores how humour, specifically dark humour, performs an affective politics of opacity in Australian comedies that invokes parody, absurdity and laughter to address the eco-social challenges of invasive species, including rabbits, brumbies, cane toads and red fire ants. The incongruity between jocular feelings and the gravity of extinction highlights humour’s ambivalent potential for violence and subversion. Through an analysis of cartoons and documentaries that bridge conservation science and the Australian cultural imagination, we identify three dimensions of environmental dark humour: (1) it questions human exceptionalism by foregrounding ambiguity, nonhuman agency and assemblage thinking beyond rational control; (2) it performs a cultural diagnosis of colonial legacies, including eco-nationalism and anti-immigration rhetoric, hegemonic White masculinity, and regional and cultural stereotypes; (3) it allows a cathartic release of affective dissent and taboo feelings by subverting culturally normative emotional attachments to invasive animals and mainstream environmentalism. By considering humour as a crucial technique for survival and ambiguity, we argue for its potential to inspire self-reflective, multispecies and decolonial modes of storytelling that can ethically account for human and nonhuman otherness in the age of extinction.

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International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Congratulations to our 2025 John Barrett Award Winners for best article in JAS! Open winners: Dr Emily Yu Zong & Daisy Bisenieks (HK Baptist University). Postgraduate winner: Phoebe Hayman (La Trobe). And shout out to A/Prof Rebecca Hill (RMIT) for receiving a Highly Commended in the Open Category.

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International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

*CFP deadline extended* Abstracts for InASA's 2027 conference "The Cringing Continent" now due 14 September....

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

🚨New issue of JAS out now🚨 50.3 features our cutest cover yet - Horrie the Wog Dog (actually a sad tale but let's not spoil the moment). We begin our 50.3 thread with the co-editors taking on AI. Stay tuned for your daily doses of 50.3! #OzStudies tinyurl.com/zsdjmzft

Blue cover of the Journal of Australian Studies Volume 50, Number 1, September 2026. Features a black and white photograph of a small terrier-like dog wearing a little vest and standing on an ammo crate in front of three tents in the north African desert.

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Jon Piccini @jonpiccini.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Check out our 18+ cover, JAS pushing the boundaries!

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Ana Stevenson @dranastevenson.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Very pleased to see my book review in the latest edition of @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social! ✍️ Anthea Taylor's excellent Germaine Greer, Celebrity Feminism and the Archive makes abundant use of the Germaine Greer Archive, with a particular focus on curatorial labour and audience letter writing 💌

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James Donaldson @cairojim.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

Pleased to have this out and open access with @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social my great grandfather, Major RJ Donaldson DSO, was one of the Aussie engineers at Brightlingsea so this had a special connection for me

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

We interrupt your (ir)regularly scheduled programming of JAS 50.2 notices to announce that the #CFP for @intlausstudies.bsky.social conference is out now! Join us at Flinders on 9-12 Feb 2027 to discuss "The Cringing Continent"! Abstracts due: 17 August 2026 For more details: tinyurl.com/4hnn6k8v

tinyurl.com

Call for Papers: ‘The Cringing Continent’, InASA Conference for 2027

The Cringing Continent 2027 InASA Conference Tuesday 9—Friday 12 February Flinders University, Adelaide In February 2027, we invite you to join us on Kaurna Country to reconsider one of the foundat…

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

50.2 of JAS is out but the cover is too saucy for Bluesky. The cover image is taken from Max Dupain’s Cronulla nudes series. You can see it on our website: www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjau20/c... #OzStudies #OzPhotography #Dupain

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

🚨New issue alert🚨 JAS 50.2 is now available. Featuring a Max Dupain photograph on the cover that has been flagged by Bluesky as sexually explicit. 😳 Wait until they read the article in this issue about foreskins… tinyurl.com/4ncnpapk #OzStudies

Cover image from Max Dupain’s Sunbathers series. Depicts nudists frolicking in the sand dunes.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/03/2026

This CFP is open for one more week! Get your proposals in by Monday 30 March. #CFP #OzStudies

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 15/03/2026

It's Monday morning and you're writing your to do list for the week. Why not add "write abstract for JAS 50.4 special issue" on that list? #OzStudies #CFP #OzHist #OzLit #humanities

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 06/03/2026

To celebrate our 50th volume, JAS invites you to contribute to a special issue on (the Journal of) Australian Studies at 50. Please see the CFP below for details - and please circulate it far and wide! @intlausstudies.bsky.social #CFP #OzStudies #OzLit #OzHist #auspol #AustralianStudies

50In 2026, the Journal of Australian Studies
publishes its 50th volume. To mark this occasion we propose a special issue for release in late 2026. For this volume, we would like to invite scholars to revisit its back issues - perhaps with nostalgia, perhaps with criticism, but always with the purpose of evaluating what Australian Studies has been, what it currently is, and what it can be.
We seek articles of that can do one or more of the following:
Select a particular article or special issue from the past to speak to from a contemporary perspective
Revisit one of your own articles published in
JAS
to critically revise, update - or perhaps redact past scholarship
Scholarly reflections of editorial experiences with the journal focused on characterising “Australian Studies” at the time
Critical personal reflections
Debates and disputes in Australian studies (on the pages and off of
JAS
)
A critical history of/commentary on
JAS
and its relationship to the field of Australian Studies more broadly
Critical reviews of key themes the journal has covered (or not covered) over its history
Critical reviews of the role of disciplines and disciplinarity within the interdisciplinary formation of Australian Studies
We also welcome other proposals and suggestions. Please note that we are open to a wide range of lengths and formats in this context, as appropriate to the form of your contribution, and we invite contributors to specify a nominal word count in their proposal, noting that this cannot exceed 8000 words (inclusive of footnotes).
We invite all contributors to provide a 300-500 word
abstract proposal for their article by 30 March 2026
. This is to allow us to identify and remedy any potential overlaps, and to identify peer reviewers in advance.
Outcomes and feedback on abstracts will be provided by 3 April
at the latest. Please submit your abstracts to:
journalofaustralianstudies@gmail.com
with the subject line:
Attn: JAS at 50 Special Issue.

Initial manuscripts are due in ScholarOne by 17 July 2026
; however, we welcome early submissions.
All manuscripts will be peer reviewed. In the spirit of collaboration, we ask that contributors to the special issue also assist with peer reviewing other contributions. After revisions based on the peer review are made, manuscripts will undergo an editorial review, after which they may be returned for further revisions. After this round of editorial revisions, the manuscripts will then be forwarded to our copyeditor by no later than 28 August. Final manuscripts (including peer review, revision, copyediting, and revisions after copyediting) are due by 9 October 2026.
If you have any questions, please email the Editors:
jess.carniel@unisq.edu.au
and
chris.hay@flinders.edu.au
Production timeline at a glance
Abstracts:
30 March 2026
Notification of acceptance:
3 April 2026
Initial manuscript submission:
17 July 2026
Peer review and revision process completed by:
28 August 2026
Final manuscripts (including peer review and copyediting)
: 9 October 2026
Publication:
December 2026

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/01/2026

Last but not least, a thread of the book reviews published in 49.4. If you have a book you would like us to review, please contact out reviews editors @jonpiccini.bsky.social and Nycole Prowse.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

Introducing the papers in 49.4: Hill examines the more-than human elements of Behrouz #Boochani's prison writing as an important part of his "practices of freedom". #OzStudies #immigration #ManusIsland #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/2s3k5dke

Screenshot of a journal article. Title: “Spirits of Resistance”: A Politics of Feeling in Behrouz Boochani’s Prison Writing. Author: Rebecca Hill, RMIT. Abstract: This article engages with Behrouz Boochani’s prison writing, especially his autobiographical novel No Friend but the Mountains and his poetic manifesto, “A Letter from Manus Island”. Boochani wrote these works while he was incarcerated in Australian immigration detention on Manus, a tropical island in an archipelago in the far north of Papua New Guinea. His writing is widely acclaimed for its meticulous description and analysis of the ongoing atrocities of the Australian immigration detention regime. I argue that his work should also be read as a sustained thinking of collective practices of freedom. The practices of freedom that Boochani articulates emerge in the generation of “profound relations” of feeling between the people, animals, plants, oceans and winds of Manus. These relations of feeling resist the system of control, coercion and violence that undergird Manus Prison. For Boochani, the system of control at the prison is a microcosm of what he calls Manus Prison Theory. His thinking of freedom is a thinking with the feelings and forces of Manus, and his writing is traced with the places that he wrote in.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 10/12/2025

🚨JAS 49.4 now available 🚨 JAS editors: "the intellectual mission of #Meanjin lives on beyond its pages, and we commit JAS to similarly challenging and extending the nation’s mental life." Thank you to @beneltham.bsky.social for permission to use the cover image. tinyurl.com/yphjfn38 #OzStudies

Melbourne poet Pi.O performs in front of the Melbourne offices of Meanjin during the Save Meanjin protest, 11 September 2025. Behind him, a man in jeans holds up a sign that covers his face. The sign reads, "Purely on financial grounds".

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Zora Simic @zorasimic.bsky.social · 17/10/2025

School of Humanities & Languages #unsw is hiring TWO postdoctoral fellows in history! 2 years fixed term, open to different specialisations. Deadline is Nov 2 external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au/cw/en/job/53...

external-careers.jobs.unsw.edu.au

Postdoctoral Fellow in History

Undertake independent research and contribute to UNSW’s vibrant History program as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in any area of historical study.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

Last but not least, a thread of the book reviews published in 49.3. Remember, if you would like your book reviewed, please contact our reviews editor @jonpiccini.bsky.social. 🧵 1/5

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

And in the final paper of the deserts special section for 49.3, guest editor Reger explores Australian deserts as a setting for Australian science fiction. #SciFi #deserts #OzStudies #AusLit #ecocriticism tinyurl.com/3yb5u3pv

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Desert Depictions in Australian Science Fiction. Author: Gary Reger (Trinity College, US). Abstract: The great interior deserts of Australia provide the setting for two important genres of Australian literature: exploration narratives and science fiction (SF). Both borrow heavily from, but also revise and challenge, the tropes about deserts European settler colonists brought with them. More recent Indigenous SF, however, has pushed back against these settler-colonist tropes, and thus introduced new approaches to the rich field of Australian SF.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

In the second article in the Australian desert special, @ruthamorgan.bsky.social examines Australia's response to the UNESCO agenda on research in "arid zones". #deserts #CSIRO #UNESCO #science #OpenAccess #OzStudies #OzHist tinyurl.com/m4wcn734

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Entering the Arid Zone: Australian Development Diplomacy and UNESCO, 1945–1960. Author: Ruth A. Morgan (Australian National University). Abstract: This article examines the response of Australian governments to UNESCO’s agenda of conducting scientific research in “arid zones” to explore the role of the nation in the liberal internationalism of the postwar world order. UNESCO’s first director-general, Julian Huxley, and its first head of the Natural Sciences Section, Joseph Needham, both positioned science as critical to an internationalist agenda. Australian botanist Bertram Thomas Dickson and his contemporaries shared this belief in the necessary role of science in postwar reconstruction and the betterment of humanity. However, as Dickson’s hitherto unexamined correspondence with Canberra and UNESCO shows, national interests still mattered, as did empire, to the movement of scientific ideas during the first decades after the war. The interwar rise of applied science and its contributions to rural Australia, as historical geographer J. M. Powell argues, had “won” scientists like Dickson and the CSIR official support, which sustained their importance to postwar reconstruction and development efforts. Australia’s contribution to the UNESCO initiative therefore followed Canberra’s assessment of the strategic value of the organisation to its regional ambitions and development diplomacy.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 05/09/2025

In 49.3's desert special section, Morton explores the various meanings that have been inscribed across the desert by settler Australians, then changed by a new appreciation of Aboriginal art. #OzStudies #OpenAccess #desert #Australia #AboriginalArt tinyurl.com/388x8xcn

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Symbolic Australian Desert. Author: Steve Morton. Abstract: Arid Australia is lightly peopled, and so in past eras its representation in art and literature has often been based on fleeting visits. The paucity of personally lived experience has encouraged commentators to use it as a blank canvas for a contradictory range of imputed meanings, from emptiness to plenitude. The country is occasionally benign yet is mostly hot and dry: the resulting attitude of deficit is exemplified by Sidney Nolan’s “Desert and Drought” paintings of the 1950s. Yet a subsequent explosion of Aboriginal art, and of written accounts revealing the appetite of Aboriginal people for connection with Country, has helped swing the pendulum towards mystique, and settler Australians have begun to interpret the deserts sympathetically. Even so, settler Australians struggle to see this tough country as habitable. Western ideals have run up against a landscape unusually inimical to industrial and agricultural purposes, such that now the inland may best be interpreted as a symbol of the limits to human endeavour.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Introducing the special section in 49.3 on "Humanities in the Australian Desert" guest edited by Andrea Gaynor and Gary Reger. #OzDeserts #deserts #OzStudies #OpenAccess #humanities tinyurl.com/8t52xxz9

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Humanities in the Australian Desert: An Introduction to a Special Section of the Journal of Australian Studies. Authors: Andrea Gaynor (University of Western Australia) and Gary Reger (Trinity College, USA)

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

In the last of our general articles in 49.3, MacNeill et al draw upon a survey of 702 artists and arts workers to explore the impact of gender on their economic status as artists. #OzArts #OzStudies #VisualArts #GenderGap #OpenAccess #CreativeIndustries tinyurl.com/23c7sp37

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Impact of Gender on Incomes in the Visual Arts in Australia. Authors: Kate MacNeill, Jenny Lye, Edwina Bartlem (University of Melbourne), Grace McQuilten, Chloe Powell, Marnie Badham (RMIT). Abstract: The gendered discrepancy in income across the visual and craft arts is widely recognised. Female artists on average receive less for their sales of art than do male artists, and at auction in the resale market, work by female artists on average sells for less than that of male artists. These outcomes are compounded by lower earnings from waged employment in the visual arts and craft sector. This article draws on the results from a 2022 survey of the incomes and working conditions of 702 visual and craft artists and arts workers in Australia to explore how gender impacts the economic status of artists. The authors analyse the survey findings in conjunction with art-market outcomes for visual artists in Australia to assess the key moments in artists’ careers where their career progression is impacted by gender and how policymakers might respond to these challenges.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

49.3 cont'd... Beattie examines the popularity and scepticism surrounding quacks visiting New England in the late 19th century revealing a familiar tension between profit and information in the media. #OpenAccess #quackery #OzHist #OzStudies tinyurl.com/yda83dhp

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Golden Chariot: Quacks, Quackery and New England Newspapers, 1889–1893. Author: Belinda Beattie, University of New England. Abstract: Quack advertising was widespread in pre-Federation newspapers including those in rural New England (northern New South Wales). Between 1891 and 1892, Madame and Dr Paul Duflot and their Golden Chariot visited the New England area and attracted large crowds. At the same time, the practice of medical science was striving to establish its credibility and set itself apart from alternative health providers. They did this by pejoratively labelling alternative medicine providers as “quacks”. This article contributes to the New England media-history and news-framing literature on quack reporting. It draws on the framing theories of Robert Entman and Paul D’Angelo, alongside Zygmunt Bauman’s concepts of the “stranger” and “strangerhood”. The analysis reveals a striking hypocrisy among local newspapers: while they prominently advertised the quacks and their cures—including the Duflots’ public appearances and private consultations—they simultaneously ran anti-quack news stories. Notably, the popularity of the Duflots suggests that New Englanders were not entirely won over by medical science. Instead, they prioritised personal autonomy, human agency and control over their healthcare decisions.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Number 3 in 49.3 - in a time of international student debates, Song and Spencer take us back to the first Korean international student in the 1920s, illustrating the importance of student mobility for people-to-people #diplomacy. #InternationalStudents #Korea #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/3je6ty9v

Screenshot of journal article. Title: From Colonial Korea to White Australia: Hoyul Kim, Australia’sFirst Korean International Student, 1921–1925. Authors: Jay Song, ANU, and Louise Spencer, University of Melbourne. Abstract: This article uncovers the life of Hoyul Kim, the first Korean international student who lived in Australia from 1921 to 1925. It sheds light on the role of the Presbyterian Church in both colonial Korean and White Australian contexts. The article draws on archival research from the National Archives of Australia, the Presbyterian Church of Victoria, the Scotch College in Melbourne and the University of Melbourne to document Kim’s activities in Australia. The bilingual team uses both Korean- and English-language materials on Kim. We argue that, in spite of the colonial and racially motivated state barriers to international student mobility in the 1920s, Kim managed to travel to Australia and gain an overseas education. Kim’s story contributes to a little-known history of Korea–Australia relations that runs much deeper than formal state relations. Kim’s story illustrates that bilateral relations are shaped by people-to-people encounters that encompass shared values of religion and education via transnational migration.

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International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Congratulations to the 2026 Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Seoul National University, Dr. Constantinos Yiallourides! More info on Dr Yiallourides' appointment to this prestigious position here: inasa.org/blog/announc...

inasa.org

Announcing the 2026 Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Seoul National University

Dr. Constantinos Yiallourides has been appointed the 2026 Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Seoul National University’s Graduate School of International Studies. Constantinos is an intern…

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 29/08/2025

Next up in 49.3, O'Brien examines patterns of environmental protest in Sydney over a decade, finding key differences in inner and outer urban/metro areas. #environment #protest #GlobalCity #urban #Sydney #ProtestEventAnalysis #OzStudies tinyurl.com/7537amzs

Screenshot of journal article. Title: A Study of Patterns of Environmental Protest in Sydney, Australia. Author: Thomas O'Brien, University of York. Abstract: As a global city and commercial capital of Australia, Sydney occupies an important place in the national imagination. Attention is naturally drawn to the city, making it a valuable target for those seeking to present claims and challenge those in power. This article draws on a unique protest-event catalogue to examine patterns of environmental activism in Sydney over the 1997–2018 period. The article draws out the key issues, actors and actions, and shows how these have changed over time across the Sydney metropolitan region. The findings suggest that the affordances of the urban environment play an important role in shaping the patterns of protest. A central division is between actions in the City of Sydney and those in surrounding local government areas. The greater availability of targets in the City of Sydney facilitates larger-scale actions, whereas those in the wider metropolitan region are more closely tied to sites impacted by perceived threats.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Let the 49.3 games begin! First up, @kristindemetrious.bsky.social and Lowe examines the historical influence of US public relations on Australian practice and its ongoing legacies in Australian political communication. #AusUSrelations #OpenAccess #auspol #PublicRelations tinyurl.com/3tjps2b2

Screenshot of journal article. Title: “What Australia Thinks”: Richard Casey, Earl Newsom and Australia’s Early Embrace of US Public Relations. Authors: Kristin Demetrious, Deakin University, and David Lowe, Deakin University. Abstract: In 1940, wartime Prime Minister Robert Menzies established Australia’s first foreign legation to Washington DC, appointing his political rival, Richard Gardiner Casey, a move that marked a turning point in the importation of US public relations. This article examines formative exchanges between Casey, one of the Liberal Party’s most senior and capable members, and US public relations figure Earl Newsom, who authored a confidential report for Casey into overcoming American uninterest in, and ignorance of, Australia. Drawing on the Earl Newsom papers, we argue that Casey’s alliance with Newsom increased the visibility of Australian news in the United States; activated a bevy of cultural and travel relationships; and was conducted in a way to avoid the unpalatable taint of propaganda. Casey’s mission was contextualised by a political battle between US media industry players and democratic reformists and had ongoing implications for Australian political communication, separate from the histories of advertising, magazine and film connections. This interdisciplinary case study sheds new light on the cultural, social, economic and political flows stemming from Australia’s embrace of United States public relations at a moment when other roads might have been taken.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

🚨New issue 49.3 out now!🚨 Featuring: a special section on Australian deserts guest edited by Andrea Gaynor and Gary Reger as well as articles on Aus-US public relations, environmental protest, and gender in Australian visual arts. Stay tuned for feature posts! www.tandfonline.com/toc/rjau20/c...

Teal book cover with title Journal of Australian Studies. Features an image of a red desert scene with scattered low green bushes and a blue sky with a trail of white clouds.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 John Barrett Award for Australian Studies, which goes to the best article in the Journal of Australian Studies each year! @intlausstudies.bsky.social official announcement: inasa.org/blog/congrat... Direct links to the winning articles 🧵...

inasa.org

Congratulations to the 2024 Winners of the John Barrett Award

The International Australian Studies Association (InASA), alongside the editors of the Journal of Australian Studies, is delighted to announce the 2024 winners of the Barrett Award for Australian S…

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Benjamin T. Jones @drbenjaminjones.bsky.social · 25/06/2025

It was a pleasure to review this important work.

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Hannah Forsyth 🍉 @hannahforsyth.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

Short version: fabulous book by a great author beautifully published by an amazing press in Aotearoa. Also. Prisons are uncool. Labour is never wholly free. Colonialism sucks. 👇

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 24/06/2025

🧵Finally, time to shine a spotlight on our wonderful book review contributors to 49.2! Remember, if you have a book you would like reviewed or if you would like to review a book, get in contact with our Reviews Editor @jonpiccini.bsky.social! 🧵1/

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 19/06/2025

In our last article from 49.2, Ricketson examines Rupert Murdoch as an elite paradox - he is hostile to "the Establishment" and elites yet he is one of them... #OzStudies #Murdoch #elites #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/26ahd9vv

Screenshot of journal article. Title: "Rupert Murdoch: Elite Outsider". Author: Matthew Ricketson, Deakin University. Abstract: Rupert Murdoch stepped down from heading his company News Corporation in 2023 after a 71-year career as a media proprietor that has been as controversial as it has been financially successful. The life and career of Rupert Murdoch has been examined through many different lenses yielding insights into his ceaseless media deal making and his influence on politics and on other media, among other topics. This study draws on the eight biographies of Murdoch and the 34 books about his company’s activities to examine three questions: why is Murdoch so hostile to the Establishment and “elites”, however variously they are defined by him when he has been a member of both his entire life? How does his antipathy show up in his media outlets, especially in his populist rhetoric where simple “us and them” binaries are posited for complex issues, and do the biographical sources about him help explain his apparently contradictory behaviour?

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 18/06/2025

More excellent 49.2 content: @phoebehayman.bsky.social examines political participation in teal independents' campaigns - are they outsiders challenging established power, or are they replicating elite dynamics? #OzStudies #auspol #WomenInPolitics #teals tinyurl.com/4aacnp7a

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Political Outsiders? A Study of “Teal” Independent Campaign Demographics in the 2022 Australian Federal Election. Author: Phoebe Hayman, La Trobe University. Abstract: The 2022 “teal” independents’ campaigns were a movement of political outsiders challenging the power of the established parties. Their campaigns mobilised candidates, campaigners and volunteers in the thousands across Australia, but little is known of who these participants were. Analysing the gender, class and ethnicity of campaign participants, this article considers whether the independent campaigns should be understood as a departure from or replication of the elite demographics of political parties. This study employs mixed methodologies, drawing on interview data from candidates, campaigners and volunteers (N = 55) and a survey of highly engaged volunteers (N = 270) to explore who joined independent campaigns and how recruitment processes influenced the gender, class and ethnicity of participants. This article argues that, despite efforts to attract participants from diverse backgrounds, the independent campaigns largely mirrored the demographics of political participants within party campaigns—except for their achievements in recruiting women across participant types. Recruitment via the social networks of existing participants was a contributing factor, reinforcing demographic disparities. This study contributes new knowledge of the teal independents movement and highlights the role of informal and social processes in shaping the gender, class and ethnicity of political participants and representatives, inside and outside of party campaigns.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 17/06/2025

Next in 49.2, guest co-editor @chriswallace.bsky.social explores the role John Hewson played in constructing consent for neoliberalism - 🔥"a cautionary tale concerning upward mobility in the neoliberal era"🔥 #OzStudies #neoliberalism #elites #auspol #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/mw6j7fjs

Screenshot of journal article. Title: "Elite Economists and the Neoliberal Ascendancy in Australia: The Case of Dr John Hewson". Author: Chris Wallace, University of Canberra. Abstract: Worsening inequality worldwide has stimulated a renewal of scholarly work on the dynamics of elite recruitment, notably Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman’s large-scale UK study (2024), which found only modest change in the make-up of Britain’s elite between the 1890s and today. Cumulative advantage is shown to accrue to those who pass through more than one of Britain’s “precise channels of elite recruitment”. Reeves and Friedman’s underlying motivation is to identify how these channels “might be remade so the elites we get are the ones we need”—implicitly, elites interested in reversing current trends in inequality. Australia presents an opportunity to consider their findings in a situation where, compared with Britain, elite recruitment is more nebulous. Drawing on the life and transnational career of Australian economist John Hewson, this article responds to Reeves and Friedman’s invocation to evaluate “how elites think, and what elites do, rather than simply who they are”. The dynamics of Hewson’s elite recruitment and its relationship to his role in constructing consent for neoliberalism in Australia in the late 20th century—in the academy, the media and politics—is contextualised in the national and global history of neoliberalism.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 16/06/2025

Start your week right with more 49.2: Melanie Nolan examines women historians' transnational approach to career-building as a strategy to break the glass ceiling of elite academia. #OzStudies #OzHistory #FeministHistory #academia #gender #OpenAccess tinyurl.com/yc2j7m3p

Screenshot of journal article. Title: "Remaking a Scholarly Elite? Insiders, Transnationalism, Outsiders and Australian Women Historians". Author: Melanie Nolan, ANU. Abstract: This article considers a group of Australian women historians trying to break through the employment “glass ceiling” (a colloquial term for invisible social barriers based on gender) before the 1970s. The experiences of this group provide a case study of the ways they entered, and thereby remade, a scholarly elite in the period before second-wave feminism. These academic women built transnational careers that took them to universities elsewhere in the Anglophone world, which served to improve their employment prospects back home. I argue that this transnational employment strategy relied on an insider-outsider divide, whereby Australian women historians accrued qualifications and experience outside Australia to try to leverage entry into a local elite formerly closed to them.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 13/06/2025

Your 49.2 Friday read: McCarthy examines the extent to which attitudes to the Great War among the Catholic elite were shaped by those of the Protestant elite and the effect of this in securing their own status. #OzStudies #elites #GreatWar #WWI #CatholicHistory #OzHistory tinyurl.com/4rbtvbra

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Next in 49.2, guest editor @sybiln.bsky.social examines the impact of Menzies' narrative of self as a child of the Victorian Mallee on shaping public knowledge about the regions. #OzStudies #Menzies #elites #RegionalHistory #Mallee tinyurl.com/9jvns2aa

Screenshot of journal article. Title: "Robert Menzies’s Mallee: The Region as a Frame of Elite Struggle". Author: Sybil Nolan, University of Melbourne. Abstract: This article explores how Australia’s longest-serving prime minister, Sir Robert Menzies (1894–1978), framed his origin story as a child of the Victorian Mallee. By 1898, when Menzies was three, the Federation drought had begun. Local water trusts charged farmers and residents for water that often they were unable to deliver. The result was political conflict over water security. Although Menzies, who grew up in Jeparit, remembered the drought all his life, the water crisis itself received scant notice in his memoir, Afternoon Light (1967). This article considers the agency of elites in shaping public knowledge of the regions from which they rise and how critical elite history can use interdisciplinary approaches to produce new insights into elites and their social impact.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 11/06/2025

First up in 49.2, ‪@drink-an-ocean.bsky.social‬ applies Connell's idea of "patriarchal dividends" colonial NSW to show how elites are a reconfiguration of patriarchal power in capitalist democracies. #OzStudies #masculinity #SettlerColonialism #auspol tinyurl.com/2a2ehw7k

Screenshot of journal article: "Patriarchal Dividends and the Creation of Political Elites in Colonial New South Wales". Author: Karen Downing, ANU. Abstract: Across the 19th-century industrialising world, expectations of access to power became based on expertise and economic role rather than birth. In the early White settler Australian colonies—where no non-Indigenous hereditary aristocracy or political institutions existed—the men who pursued status and influence and designed the political institutions of self-government justified their ambitions on the basis of their “independence”, a long-held marker of masculinity. In this article, I consider the gendered rhetoric of debates about the meaning of independence in colonial New South Wales through the lens of Raewyn Connell’s concept of the “patriarchal dividend” to argue that elites are a reconfiguration of patriarchal power in capitalist democracies. Because the criteria for rights to vote and stand for election were debated in terms of the character and conduct of men rather than their family lineage, political power accommodated more men but continued to make winners of particular men and losers of other men, as well as women.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

🚨 New issue alert 🚨 49.2 out now! Guest editors @chriswallace.bsky.social & @sybiln.bsky.social present the special issue "Insiders & Outsiders, Winners & Losers: Close-Ups of the Struggle for Power & Status in #Australia". Stay tuned this week as we feature each article! tinyurl.com/makzm2b8

Teal book cover with white writing: Journal of Australian Studies, volume 49, number 2, June 2025. Special issue: Insiders and Outsiders, Winners and Losers: Closeups of the Struggle for Power and Status in Australia. Guest editors: Sybil Nolan and Chris Wallace. Image features a man at a desk in a suit and tie, looking directly at the camera and smiling slightly.

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International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

Applications now open for 2026 Visiting Professor in Australian Studies at Seoul National University! More details & PD at the link below. Please share this exciting opportunity with senior Humanities and Social Sciences academics in your networks. inasa.org/blog/call-fo...

inasa.org

Call for Applications: 2026 Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Seoul National University

InASA is pleased to announce applications are now open for the Australia-Korea Foundation Visiting Professor in Australian Studies at Seoul National University (SNU) for 2026. Supported by Woodside…

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Reposted by Journal of Australian Studies

International Australian Studies Association @intlausstudies.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Congratulations to Lyndall Ryan Thesis Prize winner Dr Emily Gallagher, and to Dr Chris Cheng and Dr Rebecca Lindsay for their commendations. Full details including judge's citations available here: inasa.org/blog/2024-ly...

inasa.org

2024 Lyndall Ryan Thesis Prize: Winner Announcement

InASA warmly congratulates the winner of the 2024 Lyndall Ryan Thesis Prize, Dr Emily Gallagher, for her thesis “The Childhood Imagination in Australia, 1890–1940”. The Lyndall Ryan Thesis Prize ce…

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 14/03/2025

And, finally, 49.1's book reviews (presented here as a thread). Remember, if you are interested in either having your book reviewed in or in reviewing a book, please contact our wonderful Reviews Editor @jonpiccini.bsky.social. #OzStudies #AcademicSky

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

Our final article for 49.1 - Long, Burnette, Grard & Theunisz explore how a narrative of immunity was used to sell various products in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. #OzStudies #Advertising #immunity #MedicalHistory www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Screenshot of journal article. Title: “Immune from a Thousand Ailments”: Advertising Immunity in Australia, 1890–1945. Authors: Maebh Long (Otago), Jessie Burnette (Waikato), Pascale Grard (Waikato), and Marie Theunisz (Waikato). Abstract: In the late 19th century, as the Australian public was adjusting to germ theory, a narrative of immunity provided new ways to understand resistance to disease. Advertising, particularly for patent medicines, frequently adopted a hyperbolic rhetoric of immunity to sell products. In this article, we use the Trove database to present the ways immunity was presented to the public in newspaper advertising between 1890 and 1945. Our article combines a broad overview of portrayals of immunity with three focused analyses that demonstrate immunity’s discursive range, its decoupling from immunological understandings and its insertion into capitalism. First, we show how clothing brands framed their products as modes of enhanced boundary protection superior to patent medicines. Second, we look to the connections between immunity and racial identity, revealing how advertisements followed an immunological logic: White Australians, advertisements implied, could immunise themselves against the unfamiliar by incorporating small elements of difference into their diet and health regimes. Finally, we unpack the advertisements’ oscillation between immunity as an enhancement to the body and as a remedy for an inherent bodily weakness. This movement, illuminated through Jacques Derrida’s logic of the supplement, reinforced the alignment of immunity with products and brands rather than immunological functions.

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Journal of Australian Studies @jas-jozstudies.bsky.social · 12/03/2025

49.1 continues to deliver - Irving presents a gendered history of sports betting in Australia, demonstrating that it continues to be primarily a men's practice. #OzStudies #GamblingStudies #sportsbetting #AcademicSky tinyurl.com/6sacnesd

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Sport, Gambling and Masculinity: A Gendered History of Australian Sports Betting. Author: Rohann Irving, University of Queensland. Abstract: Sports betting has risen dramatically in prominence over the past 20 years and is now one of Australia’s most popular, and fastest growing, gambling activities. The practice has a long and gendered history in Australia, with almost 9 out of 10 regular sports bettors today being men. This article offers a short cultural history of sports betting that outlines its growth, along with several key reasons for its popularity among men specifically. In the early colonial period, gambling on racing and sports was a masculine pursuit from which women were largely excluded until the late 20th century. Contemporary sports betting’s focus on male-dominated football codes, along with advertising campaigns that objectify women and emphasise masculine narratives, continue to reinforce the idea that sports betting is primarily a men’s practice in modern Australia.

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