Transnationalism, Nationalism and Australian History

Using Australian history as a case study, this collection explores the ways national identities still resonate in historical scholarship and reexamines key moments in Australian history through a transnational lens, raising important questions about the unique context of Australia’s national narrative. The book examines the tension between national and transnational perspectives, attempting to internationalize the often parochial nation-based narratives that characterize national history.

Moving from the local and personal to the global, encompassing comparative and international research and drawing on the experiences of researchers working across nations and communities, this collection brings together diverging national and transnational approaches and asks several critical research questions: What is transnational history? How do new transnational readings of the past challenge conventional national narratives and approaches? What are implications of transnational and international approaches on Australian history? What possibilities do they bring to the discipline? What are their limitations? And finally, how do we understand the nation in this transnational moment?

Anna Clark is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney. With Stuart Macintyre, she wrote the History Wars in 2003, which was awarded the NSW Premier’s Prize for Australian History and the Queensland Premier’s Prize for Best Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate.

Anne Rees is a David Myers Research Fellow at La Trobe University, Australia. Previously she was a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Junior Fellow at the University of Sydney, Australia. She holds History degrees from the Australian National University and University College London, and her work has been published in Australian Feminist Studies, Australian Historical Studies and History Australia.

Alecia Simmonds is the Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Law at University of Technology, Sydney, a lecturer in Australian and Pacific history at NYU-Sydney and the Book Review editor of Law and History. She is an inter-disciplinary scholar whose work focuses on the relationship between emotion, imperialism and law. Her book, Wild Man, was published October 2015 and has received excellent reviews.