Graeme Davison
Biographic Data
| ID | 346643 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Graeme Davison |
| GIVEN NAMES | Graeme |
| FAMILY NAME | Davison |
| SIGNATURE | DAVISON G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Monash University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 149 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1978 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Louis Henry, the Wallaby Club and Melbourne’s Federal Elite
An address on the fiftieth anniversary of the Australian Historical Association, 3 July 2023The Launch of An ‘Important and Necessary Institution’: A History of the Australian Historical Association ,…
Ken Inglis: Threads of influence
Ken Inglis is one of Australia’s most creative, versatile and influential historians. This article assesses his influence, relying on memory, reading and reflection. It traces the origins and impact of his most enduring historical interest, the study of Anzac as a ‘civil religion’. Like Charles Bean, the first historian of Anzac, Inglis has been keenly interested in how national history is made and communicated to a popular audience. As general e…
John Bradley Hirst 1942–2016
Pat Jalland. Old Age in Australia: A History
Like many Western democracies, Australia faces the challenge of a rapidly ageing population. Once considered a young country, it is now demographically as old as the U.S. and may soon be as old as Britain, the land Australians once called “The Old Country.” Over the next twenty years, the elderly—those aged sixty-five years and over—will grow from 14 to 25 percent of its population. This “demographic time-bomb” is often said to be “unprecedented”…
City Dreamers: The Urban Imagination in Australia
The Suburban Idea and Its Enemies
Late in the twentieth century public opinion began to turn against the Australian suburb, as its enemies began to outnumber its friends. For more than 150 years, Australia was itself a mental suburb of England, taking many of its ideas ready-made from the world’s metropolis, London. This article identifies the main ideological strands of the suburban idea as it first appeared in England—Evangelicalism, Romanticism, Sanitarianism, and Class Prejud…
The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire
The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire, by Giordano Nanni, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2012, 254 pp.+viii., GBP £70.00 (hardback), ISBN 97807190
Just Camping Out? A Reply To Bill Garner
‘Sydney and the Bush’ challenged the romantic assumption that national character was a product of the land. Bill Garner's essay is a flawed attempt to reinstate it. By the end of the nineteenth century, when Lawson and the other Bulletin writers flourished, the experiences of camping and tramping, the material basis, according to Garner, of the bush ideal of mateship, were themselves being filtered through imported influences including bourgeois …
Rethinking the Australian Legend
Fifty years after its publication Russel Ward's The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national culture. It was shaped by a long debate, in Europe and Australia, about the cultural basis of national selfhood, as well as by the events of Ward's own time: the 1930s depression, the popular front against Nazism and the early years of the Cold War. Russel Ward was a true believer in the bush legend as well as a critical interpreter o…
Carlton and the Campus: The University and the Gentrification of Inner Melbourne 1958–75
Gentrification exhibits some common traits across Western societies but takes the colour of the societies in which it appears. In Australia, one of its most striking characteristics was its close association, chronological and geographical, with the post-war expansion of the universities. This study examines the relationship between the growth of the University of Melbourne and the city's premier gentrified neighbourhood, Carlton. It argues that …
Speed-Relating: Family History in a Digital Age
The boom in family history that began in the 1970s has gained new impetus by the rapid digitisation of genealogical sources and their instant availability through online family history sites such as ancestry.com. Instead of having to visit distant libraries and archives, stumble around country churchyards and fumble with microfilm readers the family historian can now apparently retrieve everything she needs from the desktop of her home computer. …
Exhibitions
Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities
From Urban Jail to Bourgeois Suburb: The Transformation of Neighborhood in Early Colonial Sydney
Early colonial Sydney was founded on convict transportation but by the 1820s was being transformed by free settlement in a developing market economy. Neighborhood relations in the town were shaped by these intersecting influences, the first dividing convict from free settler, the second dividing rich from poor. Descriptions of the town portray it as divided between a plebeian west and a respectable east, but analysis of the 1828 census reveals a …
The Colonial Strut: Australian Leaders on the World Stage
In his influential account of modern nationalism, Benedict Anderson emphasises the role of the press in creating a sense of “imagined community”. But the nation's identity is also constituted through the performances of representative nationals for an international audience. The visits of Australia's political leaders to London and Washington are carefully stage-crafted events, designed to elicit, or at least create an impression of, a favourable…
The Exodists: Miles Franklin, Jill Roe and the ‘Drift to the Metropolis’
‘The city and the country’ is one of the great themes in Australian history, and the ‘drift’ of rural youth to the coastal cities has been one of its leading sub-themes, especially in the first half of the twentieth century when the exodus was greatest. Miles Franklin coined the term ‘exodists’ to describe those, like herself and the heroine of her autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career, Sybylla Melvyn, who forsook the country for the city. C…
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology
Sociology was a late arrival on the Australian academic scene. But it had been preceded, and its appearance was possibly delayed, by an earlier tradition of social investigation—Christian, amateur, empirical, often paternalistic: the social survey. This paper examines the intellectual origins of the survey tradition and its influence on Australian social research especially in the middle decades of the twentieth century, before its relative decli…
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
The Oxford Companion to Australian History draws on the latest scholarship and covers people, institutions, and events that have shaped Australian society, politics and culture. There are entries on politicians, colonisers, visionaries, newspaper barons, industrialists, explorers, writers, artists, and scientists. There are numerous extended essays on key facets of the nation's life — political, social, cultural, scientific, military, and economi…
The European City in Australia
Images of modern Melbourne, 1945‐1970
(1998). Images of modern Melbourne, 1945‐1970. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Urban cannibal: Romancing the Australian city, pp. 145-161
Welcoming the world: The 1956 Olympic games and the re‐presentation of Melbourne
(1997). Welcoming the world: The 1956 Olympic games and the re‐presentation of Melbourne. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 27, No. 109, pp. 64-76
Australia: The First Suburban Nation
The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time
The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time
The rise and fall of marvellous Melbourne
The use and abuse of Australian history
Preface..1 Introduction: Australian history on the eve of the millennium..2 The last hero? History and hero-worship..3 Monumental history: Do statues (still) speak?..4 The Great Voyage: National celebrations in three new lands..5 Ancestors: The broken lineage of family history..6 Heritage: From patrimony to pastiche..7 Antiques, shrines and documents: What makes a building historic?..8 Sacred sites: The battle for historic churches..9 Living hist…
Speed-Relating: Family History in a Digital Age
The boom in family history that began in the 1970s has gained new impetus by the rapid digitisation of genealogical sources and their instant availability through online family history sites such as ancestry.com. Instead of having to visit distant libraries and archives, stumble around country churchyards and fumble with microfilm readers the family historian can now apparently retrieve everything she needs from the desktop of her home computer. …
The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire
The Colonisation of Time: Ritual, Routine and Resistance in the British Empire, by Giordano Nanni, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2012, 254 pp.+viii., GBP £70.00 (hardback), ISBN 97807190
Australia: The First Suburban Nation
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology
Sociology was a late arrival on the Australian academic scene. But it had been preceded, and its appearance was possibly delayed, by an earlier tradition of social investigation—Christian, amateur, empirical, often paternalistic: the social survey. This paper examines the intellectual origins of the survey tradition and its influence on Australian social research especially in the middle decades of the twentieth century, before its relative decli…
The Suburban Idea and Its Enemies
Late in the twentieth century public opinion began to turn against the Australian suburb, as its enemies began to outnumber its friends. For more than 150 years, Australia was itself a mental suburb of England, taking many of its ideas ready-made from the world’s metropolis, London. This article identifies the main ideological strands of the suburban idea as it first appeared in England—Evangelicalism, Romanticism, Sanitarianism, and Class Prejud…
Welcoming the world: The 1956 Olympic games and the re‐presentation of Melbourne
(1997). Welcoming the world: The 1956 Olympic games and the re‐presentation of Melbourne. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 27, No. 109, pp. 64-76
Paradigms of public history
Ken Inglis: Threads of influence
Ken Inglis is one of Australia’s most creative, versatile and influential historians. This article assesses his influence, relying on memory, reading and reflection. It traces the origins and impact of his most enduring historical interest, the study of Anzac as a ‘civil religion’. Like Charles Bean, the first historian of Anzac, Inglis has been keenly interested in how national history is made and communicated to a popular audience. As general e…
Punctuality and progress: The foundations of Australian standard time
(1992). Punctuality and progress: The foundations of Australian standard time. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 25, No. 99, pp. 169-191
Australian Urban History: A Progress Report
Australia was possibly ‘the first suburban nation’. Already at the end of the nineteenth century the American statistician Adna Weber noticed the peculiar demography of this ‘newest product of civilization’ whose population, he calculated, was more urbanized than any other country's. Yet the large coastal cities in which most town—dwellers lived were less densely occupied—more suburbanized—than the cities of Europe or North America. Here, Weber s…
Rethinking the Australian Legend
Fifty years after its publication Russel Ward's The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national culture. It was shaped by a long debate, in Europe and Australia, about the cultural basis of national selfhood, as well as by the events of Ward's own time: the 1930s depression, the popular front against Nazism and the early years of the Cold War. Russel Ward was a true believer in the bush legend as well as a critical interpreter o…
The rise and fall of marvellous Melbourne
Explanations of urban radicalism: Old theories and new histories∗
(1978). Explanations of urban radicalism: Old theories and new histories. Historical Studies: Vol. 18, No. 70, pp. 68-87.
Australian Urban History: A Progress Report
Australia was possibly ‘the first suburban nation’. Already at the end of the nineteenth century the American statistician Adna Weber noticed the peculiar demography of this ‘newest product of civilization’ whose population, he calculated, was more urbanized than any other country's. Yet the large coastal cities in which most town—dwellers lived were less densely occupied—more suburbanized—than the cities of Europe or North America. Here, Weber s…
The Outcasts of Melbourne. Essays in Social History
ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction - Graeme Davison1 'This Moral Pandemonium': images of low life - Graeme Davison and David Dunstan2 Chinatown - Chris McConville3 From 'criminal class' to 'underworld' - Chris McConville4 The poor people of Melbourne - Shurlee Swain5 The doorstep evangelist: William Hall in darkest Prahran - Roslyn Otzen6 The salvation war - Blair Ussher7 Dirt and disease - David Dunstan8 'Worst Smelbourne': Melbourne's nox…
The use and abuse of Australian history
Preface..1 Introduction: Australian history on the eve of the millennium..2 The last hero? History and hero-worship..3 Monumental history: Do statues (still) speak?..4 The Great Voyage: National celebrations in three new lands..5 Ancestors: The broken lineage of family history..6 Heritage: From patrimony to pastiche..7 Antiques, shrines and documents: What makes a building historic?..8 Sacred sites: The battle for historic churches..9 Living hist…
Australians to 1788
Paradigms of public history
Punctuality and progress: The foundations of Australian standard time
(1992). Punctuality and progress: The foundations of Australian standard time. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 25, No. 99, pp. 169-191
Australia: The First Suburban Nation
The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time
The Unforgiving Minute: How Australia Learned to Tell the Time
Welcoming the world: The 1956 Olympic games and the re‐presentation of Melbourne
(1997). Welcoming the world: The 1956 Olympic games and the re‐presentation of Melbourne. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 27, No. 109, pp. 64-76
Images of modern Melbourne, 1945‐1970
(1998). Images of modern Melbourne, 1945‐1970. Journal of Australian Studies: Vol. 22, Urban cannibal: Romancing the Australian city, pp. 145-161
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
The Oxford Companion to Australian History draws on the latest scholarship and covers people, institutions, and events that have shaped Australian society, politics and culture. There are entries on politicians, colonisers, visionaries, newspaper barons, industrialists, explorers, writers, artists, and scientists. There are numerous extended essays on key facets of the nation's life — political, social, cultural, scientific, military, and economi…
The European City in Australia
The Social Survey and the Puzzle of Australian Sociology
Sociology was a late arrival on the Australian academic scene. But it had been preceded, and its appearance was possibly delayed, by an earlier tradition of social investigation—Christian, amateur, empirical, often paternalistic: the social survey. This paper examines the intellectual origins of the survey tradition and its influence on Australian social research especially in the middle decades of the twentieth century, before its relative decli…
The Colonial Strut: Australian Leaders on the World Stage
In his influential account of modern nationalism, Benedict Anderson emphasises the role of the press in creating a sense of “imagined community”. But the nation's identity is also constituted through the performances of representative nationals for an international audience. The visits of Australia's political leaders to London and Washington are carefully stage-crafted events, designed to elicit, or at least create an impression of, a favourable…
The Exodists: Miles Franklin, Jill Roe and the ‘Drift to the Metropolis’
‘The city and the country’ is one of the great themes in Australian history, and the ‘drift’ of rural youth to the coastal cities has been one of its leading sub-themes, especially in the first half of the twentieth century when the exodus was greatest. Miles Franklin coined the term ‘exodists’ to describe those, like herself and the heroine of her autobiographical novel My Brilliant Career, Sybylla Melvyn, who forsook the country for the city. C…
From Urban Jail to Bourgeois Suburb: The Transformation of Neighborhood in Early Colonial Sydney
Early colonial Sydney was founded on convict transportation but by the 1820s was being transformed by free settlement in a developing market economy. Neighborhood relations in the town were shaped by these intersecting influences, the first dividing convict from free settler, the second dividing rich from poor. Descriptions of the town portray it as divided between a plebeian west and a respectable east, but analysis of the 1828 census reveals a …
Car Wars: How the Car Won Our Hearts and Conquered Our Cities
Carlton and the Campus: The University and the Gentrification of Inner Melbourne 1958–75
Gentrification exhibits some common traits across Western societies but takes the colour of the societies in which it appears. In Australia, one of its most striking characteristics was its close association, chronological and geographical, with the post-war expansion of the universities. This study examines the relationship between the growth of the University of Melbourne and the city's premier gentrified neighbourhood, Carlton. It argues that …
Speed-Relating: Family History in a Digital Age
The boom in family history that began in the 1970s has gained new impetus by the rapid digitisation of genealogical sources and their instant availability through online family history sites such as ancestry.com. Instead of having to visit distant libraries and archives, stumble around country churchyards and fumble with microfilm readers the family historian can now apparently retrieve everything she needs from the desktop of her home computer. …
Exhibitions
Just Camping Out? A Reply To Bill Garner
‘Sydney and the Bush’ challenged the romantic assumption that national character was a product of the land. Bill Garner's essay is a flawed attempt to reinstate it. By the end of the nineteenth century, when Lawson and the other Bulletin writers flourished, the experiences of camping and tramping, the material basis, according to Garner, of the bush ideal of mateship, were themselves being filtered through imported influences including bourgeois …
Rethinking the Australian Legend
Fifty years after its publication Russel Ward's The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national culture. It was shaped by a long debate, in Europe and Australia, about the cultural basis of national selfhood, as well as by the events of Ward's own time: the 1930s depression, the popular front against Nazism and the early years of the Cold War. Russel Ward was a true believer in the bush legend as well as a critical interpreter o…
Sociology (20 works) · Australian History and Society (19 works) · History (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · History (13 works) · Media studies (11 works) · Law (10 works) · Politics (10 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Art (7 works)