For Australia Day 2025, I wrote this short piece on The Great Counterfactual of Australian History for the Australian Academy of the Humanities' blog. It was a shortened version of a presentation I gave at the Australian Academy of Humanities' 2024 annual symposium - a recording of that, with Prof. Megan Davis, Prof. Mark McKenna, … Continue reading The Great Counterfactual of Australian History
The AHA's journal History Australia (where I was editor for 5.5 years) published a wonderful forum on the future of history in late 2024 (it starts with this article). My small contribution was to reflect on the shitshow of last year's Spill n Fill at ACU - and lessons about what to nurture most in … Continue reading Reflections on the Hunger Games
Last year I was delighted to become a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities, largely because I worked there in the secretariat about 18 years ago or so....And also because I hugely admire their advocacy work for our sector. My first (wonderful) task for them was interview a more senior fellow of my choice. … Continue reading A Fellow’s Fellow
Published in Journal of American History, a short review of a book that traversed some similar ground to my first book. "When the Italian historian Peter Martyr observed in Spain in 1519 a group of visiting Totonacs from Mexico, he was struck by two things....." Continue reading in the file below. pennockDownload
Another review for wonderful Inside Story. Here I am reviewing a new book on Gauguin that coincides with a new show on Gauguin, controversies and all. "Nicholas Thomas’s latest book offers a provocative perspective on two of Paul Gauguin’s most abiding themes — women and Polynesia." To continue reading, head on over to the piece … Continue reading Reframing Gauguin
OPENBOOK at the State Library of NSW asked me to write an essay about writing Bennelong & Phillip. It was fun to do; I also wrote this in reverse, as I wrote the book, reflecting on what the method gave me, how it felt for the book to come out in the same month as … Continue reading On Writing Bennelong & Phillip
Another book review ... and reflection on the present. Writing for my favourite mag, Inside Story, this is about Richard Whatmore's new work—eight enlightenment thinkers and the meaning of their ideas today. "The resonant experience that Whatmore notes at the close of his book is that of a set of ideas for peaceable settlement coming … Continue reading The End of Enlightenment
Double review of: Maeve E. Kane, Shirts Powdered Red: Haudenosaunee Gender, Trade, and Exchange across Three Centuries (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2023). Pp. 366; 12 b/w illus., 5 maps, 15 charts. $64.95 cloth. AND Mairin Odle, Under the Skin: Tattoos, Scalps, and the Contested Language of Bodies in Early America (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, … Continue reading Double Review for 18th-Century Studies
My first chat (short!) about my new project, commencing next year: the secret life of an eighteenth-century spy mistress. I explain how and I why I became intrigued by her role in imperial world history in this segment of SBS Dutch Radio. [Love the note on the SBS page about my reference to the character … Continue reading Marguerite Wolters
As ever, enjoyed writing for Inside Story. Here is a review of a new book on the eighteenth-century intellectual women who called themselves bluestockings. 'In my usual manner, I began this book by reading the conclusion. There, Susannah Gibson closes her new book on eighteenth-century intellectual women, The Bluestockings, by quoting Virginia Woolf. “It is the masculine … Continue reading Bluestockings review
Kate Fullagar 