Dr Michelle Arrow, Lecturer
BA (Hons) University of Sydney
PhD University of Sydney
| Office: | W6A, 416 |
| Phone: | +61 2 9850 8840 |
| Fax: | +61 2 9850 6594 |
| Email: | Michelle.Arrow@humn.mq.edu.au |
I completed my PhD at the University of Sydney in 1999, and my thesis, a social and cultural history of some of Australia 's women playwrights writing for radio, television and the stage between 1928-1968, was revised and published as Upstaged: Australian Women Playwrights in the Limelight at Last in 2002. Upstaged was shortlisted for five national prizes in 2003. In 2001, I held the NSW History Fellowship for my research project on the history of the ABC radio serials Blue Hills . In 2004, I was a presenter on the ABC TV series Rewind [link: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/rewind/txt/s1162958.htm
I am currently the exhibition reviews editor for History Australia . I was a founding member of the Centre for Media History and an associate member of the Centre for Cultural History, both based at Macquarie University. In 2007, I won a Vice-Chancellor's Citation for an Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning, and a Macquarie University Community Engagement Award. I also won a Division of Humanities Research award in 2007 for Research Initiative.
Research interests and areas of supervision
My research interests include the history of popular culture in Australia, especially the reception of popular culture, Blue Hills , radio and histories of listening, memory, feminist history, and representations of history in the media, especially television. I am also interested in Australian theatre history and histories of cultural production. I have published in all of these areas and I'm happy to supervise projects in these fields.
Current Research Projects
A History of Post-war Australian Popular Culture: this project will produce the first survey history of Australian popular culture since World War II, detailing the rise of television, the growth of youth cultures, popular music, film, sport and radio, as well as consider the growth of the internet and the role popular culture plays in contemporary nostalgia.
History on Television: Building on my experience as a presenter on the ABC TV series Rewind in 2004, I have written several articles on the relationship between history and television, and maintain an interest in the presentation of history in popular media, including reality television.
A Cultural History of The Lawsons and Blue Hills : These radio serials were the most enduring and popular ever broadcast in Australia , and provide a window into understanding Australian attitudes in the central decades of the twentieth century. A large archive of audience responses has also meant that this research has contributed to understandings of the interactions between popular culture, daily life, and memory. I have published several articles from this research, which was awarded the NSW History Fellowship for 2001.
Research Funding & Fellowships
2000 NSW History Fellowship
2005 Macquarie University New Staff Grant
Book:
Edited:
- The Chamberlain Case Reader , co-edited with Deborah Staines and Katherine Biber, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, (forthcoming 2008)
- ‘The Seventies’ special issue of Australian Feminist Studies, 22 (53), July 2007. Co-edited with Mary Spongberg.
- ‘New Urgencies in Australian Studies’, special issue of Australian Humanities Review, 2006. Co-editor with Dr Nicole Moore, online at: http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/
- History Australia , exhibition and media reviews editor, from 2006. [link to http://publications.epress.monash.edu/loi/ha/index.html]
Journal Articles:
- 'Everywhere and nowhere? Women's history in cultural history and cultural studies journals', Hecate 33 (2), November 2007.
- 'The most sickening piece of snobbery I have ever heard': Race, Radio listening, and the 'Aboriginal Question' in Blue Hills' , Australian Historical Studies , 130, October 2007.
- 'It has become my personal anthem': I Am Woman, Popular Culture and Seventies Feminism', Australian Feminist Studies 22 (53), July 2007 . Special issue 'The Seventies' co-edited by Michelle Arrow and Mary Spongberg.
- "That history should not have ever been how it was": Reality Television and Australian History Film and History (37:1, 2007) special issue "Reality Television as Film and History" edited by Ken Dvorak and Julie Taddeo. Online at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/film_and_history/v037/37.1arrow.html
- 'I want to be a television historian when I grow up!' On Being a Rewind Historian', Public History Review , 12, 2006, online at: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/phrj .
- '"Everything stopped for Blue Hills": Radio, Memory and Australian Women's Domestic Lives, 1944-2001', Australian Feminist Studies, 20 (48) 2005.
- 'Television Program Yes, History No: Doing Australian History on Rewind' , History Australia , July 2005.
- Written Out Of History? The Disappearance of Australia's Women Playwrights", Overland , No.155, 1999.
- "'Good Entertainment and Good Family Life': Listener Readings and Responses to Gwen Meredith's The Lawsons and Blue Hills" , Journal of Australian Studies, October 1998.
Chapters in Books
- 'It's here, at last!' The Introduction of Television in Australia', in David Andrew Roberts and Martin Crotty (eds.) Crucial Moments in Australian History , (University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, forthcoming 2008).
- 'I can only go on the evidence of my own eyes': witnessing traumatic histories of the Chamberlain case on film and television' in Deborah Staines, Michelle Arrow and Katherine Biber (eds) The Chamberlain Case Reader, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, (forthcoming 2008.)
- 'What about giving us a real version of Australian History?' Identity, Ethics and Historical understanding in Reality Television', in Reality Television as Film and History , eds Ken Dvorak and Julie Taddeo ( University of Kentucky Press , forthcoming 2008).
- 'Colour Must Breed out in time': Listening to whiteness in Blue Hills' in Historicising Whiteness, refereed conference proceedings, Jane Carey, Katherine Ellinghaus and Leigh Boucher (eds) (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007).
- 'Abolitionism' and 'Civil Rights' in Companion to Women's Historical Writing, Mary Spongberg, Barbara Caine, Ann Curthoys (eds), (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005)
- "Career Playwrights": Working Women Dramatists and Australian Culture, 1928 - 1968', Australian Literature and the Public Sphere , refereed proceedings of 1998 Association for the Study of Australian Literature Conference, Alison Bartlett, Robert Dixon and Christopher Lee (eds), 1999.
Other outputs
- Various stories as presenter for Rewind: Lawrence Hargrave, Vingear Hill, Sister Kenny, Eugene Goosens, The Ross Sea Party, Helena Rubenstein, Krishnamurti, Mary Mackillop, Captain Starlight.
- ‘Talking Heads in Black and White: History on Television’, talk to Film Australia ‘Making History’ workshop, August 2005, online at http://www.filmaust.com.au/production/default.asp?content=history
Undergraduate:
AUST300: Australian Perspectives III
HIST245: Women in Australian History
HIST340: Australian History Since 1901
HIST243/366: History on Film (lecturer)
HIST265/365: From Hula Hoops to Heroin Chic: Popular Culture since the 1950s (lecturer)
Modern History Honours: Media and Methods (co-convened with Department of Media)
Postgraduate:
MHPG844: History, Culture and Museum Studies (co-convened with Alison Holland)
MHPG916: Australian Popular culture since the 1950s
Committees
Honours Convenor, Department of Modern History
Member, Australian History Museum Management Committee, Division of Humanities
Conferences
- 'Making Feminist Histories of the Seventies: An Australian Feminist Studies Symposium', Macquarie University, 26 October 2007, (see: http://www.humanities.mq.edu.au/cch/symposium.html)
- Co-convenor, (with Nicole Moore) 'New Urgencies in Australian Studies', symposium at The Mint, 20 September, 2004.
- Co-convenor, (with Katherine Biber and Deborah Staines) 'Nation, Law, Memory: A Chamberlain Case Symposium', Macquarie University, 14 August 2005.
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