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History

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Full-Text Articles in Australian Studies

The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill Jul 2016

The Barber Who Read History And Was Overwhelmed, Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Beginning with a chance encounter in a Barber's shop whilst travelling, the author ruminates on history, and the proposition that each and everyone of us is an historian, and that in a sense we are all time travellers. Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) is invoked, and the role of radical historians from below discussed before the author returns to his Barber shop encounter, and to Brecht. The title of the piece references Brecht's poem A Worker Reads History (1936).

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Liberating Genocide: An Activist Concept And Historical Understanding, Tony Barta Oct 2015

Liberating Genocide: An Activist Concept And Historical Understanding, Tony Barta

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

From the outset, historians of genocide have seen themselves as activists. Among historians of colonial societies that is what distinguishes them most in relation to indigenous peoples. An ethnographic sensibility should be visible in any such study, and the more so when a question of genocide is raised. After all, if we do not have a sense of difference between peoples we fail the test of genocide at the first hurdle. And if we do not have an ethnographic sensibility towards our own cultures (including academic cultures) we will fail to make the most of our role in affecting deeply …

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