Radical history Research Papers

Sydney is represented to its citizens and to the rest of the world as a postcard, an impressive, beautiful city, a desirable tourist destination. But there has always been another Sydney not viewed so fondly by the city’s rulers, a... more

Sydney is represented to its citizens and to the rest of the world as a postcard, an impressive, beautiful city, a desirable tourist destination.

But there has always been another Sydney not viewed so fondly by the city’s rulers, a radical Sydney they are intent on ‘disappearing’ beneath concrete and glass. In the arc of working-class suburbs to the south and west, menace and disaffection developed. From the early nineteenth century through to the late twentieth century these suburbs were large and explosive places of marginalised ideas, bohemian neighbourhoods, dissident politics and contentious action.

Through a series of snapshots of people, episodes, and places, Radical Sydney captures aspects of this ‘other’ Sydney, from the days of early settlement through to the late 1970s, from Governor Phillip’s head-hunting expedition to freeing protestors in the anti-conscription movement during the Vietnam War; and in between, resident action movements in Kings Cross, anarchists in Glebe, Gay Rights activism on Oxford Street, Black Power in Redfern.

In the mainstream of white masculine and middle-class history, the voices of Aboriginal fighters, convict poets, feminist journalists, democratic agitators, bohemian dreamers and revolutionaries are rarely heard. This book restores some of that clamour and disturbance to the history of the city.

While the subject of the book is Sydney, authors Irving and Cahill make clear in their ‘Introduction’ that the book has been written as a challenge to the mainstream consensus version of Australian history. The consensus version tends to sanitise the past to present a view of Australian history and society proceeding on the basis of cooperation and consensus, a past in which there is little significant political and/or social turbulence. The authors’ view of the Australian past, on the contrary, is one in which significant political and social ferment, dissent, turbulence are not strangers, nor occasional.

Suggested Citation

Terry H. Irving Dr and Rowan Cahill Dr. Radical Sydney - Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010.

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- by Terry Irving
- •
- 2
  Radical history, Sydney History

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- by Tamara Lea Spira
- •
- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

This paper focuses on the difficulties Kathleen O'Brennan faced as a political radical and foreigner operating as an Irish republican activist in the United States. In 1920, O'Brennan constructed for herself and the American Women Pickets... more

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- by Catherine M. Burns
- •
- 23
  Irish Studies, Women's History, U.S. history, Irish Diaspora

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- by Thomas Nail
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- 165
  Creative Writing, Critical Theory, History, Cultural History

""Squatting in Europe aims to move beyond the conventional understandings of squatting, investigating its history in Europe over the past four decades. Historical comparisons and analysis blend together in these inquiries into squatting... more

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- by E.T.C. Dee
- •
- 12
  Sociology, Anarchism, Urban Studies, Critical Discourse Analysis

With the decimation of social housing and the resurgence of a profoundly exploitative private housing market, the contemporary political economy of housing now shares many distressing features with the situation one hundred years ago.... more

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- by Neil Gray
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- 8
  Urban Politics, Housing, Urban Political Economy, Social Housing

Published in Perspectives on Anarchist Theory (Fall, 2006): 33-41.

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- by John Clark
- •
- 96
  Cultural Studies, Political Sociology, Social Change, Social Movements

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- by Joel Wolfe
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- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

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- by Kristopher Imbrigotta
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- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

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- by Dan Irving
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- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

This essay, still work in progress, on the radical temperance-vegetarian publisher William Horsell, provides a detailed study of his publishing career and radical or reform affiliations in the early to mid-Victorian period, supplementing... more

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- by James Gregory
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- 6
  Victorian Studies, British History, Vegetarianism, History of Publishing

An examination of French music-hall culture in the years leading up to the World War I reveals that contemporary concerns about bodily fitness informed a modern aesthetic connecting the moral and physical which was not limited to... more

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- by Patricia Tilburg
- •
- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

MA thesis, shortlisted for the RIBA President's Award for Research in History. Subsequently published by RIBA. ---------------- An architectural history of three anarchist social clubs, based in London between 1884 - 1914. Focuses on... more

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- by Jonathan Moses
- •
- 14
  Anarchism, Anarchist Studies, History Of London, Architectural History

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- by Deborah Poole
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- 5
  Latin American Studies, Social History, Latin America, Radical history

Friedrich Nietzsche was not an anarchist. His ideas nevertheless generated strong interest from key figures from the historical anarchist movement which began in the 1890s. Gustav Landauer, Emma Goldman and others reflected on the chances... more

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- by Dominique Miething
- •
- 53
  History, American History, European History, German Studies

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- by Christopher Marshall
- •
- 7
  History, European History, Transnational History, Socialism

Punjabis in interwar Britain, who had migrated for economic opportunity but had been politicized during successive upheavals at home, admired Ghadar’s radical solidarities with nationalist and anticolonial movements. This article focuses... more

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- by Silas Webb
- •
- 9
  South Asian Diasporas, Radical history, Ghadar Movement, Anticolonialism

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- by E.T.C. Dee
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- 11
  Sociology, Social Movement, Urban Studies, Urban Studies

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- by Akinyele Umoja
- •
- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

*2009 John J. O’Connor Graduate Scholarship from New York Irish History Roundtable for distinguished graduate work on the history of the Irish in New York City, "American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement,... more

*2009 John J. O’Connor Graduate Scholarship from New York Irish History Roundtable for distinguished graduate work on the history of the Irish in New York City,

"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925"
Catherine Megan Burns
University of Wisconsin, Madison
History Department

"American Identity and the Transatlantic Irish Nationalist Movement, 1912-1925" explores assertions of patriotic American identity made by Irish and American Irish nationalists. The research is unique in Irish-American history for making Irish nationalists' pronouncements of their distinct interpretation of American identity central to its analysis. In so doing, the dissertation operates at the nexus of the history of American Irish nationalism and renewed historical attention to the nature of American patriotism.

The dissertation demonstrates that advocates for both Irish Home Rule and the Irish republic deliberately cultivated patriotic American identities with the intention of achieving their distinct political goals. Various historians have cast the Friends of Irish Freedom as the sole voice of American Irish nationalism in the period, and they have taken its declaration of "100% Americanism" as a sign of Irish-Americans' Americanization. Denying that only the Friends coupled Irish politics with American patriotism, the dissertation brings to light less known American Irish organizations that also wrapped their Irish politics in the stars-and-stripes. Those groups fell across the whole spectrum of American Irish political movements but especially included republicans who opposed Irish Home Rule and who eventually fought the Irish Free State government. In addition to Irish Home Rulers, republican organizations discussed include the Irish Progressive League, the American Women Pickets for the Enforcement of America's War Aims, the 1776 Branch of the Friends of Irish Freedom, the Irish Republic Tea Party, the Universal Truth Forum, and the Bureau for American Ideals.

Expressions of patriotic identities and sentiments did not necessarily signal either sincere attachments to American political interests or the completion of Irish acculturation to the United States. American patriotism was, instead, a political tool and a vehicle for propaganda. American Irish nationalists and the Irish allies exploited patriotic American sentiments and identities for the sake of undermining rival Irish nationalists in the United States and Ireland, obviating opposition from local and federal officials, and undermining the Irish Free State's attempts to paint republican activists as anti-American radicals.

Dissertation Committee: Thomas J. Archdeacon (advisor), Mary Trotter, Jeremi Suri, Tony Michels, James S. Donnelly, Jr. (emeritus). See also PDF abstract.

I am usually able to accommodate most requests for copies of the entire dissertation or individual chapters.

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- by Catherine M. Burns
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- 27
  Irish Studies, Irish Diaspora, Nationalism, Irish Politics

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- by Dina Copelman
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- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

The Bedside Table Archives is a curatorial project that borrows from arts-based research practice, oral history, and archival theory to produce a collection of records relating to women’s queer homemaking practices in the intimate realm... more

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- by Rebecka Sheffield
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- 7
  Sociology, Queer Studies, Gay And Lesbian Studies, Archives

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- by needle collective
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- 10
  Sociology, Anarchism, Urban Studies, Critical Geography

Arbeitspapier aus der Kommission „Erinnerungskulturen der sozialen Demokratie“ Die Erinnerung an die Migrationsbewegungen der 1960er und 1970er Jahre und an die gewerkschaftliche Migrationspolitik ist sowohl innerhalb als auch außerhalb... more

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- by Simon Goeke
- •
- 19
  History, Social Movements, Trade unionism, International Migration

This article seeks to partially rescue the story of the British communist historian Betty Grant, who contributed immeasurably to the formation of the CP Historians' Group's Local History section and its periodical, the Local History... more

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- by Andrea Bonfanti
- •
- 10
  Marxism, British History, Historiography, Local History

Resumen: En las sociedades rurales del Antiguo Régimen el pobre y el fenómeno de la pobreza eran realidades muy complejas y mutables. La definición de estos fenómenos es aún hoy muy complicada. En la Edad Moderna estaba afectada por... more

Resumen: En las sociedades rurales del Antiguo Régimen el pobre y el fenómeno de la pobreza eran realidades muy complejas y mutables. La definición de estos fenómenos es aún hoy muy complicada. En la Edad Moderna estaba afectada por valores y categorías acuñadas fuera del universo cultural del pobre. No obstante, las personas que experimentaban pobreza lo hacían de forma diversa y reaccionaban de múltiples formas a sus circunstancias vitales. Así lo expresaban a través de sus actitudes, comportamientos y percepciones. La historiografía ha sido consciente de los dilemas científicos y epistemológicos que supone atender a las percepciones endógenas y exógenas de estos fenómenos, así como de las dificultades que plantea el análisis de los mismos. Esta investigación analiza los estigmas de la pobreza, es decir, sus impactos y los comportamientos, actitudes y percepciones del pobre hacia sus circunstancias vitales en sociedades rurales de la España Cantábrica en los Tiempos Modernos. Abstract: Under the absolutist monarchy poor folk and the occurrence of poverty were highly complex and changeable realities in rural societies. Even today it is hard to provide a definition for these phenomena. In the Modern Era it was affected by values and categories forged outside the cultural universe of the poor. Nonetheless, people suffering from poverty did so in diverse fashions and reacted in multiple ways to their life circumstances. This was made explicit by their attitudes, behaviours and perceptions. History writers have been conscious of the academic and epistemological dilemmas that arise from considering the internal and external perceptions of these phenomena. They have also been aware of the difficulties posed by an analysis of them. This piece of research addresses the stigmas of poverty. This means its impacts and the behaviour patterns, attitudes and views of the poor relative to the circumstances of their lives in country societies along the northern coast of Spain in the Modern Era.

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- by Tomás Mantecón
- •
- 24
  Cultural History, Cultural Studies, Poverty, Spanish History

Rowan Cahill interviews American radical historian Marcus Rediker (in 2005).

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- by Rowan J Cahill
- •
- 3
  History, American History, Radical history

Discussion of anarchism and the Spanish Civil War with Jack Evans

The Goldman House, in Piscataway, NJ, is an unexpected work of radical art from the 1930s created by Samuel Goldman, who was born Samuel Holtzman, in 1882 in small Jewish settlement near Kiev, then part of the Russian Empire. After... more

In the early years of the twentieth century a small and diverse but very vocal group of political radicals ignited bitter debates within the Icelandic immigrant community in North America. Their insistence that canadian political culture... more

In the early years of the twentieth century a small and diverse but very vocal group of political radicals ignited bitter debates within the Icelandic immigrant community in North America. Their insistence that canadian political culture and social structure were fundamentally flawed and in need of radical reform, if not revolutionary change, upset the dominant discourse among the Icelandic immigrant leadership, who were keen to maintain a „model-immigrant“ image of the Icelanders as morally pristine and politically moderate.
This article is in part an analysis of the ideas proposed and held, discussed and debated among these radicals as well as their socio-political context. Those ideas ranged from anarchism and free love to a moderate form of socialism and populist direct democracy. What bound these radicals together – aside from a shared emphasis on moral, political and social reform – was their Icelandic background and their status as immigrants in a polyglot and highly inegalitarian country radically different from their homeland. Their status as both radicals at odds with the majority of their Icelandic peers and as immigrants with a specific cultural background created a need for them to make their own autonomous space, „havens“ that were both culturally and politically specific to their unique worldview. To that end, they established journals and newspapers as well as discussion clubs like the nominally apolitical Hagyrðingafélag (e. poets‘ club). In addition, they found a haven within the Unitarian church, which functioned both as a platform for political and social (as well as religious) debates as well as a crucial hub of social life.
The analysis also focuses on the role radical ideologies played in these radicals‘ adaptation to life as immigrants in Canada/North America. Such acculturation is always a site of contention and the critical positions towards Canadian society and politics adopted by Icelandic immigrant radicals were simultaneously a form of resistance to the pressure for unconditional assimilation to Canadian laissez-faire liberal democracy and a self-created form of „acculturation-through-participation“. They repeatedly stated their desire to become „useful“ citizens in their adopted home and by positioning themselves on the radical left of the political spectrum they were in effect doing so on their own terms.
These radicals have in many ways been marginalized in most historical writing on Icelandic immigration in North America. Their existence has either simply been excluded or, perhaps more commonly, co-opted and whitewashed in historical writings which have tended to portray a „model-immigrant“ version of the history of Icelandic immigrants in Canada and North America. That historiographical tendency has been on the decline in recent years in favour of more critical works that incorporate theoretical and methodological insights raised in recent trends in migrant and ethnic studies, historical or otherwise. This article is intended as a small contribution to this current reconfiguration of „western-Icelandic“ historiography.

This article reclaims the historicity and sanctity of sanctuary as a dynamic cultural and spiritual practice and Indigenous survival strategy cultivated in regions of refuge and rebellion in the Americas. Tracing heterogeneous... more

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- by Aimee Villarreal
- •
- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

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- by Molefi Ndlovu
- •
- 3
  South Africa, Radical history, Historical Studies

Sydney is represented to its citizens and to the rest of the world as a postcard, an impressive, beautiful city, a desirable tourist destination. But there has always been another Sydney not viewed so fondly by the city’s rulers, a... more

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- by Rowan J Cahill
- •
- 16
  Social Change, Australia, History from Below, Political History

This paper describes and compares two audio guides used to inform the general public about local historical events, specifically the 1831 Reform Riot as it happened in and around Nottingham in the UK. One audio guide consisted of a guided... more

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- by Rabab Abdulhadi
- •
- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

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- by John Clark
- •
- 98
  Critical Theory, Social Change, Social Movements, Social Theory

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- by Pete Sigal
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- 3
  Sociology, Radical history, Historical Studies

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- by A. Naomi Paik
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- 2
  Radical history, Historical Studies

This book examines the history and influence of Magna Carta in British and American history. In a series of essays written by notable British specialists, it considers the origins of the document in the political and religious contexts of... more

This article assesses squatted social centres in London as a means to understand the cycles, contexts and institutionalisation processes of the local squatters movement. This diffuse social movement had its heyday in the late 1970s and... more

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- by E.T.C. Dee
- •
- 18
  History, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Social Movements

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- by G Humberstone
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- 16
  Critical Theory, Music Theory, Musicology, Theodor Adorno

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- by Micol Seigel
- •
- 3
  Radical history, Historical Studies, Comparative method

Arhivski aktivizem: pojavne oblike, lokalna uporaba Izvleček: V tem besedilu avtorja pojasnjujeta osnove arhivskega aktivizma začenjata z vplivnim govorom radikalnega zgodovinarja Howarda Zinna, ki trdi, da se arhivisti morajo znebiti... more

Arhivski aktivizem: pojavne oblike, lokalna uporaba Izvleček: V tem besedilu avtorja pojasnjujeta osnove arhivskega aktivizma začenjata z vplivnim govorom radikalnega zgodovinarja Howarda Zinna, ki trdi, da se arhivisti morajo znebiti pojma "nevtralnosti" in naj se aktivno vključijo v delo družbenega pomena. Avtorja identificirata štiri različne sklope praks, ki predstavljajo arhivski aktivizem: arhive skupnosti, družbeno zavestno delo v arhivih, ki jih financira država in ostale 'mainstream' arhive (na primer, s spodbujanjem institucionalne transparentnosti in upoštevanja); aktivizem na temelju raziskav (odkrivanje radikalnih in potisnjenih zgodovin); družbeno zavestno delo institucionalno neodvisnih arhivistov. Opisujeta več primerov lokalne praktične uporabe arhivskega aktivizma, kot je: delo knjižnice Southern California Library v južnem Los Angelesu, razvoj arhiva National Chavez Center Archives, pomoč neodvisnih arhivistov delavcem migrantom v Združenih državah ter hramba in identifikacija dokumentov z dokumentiranjem njihovega imigrantskega statusa ter zaposlitvene zgodovine ter nedavno odkritje arhivskega gradiva Protifašistične fronte ženske Jugoslavije neodvisnih raziskovalcev in njegovo feministično reinterpretacijo. Ključne besede: arhivski aktivizem, arhiv skupnosti, radikalna zgodovina, socialna pravičnost Abstract: In this essay the authors provide a summary history of archival activism, starting with the seminal 1970 speech by radical historian Howard Zinn in which he argued for archivists to rid themselves of notions of " neutrality " , and actively engage in socially meaningful work. The authors identify four different forms of archival activism: community archives; socially conscious work within government-funded and other " mainstream " archives (for example, by promoting institutional transparency and accountability); research-based activism (retracing radical or suppressed histories); and socially conscious work by institutionally-independent archivists. They describe several examples of local practical applications of archival activism, such as the work of the Southern California Library in South Los Angeles; the development of the National Chavez Center Archives; independent archivists providing assistance to migrant fieldworkers in the United States in safeguarding and identifying records documenting their immigration status and employment history; and the recent rediscovery of records of the Women's Antifascist Front of Yugoslavia by independent researchers and its feminist reinterpretation. In 1996, the General Assembly of the International Council on Archives (ICA) held in Beijing adopted the organization's first Code of Ethics (ICA, 1996). Some sections of the code contain relatively straightforward but generalized expressions of archival concerns, calling for the protection, preservation and accessibility of records as well as for transparency of practice and professional education. Other sections inform archivists about what (not) to do in order to keep their professional conduct ethically in check. The code is more problematic when its principles and associated commentaries are opaquely expressed and invoke societally structured boundaries. First is the question of meaning: what is meant by " impartiality " and " objectivity " when the code states that both of these are the measure of an archivist's professionalism? What is meant by acting " in the

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- by Anne Gilliland and +1
  Vladan Vukliš
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- 4
  Social Justice, Radical history, Community archives, Archival activism

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- by Ravinder Kaur
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- 30
  History, Cultural History, Sociology, Cultural Studies

Radical history

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