Transnational ties : Australian lives in the world

Australian lives are intricately enmeshed with the world, bound by ties of allegiance and affinity, intellect and imagination. In Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World, an eclectic mix of scholars—historians, literary critics, and museologists—trace the flow of people that helped shape Australia’s distinctive character and the flow of ideas that connected Australians to a global community of thought. It shows how biography, and the study of life stories, can contribute greatly to our understanding of such patterns of connection and explores how transnationalism can test biography’s limits as an intellectual, professional and commercial practice.Introduction -- Archival fragments. 1. The Old Commodore: a transnational life / Cassandra Pybus -- Authority. 2. Biography and global history: reflections on examining colonial governance through the life of Edward Eyre / Julie Evans -- 3. 'A fine type of Hindoo' meets 'the Australian type': British Indians in Australia and diverse masculinities / Margaret Allen -- 4. A British prince and a transnational life: Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh's visit to Australia, 1867-68 / Cindy McCreery -- 5. Enacting the international: R. G. Watt and the League of Nations Union / Nicholas Brown -- Intimacy. 6. Love, loss and 'going Home': the intimate lives of Victorian settlers / Maggie Mackellar -- 7. A journey of love: Agnes Breuer's sojourn in 1930s China / Kate Bagnall -- 8. Life stories, family relations and the 'lens of migration': postwar British emigration and the new mobility / A. James Hammerton -- 9. 'I'm not a good mother': gender expectations and tensions in a migrant woman's life story / Alistair Thomson -- 10. First love and Italian postwar migration stories / Francesco Ricatti -- Intellect. 11. The Pacific as rhizome: the case of Sir Henry Alexander Wickham, planter, and his transnational plants / Ann Lane -- 12. A transnational imagination: Alfred Deakin's reading lists / Mark Hearn -- Imagination. 13. From cosmopolitan romance to transnational fiction: re-reading Jean Devanny's Australian novels / Nancy L. Paxton -- 14. Paris and beyond: the transnational/national in the writing of Christina Stead and Eleanor Dark / Susan Carson -- 15. Australian 'immersion' narratives: memoirs of contemporary language travel / Mary Besemeres -- 16. America and the queer diaspora: the case of artist David McDiarmid / Sally Gray -- Objects of displacement. 17. Living in a material world: object biography and transnational lives / Karen Schamberger, Martha Sear, Kirsten Wehner, Jennifer Wilson and the Australian Journeys Gallery Development Team, National Museum of Australia.329 page(s