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USC to host national history conference
Two hundred historians will prove history is far from boring when they attend a national forum at the University of the Sunshine Coast from 30 June to 3 July.
It will be the first time the region has hosted the Australian Historical Association’s annual conference and the public may attend some sessions.
USC Associate Professor and conference convenor Joanne Scott said more than 150 presentations would include top-level speakers and cutting-edge research.
Topics will range from the history of Australian cookery to world history, from fashion to furniture and from Expo ’88 to Sunshine Coast memorials.
Local presentations relate to the recently-discovered diaries of an indigenous woman from the mid-20th century, the intricacies of historical novels and the links between history and urban planning.
Other speakers will discuss: “The historian as detective”; “Beatniks, Bohemians and Be-Bop” about a Brisbane cafe popular with hippies in the 1960s; and “The Apple Land Waltz” about a 1920s song that linked Tasmania’s image to apples.
Two keynote addresses will be delivered by Griffith University’s Raymond Evans, who wrote ‘A History of Queensland’, and Marnie Hughes-Warrington, an award-winning Macquarie University teacher.
Professor Scott said presenters included museum curators, archivists, senior academics and postgraduate students.
She said history was popular in the Coast community as well as at university.
“There’s an ongoing fascination with the past and what it might mean to our present,” she said. “USC has a mix of courses in Australian and world history.”
— Julie Gatehouse