📢 CfP | GASt 2025 Annual Conference
It’s Time! Australia and the World at the Crossroads
🗓 9–12 Oct
📍 Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies
📬 Call for Papers now open!
👉 https://buff.ly/TODOtZW
#GASt2025 #AustralianStudies #ItsTime #HCTS #TransculturalStudies #DFG #CfP

»A great deal has changed over the past 50 years for LGBTIQ+ Australians. To mark SBS' 50th anniversary, we take a look back at the community’s struggle for equal rights and visibility.« (audio) https://www.sbs.com.au/news/podcast-episode/oppressive-laws-and-100-days-of-hell-lgbtiq-people-on-50-years-of-history/czqpn2bom

»These iconic women were ›inconvenient‹ in many ways. They pursued careers as journalists, poets and novelists at times when many women were relegated to the private sphere. They spoke out against injustices, despite the personal cost. They lived unconventional lives, personally and professionally. And they embodied alternative forms of womanhood.« https://theconversation.com/australias-inconvenient-women-writers-blazed-a-trail-through-the-20th-century-254705

»An Australian local government has decided against repairing an often-vandalized monument to renowned British explorer James Cook because it would be destroyed again.« https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/australian-local-government-removes-vandalized-monument-renowned-british-121785401

»Since the 1920s, the conservative partners have drifted apart and come back together, securing the Nationals an at-times outsized and consistent presence in Australia's federal parliament. Looking back through the history books perhaps offers some insights as to how this relationship could change today.« https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-21/history-of-the-coalition-nationals-liberals-splits/105314564

»A new history of the union movement in Australia says marginalised groups like migrants, women, Indigenous Australia and LGBTIQA+ people were often left to run their own grass roots campaigns, and were only embraced by the broader union movement once their campaigns had gained momentum.« (audio) https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/latenightlive/liam-byrne-australian-union-movement-history/105320316

»Nearly thirty years later, Australia’s firearm laws are not living up to the promise of the Howard Government’s bravery.« https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/australian-gun-control-29-years-after-port-arthur/

Call for Papers | 19th International Conference of the German Association for Australian Studies / Gesellschaft für Australienstudien (GASt) | “It’s Time! Australia and the World at the Crossroads” | Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg (Germany) | DL: 30 June #CfP #Australia #Conference https://australienstudien.org/NewsTexte/CfPGASt2025.pdf

»For 50 years, the Australian Performing Arts Collection has meticulously catalogued and preserved the nation's performing arts heritage, encompassing a vast repository of over 850,000 objects. This extensive collection, housed at Arts Centre Melbourne, is the largest of its kind dedicated to the stage in Australia.« https://www.danceaustralia.com.au/news/melbourne-s-new-performing-arts-museum-to-celebrate-australian-dance-history

»We’re seeing rights being walked back all around the world and freedom of speech being wrongly defined as tolerating hate speech« https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/may/17/tony-armstrong-the-tone-of-the-world-shifting-the-way-that-im-getting-spoken-to-is-wild

»Researchers wanted to know why ancient kangaroos went extinct by taking a detailed look at the teeth of more than 900 modern and extinct kangaroos.« https://www.wmra.org/2025-01-12/kangaroo-species-went-extinct-in-the-pleistocene-research-hops-in-with-a-possible-explanation?_amp=true

»This amnesty, implemented later in 1974 with bilateral support, provided humane pathways to permanency or citizenship for undocumented people in Australia.« https://theconversation.com/australia-once-had-immigration-amnesties-to-grant-legal-status-to-undocumented-people-could-we-again-252294

»The history of Hollywood making movies in Australia warns us not to get complacent« https://theconversation.com/100-years-of-boom-and-bust-a-potted-history-of-hollywoods-long-relationship-with-australia-256079

»Multicultural Affairs Minister Jinson Charls said Charles Darwin's theory of evolution had ›shaped [his] thinking‹ and compared the Opposition's political strategy to prominent Nazi, Joseph Goebbels, during a parliamentary debate about racism in the Northern Territory.« https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-22/nt-minister-jinson-charls-links-charles-darwin-evolution-racism/105322908

»When the world of academia – with its seeming rigour and professionalism, boosted by citations and peer reviews – confronts a culture with thousands of years of oral tradition but no written word, the tension between the two feels dangerously apposite.« https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/may/10/the-black-woman-of-gippsland-review-in-the-battle-to-tell-australias-history-who-gets-to-be-believed

»Written and directed by the Yorta Yorta and Gunaikurnai playwright, a descendant of the Thorpe and Pepper clans, The Black Woman of Gippsland restages the myth as a contemporary mystery centred on truth, memory and survival.« https://theconversation.com/grief-strength-and-resistance-the-black-woman-of-gippsland-is-a-powerful-reckoning-with-colonial-myths-254609

»That [Sussan] Ley is the first ever woman to lead the federal Liberal Party will pose potential challenges.« https://theconversation.com/sussan-ley-makes-history-but-faces-unprecedented-levels-of-difficulty-256336

Call for Papers | 19th International Conference of the German Association for Australian Studies / Gesellschaft für Australienstudien (GASt) | “It’s Time! Australia and the World at the Crossroads” | Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg (Germany) #CfP #Australia #Conference https://australienstudien.org/NewsTexte/CfPGASt2025.pdf

»For the first time in history, the Great Barrier Reef has been nominated as a non-human recipient of the United Nations’ Champions of the Earth Lifetime Achievement Award – the highest environmental honour, previously awarded to legends like Sir David Attenborough.« https://www.timeout.com/australia/news/the-great-barrier-reef-makes-history-as-the-first-non-human-nominee-of-the-uns-lifetime-achievement-award-042225

»An Aboriginal woman who believes she is Gina Rinehart’s niece is calling on Australia’s richest person to take a DNA test to prove their family connection.« https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/may/05/woman-who-claims-to-be-gina-rineharts-niece-calls-on-billionaire-to-resolve-any-doubts-with-dna-test-ntwnfb