Pacific Collections at the Australian National University Library – Impacts of the Chifley Flood

The Australian National University (ANU) Library is comprised of five specialist branches. ANU Library collections have been developed over the last 50 years by academics and library staff to support world class research and study at ANU. On Sunday 25 February 2018, flooding inundated the ANU Chifley branch of the ANU Library, resulting in damage to collections related to Australian and general History, Philosophy and Religion as well as some relevant microform resources to Pacific research.     

Southwest University for Nationalities in Advance——Recent Interview With University Party Committee Secretary Norbu Gyaincain

Norbu Gyaincain is the Party Secretary of the Southwest University for Nationalities. Recently we made an interview with him on the establishment and development of the university.Reporter: Could you please talk about the establishment and development of your university?     

The National Relics Institute of China

TheNationalRelicsInstituteisafirst-gradenationalresearchunitwhichisdirectedbytheNationalRelicsBureau.Itwasfoundedin1990bycolnbinationoftheoriginalRelicsConservationInstituteandtheAncientDocumentResearchDepartment.Theresearchscopeandmaintasksoftheinstitute…     

MY MUCH-BELOVED SOUTHWEST UNIVERSITY FOR NATIONALITIES——An Interview with Lozang Gyaltsen,the Party Secretary of the Southwest University for Nationalities

The Southwest College for Nationalities was founded in July 1950 and was formally established on June 1st,1951.The college was renamed the Southwest University for Nationalities with the approval of the China Ministry of Education on April 16th,2003. On June 1st,2011,the university is going to celebrate its 60th anniversary.Having completed 60 years of hard work and won success through strenuous efforts and a creative approach with generations of students,the university has realized its dreams and glorie...     

Teachers of Tibet University(Ⅱ)

Probing Effortsand PioneeringSpirit-Story of Vice-PresidentLobsang NangyalAll the teaching staffand students ofTibet Universityspeak highly of LobsangNangyi,citing his probingefforts and pioneering spiritas the model for emulation.Lobsang Nangyal wasassigned to teach in TibetTeacher's School when hegraduated from Lhasa Mid-dle School in 1964.     

The Conservation Department of the National Museum of Chinese History

TheConservationDepartmentofNationalMuseumofChineseHistoryisanorganiza-tionspecializedontheresearchandpracticeofconservationscienceandtechnology.Itcom-prisesthreelaboratoriesofconservation,utensilrestorationandpaintingrestoration,with30scientistsandtechnicians.Thedepartmentwasestablishedin1952.Intheperiodofmorethan40years,thede-partmentcarriedontheworkofconservationscienceandtechnologyinall-roundway,withtheaimofpreservingtheculturalrelicsofhumanbeings,thedispositionoflayingequalstressonbothba…     

“Academic War” over Geography? Death of Human Geography at the Australian National University

This article analyses how neoliberal economic policies decide what particular aspects of knowledge are valuable and what are not, and who might be the true holder of that knowledge within the tertiary education system. This assessment leads to some disciplines being seen as less valuable to the system. It argues that the more recent “academic wars” in geography are over the very concept of the university and its role in the contemporary society, what comprises useful knowledge, and who comprises the authoritative figure in the production and distribution of that knowledge. Gender of the geographer therefore becomes a crucial element that determines “authority” in the production of geographical knowledge. To substantiate this argument, the paper takes up the important task of analysing the complex career trajectory of geography within the Australian National University (ANU), the department that was gradually reduced leading eventually to its unfortunate closure in 2009.     

The Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and their Museum: Scotland’s National Collection and a National Discourse

Founded in 1780, the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland began immediately to form a museum that has survived remarkably intact within the National Museums of Scotland. Their initiative marked a significant point in the evolution of material culture studies between the “cabinet of curiosities” of the Renaissance and the large public museums of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An exploration of the Society’s work and ethos in its early years points to the emergence of a distinctive “Scottish History” of collections and a greater significance for the evidence of material culture than has been conventionally accorded it in conventional scholarly discourses.     

Tibetan Namyi People In Southwest Sichuan

The Namyi livedon the southeastern rim ofthe Henduan Mountainslinked with the plateauin northwestern Sichuanand the hilly areasin southwestern Sichuan.They are distributed mainlyin Miannying, Xichang,Yanyuan and Mutt ofLiangshan Prefecture,and in Jiulong County ofthe Garze Prefecture.The greatest concentration ofNamyi people, about 5,000,is in Miannying.     

Department of Neurosurgery,Seoul National University College of Medicine: 50th Anniversary (1957–2007) by History Compilation Committee (Chair: Young Seob Chung)

The public opinion and the scientific community incorrectly believe that the English term “lunatic” was originally related only to insanity, but it also referred to epileptic people. The aim of this article is to clarify the original meaning of the English word “lunatic” by analyzing the evolution of the relationship between psychiatric and neurological diseases and by pointing out the influence of the moon in the history of medicine, in popular traditions, and in English literature. The article also contains a detailed and accurate review of the modern scientific literature on the relationship between moon and epilepsy/psychiatric disorders.     

The National Gallery of Victoria’s Colony and Difficult History

A recent exhibition staged by the National Gallery of Victoria Australia can be regarded as an expression of the international difficult histories boom. In large part, its representation in Colony of Australia’s black history is in keeping with the Manichean accounts that have come to dominate in the realm of popular culture and is a function of its decision to represent the past in forms that are primarily memorial and performative rather than historical and pedagogical. I argue that any serious attempt to come to grips with this nation’s difficult Aboriginal history requires its settler peoples to rethink rather than merely reject previous settler accounts of the past, and I contend that this task demands the practice of both scholarly history and local Aboriginal community history, which provide more complex accounts of the past.     

An economic analysis of a National Theatre: The case of the ‘Abbey’

Abstract: This article asks how a regional community is culturally constructed as a policy subject in the centre/periphery relation of Finnish cultural policy. The focus is on the options the cultural recognitions analysed from the cultural policy documents of central government and the provincial administration of North Karelia provide for different political interests. It is stated here that the democratisation of cultural policy can be open for and a vehicle of the interests the prevailing spatial dominance attempts to get within the population of peripheries. North Karelia has for centuries been a geographic and economic periphery without inner cultural distinctions. Yet it is regarded as a culturally rich and specific area. The analysis shows that the regional community has continuously been used as a partisan identity for maintaining and reinforcing the spatial integration of national projects. Public cultural image would provide a symbolic compensation for the economically underprivileged. Furthermore, the strong cultural identity of North Karelia has constantly been taken by the regional establishment as an instrument to fight the “opponents of common regional interests” in political conflicts. Thus the principles of democracy have not always meant the capability or attitude to notice cultural polyphony within the region abreast of cultural political decision-making.     

Iron age farms in Southwest Norway the development of the agrarian landscape on Jæren

In this issue of NAR the development of the agrarian landscape and the farm structure in the Iron Age in Southwest Norway ‐ especially in the district of Jæren ‐ is taken up as a subject for discussion. Two publications by Bj?rn Myhre (Funn, fornminner og ?degårder. Jernalderens bosetning i H?yland Fjellbygd. Stavanger Museums Skrifter 7,1972 and The Iron Age Farm in Southwest Norway. NAR 6, No. 1, 1973) are commented upon by Björn Ambrosiani, Arnvid Lillehammer, Sven‐Olof Lindquist, Perry Rolfsen and Ulf Sporrong. Bj?rn Myhre's reply to the comments closes the discussion.     

The Changing Face of Heritage at Canada’s National Historic Sites

In order for all citizens to fully belong to a nation or a community, they must have membership in that society’s institutions, systems and social relations on both the formal and everyday levels. Heritage sites are public institutions of formal cultural presentation and informal social encounters where society demonstrates community membership. But in a country such as Canada where global economics and popular culture combine with an unprecedented influx of immigrants, how a community imagines itself and articulates its heritage is changing radically. Canada’s National Historic Sites (NHS) is among the important public institutions devoted to both the presentation of heritage and demonstration of citizen membership. This paper describes how this institution is adapting to changes in imaginings about citizenship, on both the formal and informal level. It looks at how NHS is expanding the involvement of all citizens in the why, what, how and to whom of heritage presentation, evolving its practices to include ethic minorities in its imaginings of Canadianness. Using as an example a new NHS exhibit and designations related to the Underground Railroad and African‐Canadians, the paper considers how historic sites, as formal instruments of the state, can be re‐tuned as informal sites of discourse and negotiation about identity, citizenship and belonging.     

The National Union of Students and transnational solidarity, 1958–1968

In 1968 student activism and the international connections between students became a source of interest and concern throughout the world. These international connections, however, were far from new. Internationalism has always been at the core of the National Union of Students of England, Wales and Northern Ireland (NUS), the largest student organisation in the UK. The NUS represented the majority of British students, although their policies were never universally accepted but were the outcome of sometimes vociferous debate. In the years between the end of the Second World War and 1968 the NUS was deeply involved in setting up two international student organisations, the International Union of Students (IUS) and the International Student Conference (ISC), as well as developing their own bilateral connections with students around the world. The membership and leadership of the NUS were clearly interested, and concerned, about students internationally. However, the extent to which this interest and concern should be seen as solidarity or is more rightly a new manifestation of older British traditions of paternalism and liberal internationalism is questioned in this article.     

Nationalism,Britishness and the ‘Souring’ of Australian National Art

This article investigates the nationalist historiography of the Heidelberg School, an Australian art movement from the Federation period, known for its iconic representations of national life and landscape. Drawing on recent scholarship of Australian nationalism, it questions conventional accounts of the Heidelberg School in Australian art history, especially those based on Bernard Smith’s radical interpretation of this movement. For Bernard Smith, and the generations of Australian art historians he influenced, the nationalism of the 1890s was a progressive force for national culture. Yet, in the post-Federation decades, national art declined (or ‘soured’) into a reactionary form of insular nationalism. By focusing on the ‘souring’ narrative of Australian national art, this article critiques the nationalist interpretation of the Heidelberg School. It explores an apparent contradiction: the role of Britishness in the construction of a distinctly Australian national art.     

The reinvention of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, 1992–2012

This article examines the most recent history of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, with particular emphasis on how this laboratory shifted its research program from accelerator-based particle physics towards astroparticle physics, cosmology and multi-disciplinary photon science. Photon science became the central experimental research program through a series of changes in the organisational, scientific, and infrastructural set-up and in its science policy context. The article shows that SLAC’s reinvention unfolded in a science policy context in which funding priorities drifted towards the materials sciences and the life sciences at the expense of nuclear and particle physics, which had dominated science budgets during the Cold War. SLAC took a lead position in this global development by partly dismantling and also redeploying scientific and technical capabilities from its particle physics program for these new fields, thus, providing novel experimental facilities for user communities to expand across academia and industry.