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Revisiting Classics in Australian Housing History
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Friday 26 April 2024, 9am – 5pm
Deakin Downtown (Docklands, Melbourne) and via Zoom

This workshop comes out of a research agenda under the aegis of the NHHN, established in 2023, which has identified the current moment as a transformational one in understanding the cultural and social meaning of housing in Australia. The task of uncovering forgotten histories and historical imaginaries looms as an urgent task in our present moment, widely perceived to be one of exceptional historical crisis. Revisiting Classics in Housing History recognises the rich tradition of scholarship on housing across the twentieth century – much of which has slipped out of public consciousness – and asks what these texts might offer for readers today.

RSVP by emailing newhousinghistorynetwork@gmail.com

Please indicate: In-person or Zoom attendance and dietary requirements (if you will be attending in person). We have a limit to the number of in-person places. Places will be filled as RSVPs are received.

Event organisers: Fiona Gatt (f.gatt@deakin.edu.au), Rachel Goldlust (rachgoldlust@gmail.com) and Steven Pascoe (stephen.pascoe@unsw.edu.au).

Sign up for the NHHN newsletter here.

This event has been sponsored by the Centre for Contemporary Histories.

We have a fabulous line-up of papers:

Planning for Housing

  • David Nichols, Revisiting Ruth and Maurie Crow’s utopian planning manifesto Plan for Melbourne (1970s)
  • Nick Pitt, Rereading Chippendale, Beneath the Factory Wall and Pyrmont & Ultimo, under siege: exploring the use of community histories by the heritage industry (1980s and 1990s) [ZOOM]
  • Catherine Townsend, Visions foreclosed: Reopening Barnett, Burt and Heath’s We Must Go On (1944)

Reclaiming Housing within Place-Based Histories

  • James Watson, Histories of Green Valley: Revisiting Goodall and Cadzow’s Rivers and Resilience (2009)
  • Eureka Henrich, Elizabeth’s pasts and futures: Revisiting Mark Peel’s, Good times, hard times (1995) [ZOOM]
  • Lionel Frost, Returning to the Paddocks of Paddington: Max Kelly Remembered (1978)

Positioning People

  • Elsie Louise Telford, Howard Tanner’s Australian Housing in the Seventies and the cultivation of a sense of responsibility in Australian housing (1976)
  • Rachel Gallagher, A Fictional Brisbane House of Dreams: 12 Edmondstone Street by David Malouf (2012) [ZOOM]
  • Philip Goad, Forgotten Classic? Revisiting Robin Boyd’s Australia’s Home (1952)

The Many Productions of Housing

  • Chris McConville, Welcome to neoliberal housing: The real Gold Coast story in Michael  Jones. A Sunny Place for Shady People (1986)
  • Jana Perkovic, Modernity without affordability: Reading Australian Ugliness (1960) in international context [ZOOM]
  • Renee Miller-Yeaman, Designing the Ideal House: Revisiting Walter Bunning’s Homes in the Sun (1945) and Ian MacKay’s Living & Partly Living: Housing in Australia (1971)