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ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 42 | December 1999


Harold White Fellows for 2000

Jan Fullerton, the Director-General of the National Library, has announced the award of five Harold White Fellowships for the year 2000. Each of the Fellows will spend three months in the Library, carrying out research on the book, manuscript, pictorial, oral history and newspaper collections.

Carole Carpenter, who is an associate professor at York University in Toronto, Canada, is engaged on a study of folklore in children’s literature in English in Canada, South Africa and Australia. In her research and extensive writings, Dr Carpenter has been particularly concerned with folklore as a means of cultural identity, especially in multicultural societies and in children’s culture. In her time in the Library she will be identifying and studying Australian children’s books that incorporate folklore in text and illustrations.

Bridget Griffen-Foley will be examining the relationship between Australian media companies, their proprietors and politicians, and political parties from 1945 to 1975. A historian at the University of Sydney, Dr Griffen-Foley is the author of The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire, published a few months ago. The Library holds the papers of and interviews with many newspaper proprietors, editors, journalists and politicians, and also the records of the federal secretariats of the Liberal Party and the Australian Labor Party.

David Hansen is a senior curator at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and is preparing a major exhibition on the life and work of the painter John Glover (1767–1849). Glover acquired a considerable reputation in England before emigrating to Van Diemen’s Land in 1830 and he was the most important landscape artist in Australia in the first half of the nineteenth century. Mr Hansen will be looking at not only the oil paintings and sketchbooks of Glover owned by the Library but also the works of a number of Glover’s contemporaries, along with biographical and other written sources.

Doug Munro, who is a historian at the University of the South Pacific in Suva, Fiji, is writing a biography of J.W. Davidson (1915–1973). Davidson was the first Professor of Pacific History at the Australian National University and was influential in changing the way Pacific history was written—away from imperial-centred models towards islander-centric studies. He was also a constitutional adviser to a number of territories, particularly Western Samoa, in the period of decolonisation. Dr Munro will be mainly using the large personal archives of Davidson held in the manuscript collection.

Michael Symons is writing a history of dining out in Australia, extending from the first English settlement at Sydney until the present. An Adelaide restaurateur and freelance researcher, Dr Symons is the author of One Continuous Picnic: A History of Eating in Australia, The Pudding That Took a Thousand Cooks, and other works on the history and sociology of cuisine. He will be seeking a diversity of sources in the Library, such as diaries, letters, newspaper advertisements, commercial guides, menus and reminiscences.

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Please address any comments and enquiries to The Editor, Gateways: lkirwan@nla.gov.au

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