Editorial

Sarah Abbass ‘Wartime Ambassador: Hu Shih in Washington, October 1938 – September 1942.’
Fourth Year Undergraduate, University of Western Sydney
Between October 1938 and September 1942, Hu Shih served as China’s ambassador to the United States. During China’s war with Japan, Hu Shih was tasked with converting American sympathy for China into substantial aid and assistance.  Hu Shih occupied a central position in Sino-American relations during the Second World War, but he is yet to be the subject of significant scholarly examination. This article addresses that gap, detailing Hu Shih’s significant and influential role in changing the relationship between the United States and China during this tumultuous period in history.

Ben Brooks ‘Tracing the Ideological Origins of the Second Amendment.’
Third Year Undergraduate, University of Sydney
The Second Amendment of the United States’ Bill of Rights asserts the right of American citizens to ‘bear arms’; to access, own, and utilise guns and similar weaponry. The Second Amendment is a contentious document, and this article seeks to explore the origins of the Amendment and the historical context from which it arose. By tracing the ideologies behind the Second Amendment, this article argues that the document is more than just a peculiar historical anachronism; rather, the Second Amendment institutionalises the right to revolutionary action, and in itself is proof of the problems with reading historical documents in contemporary terms.

Carol Dunn ‘The Jewish Connection to Homosexuality in the Third Reich.’
Masters, University of Sydney
Significant historical literature has detailed the narratives of those groups persecuted by Nazi Germany. This article explores the connections between two of these groups, using the history of the homosexual rights movement and the rise of sex studies in the twentieth century to outline the links between the Jewish people of Europe and homosexual communities. What emerges is a history of dual oppression, with this article detailing the ways by which the Jewish backgrounds of prominent sexologists and homosexual rights activists gave rise to increased and targeted propaganda and persecution.

Greer Rose Gamble ‘Infallibility Complex: The British Left and the Soviet Union, 1930-1950.’
Third Year Undergraduate, Macquarie University
In 2003, British novelist Martin Amis asserted, “Everybody knows…of the 6 million of the Holocaust. Nobody knows of the 6 million of the Terror Famine.” This article seeks to explore why historical knowledge of the Holocaust is more widely disseminated and understood than knowledge of life under Stalin. One explanation put forward by this article is the role played by British literary Left in obfuscating the information communicated about the USSR to the British public. In examining this case study, this article asks broader questions about the communication of historical truths, and the role of politics and memory in creating historical narratives.

Heather Lunney ‘Exploring the Cold War through The Twilight Zone: Five episodes in a journey to a dimension of sight, sound and mind.’
Masters, University of New England
Popular culture in the post-World War Two era played a significant role in the construction of Cold War narratives and the promotion of specific ideologies. With this in mind, this article uses the popular science fiction television series The Twilight Zone to explore the dominant concerns of early Cold War America: those of nuclear annihilation, the threat of the external enemy, and the threat of the enemy within the domestic sphere. This article demonstrates that The Twilight Zone is an important marker of Cold War ideologies, and provides an archive through which to track the changes in these attitudes over time. 

Kali Myers ‘Diasporas of Modernity: Centres and Peripheries in Transnational Feminist Studies of Australian Colonial Modernity, 1999-2012.’
Honours, University of Melbourne
In 1999, Antoinette Burton’s Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities drew attention to the inextricable relationship between the colonial project, modernity, and the construction and regulation of women’s sexuality, bodies and identity. This article uses that nexus to study the way that feminist studies and critiques of Australian colonial modernity have prompted a re-examination of historical interpretations of Australia’s past, present and future identities. At its core, this article asks broader questions about the role of historiography in constructing and reconstructing national narratives.

Sophie Robinson ‘Gendered Claims: Men in feminism in 1980s Australia.’
Honours, University of New South Wales
The 1980s in Australia was a time of increased public awareness and institutional presence of feminist politics. This article examines the role that men played in the feminist project in Australia during the 1980s, with specific attention paid to the ways by which feminist language and theory underpinned the gendered claims regarding masculinity made by men during this era. The presence of men alongside feminist debates and practices of the 1980s were, this article asserts, integral to the history of contemporary Australian feminism, ambiguous and contested though that presence may have been.