Contesting Australian History: Essays in Honour of Marilyn Lake ed. by Joy Damousi and Judith Smart (review)

In Australia and beyond, Marilyn Lake has been such an influential historian that the list of potential contributors to a volume of essays in her honour could be infinite. Lake has not only consistently produced the highest quality scholarship since her master’s thesis was published as a book, she has forged, shaped and reshaped entire fields of inquiry. Try and imagine Australian feminist history without her, or Australian history in general without the transnational scope advanced by Lake, including her very influential collaborations with other trailblazers such as Henry Reynolds and Ann Curthoys. The questions she has posed, the myths she has taken on (including Anzac, more than once), the connections she has made across time and place and the themes she has brought to the forefront of historical analysis have arguably made better historians of us all, and will continue to do so.

As it happens, the contributors to this consistently engrossing volume range from Graeme Davison, who was one of Lake’s PhD supervisors; through to collaborators and colleagues like Patricia Grimshaw (one of the co-authors of the justly praised Creating a Nation with Lake, first published in 1991); and onto other major Australian historians who have been inspired by Lake’s work in various ways (including Ian Tyrell, who deftly spins a rich essay on Victor Selden Clark’s 1906 book The Labour Movement in Australasia from a footnote in one of Lake’s articles). Pleasingly, early career historians are well-represented, including Samia Khutan, who vividly recalls how Lake’s appreciation of a question she posed at her first ever academic conference helped seed her ambitious first book, Australianama. Many of the contributors know Lake personally and/or have benefitted from her mentorship, together building an impressive portrait of a forever-curious and brave scholar, who is as good company in person as she is on the page.

The “essays in honour of” genre is a capacious one and the editors, Joy Damousi and Judith Smart, have done a good job organising the essays in a broadly chronological fashion that follows Lake’s evolving and dynamic scholarship. This inductive approach, which takes the reader from Lake’s Tasmanian origins (skilfully evoked by Davison) right through to her productive “retirement,” more than compensates for the lack of a substantial historiographical introduction. Several essays helpfully showcase Lake’s contribution to particular fields – Stephen Garton addresses Lake’s key role in contesting “Anzackery”; Grimshaw details Lake’s wide-ranging influence in women’s history, locally and internationally – while others draw out in illuminating ways how Lake’s work has directly influenced their own, as Smart and Damousi both do in their respective contributions. Liz Conor’s deeply felt tribute to Lake as a teacher and feminist intellectual is a much-appreciated reminder that Lake was also a vanguard figure in Women’s Studies.

Some contributors are less wedded to a close examination of Lake’s work, but clearly find her an excellent historian to think with and about, as Tim Rowse demonstrates in his essay on genealogies of Aboriginal self-determination. Aboriginal history is further represented by fascinating essays from Mark McKenna, writing on the afterlife of his book Looking for Blackfellas’ Point (2002), and Victoria Haskins and John Maynard who together trace the various challenges involved in their current project on the history of the New South Wales (NSW) Aboriginal Protection Board. Though Haskins and Maynard pay tribute to Lake, their essay and McKenna’s also stand alone as “behind-the-scenes” histories, giving this collection an even wider utility than the massive scope of Lake’s career.

The best essays encourage readers to revisit Lake’s work and to put it into fresh context. Approached from the perspective of an Australian historian of the USA, Clare Corbould reminds us not only of the high esteem in which Lake is held in the USA, but also of...