Friday, 8 May 2009, 1–5pm
Sutherland Room, Holme Building, Science Road, The University of Sydney

Convenor:          Iain McCalman
Presenters:       

• Julia Horne         ‘Landscape and Wonder’
• Peter Denney    ‘Picturesque Farming: The Sound of ‘Happy Britannia’ in Early Australia’
• Martin Thomas      ‘Cross-Cultural Exchange in Arnhem Land: The Legacy of the 1948 American-Australian Scientific Expedition’
• Richard Waterhouse  ‘Taming the ‘Wastelends’: the dream of the yeoman in Australian history’

From the eighteenth century, the discovery by Europeans in the southern hemisphere of new landforms, species and indigenous cultures prompted intense and continuing debate about natural economies (later called ecologies) on both sides of the world. We will explore these issues through papers on comparative art, aesthetics and landscape; on the rise of Darwinian evolutionary ecological theory; and on European scientific and Indigenous Aboriginal conceptions of nature and environmental management.