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In academia, the move is away from an objective, descriptive narrative and a past
which can be known towards histories which are reflective, socially critical and selfinterrogating.
In the public domain, it is paralleled by a surge of interest in anything
vaguely historical. The Australian community continues to demonstrate a popular
interest in the past, not in History as a discipline, but History as an entertaining
window on the past. National competitions, commemorations of special events,
historic homes, heritage walks, antiques, vintage cars, History theme parks, historical
drama, television documentaries and historical movies are increasingly entertaining
and informing Australians about what it was like in the old days. (2000, p. 2)
The move away from traditional approaches to history methodology has attracted criticism
and vehement debate, (see, for example, Windschuttle, 1996; Marwick, 2001) which is not
without its valid points. However, it is asserted that for the purposes of this project, the
incorporation of a variety of methodologies strengthens the analysis, especially as the two
exemplar topics—British heritages and Indigenous representations—are analysed for their
positioning within History curriculum and are intimately connected with an identified
relevant historical era. The general substance of the criticism of a move from a traditional
approach to history studies is, briefly, that cultural, sociological and literary criticism has
infiltrated history studies to such a degree that it has become a type of sophistry.
Furthermore, opposition to integrating other methodological approaches to historical studies
seems grounded in a resistance to allow a perceived dilution of the purity of the discipline.
For example, Marwick, generally scathing of the emergence of literary studies or the
“linguistic turn” (2001, p. 13) in history methodology asserts that historians must use
different language to that of novelists, poets and other creative writers, and that to state
“…history is simply a branch of literature, in which the ‘narratives’ of historians do not
significantly differ from the novels of novelists…” (2001, p. 12) is to contribute to
“confusion and obfuscation” (2001, p. 12) especially where creative metaphors, rather than
clear and explicit language is used; a feature as Marwick states is from literary disciplines
(see Curthoys & Docker, 2006 for a discussion of this view generally). Marwick clearly states
his view as “history is a specialist discipline, with methods of its own. It is not simply based
on common sense, and it is not a branch of literature” (2001, pp. 271-271). Windschuttle, in a
view not dissimilar from that expressed by Marwick, writes in The killing of history:
History is an intellectual discipline more than 2400 years old. It ranks with
philosophy and mathematics as among the most profound and enduring contributions
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