David Walker | |
|---|---|
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| Born | 12 November 1945 |
| Nationality | Australian |
| Occupation | Academic historian |
David Robert Walker (born 12 November 1945) is an Australian academic historian who has been the professor of Australian studies at Deakin University since 1991. He is a leading authority in the study of Australian perceptions of Asia.
Walker was born in Adelaide in 1945 and received his early education in rural South Australian schools where his father was a teacher. The family settled in Adelaide in 1958 and Walker graduated from the University of Adelaide with a first class honours degree in Arts in 1967. Post-graduate studies were undertaken at the Australian National University (ANU) where he was awarded a doctorate in 1972. His thesis, which explored Vance Palmer, Louis Esson and other twentieth-century Australian authors' hopes for the development of an Australian culture, was subsequently published as Dream and Disillusion: A Search for Australian Cultural Identity.
Walker spent the next two years as a postdoctoral research fellow at Australian National University (ANU), where he was the editor of Labor History. He then held a number of academic positions at the University of Auckland and the University of New South Wales until his appointment as the Professor of Australian Studies at Deakin University. He has a number of visiting appointments including a Distinguished Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at the University of Copenhagen, the Monash Chair of Australian Studies at Georgetown University and a Visiting Professorship in Australian Studies at the Australian Studies Centre, Renmin University, Beijing. [1]
Walker has received more than 30 major research grants and published more than 120 books, book chapters, peer reviewed journal articles and peer reviewed lectures. Much of his work has concentrated on the history of Australia's engagement with Asia and, in particular, the ways in which Australians imagined Asian peoples and their cultures.
The results of his research on Asia were published as Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939 in 1999. This landmark work explores the anxiety that Australians felt towards the people of Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. [2] While Australian images of Asia were overwhelmingly negative during this period, Walker makes the point that some Australians including Prime Minister Alfred Deakin saw much to admire in Asian cultures. Al Grassby, former Minister for Immigration who dismantled the White Australia Policy, described the book as "evocative and compelling prose …which shows how bigotry and myth making shaped the question of race which dominated the public and private discourse." [3] Anxious Nation has been reprinted in an India edition and translated into Chinese.
In late 2004, David Walker, suffered a sudden and severe loss of sight that rendered him legally blind and limited his ability to continue archival research. He subsequently changed his research methods and drew on his family history as a tool to investigate the development of Australia’s national character and culture. [2] This led to the publication of Not Dark Yet: A personal history which has been described by Phillip Adams as "an evocative portrait of 20th century Australia …the attitudes, idiosyncrasies and prejudices of the era." [4]
Stranded Nation: White Australia in an Asian Region is the sequel to "Anxious Nation" published by UWAP in 2019. Drawing on a wide variety of resources including archival records, literature and personal stories,this volume covers the evolution of Australia's engagement with Asia in the period of World War II and into the 1970s. This period saw Australia as a ‘white’ nation, with deep anxieties about Asia, seeking to convince both itself and its neighbours that it belonged within the Asian region. As Britain’s withdrew to Europe, Australia found an urgent need to come to an accommodation with Asia resulting in a desire for a greater understanding of the "Asian Psyche" and a gradual breaking down of the White Australia Policy. [5]
The Story of Australia (2021) written with Louise C. Johnson and Tanja Lukins provides a fresh, engaging and comprehensive introduction to Australia’s history and geography. This new history integrates a rich body of scholarship from many disciplines and uses a great variety of sources from government reports and newspaper accounts to diaries, novels and art. It places emphasis on First Australians, women, the environment and urban Australia along with Australia’s history as an Asia Pacific nation. [6]
Happy Together: Bridging the Australia China Divide (Melbourne University Press) jointly written by Walker and Li Yao with the assistance of Karen Walker will be published in June 2022. The book tells the story of Li Yao, the foremost translator of Australian writing into Chinese. In the late nineteenth century, the Li family left famine-stricken Shanxi province in northern China to begin a new life on the remote grasslands of Inner Mongolia. Li Yao grew up in Mao’s China and dreamed of becoming a writer. His dreams were torn apart by the Cultural Revolution. Li Yao’s story is interwoven with that of his friend David Walker. Both men were born at the same time (they are both Roosters by the Chinese zodiac) but grew up in very different worlds. This book illuminates not only personal histories but also China’s relations with Australia and the wider world.
The novelist Alexis Wright has said of this book: "This richly detailed memoir takes us on a remarkable journey through a tumultuous period of Chinese history. It is also an unforgettable celebration of a friendship between renowned scholar and gifted translator Li Yao, and David Walker, a distinguished Australian historian which bridges cultures, history, and life experience. An inspiring and insightful story for our times, and all times"
Walker has co-edited Australia’s Asia: from Yellow Peril to Asian Century a selection of essays on the Australian engagement with Asia which was released in late 2012. [7] In January 2013, Walker also published a collection of essays entitled Encountering Turbulence: Asia in the Australian Imaginary. [8]
In November 2012, Walker was appointed as the inaugural BHP Professor in Australian Studies at Peking University. The chair was an initiative of the Australia-China Council, the Foundation for Australian Studies in China, BHP, Peking University and the Australian Department of Industry and was the first high-profile, privately funded Australian professorial position in China. [8]
In announcing Professor Walker's appointment, the Australian Minister for Trade, Craig Emerson said that the chair was an indication of the Australian government's commitment to encouraging Australia students to look to Asia as their future. It was consistent with the government response to the "Australia in the Asian Century White Paper", which aimed to have more Australian university students studying overseas and a greater proportion undertaking part of their degree in an Asian country by 2025.
Emerson praised Walker as an outstanding ambassador for Australian education who would engage with Chinese researchers, students, government and the community to lift the profile of studies of Australian society, history and culture. Walker would also provide academic leadership to a network of more than 30 Australian Studies Centres in Chinese universities, which has been supported by the Australia-China Council for two decades. [9]
Professor Walker retired from the Chair in 2016 but has continued to support Australian Studies Centres throughout China.
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia elected Walker a fellow in 2001 and the Australian Academy of the Humanities bestowed the same honor in 2005. He received the Ernest Scott prize following the publication of Anxious Nation.
In April 2012, Walker became the Alfred Deakin Professor of Australian Studies, the highest honour that Deakin University can bestow on its academic staff. [1]
Walker was awarded Membership of the Order of Australia (AM) in the 2018 Queen's Birthday Honours.
The New Culture Movement was a progressivist movement in China in the 1910s and 1920s that criticized classical Chinese ideas and promoted a new Chinese culture based upon progressive, modern ideals like elections and science. Arising out of disillusionment with traditional Chinese culture following the failure of the Republic of China to address China's problems, it featured scholars such as Chen Duxiu, Cai Yuanpei, Chen Hengzhe, Li Dazhao, Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, He Dong, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong, Bing Xin, and Hu Shih, many classically educated, who led a revolt against Confucianism. The movement was launched by the writers of New Youth magazine, where these intellectuals promoted a new society based on unconstrained individuals rather than the traditional Confucian system. In 1917, Mr. Hu Shih put forward the famous “Eight Principle”, that is, abandon the ancient traditional writing method and use vernacular.
The Miao are a group of linguistically related peoples living in Southern China and Southeast Asia, who are recognized by the government of China as one of the 56 official ethnic groups. The Miao live primarily in southern China's mountains, in the provinces of Guizhou, Yunnan, Sichuan, Hubei, Hunan, Guangxi, Guangdong, and Hainan. Some sub-groups of the Miao, most notably the Hmong people, have migrated out of China into Southeast Asia. Following the communist takeover of Laos in 1975, a large group of Hmong refugees resettled in several Western nations, mainly in the United States, France, and Australia.
Wang Gungwu, is an Australian historian, sinologist, and writer specialising in the history of China and Southeast Asia. He has studied and written about the Chinese diaspora, but he has objected to the use of the word diaspora to describe the migration of Chinese from China because both it mistakenly implies that all overseas Chinese are the same and has been used to perpetuate fears of a "Chinese threat", under the control of the Chinese government. An expert on the Chinese tianxia concept, he was the first to suggest its application to the contemporary world as an American Tianxia.
Kwang-chih Chang, commonly known as K. C. Chang, was a Chinese / Taiwanese-American archaeologist and sinologist. He was the John E. Hudson Professor of archaeology at Harvard University, Vice-President of the Academia Sinica, and a curator at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. He helped to bring modern, western methods of archaeology to the study of ancient Chinese history. He also introduced new discoveries in Chinese archaeology to western audiences by translating works from Chinese to English. He pioneered the study of Taiwanese archaeology, encouraged multi-disciplinal anthropological archaeological research, and urged archaeologists to conceive of East Asian prehistory as a pluralistic whole.
Hellmut Wilhelm was a German Sinologist known for his studies of both Chinese literature and Chinese history. Wilhelm was an expert on the ancient Chinese divination text I Ching , which he believed to represent the essence of Chinese thought. He also produced one of the most widely used German-Chinese dictionaries of the 20th century. He held teaching positions at Peking University and the University of Washington.
Zhuang studies is an interdisciplinary intellectual field concerned with the Zhuang people – their history, anthropology, religion, politics, languages, and literature. The majority of such research is being carried out in the People's Republic of China. Huang Xianfan (黄现璠) is considered by many to be the father of Zhuang studies.
Anxious Nation: Australia and the Rise of Asia 1850–1939, written by David Walker, has been described as a "landmark" analysis of the history of Australian perceptions of Asian people and their cultures. It was first published by the University of Queensland Press in 1999 and has subsequently been reprinted in an Indian edition and translated into Chinese. Walker, who has been the professor of Australian Studies at Deakin University since 1991, is a leading authority in the field of Australian images of Asia and this work is the culmination of several years of his research and observation.
The Yenching Academy is a postgraduate college of Peking University, located in Beijing, China. It hosts the Yenching Scholarship, a fully funded prestigious global scholarship program, designed "to cultivate leaders who will advocate for global progress and cultural understanding." The academy offers Yenching Scholars, selected annually from around the world, with full scholarships for one or two years of study leading to a master's degree from Peking University.
Colin Patrick Mackerras is an Australian sinologist, Emeritus Professor at Griffith University, and specialist in Chinese culture. He has published on Chinese drama, national minorities of China, Australian-Chinese relations and images of China in the West.
The Australia-China Council (ACC) is a long-standing institution in the Australia-China bilateral relationship. ACC was established by the Government of Australia in 1978 to promote mutual understanding and foster people-to-people relations between Australia and China. ACC combines the cross-sectoral bilateral expertise and advisory capacity of an independent Board appointed by the Minister for Foreign Affairs with the policy-making and management base in the Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade. By the time of the ACC's fortieth anniversary in 2018, it had "funded over 2,600 projects at a value of more than $23 million".
Benjamin David Penny is an Australian academic specialising in religious and spiritual movements in modern and contemporary China. He is a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia.
Li Chenyang is a professor of Philosophy at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He is internationally recognized for his work in Chinese philosophy and comparative philosophy, probably best known for his work in the Confucian philosophy of harmony, and comparative studies of Confucian ethics and feminist care ethics.
David Michael Lowe is an Australian biographer and historian of modern international affairs, and of Australia's role therein, especially with reference to Asia and the Pacific.
Roger T. Ames is a Canadian-born philosopher, translator, and author. He is Humanities Chair Professor at Peking University in Beijing, China, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and a Berggruen Fellow. He has made significant contributions to the study of Chinese and comparative philosophy, in which he emphasizes the importance of understanding Chinese philosophy on its own terms rather than through the lens of Western philosophy.
Stranded Nation: White Australia in an Asian Region is a nonfiction book written by David Walker, a scholar of Australian images of Asia. It was published by the UWAP in 2019 and is a sequel to Anxious Nation. It explores the evolution of Australia's engagement with Asia during World War II and in the post-war period to the 1980s.
Rong Xinjiang is a Chinese historian who is a professor at Peking University, currently serving as chairperson of Academic Committee of Department of History and chairperson of Center for Research on Ancient Chinese History. He is also the Cheung Kong Scholars Distinguished Professor of the Ministry of Education, vice chairperson of the Tang Dynasty Institute of China and the Dunhuang and Turpan Institute of China.
Xing Wen, or Wen Xing is a Chinese scholar and researcher in Chinese art, archaeology, and classical Chinese studies. He is Robert 1932 and Barbara Black Professor in Asian Studies, Emeritus, and Professor of Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages, Emeritus at Dartmouth College.
Happy Together: Bridging the Australia China Divide jointly written by David Walker and Li Yao with the assistance of Karen Walker, is a book that was published in June 2022.
Susan Naquin is a historian, academic, and author. She is a professor emerita at Princeton University.
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