Dr Fay Anderson

Biography

Fay Anderson is a lecturer and the Director at the Australian Centre in the School of Historical Studies. She was educated at La Trobe University and the University of Melbourne. After graduating, Fay worked as a journalist and lived in Paris and Jerusalem for several years.

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Research

Fay’s research interests is Australian war journalism, which builds upon her existing expertise as an historian of intellectual ideas, censorship and institutions in the public sphere, including the study of censorship, the media and reporting. Her PhD thesis, which was awarded in 2003, was published in 2005 by Melbourne University Publishing and entitled, An Historian's Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom.

Fay and Richard Trembath’s collaborative research on Australian war journalism is funded by the ARC and conducted in partnership with the CEW Bean Foundation and the National Library of Australia, with support from Dame Elisabeth Murdoch. The project, 'Witnesses to War' will begin with Howard Willoughby’s journalistic endeavours in New Zealand in the 1860s to the present Iraq war. Major themes include the creation of the Anzac legend, the mythmaking and truths, censorship, embedded journalism, propaganda, genocide, gender, national identity, objectivity and the changing nature of war reporting. The project will result in several public initiatives and programs including an anthology of the most significant reports, an exhibition, a symposium, an oral history archive held in the NLA and the history itself, which will be published in 2009 by Melbourne University Publishing.

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Publications

Books

• Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath, Witness: Australian War Correspondents from the New Zealand Wars to Iraq, forthcoming Melbourne University Publishing, to be published 2009.
• Fay Anderson and Stuart Macintyre (eds), The Life of the Past The Discipline of History at the University of Melbourne, 1855-2005, Melbourne RMIT Publishing, 2006.
• Fay Anderson, An Historian's Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom, Melbourne University Publishing, 2005.

Articles

• Fay Anderson, ‘Into the Night: The Labyrinth of the Social Studies Enquiry, the Bulletin and ASIO’s Spoiling Operations’, Australian Historical Studies, 2005.
• Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath, ‘The Greatness and Smallness of Their Story: Australian War Correspondents in the Twentieth Century’, Informit, 2004.

Chapters and other entries

• Fay Anderson, ‘”When Fanatics Clash”: Australian Reporters on the Eastern Front’, in Australian Visitors to the Soviet Union, forthcoming Melbourne University Publishing, to be published 2008.
• Fay Anderson and Stuart Macintyre, ‘History in the Headlines’, The Life of the Past: The Discipline of History at the University of Melbourne, 1855-2005, RMIT Publishing, pp. 355-376, 2006.
• Fay Anderson and Stuart Macintyre, ‘The Honours Graduates, 1967-2002’, The Life of the Past: The Discipline of History at the University of Melbourne, 1855-2005. RMIT Publishing, pp. 395-422, 2006.
• Selected entries ‘Chadstone’, ‘Como’, ‘Commercial Travellers’, ‘Mutual Store’, ‘Sun News Pictorial’ and ‘Swallow and Ariel’ in The Encyclopaedia of Melbourne, Andrew Brown May (ed), Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Fay Anderson, Christopher Coney and Elizabeth Nelson, ‘Crime’ in Carlton: A History, Peter Yule (ed), Melbourne University Publishing, 2004, pp 430-46.
• Fay Anderson and Stuart Macintyre, ‘Crawford as Controversialist’ in Max Crawford's School of History, Stuart Macintyre and Peter McPhee (eds), Melbourne University History Department, 2000, pp 89-113.

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Teaching

Fay teaches Australian Studies subjects and co-ordinates a number of international programs, which reflect her research interests in various aspects of Australian studies including biography, intellectual freedom, the reporting of war, education, the Cold War, the media, popular culture, political surveillance and crime.

102-206 Witness: War and the Australian Media
102-003 Australia and America: Comparing New Worlds

Postgraduate supervision

Fay supervises postgraduates in a range of diverse fields, most notably Australian Studies, the media, political activism, war, memory and mythmaking, education, biography, war, film, photography and animation.

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