Alexandra Roginski's Books

Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

By: Alexandra Roginski

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Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Popular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand

By: Alexandra Roginski

The contentious science of phrenology once promised insight into character and intellect through external 'reading' of the head. In the transforming settler-colonial landscapes of nineteenth-century Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, popular phrenologists – figures who often hailed from the margins – performed their science of touch and cranial jargon everywhere from mechanics' institutions to public houses. In this compelling work, Alexandra Roginski recounts a history of this everyday practice, exploring how it featured in the fates of people living in, and moving through, the Tasman World. Innovatively drawing on historical newspapers and a network of archives, she traces the careers of a diverse range of popular phrenologists and those they encountered. By analysing the actions at play in scientific episodes through ethnographic, social and cultural history, Roginski considers how this now-discredited science could, in its own day, yield fleeting power and advantage, even against a backdrop of large-scale dispossession and social brittleness.

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Page Count

291

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

1009021095

ISBN 13

9781009021098

The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery

By: Alexandra Roginski

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The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery

By: Alexandra Roginski

1860. An Aboriginal labourer named Jim Crow is led to the scaffold of the Maitland Gaol in colonial New South Wales. Among the onlookers is the Scotsman AS Hamilton, who will take bizarre steps in the aftermath of the execution to exhume this young man’s skull. Hamilton is a lecturer who travels the Australian colonies teaching phrenology, a popular science that claims character and intellect can be judged from a person’s head. For Hamilton, Jim Crow is an important prize. A century and a half later, researchers at Museum Victoria want to repatriate Jim Crow and other Aboriginal people from Hamilton’s collection of human remains to their respective communities. But their only clues are damaged labels and skulls. With each new find, more questions emerge. Who was Jim Crow? Why was he executed? And how did he end up so far south in Melbourne? In a compelling and original work of history, Alexandra Roginski leads the reader through her extensive research aimed at finding the person within the museum piece. Reconstructing the narrative of a life and a theft, she crafts a case study that elegantly navigates between legal and Aboriginal history, heritage studies and biography. The Hanged Man and the Body Thief is a nuanced story about phrenology, a biased legal system, the aspirations of a new museum, and the dilemmas of a theatrical third wife. It is most importantly a tale of two very different men, collector and collected, one of whom can now return home.

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Page Count

146

Publisher

Monash University Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1922235660

ISBN 13

9781922235664

The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery

By: Alexandra Roginski

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The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

Finding Lives in a Museum Mystery

By: Alexandra Roginski

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

146

Publisher

Monash University Publishing

Published Date

ISBN 10

1922235660

ISBN 13

9781922235664

Book's by Alexandra Roginski

Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World

The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

The Hanged Man and the Body Thief

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