Archive Fever

How did hearing Samuel Becket say ‘fuck it’ on a scratchy tape kickstart a multi-doctoral author’s archive addiction? In this episode, Yves and Clare talk to Dr (Dr) Matthew Lamb about his colossal biography of colossus intellect, activist, journalist, novelist, publisher and archivist, Frank Moorhouse. How does a biographer navigate a living subject, especially when that person is a self-proclaimed chameleon? Do the personal archives of such a protean figure help or hinder truth-telling about a man who urged: ‘when the facts conflict with the legend, print the legend’. And where does responsibility lie when your subject commands ‘make it salacious’—but also requires discretion about his sexuality and gender?

In this raw and intimate episode, historian Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson spills the tea on the psychological rollercoaster of archival research: it offered the ‘biggest high’ and also ‘fucked [her] up’. From her formative childhood experiences in Beijing, to stumbling upon a human tooth in a Queensland court file, to reckoning with the human face of anti-Chinese racism, Sophie walks us through the time capsules of human drama she uses to tell the stories of Chinese Australia. What does a former market garden reveal about Chinese and First Nations cooperation? How could language be a technology of resistance for racialised migrants? And why did her ex’s probate records provide a lightbulb moment about migration?

An archival decolonist walks into a colonial institution, and dreams up a whole new paradigm for cultural heritage. Today on Archive Fever, Wiradjuri librarian and museum educator Nathan Sentance illuminates the challenges and possibilities of bringing Indigenous epistemologies and voices into the GLAM sector. Why is it vital to close the gap between First Nations lived experience and the white-dominated written record? How can institutions move away from old models of colonial extraction, and instead build up First Nations collections via authentic collaboration and consent? And why are art and creativity key to making this thing we call ‘decolonisation’ actually happen?

What does it feel like to be a young, urban, Jewish post-war migrant woman who grabs a camera and walks into the Australian desert, only to emerge 50 years later with an intimate archive of a civil rights movement? In this very special episode, Yves and Clare are joined by legendary octogenarian photographer Juno Gemes to discuss her lifelong pursuit of creativity, community, independence and social justice. hy did Juno follow in the footsteps of Richard Avendon and not James Baldwin? What role does photography play in the political and artistic pursuit of truth-telling? Can landscape be a portrait? And why is living in an archive both a privilege and a responsibility?

Loot: to plunder or steal—an English word itself looted from the Hindi word lūṭ. To celebrate the launch of season 7, the inimitable Scottish-born historian William Dalrymple spills on the beans on the colonial loot that made modern Britain—and which today forms an archive of violence and extraction. Never one to shy away from the underside of history, William takes us into murky terrain: from the dust and sweat of archaeological digs, to his own family’s imperial villainy, to the deep antiquity and current genocide of the Palestinian people. Why did an underground tunnel turn teenage William into an archive addict? How did a tiny jade bead from India end up in a Viking charnel house in Scotland—and what does that tell us about histories of trade and colonisation? And why have we forgotten that ancient Gaza was once famous for sweet wine and erotic poetry?

Clare and Matt speak to historian, author and fellow podcaster Yves Rees, author of the new book ‘Travelling to Tomorrow The modern women who sparked Australia’s romance with America’ (UNSW Press).

Don your rainbows (and beards) and get ready for the lavender haze of Australian history: Danielle Scrimshaw, author of She and Her Pretty Friend: The Hidden History of Australian Women Who Love Women (Ultimo, 2023), is in the studio to offer a queer eye for the straight historian. Why is queer history so important for the LGBTQIA+ community in the present? Can archive fever spark the fires of romance? And how can we uncover queer lives in heteronormative archives—is the answer ‘speculation as method’?

It’s complete carnage as Clare and Yves attempt to wrangle the phenomenon that is journalist, editor, historian, screenwriter, novelist and award-winning author Mark Dapin into the Archive Fever hot seat to discuss his latest venture in investigative crime writing, Carnage. We talk about growing up Jewish and working-class in a British army town, the stratified landscape of male violence, The Troubles, Chinese restaurants, what happens when your archives can shoot you in the knees and why researching true crime is the archival equivalent of crack cocaine. A wild and hilarious ride.

Today on Archive Fever the tables are turned, and interviewer turns interviewee. Co-host Clare Wright jumps in the hot seat to tell Yves and producer Matt Smith about the research journey behind her latest book Näku Dhäruk: The Bark Petitions (Text, 2024)—the final work in her Democracy Trilogy, an award-winning series that uses the material heritage of Australian democracy to retell how the people acquired a voice. How to incorporate Yolngu ways of being and knowing into a linear historical narrative? What does it mean to practice truth telling a year on from the unsuccessful Voice referendum? Where did Clare uncover a long-lost fourth copy of the bark petition? And what does Joan Didion have to do with any of this?

A legend walks into the studio, as Yves and Clare are joined by queer royalty, Joan Nestle. In 1974, Joan founded the Lesbian Herstory Archives in her home in New York. Fifty years later, Yves and Clare ask: how DO you start an archive from scratch, especially when so much of the history you are documenting has been lived underground? Why are archives the counter-narrative to a nation’s institutional history? Can an archival collection be both narrowly defined and broadly inclusive? How did a hundred women end up on Joan’s bed? And is it ever kosher to disguise your identity to steal photos of Eleanor Roosevelt and her lover?

Recorded in May 2024, seven months after the deadly 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel, Clare and Yves are joined by Walkley Award-winning investigative journalist Antony Loewenstein, whose book The Palestine Laboratory was first published in May 2023. The dates matter, as numbers of Palestinian casualties grow and the genocide in Gaza continues to unfold. Where did Antony’s instinct to be an irritant germinate? How does researching against the grain of hegemonic power put him in the literal firing line? Why is WikiLeaks his go-to archival ground zero? And how do you document a genocide that is being livestreamed while the archives of a people are being reduced to rubble in an act of ‘politicide’?

Clare and Yves are joined by Jazz Money, a queer Wiradjuri filmmaker, poet and artist whose debut feature film WINHANGANHA (2023) uses archival footage by or about First Nations people from the National Film and Sound Archive to ‘make sense of the archival inheritances that shape our present realities’. What does it mean for First Nations creators to speak back to the colonial archive? How can we honour the archive of the body? And why is it essential to foreground love and joy and sexiness and strength, alongside violence and suffering?

Before British colonisation, there were more than 250 languages spoken on this continent. Less than half survive today, and most of them are under threat. In a live episode of their hit podcast, Archive Fever, historians Yves Rees and Clare Wright are joined by special guests Cheryl Leavy and Paul Girrawah House to discuss orality as archive: how language helps us know the past and why the work of language revitalisation – bringing languages back to life – is so vital to the future.

In the final episode for Season 5, Yves and Clare are joined by filmmaker, conservationist and adventurer, Oliver Cassidy, on a meandering journey from the fires of archival passions to the watery depths of the Franklin River and its deep time. Oliver takes us through the research and emotional backstory to his stunning documentary film, FRANKLIN, to reveal the relationship between human diversity and biodiversity. How does the dual transition narrative of the film demonstrate the quest to be the best version of yourself? What story do we tell ourselves about who we are, both as individuals and as a nation? Is it possible to heal multiple wounds – historical, familial, environmental, political – by using a river as archive, as a source of evidence? How can we use can we use documentary film footage as a tool of archival activism so that current generations can draw courage from the traditions of commitment, protection and responsibility of past change leaders?

Can historians kick off the shackles of footnotes and approach the past in the spirit of play? This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves are joined by Dr Nadia Rhook, a historian and poet whose most recent collection is Second Fleet Baby (Freemantle Press, 2022). In a conversation that tackles the limitations of the history discipline, Nadia shares her journey from conventional academic historian to creative writer who connects with the past from the fullness of herself. How can we restore the past in ways that nourish the historian? Why does being more creative involve giving up authority? And what can settler historians learn from First Nations archival poetics?

This week, an Archive Fever first: live music! Clare and Yves are joined in studio by acclaimed musicians Nigel Wearne and Luke Watt, who collectively record as Above the Bit. Their debut self-titled album is a feast of revisionist storytelling, featuring lyrical tales of mutineers, rebels, warriors and wayfarers in Australia’s history. How can traditional music – like oral history – serve as an endless archive? When songwriters do research, what comes first: the story or the music? How much historical licence can you take in songwriting that has truth-telling (and activism) at its heart? Why don’t some tales heal unless they are told? And why does listening to music make even the most hardened of grown men cry? Spoiler alert: this episode comes with bonus musical tracks. Get out your tissues.

Bonjour Australie! This week, Clare and Yves put on their berets and grab a baguette to talk Australian history through a French lens with Dr Alexis Bergantz, historian at RMIT University and author of the award-winning French Connection: Australia’s Cosmopolitan Ambition (NewSouth, 2021). How does being an outsider give one fresh eyes on a nation’s past? Why should we disrupt the monolingualism of Australia’s settler history? What do non-English archives bring to the table? And can foreign-language sources help us challenge nationalist mythologies?

This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves dive down into the archival underbelly of 1930s queer, criminal Sydney, with author, performance and activist, Fiona Kelly Macgregor, whose recent novel Iris is a stunner. Why does holding the bullets from a woman’s gun – trial evidence – compel you to spend twenty years writing a book? How do you get a voice from the dead to rise up out of the grave, speaking in the urban colloquial vernacular of a bygone era? At what is all this nostalgia for a pre-digital age where it was possible to driftnet fish in the stacks? Fiona takes us on a tour through tattoos, night clubs and streets that might just be familiar to you … sort of.

Who said archives had to be on planet earth? This week on Archive Fever, Clare and Yves are joined by Kamilaroi woman Krystal de Napoli, an astrophysicist, advocate for Indigenous astronomy and co-author of the award-winning book Astronomy: Sky Country (2022). How does the sky function as an archive for Indigenous knowledges? Why does light pollution threaten this celestial library? And why must any recognition of Indigenous sovereignty extend to the sky? Once you learn about Indigenous sky rights, you’ll never think about Country the same way again.

This week is a first for Archive Fever: a lawyer in the hot seat! Clare and Yves are joined by Professor Kate Auty, barrister, magistrate, law reformer and, with the 2023 release of her book O’Leary of the Underworld, historian. What are the differences between legal research and historical research? What happens when an archivist turns informer? Why, when you ‘enter a justice space’, is writing an explainer simply not an option? What happens to judicial impartiality when you want to flay your historical protagonist alive? And how does it feel, down there in the gutter fight of history?