Professor Janet McCalman
BA Hons (Melbourne), PhD (ANU)
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social SciencesContact details
Rm 518 Level 5
Centre for Health & Society
207 Bouverie Street
The University of Melbourne
VIC 3010 Australia
T: (03) 8344 9107
E: janetsm@unimelb.edu.auAcademic Profile
Professor Janet McCalman holds joint appointments in History & Philosophy of Science in the Faculty of Arts and in the Centre for Health and Society in the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences. She is director of the Johnstone-Need Medical History Unit.
She is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and the Australian National University; and a fellow of both the Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of the Social Sciences. She has published two histories of Australian life and politics, Struggletown (1984, 1998) set in the Melbourne suburb of Richmond, and Journeyings (1993), a biography of a middle-class generation from the world of the '69 tram'. The social history of women's health, Sex and Suffering: women's health and a women's hospital, 1856-1996 (Melbourne University Press 1998), was also published in the United States by Johns Hopkins University Press. Her current research interests are in the social history of health and disease, life course history, (in particular of childhood and adolescence), the family, and ecological history. With Dr Len Smith of the ANU and Professor Ian Anderson, she has been working on a reconstitution of the Aboriginal population of Victoria. And with colleagues from the universities of Tasmania, Flinders and ANU, she is part of the Founders & Survivors project, tracing the life courses and descendants of convicts transported to Van Diemen's Land. For eight years she wrote a fortnightly opinion column for The Age. In HPS she leads the first year University Breadth Subject, 'An Ecological History of Humanity' and the second/third year subject, ‘Medicine: from magic to microbes’ (previously 'Blood, Guts and Science'); and in the Centre for Health & Society, the graduate class 'Living Longer'.
Janet supervises postgraduate research in history of health and medicine, environmental history, ecological history, Australian social history, education, the family and private life.
Publications
Books
- Struggletown: Public and Private Life in Richmond, 1900-1965, (Melbourne University Press 1984, 1985; Penguin Books 1988; MUP 1994, Hyland House 1998), 322 pp.
- Journeyings: the Biography of a Middle-class Generation, 1920-1990, (Melbourne University Press 1993), 348 pp.
- A Hundred Years at Bank Street: A Centenary History of Ascot Vale State School. 1885-1985, (Ascot Vale State School 1985), 72 pp.
- (with Mark Peel), Who Went Where in Who's Who 1988: the Schooling of the Australian Elite, Melbourne University History Research Series no. 1. Melbourne 1992, 103 pp.
- (with Mark Peel), The 1990 Journeyings Survey: A Statistical Portrait of a Middle-Class Generation, Melbourne University Historical Research Series no. 5, Melbourne 1994, 67 pp.
- Sex and Suffering, women's health and a women's hospital, Royal Women's Hospital, Melbourne, 1856-1996, (Melbourne University Press, 1998), 420 pp.
- Sex and Suffering, women's health and a women's hospital, 1856-1996, (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1999), 420 pp.
- Janet McCalman on the world of the sixty-nine tram, (Melbourne University Press, 2006), 130 pp, ISBN 9 78052285 2134
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Chapters in Books
- 'Fitzroy 1989', chapter in Fitzroy, Melbourne's First Suburb, (Cutten History Committee of the Fitzroy Historical Society, (Hyland House 1989 and Melbourne University Press 1991).
- 'Private Life in the Garden Suburbs Between the Wars', in The Cream Brick Frontier, Histories of Australian Suburbia, Graeme Davison, Tony Dingle and Seamus O'Hanlon, eds., Monash Publications in History no. 19., 1996, ISBN 0 818 0032, pp. 51-61.
- 'Class and Respectability in a Working-Class Suburb: Richmond, Victoria, before the Great War', in Memories and Dreams, Reflections of Twentieth Century Australia, Pastiche II, Richard White and Penny Russell, eds., Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997, pp. 21-39.
- 'The Originality of Ordinary Lives', in Creating Australia, Changing Australian History, Wayne Hudson and Geoffrey Bolton, eds., Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1997, ISBN 1 86373 560 7, pp. 86-95.
- 'Community Interaction: the Humanities and the Community' in Knowing Ourselves and Others: the Humanities in the Australia into the 21st Century, Australian Research Council, Canberra 1998, pp. 59-74.
- 'Blurred Visions' in Why Universities Matter: a conversation about values, means and directions, Tony Coady ed., Allen & Unwin, Sydney 2000, ISBN 1 86508 038 1, pp. 132-43.
- 'Hard Cases Make Bad History: Doctors and Childbirth between the wars', in Future Imaginings: Sexualities and Genders in the New Millennium, Delys Bird, Wendy Were and Terri-Ann White eds., University of Western Australia Press, Perth 2003, ISBN 1 920694 07 2, pp. 71-86.
- '"All just melted with heat": mothers, babies and ‘hot winds’ in colonial Melbourne’, in Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds) A change in the weather: Climate and culture in Australia, Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2005, pp. 104-15, ISBN 1 876944 28 5.
- ‘The past that haunts us: the historical basis of well-being in Australian children’ in Margot Prior and Sue Richardson, eds, No Time to Lose: the Wellbeing of Australia’s Children, Melbourne University Publishing, Melbourne 2005, pp. 36—59, ISBN 0 522 85220 3.
Books Edited
- The Future of Academic Publishing, Proceedings of the Fourth Round Table of the National Scholarly Communications Forum, Janet McCalman, ed., The Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra 1996, ISBN 0 909897 35 2, introduction, pp. v-viii, pp. 134.
- Humane Societies, Papers from the 30th Anniversary Symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, ed. Janet McCalman, The Australian Academy of the Humanities, Canberra 2001, ISBN 0 909897 48 4, introduction pp. xi-xii, pp. 99.
Refereed Articles
- 'The impact of the First World War on Female Employment in England', Labour History, no. 21, November 1971.
- 'Respectability and Working-Class Politics in Late-Victorian London', Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 74, April 1980.
- 'Class and Respectability in a Working-Class Suburb: Richmond, Victoria before the Great War', Historical Studies, vol. 20, no. 78, April 1982.
- 'The Uses and Abuses of Oral History', Canberra Historical Journal, New Series, no. 20, 1988.
- 'Old School Ties and Silver Spoons: A Statistical Footnote from Darkest Victoria', Australian Cultural History, no. 8, 1989.
- 'Translating Social Inquiry into the Art of History', Tasmanian Historical Studies, vol. 5.1, 1995-6, pp. 1-15.
- Australian Dictionary of Biography: Jennie Brenan, vol. 7; Laurence Cohen, George Cole, C.J. De Garis and E.C. De Garis, vol. 8; Frank Tudor, vol. 12; Hector Hercules Bell, vol. 13; George Simpson, vol. 16.
- 'The World we are Losing', Australian Universities Review, 40, 2, 1997, pp. 23-6.
- 'The Power of Care: the Women's Hospital 1884-1914', Nursing Inquiry Melbourne, Blackwell Science, 5, 4, December 1998, pp. 204-11.
- 'The Making of Doctors: the extern case books, 1921-1935', Health and History, 1998, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 48-64.
- with Ruth Morley: 'Mother's health and babies' weights: the biology of poverty at the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital, 1857-83', Social History of Medicine, vol. 16, no. 1, April 2003, pp. 39-56.
- , R., , J., , J., 'Trends in birthweight between 1857 and 1883, in Melbourne, Australia', Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology 2003, 17, pp. 236-243.
- ‘Burnley’, ‘Community’, ‘Diseases and Epidemics’, ‘Religious Allegiances’, ‘Richmond’, ‘Royal Women’s Hospital’ in Brown-May, Andrew and Shurlee Swain eds, The Encyclopedia of Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne 2005, pp. 102, 164-6, 211-2, 596-8, 604-5, 625, ISBN-13 978 0-521-84234.
- Morley, Ruth, McCALMAN, JANET, Carlin, John, Birth weight and coronary heart disease in a cohort born 1857 - 1900 in Melbourne, Australia, International Journal of Epidemiology, 2006, Aug;35(4):880-5.
- WF and Helen Bynum eds, Dictionary of Medical Biography, Greenwood Press, 2006, essays on Dame Kate Campbell, Dame Jean McNamara, Dr Vera Scantlebury Brown, Dr Lucy Bryce, Dr Walter Balls Headley, IBSN 0-313-32877-3
- JANET McCALMAN, Ruth Morley and Gita Mishra, A health transition: Birth weights, households and survival in an Australian working-class population sample born 1857-1900, Social Science & Medicine (2008) vol. 66, pp. 1070-1083.
- Len Smith, JANET McCALMAN, Ian Anderson, Sandra Smith, Joanne Evans, Gavan McCarthy, Jane Beer, Fractional Identities: the political arithmetic of Aboriginal Victorians, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 2008, 38 (4) PP. 533-551
- JANET McCALMAN and Ruth Morley, Inequalities of Gender and Health 1857-1985: a long-run perspective from the Melbourne Lying-In Hospital Birth Cohort, Australian Journal of Social Issues, 2008, Vol. 43, No. 1, pp 29-44.
Selected Conference Papers
- National Academies' Forum, 'Malthus and His Legacy: 200 Years of the Population Debate', Australian National Library, September 1998: 'The Microeconomic Effects of Unrestrained Fecundity'. Published on the Web in 1999.
- 'Writing people's lives', A Question of Ethics: personal perspectives, Michelle Langfield ed., The History Institute Victoria, 1999, pp. 1-12.
- 'The learning of history and learning how to live', public lecture given at the Australian Historical Association Conference, University of Adelaide 2000, published by the History Department of the University of Melbourne, 2001.
- July 2002 In Sickness and in Health Ethics Conference, University of Melbourne, Keynote speaker: 'A natural history of care'.
- July 2002 Australian Historical Association Biennial Conference, Brisbane, 'Birth weight, poverty and disconnection: the biological inscription of colonial failure, 1857-1883'.
- August 2002 National Scholarly Communication Forum, Round Table 14: Privacy: 'Privacy and the past'.
- September 2002 National Academies' Forum: 'Climate and Culture in Australia', 'All Just Melted with Heat: mothers, babies and 'hot winds' in Colonial Melbourne'.
- Novemeber 2002 Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, Annual Symposium: Building a Better Future for our Children: Keynote, 'History and Childhood: Pathways in the Past'.
- 2003 AAHPSSS and 2003 Tasmanian Historical Association: 'The Family and Gender in Australian History: a social and biological perspective'