Guest editors: Christopher G Robbins and Eric Ferris with Sian Supski
This liber amicorum, or ‘book of friends’, celebrates Peter Beilharz by engaging with different facets of his complex body of work as an intellectual, educator/mentor, and friend/thought partner, on the occasion of his 70th birthday.
by Peter Murphy
I think that what happened to both of us separately but in unconscious tandem in the 1990s says a lot about the intellectual framing of Australian society and history. We both, unwittingly, without any preconception of this, moved away from a politicised interpretation of Australian society (typical of much of Australian historiography) toward a view that placed art and aesthetics at the centre of social analysis.
by Trevor Hogan
Upon knocking on their front door, the domestic tableau that greeted us included Pete sitting on the floor and leaning against a couch, pen and paper in hand, folder perched on his knee, surrounded by piles of books including an up-ended paperback of E.P. Thompson’s (1963) The Making of the English Working Class, or so my mind’s eye reconstructs the scene of our first meeting. He was preparing lecture notes for his first semester of teaching – first year sociology at La Trobe University. Our conversations moved quickly from beaches and bands to books, critical theory, and politics.
by Alastair Davidson
Peter Beilharz is the only one of the three founding editors of Thesis Eleven to have remained with the journal over the decades since 1980. Three generations of editors joined him in its progress from the tiny, self-financed Australian journal born in Room 681 of the Menzies Building, at Monash University, but he alone saw it through to its transition into a major international journal of the Left, outlasting many other journals born in the same decade. His early energy and enthusiasm, his tenacity, flair and insights accompanied him through the years.
thesis eleven 