Humanities and Social Sciences

History Program

Staff Profiles

Mr Tony Barta

Research interests include 20th Century German history; especially. relations between social life, culture and ideology; genocide in colonial societies; History media.

Research Projects

Living in Dachau 1900-1950; Darwinism and genocide; media and historical understanding.

Research Publications

On Genocide

• ‘After the Holocaust: Consciousness of Genocide in Australia’, The Australian Journal of Politics and History, Vol. 31, No. 1, 1985, special issue ed, Konrad Kwiet and John A. Moses, 154-161.
• ‘Relations of Genocide: Land and Lives in the Colonization of Australia’ in Isidor Wallimann and Michael N. Dobkowski eds, Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1987) pp. 237-251.
• ‘Discourses of genocide in Germany and Australia: a linked history’, in Ann Curthoys and John Docker eds, ‘ “Genocide”? Australian Aboriginal history in international perspective’, Aboriginal History, Vol. 25, 2001, 37-56.
• ‘Mr Darwin’s Shooters: On Natural Selection and the Naturalizing of Genocide,’ Patterns of Prejudice 39, no. 2 (2005): 116-37. Also in A. Dirk Moses and Dan Stone eds, Colonialism and Genocide (London and New York: Routledge, 2007)
  
  An audio version is available at
  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/ockhamsrazor/stories/2006/1812165.htm
  
• ‘On pain of extinction: laws of nature and history in Darwin, Marx and Arendt’, in Richard H. King and Dan Stone, eds, Imperialism, Slavery, Race and Genocide: The Legacy of Hannah Arendt, (New York: Berghahn 2007)
• 'On Pain of Extinction: Laws and History in Darwin, Marx and Arendt', Hannah Arendt and the Uses of History, Ed(s). Richard H King and Dan Stone, New York and Oxford, Berghahn Books,2007, pp. 87-108.
• Barta, A 'Darwin's Shooters', Lies, Deep Fries and Statistics, Ed(s). Robyn Williams, Sydney, ABC,2007, pp. 11-25.
• ‘Decent Disposal: Australian Historians and the Recovery of Genocide’ in Dan Stone ed., The Historiography of Genocide (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008)
• ‘With intent to deny: on colonial intentions and genocide denial’, Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 10, Issue 1, March 2008 , 111-119
• ‘Sorry, and Not Sorry, in Australia: How the apology to the stolen generations buried a history of genocide’, Journal of Genocide Research, Volume 10, Issue 2, 2008, pp.201-214.
• ‘ “They appear actually to vanish from the face of the earth.” Aborigines and the European project in Australia Felix’, Journal of Genocide Research, Vol 10, Issue 4, 2008, pp519-539.
• " Three responses to 'can There Be Genocide Without the Intent to Commit Genocide'?", Journal of Genocide Research, Vol. 10, No. 1, 2008, pp.111-133.
• 'Decent Disposal: Australian Historians and the Recovery of Genocide', Decent Disposal: Australian Historians and the Recovery of Genocide, Ed(s). Dan Stone, New York, Palgrave 2008, pp. 296-322.

On Germany

• ‘After Nazism: Antifascism and Democracy in Dachau, 1945’, in Michael N. Dobkowski and Isidor Wallimann, eds, Radical Perspectives on the Rise of Fascism in Germany, 1919-1945 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1989) pp. 289-318.
• ‘Living in Dachau: Bavarian Catholics and the Fate of the Jews 1893-1843’, in John Milfull (ed.) Why Germany? (Oxford: Berg, 1993)
• Nazi Germany: Understanding the Third Reich, La Trobe University Studies in History (revised and expanded edition), 2004

On Film

• ‘Recognizing the Third Reich: Heimat and the Ideology of Innocence’, in Tom O’Regan and Brian Shoesmith eds, History on/and/in Film (Perth, 1985) 131-139.
• History, Film and Video for First Year History Students: History 1HF at La Trobe'. In T. O'Regan & B. Shoesmith eds. History on/and/in Film. Perth: History & Film Association of Australia, 1987. 174-78.
• ‘Film Nazis: The Great Escape’, Metro, No.100 Summer 1994/95, reprinted
• Tony Barta, ed. Screening the Past: Film and the Representation of History, (Westport: Praeger) 1998
• ‘Making it Strange: Ross Gibson's Camera Natura, David Perry's The Refracting Glasses, and John Hughes' One Way Street in Ken Berrymann, Wayne Levy and John Benson (eds) Papers given at the Sixth Australian History and Film Conference, Melbourne 1994.
• ‘Consuming the Holocaust: Memory Production and Popular Film’, Contention, Vol. 5, No. 2, Winter 1996, 161-175
• ‘Downfall and Other Endings: German Film and Hitler’s War after Sixty Years’, in Michael Paris, ed. Repicturing the Second World War: Representations in Film and Television, (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
  
  Other ABC talk transcripts are at
  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/2001980.htm
  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1990068.htm
  http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2007/1996102.htm