On the website of the Australian National University in Canberra, emeritus professor of history Barry Higman lists his research interests as food sciences, cultural studies and historical studies, with a particular interest in
The world history of food over the last 5,000 years; the global history of domestic servants in the modern world; the history of the Jamaican landscape; the history of Australia as a flat place; and the history of islands and insularity.
This rather unusual breadth of interests suggests either that Professor Higman is a very curious man indeed or a complete academic fraud. Fortunately, for the sake of the future of higher education in south-eastern Australia, it’s the former. Flatness is the uneven, fascinating work of a true scholar enthusiast. Flatness: effervescent.
‘I cannot see a plain without a shudder:/ O God, please, please don’t ever make me live there,’ wrote Auden in one of his ‘Bucolics’.
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