Deals with themes and debates that have shaped perceptions of the past and the evolution of Australian historical literature. Explores the individual works of historians who have been instrumental in shifting and challenging dominant representations of the past and the controversial reactions they have sparked. Pays special attention to the way historiography has developed around themes of race, gender, memory, the nation and postmodernism, and the ways in which these representations have played out in popular and alternative constructions of the past, in politics, in the press, in film, fiction and museums.