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Books, Pamphlets and Zines
"Mostly history shows that it is many resistances, by many people over time, many stones, many slingshots, that tumbles Leviathan. Within this, it is not only the slingshot and its wielder that matter, but also the stones. And all stones count."
- Rowan Cahill, Walking on the Wildside, 2020.
My major publications as catalogued by the National Library of Australia, and listed here in order of their publication, are:
- R.J. Cahill, Treason and the NLF, Students for a Democratic Society, Sydney, 1967. Widely distributed four-page roneod foolscap pamphlet arguing in favour of providing material aid to the National Liberation Front (Vietnam). Controversial at the time and considered ‘treasonable’ by some, this was the first of my writings to elicit ‘death threats’.
- Rowan Cahill, Notes on the New Left in Australia, Australian Marxist Research Foundation, Sydney, 1969. Pioneering work documenting the extent and variation of tendencies, forces, organisations comprising the Australian New Left. Used as a launch pad by subsequent researchers, sometimes without credit. Roneod monograph; 50pp.
- Rowan Cahill and Vaughan Evans, Survival in the Classroom: A Handbook for Beginning Teachers, R. Cahill and V. Evans, Bowral, NSW, 1978. 40pp. Written with teaching colleague Vaughan Evans and drawing on a collective experience of 23 years of classroom teaching, this book comprised practical advice for beginning classroom teachers. Published at a time when there was very little in the way of support for beginning teachers, anecdotal evidence suggests the book attained cult-status; old hands still recall it affectionately.
- Brian Fitzpatrick and Rowan J Cahill, The Seamen’s Union of Australia, 1872-1972: A History, Seamen’s Union of Australia, Sydney, 1981. This pioneering contribution to Australian maritime history built on work by historian Brian Fitzpatrick (1905-1965) commissioned by the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) in 1949. The book’s manuscript was completed in the early 1970s. Publication was delayed by the SUA’s political and industrial engagements of the time, and by a printery fire which destroyed the letterpress setting of the book. See Rowan Cahill, ‘Tale of a Manuscript’ (2019). Pre-publication, and in good faith, I responded to research inquiries from academics, and provided photocopies of relevant parts of my significant contribution to the manuscript. I was working as a rural school-teacher at the time. Although I cannot prove it, I believe two of these career-researchers benefited from my work without attribution. For a long time afterwards this experience jaundiced my attitude towards academia.
- David Stewart and Rowan Cahill, Twentieth Century Australia: Conflict and Consensus, Nelson, Melbourne, 1987. Textbook written for the middle years of the Australian secondary school system comprising case studies presenting Australian history in terms of contestation, conflict, and resolution – or not.
- Rowan Cahill, W[h]ither Schooling, Rowan Cahill, Bowral, NSW, 1983. First published as a pamphlet, then later in a couple of journals as an essay, this is a critique of Australian curriculum reform taking place at the time in the secondary school system where post-modern influences and initiatives were taking hold.
- Rowan J Cahill, Synthesis and Hope, Australian Education Network, Sydney, 1993. 40pp. A collection of my short, critical writings on education related matters and issues previously published in a diversity of outlets, and gathered here to give them focus.
- Rowan J Cahill, October: An Education Journal, Bull Ant Press, Bowral, 1997. Written in the form of a diary for the month of October 1997, and published as an eight-page zine/pamphlet, this is a critique of the tendency in contemporary education to embrace corporate and marketplace ideologies and practices. It is an example of premature anti-neoliberalism.
- Rowan Cahill, Sea Change: An Essay in Maritime Labour History, Rowan Cahill, Bowral, 1998. 36pp. A personal and historiographical account of the impact and legacies of my involvement with the Seamen’s Union of Australia, beginning in 1970. Later, I gave permission for this to be republished on a number of open access websites.
- Rowan Cahill, Picket Line Dispatches: From the Joy Mining Machinery Dispute, 2000 [with an Introduction by Peter Lewis], Bull Ant Press, Bowral, NSW, 2002. A4, 12pp. Collection of dispatches by Rowan Cahill published in the online weekly Workers Online (NSW Labor Council) during the seven-month Joy Mining Machinery industrial dispute in rural NSW, 2000.
- Beverley Symons and Rowan Cahill, A Turbulent Decade: Social Protest Movements and the Labour Movement, 1965-1975, Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, Newtown, 2005. This book brings together the candid, at times vulnerable, reflections and recollections of 39 participants in the cultural, social and political turbulence of the period 1965-1974.
- Rowan Cahill (editor), The Hungry Mile and Other Poems by Ernest Antony [with an Introduction and Notes by Rowan Cahill], Maritime Union of Australia, Sydney, 2008. A reissue of the sole collection of poems by Australian working-class poet Ernest Antony (1894-1960), first published in 1930. Over time, as author of the legendary poem ‘The Hungry Mile’, Ernest Antony tended to get separated from his creation, and his name lost. With its scholarly Introduction, this book restores the link, and introduces modern readers to his impressive output.
- Terry Irving and Rowan Cahill, Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010. Collection of forty-six vignettes and portraits honing in on specific architectures, places and spaces, enabling the reader to view and understand Sydney and its past and present as contested and spatially class divided. Widely reviewed, and well received. For an account of the reception and influence of this book 2010-2021, see Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving, "Radical Sydney Diary."
- Rowan Cahill, Walking on the Wildside, Bull Ant Press, Mittagong, NSW, 2020. A zine collection of poems and short prose pieces; illustrated; 12pp..
- Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving, The Barber Who Read History: Essays in Radical History, Bull Ant Press, St. Peters, 2012. 230pp. A collection of essays authored individually or jointly by Cahill and Irving during their writing, but mostly following publication, of Radical Sydney: Places, Portraits and Unruly Episodes (UNSW Press, 2010). The essays cover a broad range of topics concerning the writing and practice of history, the social and political roles of historians, the nature of the modern neoliberal academy and of academia, and biographical and autobiographical portraits. In common is their linkage to the writing of Radical Sydney, to robust discussions and feedback following its publication, and to a conception of the scholar as an activist taking part in public discourse and movements for social change.