Thomas Mackay
School of Humanities
Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics
Dr Thomas Mackay is a Visiting Research Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Adelaide. He specialises in modern American history, especially the history of American capitalism, the Gilded Age and the Progressive Era, and the histories of American social and democratic movements. Additionally, he is interested in twentieth-century Australian history, the history of violence, and general social and cultural histories.
My research is grounded in the new history of capitalism literature. Specifically, it explores historical processes of institutional legitimation, ideology formation, and mythologisation within 'capitalist' societies, particularly in the United States and Australia. Along these lines, my PhD thesis investigated popular confidence issues and the subsequent rise of advertising and public-relations in US banking at the turn of the twentieth century. I have had sole-authored articles and book reviews published in Enterprise and Society, American Nineteenth Century History (ANCH), the Flinders Journal of History and Politics (FJHP), the History of Education Review, and the Australasian Journal of American Studies (AJAS). Additionally, I have had co-authored articles published in the Journal of the Gilded Age Progressive Era, History Australia and the Journal of Australian Studies.
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Appointments
Date Position Institution name 2017 - ongoing Visiting Research Fellow University of Adelaide, Adelaide -
Education
Date Institution name Country Title University of Adelaide Australia Doctor of Philosophy -
Research Interests
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Journals
Year Citation 2021 Locke, H. J., & Mackay, T. A. (2021). “You Are a True Progressive”: Red Dead Redemption 2 and the Depiction and Reception of Progressive Era Politics. The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, 20(1), 174-193.
2021 Mackay, T. A. (2021). Book review. Rehearsing revolutions: the labor drama experiment and radical activism in the early twentieth century by Mary McAvoy, University of Iowa Press, Iowa City, 2019, ix + 260pp, ISBN: 978-60938-641-2 (pbk). History of Education Review, 50(1), 94-95.
2019 Mackay, T. A. (2019). Book Review. Temp: How American Work, American Business, and the American Dream Became Temporary by Louis Hyman. New York: Viking, 2018. 388 pages. Australasian Journal of American Studies (AJAS), 38(1), 151-153. 2018 Buchanan, T., & Mackay, T. (2018). The return of the steel octopus: free enterprise and Australian culture during BHP’s Cold War. History Australia, 15(1), 62-77.
Scopus12018 Buchanan, T. C., & Mackay, T. A. (2018). B.H.P.’s “Place in the Industrial Sun”: Whyalla in its Golden Age. Journal of Australian Studies, 42(1), 85-100.
Scopus12018 Mackay, T. (2018). Bank-wreckers, defaulters, and embezzlers: America's popular fear and fascination with the misappropriation of bank deposits during the gilded age and progressive era. Enterprise and Society, 19(1), 58-87.
Scopus12017 Mackay, T. A. (2017). Book Review. Dead Pledges: Debt, Crisis, and Twenty-First Century Culture. By Annie McClanahan, 2017.. Australasian Journal of American Studies (AJAS), 36(1), 171-174. 2015 Mackay, T. (2015). Making banks fit for the people: confidence, democracy, and the rise of banking alternatives in America, 1880–1914. American Nineteenth Century History, 16(3), 307-328.
2014 Mackay, T. (2014). Cultural abundance, economic scarcity: cultural studies, economics, and contemporary Australian history. Flinders Journal of History and Politics, 30, 84-110. 2014 Mackay, T. (2014). Colonization and its discontents: emancipation, emigration and antislavery in Antebellum Pennsylvania. By Beverly C. Tomek, New York University Press, New York and London, 2012, pp. xxiii + 296, US$39.00. Australasian Journal of American Studies (AJAS), 33(1), 138-139.
I have been convening, tutoring, and marking at the University of Adelaide since 2013. I convened and lectured for the third-year course Protecting the Peace in Semester 2, 2020. I co-convened the first-year course Empires in World History in Semester 1, 2020, and convened the second-year course Violence in the Modern Western World in Semester 2, 2019. I have also tutored for Empires in World History (HIST1108 2014, 2017), Revolutions that Changed the World (HIST1109 2015), Modern America: Capitalism and Democracy (HIST2062 2016), and Violence in the Modern World (HIST2090 2017). In addition to marking for these courses, I have also marked for Modern America: From the Civil War to Iraq (HIST2062 2013), Aboriginal Peoples and the Colonial World (HIST3052 2016), and Human Trafficking: Atlantic Trade to Contemporary (HIST3030 2017).
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Memberships
Date Role Membership Country 2017 - ongoing - Australian Historical Association (AHA) - 2017 - ongoing - Business History Conference - 2015 - ongoing - Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association (ANZASA) -
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