Canons Old and New? the Undergraduate History Curriculum in 2004

This article summarises the main findings of a survey, conducted for the Australian Historical Association, of undergraduate history curricula in Australia, Fiji, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. While curriculum change and planning seem more ad hoc than most academic historians would like, a particularly interesting phenomenon is the emergence of a new kind of ‘canon’, in which large-scale, comparative and global histories - sometimes organised around a particular theme or question - serve as the chief base for later specialisations in national and thematic histories.