Tailor Made, Skylarking, and Making in the Humanities

Reacting to the symbolic features and historical artefacts that invite institutional self-reflection at the Royal Military College (RMC), I created a performance project leading to two storytelling events. Everyday campus life at RMC already offers opportunities for cultivating a meta-perspective—a higher-order awareness—of the institution, and the storytelling events called attention to such opportunities. I argue that, likewise, art-based projects in the humanities call attention to the creativity—the making—involved in the humanities more broadly. The first storytelling event, Tailor Made (2017), comprised stories focused on the uniform as a model and the body wearing it as an actual bearing out that model. Social and cultural life is made of the difference between models and actuals, and each story engaged the ways that rules, systems, and practices meet with individuals in hurtful, inconvenient, funny or messy ways. The second event, Skylarking (2018), included stories of the institutionally condoned pranks called “skylarks” and coincidentally occurred against the backdrop of a campus-wide punishment that elicited a skylark response. This event and its context showed that marking disruption with more disruption (marking failure with punishment and marking punishment with prank) is a recursion that invites higher-order thinking about existing orders.

Tailor Made, Skylarking, and Making in the Humanities

Reacting to the symbolic features and historical artefacts that invite institutional self-reflection at the Royal Military College (RMC), I created a performance project leading to two storytelling events. Everyday campus life at RMC already offers opportunities for cultivating a meta-perspective – a higher-order awareness – of the institution, and the storytelling events called attention to such opportunities. I argue that, likewise, art-based projects in the humanities call attention to the creativity – the making – involved in the humanities more broadly. The first storytelling event, Tailor Made (2017), comprised stories focused on the uniform as a model and the body wearing it as an actual bearing out that model. Social and cultural life is made of the difference between models and actuals, and each story engaged the ways in which rules, systems, and practices meet with individuals in hurtful, inconvenient, funny, or messy ways. The second event, Skylarking (2018), included stories of the institutionally condoned pranks called “skylarks” and coincidentally occurred against the backdrop of a campus-wide punishment that elicited a skylark response. This event and its context showed that marking disruption with more disruption (marking failure with punishment and marking punishment with prank) is a recursion that invites higher-order thinking about existing orders.

UNSW and the establishment of the Faculty of Military Studies at the Royal Military College, Duntroon: 1965-1968

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in the establishment of the Faculty of Military Studies (FMS) at the Royal Military College (RMC) at Duntroon between 1965 and 1968. And, in so doing, detail the academic culture and structure of the FMS at its inception in 1968. Design/methodology/approach – Given the small body of literature on the subject, the chronology of events was developed primarily through archival research and interview transcripts, supplemented by correspondence and formal interviews with former academic staff of the FMS (UNSW HREAP A-12-44). Findings – This paper reveals the motivations for, issues encountered, and means by which UNSW’s administration under Sir Philip Baxter were willing and able to work with the Army to establish the FMS. In so doing, it reveals the FMS as a “compromise institution” in which the role of UNSW and the academic staff was to deliver a professional education subordinate to the imperatives of the RMC’s socialization and military training regime. Research limitations/implications – Primary materials were restricted to archived documentation comprised of correspondence and meeting minutes as well as a limited group of witnesses – both willing and able – to provide insight into UNSW and RMC in the mid-1960s. Originality/value – This paper presents an original account of the establishment of the FMS and the role of Sir Philip Baxter and the UNSW administration in pioneering the institutional forbearer of the Australian Defence Force Academy.

One Officer Factory: The Royal Military College and Officer Education since 1955

This article describes how between 1955 and 2000 the Royal Military College developed and operated a range of undergraduate and graduate degree programmes which satisfied the learning needs of the Canadian Forces. In so doing the College, actually a degree granting university with a charter from the province of Ontario, was able to meet the educational vision laid down in 1969 shortly after the three military services had been unified. More fundamentally, it shows how senior military leaders and the faculty of RMC were able to work together to provide the military profession with the intellectual skills and professional knowledge to deal with complex and often ambiguous security and defence challenges. Résumé: Cet article décrit comment, entre 1955 et 2000, le Collège militaire royal (CMR) a développé et mis en œuvre plusieurs programmes de premier cycle et d’études supérieures pour satisfaire aux besoins de formation des Forces armées canadiennes. En vertu d’une charte de la province de l’Ontario, ce collège fut autorisé à offrir des grades universitaires et put ainsi réaliser les objectifs en éducation formulés en 1969, peu de temps après l’unification des trois corps d’armée. Plus fondamentalement, ce texte montre comment les leaders militaires et les professeurs du CMR ont travaillé ensemble pour doter la profession militaire de compétences intellectuelles et de savoirs professionnels afin d’affronter les défis complexes et souvent ambigus de la sécurité et de la défense.