Newsletter No 36  November 2003  News From National Committees

 AUSTRALIA

Conferences

Network for Research in Women’s History Conference

In late September, the one-day conference ‘Imagining Worlds’ held at Mildura was well-attended and the papers presented were:

Christine CHEATER(Newcastle)'"Aboriginal woman as she really is…"  Fact and fantasy in the writings of Katherine Susannah Prichard and Phyllis Mary Kaberry'

Shannon SCHEDLICH-DAY (Flinders)‘The Visual as Grist for the Memory Mill: Pioneer Women in Colonial Painting’

Margaret ALLEN  (Adelaide) '"The white woman…could not keep back her tears": The imagined world of Catherine Martin's Incredible Journey'

Barbara BAIRD (Tasmania)  'Choosing choice: Abortion, Women's Liberation and new women's magazines in Australia 1970-75'

Jane CAREY (Melbourne) 'Imagining the Potential of Science: Elite Women in the Pursuit of Scientific Social Reform, 1890-1940'

Sueellen MURRAY Victoria '"Make pies not wars": Protests against nuclear war and violence against women by the women's peace movement of the 1980s'

Goldie OSURI (Adelaide)  '"Paralogical" Moments: Herstories of Colonialism and Conversion, Decolonisation and Diaspora'

Robin SECOMB  (Adelaide)"Jimmy and Dumpie: Gender, Letters and a plea for using the imagination in Re-Creating the past.'

Penny RUSSELL (Sydney) 'Imagining Love in Geneva'

Vicki HASKINS (Flinders) 'Fear the bitch who sheds no tears': the persistence of the female scapegoat in Australian historical drama'

Penny ROBINSON.(La Trobe) The 'natural prey of unscrupulous men': Labor Women interpret Aboriginal appeals in the mid-1930s

Lisa FEATHERSTONE(Macquarie) 'Imagining Whiteness: medicine and racialised maternity in Australia, 1880-1910'

 The next Network for Research in Women’s History Conference, Visions: how women historians imagine the past

will be held at the University of Newcastle on 5th July 2004 in association with the Australian Historical Association Conference.

 Abstracts should be no more than 300 words. Provide the title of the conference and your name and contact details. Give details of any special facilities required (eg PowerPoint , overhead projector) Send to Lyn Hunter, School of Humanities, Ourimbah Campus, University of Newcastle, PO Box 127 Ourimbah 2258, or by email to Lyn.Hunter @newcastle.edu.au by Monday 1 December 2003.

 Any queries?  For Network for Research in Women’s History, please contact Professor Lyndall Ryan (Lyndall.Ryan@newcastle.edu.au).

 Festschrift for Professor Emeritus Jill Roe.

Jill Roe has retired recently from Macquarie Uuniversity and a festschrift for her will be held on February 11,12, 13th , 2003 and a New Directions in Australian Women's History Conference (showcasing postgrad and post doctoral work in the field) to mark the transition at Macquarie at the same time. For further information please contact Mary Spongberg (mspongbe@hmn.mq.edu.au) or Melanie Oppenheimer (m.oppenheimer@uws.edu.au)

 Lilith Symposium 2003

'Identities: Creation and Representation'

Friday November 7, 2003

Fifth Floor Common Room, John Medley Building,

University of Melbourne

Keynote Speaker: Penny Russell

For conference updates, or to subscribe to the journal, please visit

our website at: www.history.unimelb.edu.au/lilith

 Grants

Professor Vera Mackie,(University of Melbourne) has won an ARC Discovery Grant to explore a cultural history of the body in Japan from the late nineteenth century to the present. This study will go beyond previous theorisations of the body, by looking at the development of Japanese modernity through analysing cultural representations of embodied experiences and embodied practices. In addition to considering questions of sex, gender, sexuality and reproduction, the project will also focus on the classed, racialised and ethnicised dimensions of bodily experience. It will consider the body at work, the body in leisure, the body as the medium of violence, and the embodied experiences of globalization.

 Dr Clare Wright,(La Trobe University) has won an ARC Postdoctoral Grant to undertake the first systematic study of the role of women in an iconic event in Australian history  - the Eureka Stockade of 1854. The research will challenge the prevailing representation of Eureka as a hyper-masculine episode male passions inflamed, male blood shed, manhood suffrage won by providing a unique gender perspective to a familiar narrative. My hypothesis is that women were intimately and inextricably involved in the events at Eureka, as they were more generally in the political and cultural life of the Victorian goldfields. The research findings will contribute to ongoing debates about the meaning of the Eureka story for Australian identity, citizenship and democracy.

 Professor Marilyn Lake  (La Trobe University) has won an ARC Professorial Fellowship on a trans-national study of the gendered and racialised meanings of being a white man c.1890-1940.

 PROJECTS

Professor Marilyn Lake  (La Trobe University) is involved in an ongoing campaign with the Women's History Group at the University of Tasmania to erect a statue commemorating the struggle for women's suffrage and their victory in 1903.

In October she will present a seminar 'Gender, class and race in historical analysis: the case of White Australia' at Curtin University. In November she will present a public lecture in the 'Challenging Nation' series conducted by University of British Columbia, in Vancouver. In 2004, she will have a Visiting Fellowship at the Humanities Research Centre at ANU.

 Miranda Morris (Gender Studies program at the University of Tasmania, morrisme@utas.edu.au) has been in the UK researching The Trials of Gertrude Kenny, the matron, from 1868 at a Girls Industrial School and then at the New Norfolk Asylum.

 At Macquarie University, Clair Scrine’s PhD thesis on Nymphomania has received a Vice Chancellor’s commendation.

 Mary Cannon (La Trobe University) has been awarded her Ph D for her study on Adela Pankhurst as the invisible Pankhurst.

 

PUBLICATIONS

Diane Kirkby and Hilary Golder 'Mrs. Mayne and her boxing kangaroo: a married woman tests her property rights in colonial NSW',1 Law and History Review, Fall 2003

 Diane Kirkby 'Beer, glorious beer: gender politics and Australian popular culture',1 Journal of Popular Culture, Oct 2003

 Diane Kirkby 'Barmaid, the landlady and the Publican's Wife,'1 in Margaret Thornton,ed., Romancing the Tomes: Feminism Law and Popular Culture, London, Cavendish, 2002

Michelle Arrow's book Upstaged : Australian women dramatists in the limelight at last. Currency Press, Pluto Press, 2002.has been shortlisted for several prizes.

Mary Spongberg Writing Women's History (Palgrave) 2002

Hsu-Ming Teo edited with Richard White Cultural History  in Australia 2003 It contains chapters from Hsu Ming, Katie Holmes and Tanya Luckins.

Marilyn Lake 'White Man's Country The Trans-National History of National Project' in Australian Historical Studies, October, 2003.

 Cathy Coleborne and Dolly MacKinnon,(eds) Madness in Australia  UQ Press,has chapters by Ruth Ford, Tanja Luckins, Lee-Anne Monk, Susan Piddock, Belinda Robson, Ann Westmore, Emily Wilson.

 Margaret Allen ‘Homely stories and the ideological work of “Terra Nullius”’ Journal of Australian Studies October 2003

 The National Pioneer Women’s Hall of Fame (NPWHF) has launched a fund raising project involving two Signature Quilts, each containing over 150 autographs and inspirational messages from women who have been first in their field throughout Australia. See www.pioneerwomen.com.au

 Compiled by Margaret Allen