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News From National Committees

AUSTRALIA

MOVES
Ann McGrath has taken up the position of Program Director, Society and Nation, at the newly opened National Museum of Australia. She is working on a major exhibition on 'Bushrangers and Bandits in National Legends', including Bandit Queens. If you are interested in this topic please email Ann at a.mcgrath@nma.gov.au

Dr Christina Twomey has taken up a position in History at Adelaide University. She is researching representations of Australian women prisoners of war during the Second World War.

Dr Margaret Anderson has taken up the position of Director of the History Trust of South Australia. The Trust has 3 museums, the Migration Museum, the Maritime and the Birdwood Motor Museum and runs an outreach program for small rural and community museums.

FROM THE NORTHERN TERRITORY
Since 1993, the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame has been in operation in Central Australia, dedicated to preserving and recording the history of Australian women. In 1994 Pauline Cockrill began to assist with the development of a museum and onsite archives at the Old Courthouse building in Alice Springs.

On 13 March 2001 the Hon Peter McGauran MP, Federal Minister for the Arts and Centenary of Federation; the Hon Dr Richard LimMLA Minister for Central Australia and the President and Founder of the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame launched the new Website for the National Pioneer Women's Hall of Fame. The website is stage one of Australia's first virtual Women's Museum created with Northern Territory government Women's Fellowship funding. In 2000, Curator Pauline Cockrill received the $15,000 Women's Fellowship to develop and bring this site on-line. The site

includes three exhibitions of women's history and culture as well as video clips, history of the
organisation, museum policies and archives. The site is: www.pioneerwomen.com.au. Pauline Cockrill will also use the funding from the fellowship to travel overseas later this year to visit other women's museums around the world, in Europe, the USA and elsewhere.

Women's historian Barbara James is in the process of re-writing her feminist history of the Northern Territory, "No Man's Land" (Collins, 1989). Barbara James will update and enlarge on sections of the book in light of her recent research into Northern Territory female suffrage and labour history, and will include more graphic and photographic material. Barbara James is also working with Curator of Territory History at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory, Mickey Dewar, to produce a community exhibition featuring needlework and embroidery produced by Eileen Fitzer. Assisted by Mrs Fitzer's old friend and fellow historian, Vern O'Brien, the exhibition will feature two cloths produced by Eileen Fitzer in 1914 as a child of 12 and in 1923 on the occasion of her twenty-first birthday. The cloths are an embroidered record of the signatures of friends and family. The third cloth in the exhibition is by an unknown woman at the time of Federation(1901) and contains many signatures of the people of Darwin and surrounding areas. Barbara James has been working in this area, sometimes in consultation with noted author and researcher, Jenny Isaacs, on the domestic and social history of women in the Northern Territory for some time. The exhibition will run at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory in Darwin from May to August 2001.

WESTERN AUSTRALIAN NEWS
(from Jasmina Brankovich)
Since the start of 2001, the University of Western Australia has been a hub of activity for local, national and international scholars in gender theory and history. The Gender and Cultures Programme, coordinated by Delys Bird (Centre for Women's Studies) and Patricia Crawford (History), and facilitated by the amazing Terri-ann White, the Executive Director (Academic) of the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies, took off on a flying start. The first module for the year, 'The Future of Gender', was convened by Delys Bird and Jane Long (Women's Studies) in March, and attracted record audience. Bob Connell opened the conference with his public lecture on the effects of global economy on gender constructions. Other participants included David Buchbinder (Curtin, on the 'masculinity crisis'), Amanda Fernbach (UNSW, on gender and fetishism), Chilla Bulbeck (University of Adelaide, on feminism and race/ethnicity), Sheila Jeffreys (University of Melbourne, on gender and prostitution), and Felicity Haynes (UWA, on the chaotic language of gender identity). The Programme has continued on 4 and 5 May, with Pamela Sharpe (History, UWA) convening a research workshop 'Gender and Work Culture'. The participants have included: Beverly Lemire (University of New Brunswick, Canada, on culture of household management 1600-1900), Miriam Glucksman (University of Essex, on gender and social organisation of labour), Belinda Probert (RMIT), Charlie Fox (UWA, on hair and hairdressers), Diane Kirkby (La Trobe, on gender and law at work), and Kellie Abbott (UWA, on the young worker in early 20th century WA). The Gender and Culture programme is an initiative which has brought together the diversity of feminist theories and fostered a cross-disciplinary culture, which nonetheless values the necessities of historical contextualisation of women's experiences.

This year's annual UWA Grace Vaughan lecture, honouring the social justice activist, social worker and former Western Australian Labor parliamentarian, was given by Sylvia Walby, Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds, who spoke lucidly on gender transformations at work in a global era. The lecture was held on 4 May to coincide with the Gender and Work Culture Programme and featured a large and interested audience.

PUBLICATIONS
The major publication from the IFRWH conference held in Melbourne, Australia in 1998 has just appeared. It is Patricia Grimshaw, Katie Holmes, and Marilyn Lake (eds). Women's rights and human rights : international historical Perspectives (New York., Palgrave, 2000).

Papers from the Australian Network for Research in Women's History conference, 'Gender in the Contact Zone' held in Adelaide in July 2000 are now published in special issue of Australian Feminist Studies vol. 16 (34) March 2001 and also in outskirts, an on-line journal, http://mmc.arts.uwa.edu.au/chloe/outskirts/index.html

Anna Haebich Broken circles : fragmenting indigenous families 1800-2000 (Fremantle, W.A. : Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2000). This book on removal of indigenous children from their families has won the major non-fiction award at the NSW Premier's Literature Awards.

Joy Damousi, Living with the aftermath : trauma, nostalgia and grief in post-war Australia; (Melbourne Cambridge University Press, 2001).

CONFERENCES
The conference "Flapper Trappers and Modish Maids-Women and Modernity" held at University of Melbourne in December 2000 was highly successful and lots of fun.

LILTIH SYMPOSIUM 2001 "The Current State of Australian Feminist History" University of Melbourne 18 July, 2001. Conference from the Lilith Collective, History Department, University of Melbourne.

-compiled by Margaret Allen