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Newsletter 35: News from National Committees

AUSTRALIA

GRANTS and PROJECTS

The Australian Women's Archives Project (AWAP)

A team headed by Professor Patricia Grimshaw (University of Melbourne) has won funding of some $280,000 for an Australian Research Council LIEF grant. The primary aim of this project is to construct a searchable, relational internet database of archival and library material relating to women and women's organisations in Australia, accessible to scholars within and beyond the academy. In addition to linking resources already archived in national, state, local and organisational repositories it will seek to identify, index and ensure the preservation of records remaining in private hands thus increasing the resources available to scholars both now and in the future. The construction of the database will also contribute to the validation of developing Australian and international archival metadata standards for description, resource discovery and publication on the Internet. This project will encompass the National Council of Women and its affiliated organisations, suffrage groups and their successor organisations as well as Aboriginal and migrant women's groups. It will create approximately 350 new organisational entries and 1800 individual entries resulting in coverage of all major women's organisations and individuals prominent within these groups for the period 1880-1980 with an emphasis on diversity. The time frame selected coincides with the emergence of national women's organisations up to the 1970s feminist movement. It will establish the AWAP as a comprehensive and sustainable resource for studies in women's history.

Other members of the team are Shurlee Swain (Australian Catholic U), Renate Howe (Deakin U), Richard Nile (Curtin U), Rae Frances (UNSW), Judith Smart (RMIT), Margaret Allen (Adelaide University), Diane Kirkby (La Trobe University), Patricia ni Ivor (National Foundation for Australia Women) and F. Ventress and J. Heazlewood of the Record Offices of NSW and Victoria and G. Mc Carthy of AUSTEHC at Melbourne University.
See http://www.womenaustralia.info/

Work is continuing on The Companion to Women's Historical Writing: edited by Dr Mary Spongberg (Macquarie University) , Professor Barbara Caine (Monash University), and Professor Ann Curthoys (Australian National University). To be published late 2005, Palgrave.

PUBLICATIONS

Ann Curthoys, 'Cultivating the arts of the female self: the micro-politics of a re-fashioned feminism', in Bennett, Jane and Shapiro, Michael J. (eds), Demoralising Theory!, New York and London, Routledge, 2002.

Ann Curthoys, Freedom Ride: A Freedomrider Remembers, Sydney, Allen and Unwin 2002, shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize in the NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and 'Highly Commended' in the non-fiction category of the Australian Human Rights Awards 2002.

Christina Twomey. Deserted & Destitute: Motherhood, Wife Desertion & Colonial Welfare Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003.

Penny Russell, This Errant Lady: Jane Franklin's Journey to Port Philip and Sydney, 1839 National Library of Australia 2002.

Mary Spongberg, Writing Women's History Since the Renaissance Palgrave, 2003.

APPOINTMENTS NEWS

Ann McGrath appointed Professor of Indigenous History at History RSSS, Australian National University.

Dr. Georgine Clarsens appointed to lectureship at the University of Wollongong.

Professor Desley Deacon is now Head of History Program, RSSS, Australian National University and working on her biography of Mary McCarthy.

Dr. Fiona Paisley has been appointed Lecturer in Australian History in the School of Humanities at Griffith University.

Dr. Christina Twomey has been appointed to the School of Historical Studies, at Monash University.

During 2003 three women's historians have been appointed to continuing positions in the History Department, University of Sydney. They are:

Dr. Kirsten McKenzie (D. Phil., University of Oxford) Lecturer in Australian History. Kirsten has published on the themes of British imperial bourgeois culture and respectability in Gender and History, Australian Historical Studies and The South African Historical Journal. A larger project, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820 - 1850 is forthcoming with Melbourne University Press.

Dr. Cindy McCreery (D. Phil., University of Oxford) Lecturer in Modern European History. Cindy has published widely on caricatures of women in eighteenth century prints and her book, Uneasy Fascination: Satirical Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth-Century England,is forthcoming early in 2004 with Oxford University Press.

Dr. Frances Clarke (Ph.D., Johns Hopkins) Lecturer in US History. Frances's research interests include 19th century U.S. history, the Civil War and Reconstruction, reform and protest movements, and war and memory. She is currently working on her first book, Sentimental Bonds: Suffering, Sacrifice and Benevolence in the Civil War North.

CONFERENCES
1) 'Feminists, Flappers and Reformers: Women in Brisbane, 1842-2002'
auspiced by the Brisbane History Group on 29th of November at the St. Lucia campus of University of Queensland. Papers will be published as a special edition of the Brisbane History Group Papers (a refereed publication).

Please send abstracts to:
Julie Ustinoff and Shirleene Robinson
Dept of History, University of Queensland
St Lucia, QLD, 4207 or contact <jj.ustinoff@uq.edu.au> or shirleene@hotmail.com

2) 'Imagining Worlds' Network For Research In Women's History Conference at Mildura in Victoria on Sunday 28th September 2003
This one-day conference will be held in conjunction with 'FEAST BY THE MURRAY', The Australian Historical Association Regional Conference which runs from late on 28 September - 1 October 2003.
Please submit 150 word abstracts of paper proposals by 31 May to Margaret Allen, University of Adelaide. margaret.allen@adelaide.edu.au

Compiled by Margaret Allen