Australian Women’s History Network Conference
Queen Victoria Women’s Centre, Melbourne
March 31-April 1 2016
This conference will explore past and present ‘intersections’ in women’s, feminist and gender history, broadly conceived. Its title gestures towards the theoretical framework of ‘intersectionality’, more usually seen in sociology and gender/cultural studies where it has recently emerged as a key paradigm. This framework insists that multiple categories of analysis (gender, race, class, sexuality among others) must be deployed together to understand social processes and experiences. It has also emerged as an important rallying point for activism. This conference proceeds in part from the understanding that women’s history, and women’s activism, has actually paid attention to multiple categories of analysis for quite some time – even if these contributions are not well recognised.
The conference will also mark a series of significant milestones for the Australian Women’s’ History Network, which will celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2017, and Lilith, which turned 30 in 2014. Plenary speakers will include Ann Curthoys, Carolyn D’Cruz, Samia Khatun, Vera Mackie, Crystal McKinnon, Lynette Russell, Zora Simic, Crystal Feimster and Patricia Grimshaw who was instrumental in founding the Network.
Conference convenors: Jane Carey, Jordy Silverstein and Mary Tomsic.
Contact: auswhn@gmail.com.
Conference Publication
A special issue of the AWHN’s journal, Lilith: A Feminist History, for postgrads and ECRs, will emerge from the conference papers in 2017.
The conveners are exploring a number of possible avenues for a special issue in another journal to be announced.
Plenary Speakers
Ann Curthoys
Ann Curthoys is a historian and honorary professor at the University of Sydney and the University of Western Australia. She has written on a range of subjects in Australian history and on questions of historical theory and writing, her books including Freedom Ride: A Freedom Rider Remembers (2002), and (with John Docker) Is History Fiction? (2005, rev. 2010). She is currently writing with Jessie Mitchell a book for Cambridge University Press tentatively titled Colonising Liberty: How Settlers in the Australian Colonies gained Self-Government and Indigenous People Lost it.
Carolyn D’Cruz
Carolyn D’Cruz is a senior lecturer and program convenor of Gender, Sexuality and Diversity Studies at La Trobe University. She is author of Identity politics in deconstruction: Calculating with the incalculable and is co-editor of the anthology, After homosexual: The legacies of gay liberation.
Ruth DeSouza
Ruth De Souza is the Stream Leader for Research, Policy and Evaluation at the Centre for Culture, Ethnicity and Health at North Richmond Community Health.
Crystal Feimster
Crystal N. Feimster, a native of North Carolina, is an associate professor in the Department of African American Studies, the American Studies Program and History Department at Yale University; and she is also affiliated with the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. Her publications include “The Impact of Racial and Sexual Politics on Women’s History,” Journal of American History (2012), “’How are the Daughters of Eve Punished?’ Rape During the American Civil War,” in Writing Women’s History, ed. Elizabeth Anne Payne (Oxford: Mississippi University Press, 2011), and “General Benjamin Butler & the Threat of Sexual Violence During the American Civil War,” Daedalus (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Spring, 2009). Her prize winning book, Southern Horrors: Women and the Politics of Rape and Lynching (Harvard University Press, 2009) examines the roles of both black and white women in the politics of racial and sexual violence in the American South. In 2010 she was named in the The Root 100 as one of a new generation of African-American leader. She has been a fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Science (Cambridge, Ma) and a visiting scholar in the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton, NJ).
Patricia Grimshaw
Patricia Grimshaw is an Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, where she previously held the Max Crawford Chair. She is internationally recognised for her pioneering work in women’s history, missionary history and comparative colonial history, where she has focussed on issues of gender and race in settler societies. Her publications include Paths of duty: American missionary wives in nineteenth century Hawaii (University of Hawaii Press, 1989) and, with Julie Evan, David Philips and Shurlee Swain, Equal subjects, unequal rights: Indigenous people in British settler colonies, 1830-1910 (Manchester University Press, 2003), among other books as well as dozens of articles and chapters. Professor Grimshaw was instrumental in the formation of the Australian Women’s History Network.
Samia Khatun
Samia Khatun is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Melbourne. She is a historian of South Asia and Australia.
Vera Mackie
Vera Mackie is Senior Professor of Asian Studies and Director of the Centre for Critical Human Rights Research in the Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts at the University of Wollongong. Recent publications include The Social Sciences in the Asian Century (ANU Press, 2015, co-edited with Carol Johnson and Tessa Morris-Suzuki), Ways of Knowing about Human Rights in Asia (Routledge, 2015), The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia (Routledge 2015, co-edited with Mark McLelland) and Gender, Nation and State in Modern Japan (Routledge 2014, co-edited with Andrea Germer and Ulrike Wöhr).
Crystal McKinnon
Crystal McKinnon is an Amangu woman from the Yamatji nation on the west coast of Australia. She is a PhD student at Latrobe University, examining Indigenous resistance to oppression through the use of the creative arts, including music and literature, and is co-editor of History, Power and Text: Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies (UTS ePress, 2014). She is also the Project Coordinator at Elizabeth Morgan House Aboriginal Women’s Service, and is on the board of Flat Out Ltd and the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women.
Lynette Russell
Lynette Russell is an anthropological historian, and Director of the Monash University Indigenous Centre in Melbourne, Australia. Originally trained in archaeology she now works across the disciplines of history, archaeology and anthropology. She is the author or editor of numerous books, including Roving Mariners: Aboriginal Whaler and Sealers, in the southern oceans 1790-1870, (2012 SUNY) and Governance and Victoria: Colonial History, Postcolonial Theory and the “Aboriginal Problem, (2015, Aboriginal History Press) and with Ian J. McNiven Appropriated Pasts: Archaeology and Indigenous People in Settler Colonies, (2005, AltaMira Press).
Zora Simic
Zora Simic is a Lecturer in History and Convenor of Women’s and Gender Studies in the School of Humanities and Languages at the University of New South Wales. She has published widely on the past and present of Australian feminism, including articles in Australian Feminist Studies and History Australia. Her research and teaching interests are also closely integrated. Drawing on teaching of post-war migration to Australia, she continues to extend research on the impact of migration on wider Australian society. Her other current research interest – female sexuality in the context of western modernity – emerges from teaching the history of sexuality and introductory women’s and gender studies.
Program
You can download a PDF of the program here and the book of abstracts here.
Thursday 31 March – Morning Sessions
| 9am | Welcome to Country: Dianne Kerr (Victoria Room) | ||
| 9.15 | Conference Welcome and Opening Plenary Panel: Victoria Room
Intersectionality and the Writing of Women’s History Chair: Jane Carey
Speakers: Ann Curthoys, Crystal Feimster, Lynette Russell, Zora Simic
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| 10.30 | Morning Tea: Victoria Room
Short film screening: The Women Who Were Never There (10.35-10.50 – Courtyard Room) |
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| 11.00 | Crime & Scandal/Speech & Sound
Victoria Room Chair: Catherine Kevin
Kiera Lindsey, Scandal and Self-Government: Sydney in 1848 Alana Piper, Categories of Female Thieves in Victoria, 1875-1920 Nadia Rhook, Unsettling speech: A Norwegian woman in an “English-speaking” colony Catherine Horne, ‘A Delight to the Ear’: Dame Enid Lyons’s Macquarie Network Broadcasts, 1939-1940
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Violence, War and Dislocation
Courtyard Room Chair: Zora Simic
Stephanie Woodbridge, “Just a few lines”: Repatriation advocacy through correspondence 1916-1940 Alexandra Dellios, ‘It was just you and your child’: single mothers and generational storytelling in Australia’s migrant hostels Hannah Loney, New Order Gender Ideology and the Indonesian Occupation of East Timor Claire Jansen, “We really missed them when they were away”: Looking for Alibrandi and the re-telling of Australian migrant women’s history
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Nationalism, Internationalism and Advocacy
Meeting Room Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Divided Sisterhood? Nationalist Feminism and Militancy in England and Ireland Dianne Hall, Irish revolutionary women in Australia, 1924-5. Jude Conway, “They would still be doing the dishes after the revolution”: The intersection of old and new left women and second wave feminists in the celebration of International Women’s Day in Newcastle, NSW, 1970 – 1990 Faye Yik-Wei Chan, Intersectionality and the Law: The Legal Status of Ethnic Chinese women in Indonesia
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| 1.00 | Lunch: Victoria Room – AWHN AGM @ 1.2 | ||
Thursday 31 March – afternoon Sessions
| 1.50 | Violence and Invisible histories
Victoria Room Chair: Katherine Ellinghaus
Catherine Kevin, Intersectional analysis and the history of domestic violence in Australia 1788 -1901 Meg Foster, “At the mercy of Governor’s wife”?: the life and times of Ethel Page in (what is commonly depicted as) the Jimmy Governor story Anne O’Brien, Homeless women and the problem of visibility
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Sexuality and Transgender
Courtyard Room Chair: Chelsea Barnett
Thao Phan, Imitating Alan Turing: Biography of a gay activist icon Sophie Robinson, The intersections of Liberation: Sexuality and Difference in Women’s and Gay Liberation Noah Riseman, Transgender Women and the Australian Defence Force
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Transnational Exchange and Women’s Leadership
Meeting Room Chair: Faye Yik-Wei Chan
Tanya Fitzgerald, Globalizing ‘home’: Women home scientists at the University of New Zealand 1911-1961 Caroline Jordan, Fostering Australian Women Modernists as Leaders in the 1930s and 1940s Diane Kirkby & Vera Mackie, Women Leading America’s Cold War in the Asia-Pacific |
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| 3.20 | Afternoon Tea | ||||
| 3.505.20 | Feminism and Difference in the 1970s
Victoria Room Chair: Crystal Feimster
Zora Simic, The rise and fall of Women’s Liberation; or what did intersectionality have to do with it? Petra Mosmann, Banners, identity and protest at the Pine Gap Women’s Peace Camp Rebecca Sheehan, Restoring Colour to the Second Wave: Feminism, Racial Patriarchy and Sexual Sovereignty |
Writing Difference in the 18th and 19th Centuries
Courtyard Room Françoise Daquin, Feminism and Abolitionism in Mme de Staël’s Activism as Shown in her Life and Works Ana Stevenson, The Woman-Slave Analogy: A Failed Allusion to Intersectionality in Nineteenth-Century American Social Movements Shane Greentree, ‘To shed a generous tear’: Gender and Emotion in Catharine Macaulay and David Hume’s Accounts of the Death of Charles I
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Insights from the Trailblazing Women Lawyers Oral History Project: interdisciplinary approaches to speaking, listening to and interpreting women’s gendered experiences in Australian legal studies and practice
Meeting Room Chair: Sophie Robinson
Kim Rubenstein, How does being a lawyer enable women to be active citizens and productive public beings? Nikki Henningham, Is the recorder switched off?’ – Public interest, private narratives and Trailblazing Women lawyers in Australia. Louise Baker, Computational Methods and Qualitative Data: Trailblazing Women Lawyers and their Networks. Helen Morgan, Presenting women’s life stories online, public and private: Rights, re-usage and research data management of oral history data |
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| 6.30 for 7 | Conference Dinner Kri Kri Greek Restaurant, 37 – 41 Little Bourke St. | ||||
Friday 1 April – morning sessions
| 9am | Plenary Panel: Intersectionality, Resistance, and History-Making
Victoria Room Chair: Jordy Silverstein
Speakers: Carolyn D’Cruz, Ruth DeSouza, Crystal McKinnon, Samia Khatun
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| 10.15 | Morning Tea: Victoria Room | |||
| 10.45 | Race & Gender
Victoria Room Chair: Ruth DeSouza
Katherine Ellinghaus, Blood, Gender and Native American Assimilation: The Unwritten Stories of the 1887 General Allotment Act Liz Conor, Graphic Encounters: Gender and Race in the Colonial Print Archive Kathryn Ticehurst, In the Field: Gendered Experience and Authority in Anthropology 1940-1960 Crystal N. Feimster, The American Civil War: Rape and Mutiny at Fort Jackson |
Maculinities, class, race and gender relations
Courtyard Room Chair: Charlotte Macdonald
Katie Holmes, The “Mallee-made man”: making masculinity in the Mallee lands of south east Australia Bethany Phillips-Peddlesden, Joe and Enid Lyons: Political masculinity, gender relations and class in Australian historiography Laura Ticehurst, Migrants in White Australia: a romance? Class, race and intercultural relations. Chelsea Barnett, “What sorta man are you anyway”: Masculinity, Class, and Conflict in Australian Postwar Cinema
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Professional Women & Equality
Meeting Room Chair: Bethany Phillips-Peddlesden
Sarah Gibson Walker, Ruby Lindsay: a professional artist of the suffrage-era Donna Lee Brien, From “household names to obscurity”: Forgotten Post-war Australian Women Food Writers Marama Whyte, “In the same boat (or balcony)”: The fight for gender equality in the National Press Club by the Women’s National Press Club, 1953-1971 Helen Anderson, The Links in a Life: Anna Brennan 1879-1962
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| 12.45 |
Lunch: Victoria Room |
Journal launch: Law & History special issue ‘Intersections: Gender Law and History in Time and Place’ (1.15pm) | ||
Friday 1 April – afternoon sessions
| 1.45 | Religion, Modernity & Cross Cultural Exchange
Victoria Room Chair: Anne O’Brien
Jane Haggis, Building cosmopolitan amity in inter-faith, cross-cultural friendships in imperial contact zones: ‘difficult conversations’ between Indian and British women of faith 1880 to 1940. Margaret Allen, ‘Force and initiative unusual in an Indian woman: Mohini Maya Das’ Laura Rademaker, 150 wives speak back: Tiwi women’s stories of the conversion of the Tiwi Jennifer Jones and Emma Robertson, A Scottish Woman’s experience on the Bendigo goldfields: Negotiating work, family and respectability
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Creative and Performative Interventions
Courtyard Room Chair: Liz Conor
Elizabeth Emery, Holding Time, Survival and Place: Aboriginal Women’s Basketry and Cross-cultural Encounter Julie Montgarrett, Invisible Mending: fraught fictions and fragile facts Lydia Nicholson, ‘Integrity’ and the performance of working class women Alexander Hunter, Intersectionality and Experimental Music |
Approaching Class & Emotions
Meeting Room Chair: Katie Holmes
Cathy Brigden, Visible, hidden and assumed intersections: constructing an intersectionally-sensitive analysis of a female trade union activist Christine Yeats, “On the up”: family ambitions intersecting with class in post colonial society and Sarah Hynes’ battle for position and place Wendy Michaels, When feminism intersects with classism: Millicent Preston Stanley’s reconstruction of the gender/class terrain Judith Smart and Marian Quartly, Women’s History and the Emotional Turn
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| 3.45 | Afternoon Tea | ||
| 4.15 |
Closing plenary: Looking Back/Looking Forward Victoria Room Chair: Mary Tomsic
Speakers: Professor Patricia Grimshaw and Professor Vera Mackie
Closing remarks from the conference convenors and incoming national convenors of the AWHN. |
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Registration
Registration for the AWHN 2016 Conference “Intersections in History” is now open. Registration fees are as follows:
- Member-full $185
- Member-concession $120
- Non-member – full $230
- Non-member – concession $145
- Day rate – full $150
- Day rate – concession $90
Please dowload a copy of the registration form here and return it along with payment to auswhn@gmail.com.
Please note that ALL speakers must be members of the Australian Women’s’ History Network. Please see our Membership page for details of how to join.