The Australian Historical Association
The site for and about historians working in or on Australia.
Book talk with With author Leigh Straw. The first biography of legendary Kate Leigh, famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer. Leigh tells the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the gender stereotyping of the time to become a leading underworld Read more …
Author Leigh Straw in conversation with City of Sydney Historian Lisa Murray. The first biography of legendary Kate Leigh, famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer. Leigh tells the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the gender stereotyping of the time Read more …
Leigh Straw’s The Worst Woman in Sydney: The Life and Crimes of Kate Leigh (NewSouth Books) is the first biography of legendary Kate Leigh, famed brothel madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer. Leigh tells the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the Read more …
Presented by Professor Ann Curthoys, University of Sydney When writing colonial political history, most of the time, the historical actors we consider are male. Whether they are Indigenous leaders or pastoral labourers, missionaries, pastoralists, convicts, free immigrants, British officials, or intellectuals debating questions of Aboriginal policy and colonial governance, they are usually men. Women are Read more …
Frances M. Clarke and Rebecca Jo Plant have won the Berkshire Conference Article Prize for the best article published on women, gender or sexuality. The winning article was ‘“The Crowning Insult”: Federal Segregation and the Gold Star Mother and Widow Pilgrimages of the Early 1930s’, Journal of American History 102: 2 (September 2015).
Clare Wright’s book We Are The Rebels: The Women and Men Who Made Eureka has been short-listed for the Children’s Book Council Award for the Best Information Book. Read the announcement in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Tim Allender’s Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1820–1923 (Manchester University Press) uses a broad framework to examine the many life experiences of women living in colonial India and how their position changed, both personally and professionally, over this long period of study. Drawing on a rich documentary record from archives in the United Kingdom, India, Read more …
Claire Lowrie’s Masters and Servants: Cultures of Empire in the Tropics (Studies in Imperialism Series, Manchester University Press) explores the politics of colonial mastery and domestic servitude in the neighbouring British colonies of Singapore and Darwin and illustrates the centrality of the domestic realm to the colonial project. It is the first comparative history of Read more …
AHA member Clare Wright will be in Ballarat discussing the life and times of Lola Montez, a central character explored in the 19th Century Bling – Goldfields Jewellery exhibition, at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka (MADE). Lola Montez (1818 – 1861), dancer and courtesan, born in Limerick, Ireland visited Ballarat and Victoria’s goldfields Read more …
This round table will be an occasion for Professor Plummer to discuss the hidden history of the enigmatic Australian artist and theosophist Louisa Hayes Le Freimann, with other ANU panellists whose work also examines Australian women’s lives. Professor Plummer ((University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany) is an ANU Gender Institute and Humanities Research Centre joint Visiting Fellow. Read more …