Publications

SCEPTICAL HISTORY
Feminist and Postmodern Approaches in Practice (Routledge, 2007)

Hélène Bowen Raddeker (School of History and Philosphy)

Sceptical History familiarises readers with the postmodern critique of history whilst also focusing on the question of how to practise postmodernist feminist (sceptical) history.

A highly original work, this book considers major themes including cultural, class and sexual identity and ‘difference’, weaving them into debates on the nature and methods of history. In so doing it arrives at new ways of doing ‘history and theory’ that do not exclude feminist approaches nor attention to non-Western history.

Anne Brewster, Angeline O'Neill and Rosemary van den Berg (eds), Those who remain will always remember: an anthology of Aboriginal Writing, Fremantle: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2001

Anne Brewster (School of English, Media and Performing Arts)

This major collection of indigenous writing  includes a range of work - poetry, essays, testimonials, songs and legends -  by  established and emerging  women writers, including Doris Pilkington Garimara, Pat Mamajun Torres, Charmaine Papertalk-Green, Glenyse Ward, Jennifer Sabbioni, Denise Groves and Pat Dudgeon. It has a substantial Introduction which examines how these writers use various literary and non-literary genres and also the central function of memory in indigenous and white Australia.

Judith Butler: Live Theory (Continuum, 2006)

Vicki Kirby (School of Social Sciences and International Studies)

Judith Butler: Live Theory is an invaluable introduction to one of the most influential thinkers in contemporary culture. Concise, accessible and comprehensive, the book explores Butler's ongoing contributions to gender theory, offers new insights into the central themes of her work, and considers the extent of her impact on how the discipline of gender studies has been shaped.

Writing Woman, Writing Place: contemporary Australian and South African Fiction (Routledge, London and New York, 2004)

Sue Kossew (School of English, Media and Performing Arts)

Writing Woman, Writing Place analyses the ways in which contemporary women writers in the two "settler' colonies of Australia and South Africa explore notions of self, identity and place in their fiction.
Both societies are coming to terms with their often violent colonial pasts and also re-evaluating and re-examining the history of white privilege and Indigenous dispossession.
Three main strands run through the readings offered in this book - the theme of violence and the violence of representational practice itself, the revisioning of history, and the writers' consciousness of their own paradoxical subject-position within the nation as both privileged and excluded.

God’s Willing Workers: Women and Religion in Australia (UNSW Press, Sydney, 2005)

Anne O’Brien (School of History and Philosophy)

God’s Willing Workers examines the ways religious values, beliefs and institutions have shaped and been shaped by the lives of women in Australia over 200 years. It explores the various and contradictory ways laywomen, nuns, missionaries and deaconesses grappled with church teachings on sexuality, marriage and family, gender roles, work and education.

Women Making Time (UWA Press, 2006)

Elizabeth McMahon (School of English, Media and Performing Arts) &
Brigitta Olubas (School of English, Media and Performing Arts)

How do women experience time in the modern world? What connections can be drawn between time, action and ethical human relations? From vantage points across the humanities and social sciences, Women Making Time looks at how women fashion understandings of the past, present and future.