Professor of History and Director of Centre for the Study of the Inland at La Trobe University. Work integrates environmental, oral, gender and cultural history. Author of 'Spaces in Her Day: Women's Diaries of the 1920s Phone: 61 3 9479 2427 Address: History Program
School of Humanities
La Trobe University
Victoria 3086
Australia
Between the Leaves is an intimate exploration into the lives of nine twentieth-century women – in... more Between the Leaves is an intimate exploration into the lives of nine twentieth-century women – including Judith Wright, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Winifred Stephensen and Jean Galbraith – who wrote about their garden in their letters and diaries. Their stories illustrate the many meanings of the garden, and reveal the ways in which women were involved in transforming their landscapes and reshaping the world around them. The stories we find in the garden lead us to intimate understandings of women’s lives as well as to broader questions of Australian history: that the sites of women’s stories – the missing stories – are also the places where the nation’s stories can be found.
'Reading the Garden' explores Australian's deep affection for gardens and gardening and illuminat... more 'Reading the Garden' explores Australian's deep affection for gardens and gardening and illuminates their numerous meanings and uses from European settlement to the late twentieth century. More than just a pastime, the act of garden making has helped migrants create 'home' and an identity in a new place, and we continue to ue our outdoor landscapes to preserve the memory of a loved one, feed the family or beautify our surrounds. In 'Reading the Garden', new ways of seeing Australian history and culture-memory and belonging; domesticity and civilisation; nationalism and identity-are woven into a compelling narrative around gardens and landscape.
Spaces in Her Day uncovers the rich, private world of women's diaries. Australian in the 1920s an... more Spaces in Her Day uncovers the rich, private world of women's diaries. Australian in the 1920s and 1930s offered new possibilities to young women: paid work, motor cars, ready-to-wear fashion and the promise of romance. Many women embraced these opportunities and confided to their diaries their dreams and fears. For other women, already burdened with domestic responsibilities, the endless demands of motherhood and housework consumed their time. In their diaries they might boast of tasks accomplished, or take time to dream of quieter days. Spaces in Her Day tells the stories of these diaries and the women who wrote them. The book brings to life the desires, loves and losses of women who took time to record what was important to them, who made a space in their day to preserve their words. The result is a fascinating exploration of what it was like to be a woman in Australia between the wars. We also discover why women wrote their diaries and catch a tantalising glimpse of the secrets they disclosed..
History is constantly evoked to justify present political positions or to understand and interpre... more History is constantly evoked to justify present political positions or to understand and interpret current events. But this is never a simple matter; in Ireland and Australia remembrance of the past is often bitterly disputed and history becomes a means of waging contemporary conflict. Exhuming Passions is a collection of writing by leading Australian and Irish scholars about different ways in which rival interpretations of the past vie with each other for attention and influence. The book deals with highly topical issues such as the ways in which war is remembered and commemorated; governments apologise for the wrongs of previous generations ; film and literature construct the past; and, not least, the ways in which private and public memory are constructed and deployed for contested social, cultural and political purposes.
Skip to content. admin login. La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding w... more Skip to content. admin login. La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students ...
Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they m... more Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they may be regarded as" open access" documents; interested readers may read, download or print them, but they remain protected by copyright, and many are subject to publishers' policies regarding use, reproduction or communication. Please check individual records for details of other permissible use. If you believe that any material has been made available without permission of the copyright owner please contact us with the details.
Between 1926 and 1935 the Better Farming Train made seven trips to the Victorian Mallee region. M... more Between 1926 and 1935 the Better Farming Train made seven trips to the Victorian Mallee region. Modeled on North American examples, the mission of the Train was to spread the ‘doctrine of better farming’ to this wheat-growing region. The Train carried to the Mallee ideas about the promise of science and the hopes of modernity. It championed particular ideas about agricultural development, settlement, and the role of female labor in the carrying out of the yeoman ideal of the small farm holding. Although the product of a specific time and place, it also tapped into a long standing belief that the mallee lands could be developed through correct settlement, the advances of technology and the application of science. The Train was more than a moving collection of exhibits, it freighted a way of imagining the Mallee that saw in the prospect of golden fields of wheat a way of redeeming the land and forging a modern nation.
Mental illness was an experience readily discussed by participants in the Australian Generations ... more Mental illness was an experience readily discussed by participants in the Australian Generations Oral History Project. The stories demonstrate the significant shift which has occurred within the community during the last three decades, around attitudes toward, and treatment of, mental illness. The pervasiveness of a therapeutic discourse through which to express understandings of self is also evident. This article examines the different ways in which participants understood their varying experiences of mental illness. It considers participants' changing historical circumstances and argues that we can identify key structural patterns of inequality—poverty and gender—which shape the prevalence and experience of mental illness, and the interpretive frames which provide narratives through which to understand that experience, namely feminism and the therapeutic attention to suffering. The article also considers the significance of the life history interview in enabling participants to tell their stories of mental illness within a whole of life trajectory.
Oral historians are regularly faced with interviewees who express distressing emotions while reca... more Oral historians are regularly faced with interviewees who express distressing emotions while recalling past events. How do we interpret these emotions? What is their historical meaning? This article draws on discussions within history of emotions and oral history literature to examine these questions. It looks closely at an interview conducted for the Australian Generations Oral History Project and argues that in order to understand the expression of emotion in oral history interviews we need to view it through a set of entangled relationships: between the time of the event and the time of the telling; the process of remembering in a life history interview; and finally between the intersubjectivities present in the interview itself, that is, the transference and counter-transference that occur between interviewee and interviewer.
This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee regio... more This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee region in the years 1840–1914. It tracks the multiple ways in which the region was imagined and discussed, paying close attention to how these imaginings were both shaped by, and in turn themselves shaped the landscape. We argue that while the Mallee experience became emblematic of the broader Australian struggle with the land and thus the founding narrative of the pioneer legend, the Mallee as a distinct region retained local, specific meanings, including the idea of a preferred English settler. It identifies the Federation Drought as a turning point in ecological, national and cultural understandings of the region.
Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 2011
Settling is about many things. Settling is about transformation and violence, it is about tendern... more Settling is about many things. Settling is about transformation and violence, it is about tenderness and cruelty, hope and despair. Settling invokes memories of old homes founded in new places as well as of new landscapes settling into old hearts. Settling is also as much about ...
Abstract: Paper delivered at the Lilith Symposium by Katie Holmes, is presented. A reflect on of ... more Abstract: Paper delivered at the Lilith Symposium by Katie Holmes, is presented. A reflect on of the extent to which the project of feminist history has succeeded in Australia and the terms of measuring the success is discussed. ... To cite this article: Holmes, Katie. Past, ...
Between the Leaves is an intimate exploration into the lives of nine twentieth-century women – in... more Between the Leaves is an intimate exploration into the lives of nine twentieth-century women – including Judith Wright, Katharine Susannah Prichard, Winifred Stephensen and Jean Galbraith – who wrote about their garden in their letters and diaries. Their stories illustrate the many meanings of the garden, and reveal the ways in which women were involved in transforming their landscapes and reshaping the world around them. The stories we find in the garden lead us to intimate understandings of women’s lives as well as to broader questions of Australian history: that the sites of women’s stories – the missing stories – are also the places where the nation’s stories can be found.
'Reading the Garden' explores Australian's deep affection for gardens and gardening and illuminat... more 'Reading the Garden' explores Australian's deep affection for gardens and gardening and illuminates their numerous meanings and uses from European settlement to the late twentieth century. More than just a pastime, the act of garden making has helped migrants create 'home' and an identity in a new place, and we continue to ue our outdoor landscapes to preserve the memory of a loved one, feed the family or beautify our surrounds. In 'Reading the Garden', new ways of seeing Australian history and culture-memory and belonging; domesticity and civilisation; nationalism and identity-are woven into a compelling narrative around gardens and landscape.
Spaces in Her Day uncovers the rich, private world of women's diaries. Australian in the 1920s an... more Spaces in Her Day uncovers the rich, private world of women's diaries. Australian in the 1920s and 1930s offered new possibilities to young women: paid work, motor cars, ready-to-wear fashion and the promise of romance. Many women embraced these opportunities and confided to their diaries their dreams and fears. For other women, already burdened with domestic responsibilities, the endless demands of motherhood and housework consumed their time. In their diaries they might boast of tasks accomplished, or take time to dream of quieter days. Spaces in Her Day tells the stories of these diaries and the women who wrote them. The book brings to life the desires, loves and losses of women who took time to record what was important to them, who made a space in their day to preserve their words. The result is a fascinating exploration of what it was like to be a woman in Australia between the wars. We also discover why women wrote their diaries and catch a tantalising glimpse of the secrets they disclosed..
History is constantly evoked to justify present political positions or to understand and interpre... more History is constantly evoked to justify present political positions or to understand and interpret current events. But this is never a simple matter; in Ireland and Australia remembrance of the past is often bitterly disputed and history becomes a means of waging contemporary conflict. Exhuming Passions is a collection of writing by leading Australian and Irish scholars about different ways in which rival interpretations of the past vie with each other for attention and influence. The book deals with highly topical issues such as the ways in which war is remembered and commemorated; governments apologise for the wrongs of previous generations ; film and literature construct the past; and, not least, the ways in which private and public memory are constructed and deployed for contested social, cultural and political purposes.
Skip to content. admin login. La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding w... more Skip to content. admin login. La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students La Trobe University Research Online, a digital repository holding works produced by La Trobe University staff and students ...
Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they m... more Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they may be regarded as" open access" documents; interested readers may read, download or print them, but they remain protected by copyright, and many are subject to publishers' policies regarding use, reproduction or communication. Please check individual records for details of other permissible use. If you believe that any material has been made available without permission of the copyright owner please contact us with the details.
Between 1926 and 1935 the Better Farming Train made seven trips to the Victorian Mallee region. M... more Between 1926 and 1935 the Better Farming Train made seven trips to the Victorian Mallee region. Modeled on North American examples, the mission of the Train was to spread the ‘doctrine of better farming’ to this wheat-growing region. The Train carried to the Mallee ideas about the promise of science and the hopes of modernity. It championed particular ideas about agricultural development, settlement, and the role of female labor in the carrying out of the yeoman ideal of the small farm holding. Although the product of a specific time and place, it also tapped into a long standing belief that the mallee lands could be developed through correct settlement, the advances of technology and the application of science. The Train was more than a moving collection of exhibits, it freighted a way of imagining the Mallee that saw in the prospect of golden fields of wheat a way of redeeming the land and forging a modern nation.
Mental illness was an experience readily discussed by participants in the Australian Generations ... more Mental illness was an experience readily discussed by participants in the Australian Generations Oral History Project. The stories demonstrate the significant shift which has occurred within the community during the last three decades, around attitudes toward, and treatment of, mental illness. The pervasiveness of a therapeutic discourse through which to express understandings of self is also evident. This article examines the different ways in which participants understood their varying experiences of mental illness. It considers participants' changing historical circumstances and argues that we can identify key structural patterns of inequality—poverty and gender—which shape the prevalence and experience of mental illness, and the interpretive frames which provide narratives through which to understand that experience, namely feminism and the therapeutic attention to suffering. The article also considers the significance of the life history interview in enabling participants to tell their stories of mental illness within a whole of life trajectory.
Oral historians are regularly faced with interviewees who express distressing emotions while reca... more Oral historians are regularly faced with interviewees who express distressing emotions while recalling past events. How do we interpret these emotions? What is their historical meaning? This article draws on discussions within history of emotions and oral history literature to examine these questions. It looks closely at an interview conducted for the Australian Generations Oral History Project and argues that in order to understand the expression of emotion in oral history interviews we need to view it through a set of entangled relationships: between the time of the event and the time of the telling; the process of remembering in a life history interview; and finally between the intersubjectivities present in the interview itself, that is, the transference and counter-transference that occur between interviewee and interviewer.
This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee regio... more This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee region in the years 1840–1914. It tracks the multiple ways in which the region was imagined and discussed, paying close attention to how these imaginings were both shaped by, and in turn themselves shaped the landscape. We argue that while the Mallee experience became emblematic of the broader Australian struggle with the land and thus the founding narrative of the pioneer legend, the Mallee as a distinct region retained local, specific meanings, including the idea of a preferred English settler. It identifies the Federation Drought as a turning point in ecological, national and cultural understandings of the region.
Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 2011
Settling is about many things. Settling is about transformation and violence, it is about tendern... more Settling is about many things. Settling is about transformation and violence, it is about tenderness and cruelty, hope and despair. Settling invokes memories of old homes founded in new places as well as of new landscapes settling into old hearts. Settling is also as much about ...
Abstract: Paper delivered at the Lilith Symposium by Katie Holmes, is presented. A reflect on of ... more Abstract: Paper delivered at the Lilith Symposium by Katie Holmes, is presented. A reflect on of the extent to which the project of feminist history has succeeded in Australia and the terms of measuring the success is discussed. ... To cite this article: Holmes, Katie. Past, ...
When I was nineteen someone told me that time was the most important word in literature. I was sk... more When I was nineteen someone told me that time was the most important word in literature. I was skeptical. What about love? What about soul? Now that some years have gone by, I'm certain that she was right. Time is the strongest thing of all, and the diarist is always fleeing ...
Prior to her death in 1962, Katherine Susannah Pritchard requested that her diaries and personal ... more Prior to her death in 1962, Katherine Susannah Pritchard requested that her diaries and personal papers be destroyed.'I do not like to be seen in deshabille" even in manuscript', she said. 1'Deshabille'suggests a state of undress, careless dressing, or a garment worn ...
... Lawson's fiction allows more licence.6 Albert Facey is perhaps a more understand... more ... Lawson's fiction allows more licence.6 Albert Facey is perhaps a more understandable selection for Hirst, although Facey's marriage was not the main concern of his ... (See J. Hajnal, 'European Marriage Patterns in Perspective', in DV Glass and DEC Eversley (eds), Populations ...
This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee regio... more This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee region in the years 1840–1914. It tracks the multiple ways in which the region was imagined and discussed, paying close attention to how these imaginings were both shaped by and in turn themselves shaped the landscape. We argue that while the Mallee experience became emblematic of the broader Australian struggle with the land and thus the founding narrative of the pioneer legend, the Mallee as a distinct region retained local, specific meanings, including the idea of a preferred English settler. We identify the Federation Drought as a turning point in ecological, national and cultural understandings of the region.
about the practical, day-to-day connections between Charlotte Haldane and Naomi Mitchison, or abo... more about the practical, day-to-day connections between Charlotte Haldane and Naomi Mitchison, or about the actual time that Mary Kingsley spent in West Africa. Taken together, however, these essays significantly expand our understanding of the women who, whatever their relationship to the largely male scientists around them, framed investigations of nature in ways that made it accessible to a broader public and in the process renegotiated scientific and cultural themes.
The Mallee region of south-eastern Australia is a semi-arid area with a distinct social and envir... more The Mallee region of south-eastern Australia is a semi-arid area with a distinct social and environmental history. Adapting to the demands of farming in this environment has required, so the narrative goes, highly responsive farmers who also possess great personal resilience. Their stories of adaptation and resilience, however, are striking for the conflicts they reveal about their attitudes to farming in the Mallee environment. This chapter uses life history interviews to explore different narratives about environmental change in the Mallee and considers the ways individual lives can disrupt and challenge the meta-narratives of colonial and national progress, of pioneering and the frontier, at the same time that those meta-narratives shape the ways in which individuals seek to frame their (gendered) life story and anticipate their future.
Review(s) of: Landscape for a good woman. A story of two lives, by Carolyn Steedman, Virago, Lond... more Review(s) of: Landscape for a good woman. A story of two lives, by Carolyn Steedman, Virago, London 1986, 168pp. $12.95 (paperback).
The introduction to this book considers what new insights can be gained by bringing together the ... more The introduction to this book considers what new insights can be gained by bringing together the approaches of oral and environmental history. Oral history brings attention to memory and the stories people tell about the environments they move into and across. The insights of environmental history challenge oral historians to think more critically about the ways an active more-than-human world shapes experiences and people. The integration of these approaches enables us to more fully and critically understand the ways cultural and individual memory and experience shape human interactions with the more-than-human world, just as it enables us to identify the ways human memory, identity and experience are moulded by the landscapes and environments in which people live and labour. The chapter includes a discussion of the historiography around oral and environmental history in India, Australia, the UK and North America.
Studies in the History of Gardens & Designed Landscapes, 2011
... The dahlia along with the rose, the carnation and chrysanthemum remained dominant. ... Vi... more ... The dahlia along with the rose, the carnation and chrysanthemum remained dominant. ... View all notes. In 1957, the New South Wales-based Thistle Harris and the Victorian botanist ArthurSwaby founded the Society for Growing Australian Plants, which helped to ...
This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee regio... more This article traces the changing understandings and representations of the Victorian Mallee region in the years 1840–1914. It tracks the multiple ways in which the region was imagined and discussed, paying close attention to how these imaginings were both shaped by and in turn themselves shaped the landscape. We argue that while the Mallee experience became emblematic of the broader Australian struggle with the land and thus the founding narrative of the pioneer legend, the Mallee as a distinct region retained local, specific meanings, including the idea of a preferred English settler. We identify the Federation Drought as a turning point in ecological, national and cultural understandings of the region.
Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, 2011
Settling is about many things. Settling is about transformation and violence, it is about tendern... more Settling is about many things. Settling is about transformation and violence, it is about tenderness and cruelty, hope and despair. Settling invokes memories of old homes founded in new places as well as of new landscapes settling into old hearts. Settling is also as much about ...
Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they m... more Where documents are made available* through records in La Trobe University Research Online they may be regarded as" open access" documents; interested readers may read, download or print them, but they remain protected by copyright, and many are subject to publishers' policies regarding use, reproduction or communication. Please check individual records for details of other permissible use. If you believe that any material has been made available without permission of the copyright owner please contact us with the details.
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Books by Katie Holmes
In 'Reading the Garden', new ways of seeing Australian history and culture-memory and belonging; domesticity and civilisation; nationalism and identity-are woven into a compelling narrative around gardens and landscape.
Spaces in Her Day tells the stories of these diaries and the women who wrote them. The book brings to life the desires, loves and losses of women who took time to record what was important to them, who made a space in their day to preserve their words. The result is a fascinating exploration of what it was like to be a woman in Australia between the wars. We also discover why women wrote their diaries and catch a tantalising glimpse of the secrets they disclosed..
Edited Books by Katie Holmes
The book deals with highly topical issues such as the ways in which war is remembered and commemorated; governments apologise for the wrongs of previous generations ; film and literature construct the past; and, not least, the ways in which private and public memory are constructed and deployed for contested social, cultural and political purposes.
Articles by Katie Holmes
In 'Reading the Garden', new ways of seeing Australian history and culture-memory and belonging; domesticity and civilisation; nationalism and identity-are woven into a compelling narrative around gardens and landscape.
Spaces in Her Day tells the stories of these diaries and the women who wrote them. The book brings to life the desires, loves and losses of women who took time to record what was important to them, who made a space in their day to preserve their words. The result is a fascinating exploration of what it was like to be a woman in Australia between the wars. We also discover why women wrote their diaries and catch a tantalising glimpse of the secrets they disclosed..
The book deals with highly topical issues such as the ways in which war is remembered and commemorated; governments apologise for the wrongs of previous generations ; film and literature construct the past; and, not least, the ways in which private and public memory are constructed and deployed for contested social, cultural and political purposes.