This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's... more This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's movement in the inter-war years. It argues that, compared to the relatively limited attention paid to the 'Aboriginal problem', concerns about white degeneracy abounded. The paper focuses on the female-dominated Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales, Australia's largest and longest-lasting eugenic organisation, and its campaigns around venereal disease and the segregation and sterilization of 'mental deficients'. Eugenics has usually been associated with moves to limit white women to their domestic and reproductive roles, to their status as 'mothers of the race'. However, this paper demonstrates how such racial discourses were also appropriated by elite women to support their own reforming agendas and to argue for a larger public role for themselves in working to halt the perceived threat of white racial degeneracy. These activities are significant beyond understanding the impact of racial thinking on the women's movement alone. They point to the ways in which discourses of whiteness, like eugenics, formed a major field of racial discussion more broadly. Since the 1970s historians have looked largely, if not exclusively, towards white western constructions of 'others' to understand ideas about 'race'. What I wish to suggest here is that such an approach is not always sufficient. Overlooking these discussions of whiteness means losing sight of one of the key domains in which ideas about race were being articulated.
This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic an... more This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic and political potential, needs to pay closer attention to historical specificity, power-relations and transnational processes of material and discursive exchange if it is to move forward. Through a wide-ranging historiographical survey, this introduction 'takes stock' of the field and offers a number of strategies through the analytic and political pitfalls that have characterised studies of whiteness in the past fifteen years. Perhaps most significantly, this paper draws on a burgeoning literature from Australia to address the largely American criticisms of whiteness studies.
Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction wit... more Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction within early western feminism, this article presents some preliminary reflections on the first two feminist utopian novels published in Australia, Henrietta Dugdale's A Few Hours in a Far-off Age (1883) and Catherine Spence's A Week in the Future (1888-9). While these novels are relatively well known as significant early feminist texts, they have not been the subject of any focussed scholarly analysis. Closer reading reveals that the feminist futures presented in these works were fundamentally based in evolutionary and proto-eugenic theories. Paradoxically, then, these visions relied on biological determinism. They also reflected a racially exclusive worldview. When situated alongside other feminist non-fictional writing and activism, these texts are thus particularly suggestive in terms of understanding how 'race' operated within Australian feminist thought and activism in this period.
... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 lip s... more ... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 lip sewing protests at Woomera, he argues that they provide the cultural Other against which the text constructs an ideal audience and the reader a moral cultural self: In both 'negative' and ...
This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within gl... more This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within global networks of imperial power and wider histories of "transnational" connections. It takes up a crucial challenge for new imperial and transnational histories: to explore the historical role of colonized and subaltern communities in these processes, and their legacies in the present. Bringing together prominent and emerging scholars who have begun to explore Indigenous networks and "transnational" encounters, and to consider the broader significance of "extra-local" connections, exchanges and mobility for Indigenous peoples, this work engages closely with some of the key historical scholarship on transnationalism and the networks of European imperialism. Chapters deploy a range of analytic scales, including global, regional and intra-Indigenous networks, and methods, including histories of ideas and cultural forms and biography, as well as exploring contemporary legacies. In drawing these perspectives together, this book charts an important new direction in research.
The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australia's racial past. Creating White Australia takes a fresh approach to the question of ‘race’ in Australian history. It demonstrates that Australia's racial foundations can only be understood by recognising whiteness too as 'race'. Including contributions from some of the leading as well as emerging scholars in Australian history, it breaks new ground by arguing that ‘whiteness’ was central to the racial ideologies that created the Australian nation.
This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.
The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australiażs racial past. ...
This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's... more This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's movement in the inter-war years. It argues that, compared to the relatively limited attention paid to the 'Aboriginal problem', concerns about white degeneracy abounded. The paper focuses on the female-dominated Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales, Australia's largest and longest-lasting eugenic organisation, and its campaigns around venereal disease and the segregation and sterilization of 'mental deficients'. Eugenics has usually been associated with moves to limit white women to their domestic and reproductive roles, to their status as 'mothers of the race'. However, this paper demonstrates how such racial discourses were also appropriated by elite women to support their own reforming agendas and to argue for a larger public role for themselves in working to halt the perceived threat of white racial degeneracy. These activities are significant beyond understanding the impact of racial thinking on the women's movement alone. They point to the ways in which discourses of whiteness, like eugenics, formed a major field of racial discussion more broadly. Since the 1970s historians have looked largely, if not exclusively, towards white western constructions of 'others' to understand ideas about 'race'. What I wish to suggest here is that such an approach is not always sufficient. Overlooking these discussions of whiteness means losing sight of one of the key domains in which ideas about race were being articulated.
This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic an... more This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic and political potential, needs to pay closer attention to historical specificity, power-relations and transnational processes of material and discursive exchange if it is to move forward. Through a wide-ranging historiographical survey, this introduction 'takes stock' of the field and offers a number of strategies through the analytic and political pitfalls that have characterised studies of whiteness in the past fifteen years. Perhaps most significantly, this paper draws on a burgeoning literature from Australia to address the largely American criticisms of whiteness studies.
Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction wit... more Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction within early western feminism, this article presents some preliminary reflections on the first two feminist utopian novels published in Australia, Henrietta Dugdale's A Few Hours in a Far-off Age (1883) and Catherine Spence's A Week in the Future (1888-9). While these novels are relatively well known as significant early feminist texts, they have not been the subject of any focussed scholarly analysis. Closer reading reveals that the feminist futures presented in these works were fundamentally based in evolutionary and proto-eugenic theories. Paradoxically, then, these visions relied on biological determinism. They also reflected a racially exclusive worldview. When situated alongside other feminist non-fictional writing and activism, these texts are thus particularly suggestive in terms of understanding how 'race' operated within Australian feminist thought and activism in this period.
... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 lip s... more ... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 lip sewing protests at Woomera, he argues that they provide the cultural Other against which the text constructs an ideal audience and the reader a moral cultural self: In both 'negative' and ...
This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within gl... more This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within global networks of imperial power and wider histories of "transnational" connections. It takes up a crucial challenge for new imperial and transnational histories: to explore the historical role of colonized and subaltern communities in these processes, and their legacies in the present. Bringing together prominent and emerging scholars who have begun to explore Indigenous networks and "transnational" encounters, and to consider the broader significance of "extra-local" connections, exchanges and mobility for Indigenous peoples, this work engages closely with some of the key historical scholarship on transnationalism and the networks of European imperialism. Chapters deploy a range of analytic scales, including global, regional and intra-Indigenous networks, and methods, including histories of ideas and cultural forms and biography, as well as exploring contemporary legacies. In drawing these perspectives together, this book charts an important new direction in research.
The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australia's racial past. Creating White Australia takes a fresh approach to the question of ‘race’ in Australian history. It demonstrates that Australia's racial foundations can only be understood by recognising whiteness too as 'race'. Including contributions from some of the leading as well as emerging scholars in Australian history, it breaks new ground by arguing that ‘whiteness’ was central to the racial ideologies that created the Australian nation.
This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.
The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australiażs racial past. ...
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This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.
This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.