- I am an Australian historian primarily interested in the history of bodies, especially the history of sexuality, the ... moreI am an Australian historian primarily interested in the history of bodies, especially the history of sexuality, the history of sexual violence, and the history of reproduction.
I have published widely on sexuality, history of sexual crimes, masculinity, and the history of medicine. My recent book, with Andy Kaladelfos, is Sex Crimes in the Fifties (MUP, 2016). My first book, Let's Talk About Sex (2011) explores a range of Australian sexualities in early twentieth century Australia. More specific case studies from this time period have been published in a range of journals, including The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Women's History Review, Australian Historical Studies and Australian Feminist Studies. I currently hold an ARC DP "Sexual Offences, Legal Responses and Public Perceptions: 1880s-1980s" with Andy Kaladelfos, Carolyn Strange and Nina Westera.edit
From the start of the new Australian nation in 1901, to the use of the female contraceptive pill in 1961, Let's Talk About Sex explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in Australia. Far from being... more
From the start of the new Australian nation in 1901, to the use of the female contraceptive pill in 1961, Let's Talk About Sex explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in Australia. Far from being something hidden and private, this work brings sexuality out into the open, and explains why sex is of social, cultural, political and economic importance. Let's Talk About Sex is an inclusive history, surveying multiple and interwoven forms of sexuality, desire, pleasure, regulation and resistance. It begins with the long Victorian period: the hidden desires of women and the hydraulic sexual needs of men, both in the cities and on the frontier. It moves across the decades, considering heterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbians and nascent ideas about queer and sexual difference. Lisa Featherstone highlights the tensions of the ages: venereal disease, homophobia, birth control, rape and child sexual assault. She analyses the ways non-normative sexuality was constructed as evil and perverse, but also how men and women responded to this pathologising of their desires. Let's Talk About Sex provides a fascinating account of sex, gender, age and race, across the formative years of Australian society.
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It was July 2011, and Newcastle’s industrial waterfront was hidden by torrential rain. Sheltering inside were 70 historians of sexuality, attending a conference hosted by the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University. Perhaps it... more
It was July 2011, and Newcastle’s industrial waterfront was hidden by torrential rain. Sheltering inside were 70 historians of sexuality, attending a conference hosted by the University of Newcastle and Macquarie University. Perhaps it was the weather which kept people huddled inside, drinking tea, coffee and later wine, but it was a remarkably stimulating two days. This special issue, ‘Histories of Sexuality’, is the result of this conference. That a regional city could attract such a robust conference attendance is indicative of just how far the history of sexuality has come in Australia. From its small and humble beginnings, the scholarship of pioneers such as Garry Wotherspoon and Robert Aldrich has blossomed into a field that encompasses a raft of historians working within legal history, cultural history, social history and oral history. Histories of homosexuality have been particularly vigorous in Australia, and scholars including Wotherspoon, Graham Willett, Robert Reynolds and Clive Moore have shaped the way we understood same-sex interactions in Australian cities and regional areas.1 Even more recently, a new generation of scholars of gay history has also emerged, including Yorick Smaal and Scott McKinnon, showing the vibrancy and potential for further work in the field.2
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While there was significant public support for most of the changes to rape laws in Australian jurisdictions in the 1970s and 1980s, the criminalising of marital rape remained contentious. This article explores the arguments for and... more
While there was significant public support for most of the changes to rape laws in Australian jurisdictions in the 1970s and 1980s, the criminalising of marital rape remained contentious. This article explores the arguments for and against reformers' attempts to remove the immunity from prosecution given to a husband who had non-consensual sex with his wife, with a focus on 'rights'- based discourses. Discourses of rights, whether imagined as specific to one group or more broadly as 'human rights', were one way to argue for equality in society and within the law. This article argues that the call to rights, particularly human rights, did not have a strong public appeal. Instead, the public responded to the problem of marital rape when it was individualised. There was a keen interest in the direct stories of victims publicised in the media, which were far more persuasive than a universalised discourse of rights. Public narratives of suffering from a woman needing protection from a violent husband proved a powerful impetus to social and legal change, leading to the criminalisation of marital rape in all Australian jurisdictions by 1992.
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Simone Murray’s Mixed Media won the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing’s 2005 De Long book prize for its trenchant, thorough, and longoverdue treatment of what Murray rightly calls ‘the most significant... more
Simone Murray’s Mixed Media won the Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing’s 2005 De Long book prize for its trenchant, thorough, and longoverdue treatment of what Murray rightly calls ‘the most significant development in late twentieth-century book publishing: the emergence and infiltration into the mainstream press of feminist presses’ (1). No book historian could fail to recognise Murray’s contribution to a field that often seems blind not only to the workings of gender but also to the very existence of a post-Second World War publishing industry. Mixed Media’s deft histories of a handful of important US and British presses (Virago Books, The Women’s Press [the English, not the Canadian house], Sheba Feminist Publishers, Black Woman Talk, Kitchen Table*Women of Color, Pandora, and Naiad) display an astute grasp of the political economy of contemporary publishing and book marketing. They also demonstrate a keen appreciation for the distinctive ideological c...
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Michel Foucault's contribution to postmodern history has been widely discussed, critiqued and admired. Several major theoretical works have addressed the idea that theorists can appropriate Foucauldian theory for feminist means. I... more
Michel Foucault's contribution to postmodern history has been widely discussed, critiqued and admired. Several major theoretical works have addressed the idea that theorists can appropriate Foucauldian theory for feminist means. I wish to merge these two areas of analysis and consider the use (and abuse) of Foucault for feminist history. In order to do so I offer a two-fold examination: first, of the significance of Foucauldian modes of analysis for feminist theories; and second, a consideration of Foucault's relevance for feminist historians. The aim is to examine the potential for a feminist alliance with Foucault and to explore its political ramifications.14 page(s
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The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw profound changes in social and medical attitudes towards maternity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rise of antenatal care, a system of monitoring the health and wellbeing of... more
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw profound changes in social and medical attitudes towards maternity. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the rise of antenatal care, a system of monitoring the health and wellbeing of the unborn child through the surveillance of the pregnant woman. This paper will chart the emergence of such a system of surveillance in Australia around the time of the First World War, and will explore the complexities of debates over maternity, medicine and the needs of the state. In essence, the development of an antenatal regime was stimulated by fears over the declining population, and concerns over the high rate of maternal mortality during reproduction. The rise of antenatal care, however, is notable for more than being an extension of medical services to mothers. The interest in the foetus marks a significant shift in understandings about mothers and children. Based on the perceived need for population, the foetus was considered less a par...
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Macquarie University ResearchOnline.
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Review(s) of: An imperial affair: Portrait of an Australian marriage, by John Rickard, (Clayton, Monash University Publishing, 2013, 152pp, $24.9Spb).
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The film Puberty Blues exploded into Australian cinemas in the summer of 1981. Puberty Blues was a savage, satirical and sometimes downright frightening study of a 'surfie'subculture in Sydney in the early 1970s. Directed by the... more
The film Puberty Blues exploded into Australian cinemas in the summer of 1981. Puberty Blues was a savage, satirical and sometimes downright frightening study of a 'surfie'subculture in Sydney in the early 1970s. Directed by the Australian, Bruce Beresford ...
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Macquarie University ResearchOnline.
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Publikationsansicht. 46131975. Whose breast is best? Wet nursing in nineteenth century Australia (2002). Featherstone, Lisa. Abstract. This paper will explore wet nursing in Australia at the turn of the century. At a time when maternal ...
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From the start of the new Australian nation in 1901, to the use of the female contraceptive pill in 1961, Let's Talk About Sex explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in Australia. Far from being... more
From the start of the new Australian nation in 1901, to the use of the female contraceptive pill in 1961, Let's Talk About Sex explores the ways sexuality has been constructed, understood and experienced in Australia. Far from being something hidden and private, this work brings sexuality out into the open, and explains why sex is of social, cultural, political and economic importance. Let's Talk About Sex is an inclusive history, surveying multiple and interwoven forms of sexuality, desire, pleasure, regulation and resistance. It begins with the long Victorian period: the hidden desires of women and the “hydraulic” sexual needs of men, both in the cities and on the frontier. It moves across the decades, considering heterosexuality, homosexuality, lesbians and nascent ideas about queer and sexual difference. Lisa Featherstone highlights the tensions of the ages: venereal disease, homophobia, birth control, rape and child sexual assault. She analyses the ways non-normative se...
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The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw profound changes in Australian attitudes towards maternity. Imbibed with discourses of pronatalism and eugenics, the production of infants became increasingly important to society and... more
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw profound changes in Australian attitudes towards maternity. Imbibed with discourses of pronatalism and eugenics, the production of infants became increasingly important to society and the state. Discourses proliferated on "breeding", and while it appeared maternity was exulted, the child, not the mother, was of ultimate interest. This thesis will examine the ways wider discourses of population impacted on childbearing, and very specifically the ways discussions of the nation impacted on medicine. Despite its apparent objectivity, medical science both absorbed and created pronatalism. Within medical ideology, where once the mother had been the point of interest, the primary focus of medical care, increasingly medical science focussed on the life of the infant, who was now all the more precious in the role of new life for the nation. While all childbirth and child-rearing advice was formed and mediated by such rhetoric, t...
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Of all the groups treated by the medical profession, infants were amongst the most vulnerable: the late-nineteenth century baby had a rather tenuous hold on life. Prior to the 1880s and 1890s, the health and wellbeing of the child had... more
Of all the groups treated by the medical profession, infants were amongst the most vulnerable: the late-nineteenth century baby had a rather tenuous hold on life. Prior to the 1880s and 1890s, the health and wellbeing of the child had largely been subsumed into that of the mother, and medically the child was subordinated into the disciplines of obstetrics and gynecology. From the late-nineteenth century, however, there was an increasing emphasis on the child as an individual body. The predominant signifier of such an interest was the rise of a new specialised discipline to cater for the child: paediatrics. Traditional explanations for the emergence and growth of paediatrics have centred upon Romantic ideas of the child, suggesting that the body of the child was medicalised because it was increasingly viewed as separate and special. This paper suggests that in the colonies, the separate speciality of paediatrics developed in response to issues of population and whiteness. The new int...