Dr Lisa Featherstone, Research Fellow
BA (Hons), PhD (Macquarie University)
| Office: | W6A 402 |
| Phone: | +61 2 9850 8875 |
| Fax: | +61 2 9850 6594 |
| Email: | lisa.featherstone@humn.mq.edu.au |
I am an Australian historian primarily interested in feminist history, gender history and the history of medicine. Currently a Research Fellow in the Department of Modern History, I am writing a history of sexuality in Australia from 1900 to the contraceptive pill.
I have published on women's sexuality, reproductive history, race and medicine, child health and Foucauldian historiography. I have been awarded the CH Currey Memorial Fellowship at the State Library of New South Wales for my work on sexuality in the twentieth century; the Mary Bennett Prize for Women's History, for the best article in the field of women's history in any journal, for my article in Australian Historical Studies on women's sexuality during WWII; and the Iain Brash Prize for my article in Limina on the development of antenatal care in Australia.
Research interests
My research interests focus on gender history, women's history and medical history, with a particular focus on sexuality. I primarily work within Australian history, mainly in the late nineteenth century and into the twentieth century.
Current Research Projects
- Desire: A History of Sexualities in Australia , 1900 -1961
This project will provide the first comprehensive history of sexuality in Australia , 1901-1961. It will examine the meanings of sex before the crucial revolutions of the 1960s. It will consider the dynamics of power and sexuality, and ways that sex was used as a form of social, political and economic control. Though theoretically informed, this project is based on archival research. The resulting book, journal articles, conference papers and media work will be a substantial contribution to scholarly work on sexuality, both in Australia and internationally, and provide historical background to current debates over sex and morality.
- Excess and Constraint: masculinity and male sexuality in late nineteenth century Australia
Traditionally, late nineteenth century Australian masculinity has been a concept historicized within the framework of nationalist hyper-masculinity (the bushman, the digger). Whether celebrating or critiquing the masculinist mythologies, such legends nevertheless provide the framework for analysis. In this series of articles, I want to suggest some counter-narratives of Australian manhood, and to examine some of the anxieties surrounding men and men's bodies in the end of the century.
- Breeding and Feeding: A Social History of Mothers and Medicine in Australia , 1880-1925.
The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries saw profound changes in Australian attitudes towards maternity. This project, continuing from my PhD thesis, examines 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.
Research funding and fellowships
2007-2010 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Macquarie University
2005 CH Currey Memorial Fellowship, State Library of NSW
Journal articles
- 'Becoming a Baby? The foetus in late nineteenth century Australia', Australian Feminist Studies (forthcoming 2008)
- The Value of An Infant: The Rise of Paediatrics in Australia , 1880-1910', Health and History (forthcoming, May 2008.)
- 'Sex and the Australian Legend: Pathologising the White Man's Body', Journal of Australian Colonial History . (forthcoming 2008)
- Birth In Sydney ', The Dictionary of Sydney . http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/sydney_journal , 2008
- 'Imagining the Black Body: Race, gender and gynaecology in late colonial Australia ', Lilith , v.15, 2006, pp86 - 96.
- Sexy Mamas? Women, Sexuality and Reproduction in Australia in the 1940s', Australian Historical Studies , v.37, no.126, Oct 2005, pp. 234 - 252
- Surveying the mother: the rise of antenatal care in early twentieth-century Australia ', Limina , v.10, 2004, pp. 16-31
- Whose breast is best? Wet nursing in nineteenth century Australia ', Birth Issues , 2002, pp. 41 - 46
Chapters in books [includes conference proceedings]
- 'Confined: Constructions of Childbirth in Popular and Elite Medical Culture in late nineteenth-century Australia ', Gender, Health and Popular Culture: Historical Perspectives . Cheryl Krasnick Warsh (ed.) Forthcoming. Ontario: Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2009.
- '"The Value of the Victorian Infant": Whiteness and the Emergence of Paediatrics in Late Colonial Australia', refereed conference proceedings in Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity . Leigh Boucher, Jane Carey and Katherine Ellinghaus (eds) ( Melbourne : RMIT Publishing, 2007) http://search.informit.com.au/browsePublication;username=conhis;password=access;res=E-LIBRARY;eisbn=9781921166808
- 'Foucault, Feminism and History', in Feminist Alliances . Lynda Burns (ed) ( New York : Rodolphi, 2006)
- 'The Kindest Cut? The Origins of the Caesarean Section in Australia ,' in Mother Power? Contemporary Feminist Voices , (ed.) Marie Porter, Patricia Short and Andrea O'Reilly ( Toronto : Women's Press, 2005).
- 'Infant Ideologies: Doctors, mothers and the feeding of children in Australia 1880-1910', in Children's Health: International Historical Perspectives. Cheryl Krasnick Warsh and Veronica Strong-Boag (eds) ( Ontario : Wilfred Laurier University Press, 2005).
- 'Romantic Friendships', in The Companion to Women's Historical Writing. Mary Spongberg, Barbara Caine and Ann Curthoys (eds) ( London : Palgrave, 2005).
- 'Marriage and Family', The Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History. William H McNeill, Jerry Bentley, David Christian, Judith Zinsser, Heidi Roupp and David Levinson (eds) ( Berkshire : 2004).
- 'Ignorant and Unnatural: The construction of the "Bad Mother" In Australia , 1880-1910'. Refereed Conference Papers, Casting New Shadows, Macquarie University , January 2001.
- 'Race for reproduction: the gendering of eugenic theories in Australia , 1890-1940' 2000 History and Sociology of Eugenics Conference (2000: Newcastle , NSW). A Race for a Place: Eugenics, Darwinism and Social Thought and Practice in Australia : Proceedings. (2000)
- Radio podcast, interview MQtv, History of Sexuality October 16, 2007 http://www.mqtv.mq.edu.au/Main.php
Committees
Management Committee, History Council of New South Wales (2007- present)
Management Committee, Australian History Museum , Macquarie University (2007- present)
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