Negotiating Masculinities and Modernity in the Maritime World, 1815–1940
Karen Downing, Johnathan Thayer and Joanne Begiato (eds)
This book explores ideas of masculinity in the maritime world in the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. During this time commerce, politics and technology supported male privilege, while simultaneously creating the polite, consumerist and sedentary lifestyles that were perceived as damaging the minds and bodies of men. This volume explores this paradox through the figure of the sailor, a working-class man whose representation fulfilled numerous political and social ends in this period. It begins with the enduring image of romantic, heroic veterans of the Napeolonic wars, takes the reader through the challenges to masculinities created by encounters with other races and ethnicities, and with technological change, shifting geopolitical and cultural contexts, and ends with the fragile portrayal of masculinity in the imagined Nelson. In doing so, this edited collection shows that maritime masculinities (ideals, representations and the seamen themselves) were highly visible and volatile sites for negotiating the tensions of masculinities with civilisation, race, technology, patriotism, citizenship, and respectability during the long nineteenth century.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Borrow in Australia: Trove
How gender can transform the social sciences: Innovation and impact
Marian Sawer, Fiona Jenkins, Karen Downing (eds)
This collection of case studies turns a spotlight on the contribution being made by gender innovation across the social sciences. The case studies show how the application of a gender lens has improved the understanding of fundamental questions. Each of the case studies begins with the gaps in knowledge that existed in a particular subject area before explaining how gender perspectives provided a sharper focus and new scholarly, disciplinary and policy insights.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Borrow in Australia: Trove
Restless Men: Masculinity and Robinson Crusoe, 1788-1840
Around the turn of the nineteenth century Robinson Crusoe turns up remarkably often in material dealing with the emerging Australian colonies. The call to adventure and do-it-yourself guide to settlement in Daniel Defoe’s novel resonated strongly with British explorers and settlers. But Crusoe did not make men restless: restlessness was the expression of unresolved tensions in men’s lives between ideals, aspirations, traditions and material circumstances, the tension between what men felt they should do and what was actually possible. Crusoe seemingly reconciled these tensions, showing that a man could be both wild and domesticated. Karen Downing traces the links in a discursive chain by which a particular male subjectivity was forged. Through the rarely studied interrelationship between public representations of manliness and self-representations by men in more private writings, she reveals how restless men took their restlessness with them, so that the Australian colonies never were a solution to men’s anxieties.
Published by Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Reviews: Sydney Morning Herald; Australian Historical Studies; Digital Defoe; The Resident Judge of Port Phillip.
Purchase a copy: Palgrave Macmillan; Amazon. Borrow in Australia: Trove
Tears, Laughter, Champagne: A story of friendship forged through fire & food
On Saturday 18 January 2003, four people lost their lives and 500 homes were destroyed when out-of-control bushfires combined and descended on Canberra’s south-western suburbs in a day that gave new and painful meaning to the ‘Bush Capital’.
In Tears, Laughter, Champagne, nine women recount their fifteen year journey from the day the fires changed their lives. These are the Singed Sisters and I am one of them.
From tea and tears in the months following the fires to champagne and laughter as we moved into newly built homes, this book is the story of our journey and the recipes that helped along the way.
Published by Obiter Publishing, 2017.
ANU Inspiring Women
This book is a celebration of some of the many inspirational women at the Australian National University, the culmination of a year-long project that highlights women’s contribution to all facets of campus life. The book proudly showcases a side of ANU that depends on the vivacity, warmth, intellectual power and personal courage that women bring to it. The ANU Inspiring Women project was undertaken by the ANU Gender Institute and it was launched by ANU Vice Chancellor Ian Young in March 2013. I was very proud to be the manager of this project.
