Author: Petra Mosmann
Mosmann, Petra, 2018 Archives of the Australian Second Wave: History and Feminism after the Archival Turn, Flinders University, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
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This thesis writes a history of the second wave by reading objects in public Australian feminist archives; rather than searching for evidence and writing a history of a particular event, group, identity, text, idea or issue, I read selected pieces of second wave material culture in relation to their collection and location within a feminist archive. The thesis makes two contributions. First, I argue that there is much to be gained by further engaging with the archival turn within historical studies. Second, my reading of feminist objects in archives disrupts descriptions of feminist history that emerge in feminist studies. The objects and their archives disrupt, as they fail to neatly illustrate familiar feminist narratives of the past and offer a set of complex concerns and relationships that defy the conventional linear periodisation of feminist thought. I therefore demonstrate a methodology for writing feminist history that further addresses the archive after the archival turn.
Keywords: feminism, archive, Australia
Subject: Australian Studies thesis, Women's Studies thesis
Thesis type: Doctor of Philosophy
Completed: 2018
School: College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
Supervisor: Dr Catherine Kevin