Australian Studies Commons^™

Finding A Place For Women In Australian Cultural History: Female Cultural Activism In Sydney, 1900-1940, Jane Hunt

Jane Hunt

With only a few exceptions, the endeavours of culturally active women appear as irrelevant or marginal to the history of Australian culture. Australian cultural historiography dwells on antithetic relationships, whether between cultural-political elites, gendered spaces and practices, or elitist and popular culture. However, this historical preoccupation with dichotomous notions of class, gender, and culture has deflected attention from other aspects of the struggle to define culture. Cultural definitions were far from fixed for most of the first half of the twentieth century in Australia. Negotiations on what constituted appropriate cultural form, content, and practice are apparent inside and outside establishment …