Professor Susan Magarey

Biography/ Background

Susan Magarey AM, FASSA, PhD, has degrees in English Literature and History from Adelaide University and the Australian National University. She was Director of the Research Centre for Women's Studies at Adelaide University where she is now Adjunct-Professor in History. She is the author of three monographs: one, her prize-winning biography of Catherine Helen Spence, Unbridling the tongues of women (1986) is to be republished in 2010 by Adelaide University Press, with a new Introduction; the second, Passions of the first-wave feminists, was published in 2001; and the third, Looking Backward: Looking Forward. A History of the Queen Adelaide Club 1909-2009 appeared in 2009. She is also, with Kerrie Round, co-author of Roma the First: a Biography of Dame Roma Mitchell (Wakefield Press), Adelaide, 2007, second revised imprint 2009. 

She has published more than sixty articles and book chapters. Among the most recent are

'What is Happening to Women's History in Australia at the Beginning of the Third Millenium?', Women's History Review, Vol.16, No.1, February 2007;

'Dreams and Desires: four 1970s Feminist Visions of Utopia', Australian Feminist Studies, Vol.22, No. 53, July 2007;

'Dame Roma Mitchell's Unmentionables: Sex, Politics and Religion', the Fourth History Council of South Australia Lecture, 2007, in History Australia, 2008;

When it changed: the beginnings of Women's Liberation in Australia in David Roberts and Martin Crotty (eds), Turning Points In Australian History (UNSW Press) Sydney, 2008; 

Three Questions for Biographers: Public or Private? Individual or Society? Truth or Beauty?, Journal of Historical Biography (Canada), no.4, Autumn 2008;

The Sexual Revolution as Big Flop, in Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ed.), Dialogue, vol.27, no.3, 2008;

The private life of Catherine Helen Spence 1825-1910 in Graeme Davison, Pat Jalland and Wilfrid Prest (eds), Body and Mind in Modern British and Australian History: Essays in Honour of FB Smith (Melbourne University Publishing), Melbourne, 2009;

The Centre of South Australia's Progressive Law Reform in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century? Dame Roma Mitchell, in Law School of Adelaide (ed.), Law 125 Distinguished Speakers, forthcoming 2010.

She has edited eight collections of articles - including Women in a Restructuring Australia: Work & Welfare (1995) with Anne Edwards, and Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1890s (1993) with Sue Rowley and Susan Sheridan - and was for twenty years the Founding Editor of the tri-annual journal, Australian Feminist Studies.

She is the founder of the Magarey Medal for Biography, a member of the Board of the History Trust of South Australia and a member of the Committee of the Friends of the Library of the University of Adelaide. She is writing a history of the Women's Liberation Movement in Australia. For fun, she swims, gardens, cooks and listens to music. She describes her life in the words of Australian poet Jennifer Maiden: 'Ambivalent, ambidextrous, ambiguous, androgynous, amorous, ironic'. In her next life she will be a trapeze artist.

In June 2008, she presented a paper to the Network for Research in Women's History conference held at the University of Melbourne in conjunction with the conference of the Australian Historical Association, titled 'The Sexual Revolution as Big Flop: Women's Liberation Lesson One'. (an un-edited version is attached below).

In June 2009, she presented a paper to the Network for Research in Women's History conference held at the University of the Sunshine Coast in conjunction with the conference of the Australian Historical Association titled 'The 1970s Australian Girl: from "I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do" to "The Winner Takes It All"', also attached below.

Files

• Susan Magarey paper - The_1970s_Girl_in_Australia.pdf [43.0K] (application/pdf)
• Susan Magarey paper - The_Sexual_Revolution_as_Big_Flo1.pdf [41.6K] (application/pdf)

Expertise for Media Contact

Categories	Human rights and civil liberties, History
Expertise	Late 19th and early 20th century; history; feminism (history of women's movements, women's suffrage in Australia, women's liberation, equal rights)
Notes	Alt phone: (08) 8303 5611

Entry last updated: Sunday, 15 Nov 2009