Keynotes

Professor Stephen Garton
“Historicism and other dilemmas in writing histories of sexuality”

The history of sexuality was one of the great battlegrounds in the theory wars of the late twentieth century – a primary site for the struggle between essentialism and social constructionism. The fire in this debate has diminished somewhat in the twenty-first century but the challenges of writing on sexuality and its history has in no way diminished. Historians now face a more complex field of competing approaches, methods, theories and themes than before. This paper provides an overview of some of these developments and highlights some the recent trends in the historiography, particularly those concerned with questions of the subversion of identity, resistance and the capacity of sexuality to be a point of contest against dominant forms of social being.
Stephen Garton is Challis Professor of History and Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Medicine and Madness (1988), Out of Luck (1990), The Cost of War (1996) and Histories of Sexuality (2004) as well as numerous articles and chapters in such fields as the history of crime, eugenics, the culture of war, masculinity and incarceration. He is currently working on some collaborative projects , notably Everyday Life in Harlem in  the 1920s and the Dictionary of Sydney, both of which have innovative ehumanities dimensions.


Dr. Alison J. Laurie
Pre-1970 transnational lesbian and homosexual connections - the Australian and New Zealand links.

This paper is a work in progress. It discusses the pre-1970, pre-gay liberation and lesbian-feminist transnational connections made by selected New Zealand and Australian lesbians and homosexual men, based on archival research including subscriptions and letters to lesbian/gay/homosexual publications, as well as on personal experience during the pre-1970 period. Were Australian and New Zealand lesbians and homosexual men isolated from the ideas and developments happening elsewhere, or were some part of international networks? How effective was pre-1970 censorship at preventing access to international homosexual and lesbian publications? How did Australians and New Zealanders discover the existence of these publications? What impact did these connections have on pre-1970 homosexual organisations, in particular the NZ Homosexual Law Reform Society?

Alison is Programme Director of Gender and Women's Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, and a long term gay and lesbian community activist, especially on homosexual law reform and human rights campaigns. She was a founder of Circle, NZ first lesbian magazine, of the first NZ lesbian organisation, Sisters for Homophile Equality (SHE), and the first lesbian community radio programme.  She has published nationally and internationally on lesbian and homosexual histories, including Parker and Hulme, a lesbian view (with Julie Glamuzina); and has edited Lesbian Studies in Aotearoa; and with Linda Evans, Outlines, lesbian and gay histories of Aotearoa, and Twenty years on, histories of homosexual law reform in Aotearoa. She is presently writing A social history of lesbians in New Zealand, editing international collections Lesbians in history, and with Graham Willett Wolfenden 50; the aftermath of the Report.