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Articles and chapters by Jane Carey

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction: On the critical importance of colonial formations

Papers by Jane Carey

Research paper thumbnail of Thinking with and beyond settler colonial studies: new histories after the postcolonial

Postcolonial Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Australian settler colonialism over the long nineteenth century: new insights into history, gender and biopolitics

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, Routledge, Cavanagh E and Veracini L (ed), United Kingdom, pp. 371-389. , 2017

Research paper thumbnail of A 'happy blending'? Maori networks, anthrolpology and 'Native' policy in New Zealand, the Pacific and beyond

Indigenous Networks: Mobility, Connections and Exchange, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Epilogue: Indigenising Transnationalism? Challenges for New Imperial and Cosmopolitan Histories

Indigenous Networks: Mobility, Connections and Exchange, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of 'Not Only a White Race, but a Race of the Best Whites': The Women's Movement, White Australia and Eugenics between the Wars

This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's... more This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's movement in the inter-war years. It argues that, compared to the relatively limited attention paid to the 'Aboriginal problem', concerns about white degeneracy abounded. The paper focuses on the female-dominated Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales, Australia's largest and longest-lasting eugenic organisation, and its campaigns around venereal disease and the segregation and sterilization of 'mental deficients'. Eugenics has usually been associated with moves to limit white women to their domestic and reproductive roles, to their status as 'mothers of the race'. However, this paper demonstrates how such racial discourses were also appropriated by elite women to support their own reforming agendas and to argue for a larger public role for themselves in working to halt the perceived threat of white racial degeneracy. These activities are significant beyond understanding the impact of racial thinking on the women's movement alone. They point to the ways in which discourses of whiteness, like eugenics, formed a major field of racial discussion more broadly. Since the 1970s historians have looked largely, if not exclusively, towards white western constructions of 'others' to understand ideas about 'race'. What I wish to suggest here is that such an approach is not always sufficient. Overlooking these discussions of whiteness means losing sight of one of the key domains in which ideas about race were being articulated.

Research paper thumbnail of A new beginning for Settler Colonial Studies

Settler Colonial Studies, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Creating White Australia: New perspectives on race, whiteness and history

Creating White Australia, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of 'The Racial Imperatives of Sex: Birth Control and Eugenics in Britain, the United States and Australia in the Interwar Years'

Research paper thumbnail of "What's a nice girl like you doing with a Nobel Prize?" Elizabeth Blackburn, Australia's first women Nobel Laureate and women's scientific leadership

In 2009 Elizabeth Blackburn (along with two of her American colleagues) won the Nobel Prize for P... more In 2009 Elizabeth Blackburn (along with two of her American colleagues) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, confirming her position as a global scientific leader. She was immediately celebrated as Australia's first woman Nobel laureate. However, although 2009 was a 'bumper' year for women Nobel laureates, with five winners in total, the media coverage soon became highly negative and discouraging. Much discussion focused not on Blackburn's scientific work but on her gender -the difficulties it was assumed she must have faced individually as a woman scientist, and her wider leadership role in encouraging and supporting other women to overcome these obstacles. In this chapter I suggest the continuing highly negative ways the possibilities for women's participation and leadership in science are discussed are counterproductive. Journalistic, policy and scholarly discussions of the 'problem' of women in science misconstrue the extent of women's participation in the field and the nature of their experiences. In all these spheres, science continues to be understood and represented as an unhappy place for women to be. This misrepresentation, I argue, undercuts the leadership roles women scientists are seeking.

Research paper thumbnail of Jane Carey et al, 'Historicising Whiteness: Towards a New Research Agenda', in Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, ed. Leigh Boucher, Jane; Carey, and Katherine Ellinghaus, (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007): vi-xxiii.

This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic an... more This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic and political potential, needs to pay closer attention to historical specificity, power-relations and transnational processes of material and discursive exchange if it is to move forward. Through a wide-ranging historiographical survey, this introduction 'takes stock' of the field and offers a number of strategies through the analytic and political pitfalls that have characterised studies of whiteness in the past fifteen years. Perhaps most significantly, this paper draws on a burgeoning literature from Australia to address the largely American criticisms of whiteness studies.

Research paper thumbnail of White anxieties and the articulation of race: The women’s movement and the making of White Australia, 1910s–1930s

Creating White Australia, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Utopian Visions of Evolution and Race in Feminist Fiction and Activism: Some Preliminary Reflections on Catherine Spence, Henrietta Dugdale and other late Nineteenth-century Australian Writers

Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction wit... more Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction within early western feminism, this article presents some preliminary reflections on the first two feminist utopian novels published in Australia, Henrietta Dugdale's A Few Hours in a Far-off Age (1883) and Catherine Spence's A Week in the Future (1888-9). While these novels are relatively well known as significant early feminist texts, they have not been the subject of any focussed scholarly analysis. Closer reading reveals that the feminist futures presented in these works were fundamentally based in evolutionary and proto-eugenic theories. Paradoxically, then, these visions relied on biological determinism. They also reflected a racially exclusive worldview. When situated alongside other feminist non-fictional writing and activism, these texts are thus particularly suggestive in terms of understanding how 'race' operated within Australian feminist thought and activism in this period.

Research paper thumbnail of Foremothers VI: Kathleen Fitzpatrick (1905-1990), Margaret Kiddle (1914-1958) and Australian History After the Second World War

Gender <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> History, 2001

Early in the new academic year of 1958 Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor of History at th... more Early in the new academic year of 1958 Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, addressed an audience of members of the Victorian Women Graduates' Association in the University's Wilson Hall. The Vice Chancellor and several other important university dignitaries were also present. She used the occasion of the association's presentation of a memorial screen honouring the university's first women graduates, of some eighty years before, to reflect on the history of the fight for equality and justice for women in Australia and on the challenges that remained. Surely, she said, women's positive contribution to the life of the community was not yet as great as had once been hoped. 'I find it hard to know why in our country the emancipation of women reached a certain point and then, or so it seems, stopped dead.' 1 She objected to the way people declared that the time for militant feminism had passed, and that professional women could help the cause

Research paper thumbnail of EDITORIAL: WHITENESS STUDIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEME IN 2009, SOME COMMENTS

... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 “lip s... more ... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 “lip sewing” protests at Woomera, he argues that they provide the cultural Other against which the text constructs an ideal audience and the reader a moral cultural self: “In both 'negative' and ...

Edited collections by Jane Carey

Research paper thumbnail of Indigenous Networks Mobility, Connections and Exchange

This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within gl... more This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within global networks of imperial power and wider histories of "transnational" connections. It takes up a crucial challenge for new imperial and transnational histories: to explore the historical role of colonized and subaltern communities in these processes, and their legacies in the present. Bringing together prominent and emerging scholars who have begun to explore Indigenous networks and "transnational" encounters, and to consider the broader significance of "extra-local" connections, exchanges and mobility for Indigenous peoples, this work engages closely with some of the key historical scholarship on transnationalism and the networks of European imperialism. Chapters deploy a range of analytic scales, including global, regional and intra-Indigenous networks, and methods, including histories of ideas and cultural forms and biography, as well as exploring contemporary legacies. In drawing these perspectives together, this book charts an important new direction in research.

Research paper thumbnail of Creating White Australia

The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australia's racial past. Creating White Australia takes a fresh approach to the question of ‘race’ in Australian history. It demonstrates that Australia's racial foundations can only be understood by recognising whiteness too as 'race'. Including contributions from some of the leading as well as emerging scholars in Australian history, it breaks new ground by arguing that ‘whiteness’ was central to the racial ideologies that created the Australian nation.

This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.

Research paper thumbnail of Creating White Australia

The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australiażs racial past. ...

Research paper thumbnail of Introduction: On the critical importance of colonial formations

Research paper thumbnail of Thinking with and beyond settler colonial studies: new histories after the postcolonial

Postcolonial Studies, 2020

Research paper thumbnail of Australian settler colonialism over the long nineteenth century: new insights into history, gender and biopolitics

The Routledge Handbook of the History of Settler Colonialism, Routledge, Cavanagh E and Veracini L (ed), United Kingdom, pp. 371-389. , 2017

Research paper thumbnail of A 'happy blending'? Maori networks, anthrolpology and 'Native' policy in New Zealand, the Pacific and beyond

Indigenous Networks: Mobility, Connections and Exchange, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of Epilogue: Indigenising Transnationalism? Challenges for New Imperial and Cosmopolitan Histories

Indigenous Networks: Mobility, Connections and Exchange, 2014

Research paper thumbnail of 'Not Only a White Race, but a Race of the Best Whites': The Women's Movement, White Australia and Eugenics between the Wars

This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's... more This paper explores campaigns for white racial improvement emerging out of the Australian women's movement in the inter-war years. It argues that, compared to the relatively limited attention paid to the 'Aboriginal problem', concerns about white degeneracy abounded. The paper focuses on the female-dominated Racial Hygiene Association of New South Wales, Australia's largest and longest-lasting eugenic organisation, and its campaigns around venereal disease and the segregation and sterilization of 'mental deficients'. Eugenics has usually been associated with moves to limit white women to their domestic and reproductive roles, to their status as 'mothers of the race'. However, this paper demonstrates how such racial discourses were also appropriated by elite women to support their own reforming agendas and to argue for a larger public role for themselves in working to halt the perceived threat of white racial degeneracy. These activities are significant beyond understanding the impact of racial thinking on the women's movement alone. They point to the ways in which discourses of whiteness, like eugenics, formed a major field of racial discussion more broadly. Since the 1970s historians have looked largely, if not exclusively, towards white western constructions of 'others' to understand ideas about 'race'. What I wish to suggest here is that such an approach is not always sufficient. Overlooking these discussions of whiteness means losing sight of one of the key domains in which ideas about race were being articulated.

Research paper thumbnail of A new beginning for Settler Colonial Studies

Settler Colonial Studies, 2013

Research paper thumbnail of Creating White Australia: New perspectives on race, whiteness and history

Creating White Australia, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of 'The Racial Imperatives of Sex: Birth Control and Eugenics in Britain, the United States and Australia in the Interwar Years'

Research paper thumbnail of "What's a nice girl like you doing with a Nobel Prize?" Elizabeth Blackburn, Australia's first women Nobel Laureate and women's scientific leadership

In 2009 Elizabeth Blackburn (along with two of her American colleagues) won the Nobel Prize for P... more In 2009 Elizabeth Blackburn (along with two of her American colleagues) won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine, confirming her position as a global scientific leader. She was immediately celebrated as Australia's first woman Nobel laureate. However, although 2009 was a 'bumper' year for women Nobel laureates, with five winners in total, the media coverage soon became highly negative and discouraging. Much discussion focused not on Blackburn's scientific work but on her gender -the difficulties it was assumed she must have faced individually as a woman scientist, and her wider leadership role in encouraging and supporting other women to overcome these obstacles. In this chapter I suggest the continuing highly negative ways the possibilities for women's participation and leadership in science are discussed are counterproductive. Journalistic, policy and scholarly discussions of the 'problem' of women in science misconstrue the extent of women's participation in the field and the nature of their experiences. In all these spheres, science continues to be understood and represented as an unhappy place for women to be. This misrepresentation, I argue, undercuts the leadership roles women scientists are seeking.

Research paper thumbnail of Jane Carey et al, 'Historicising Whiteness: Towards a New Research Agenda', in Historicising Whiteness: Transnational Perspectives on the Construction of an Identity, ed. Leigh Boucher, Jane; Carey, and Katherine Ellinghaus, (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2007): vi-xxiii.

This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic an... more This paper suggests that the field of whiteness studies, whilst offering considerable analytic and political potential, needs to pay closer attention to historical specificity, power-relations and transnational processes of material and discursive exchange if it is to move forward. Through a wide-ranging historiographical survey, this introduction 'takes stock' of the field and offers a number of strategies through the analytic and political pitfalls that have characterised studies of whiteness in the past fifteen years. Perhaps most significantly, this paper draws on a burgeoning literature from Australia to address the largely American criticisms of whiteness studies.

Research paper thumbnail of White anxieties and the articulation of race: The women’s movement and the making of White Australia, 1910s–1930s

Creating White Australia, 2009

Research paper thumbnail of Utopian Visions of Evolution and Race in Feminist Fiction and Activism: Some Preliminary Reflections on Catherine Spence, Henrietta Dugdale and other late Nineteenth-century Australian Writers

Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction wit... more Building on international scholarship that has demonstrated the importance of utopian fiction within early western feminism, this article presents some preliminary reflections on the first two feminist utopian novels published in Australia, Henrietta Dugdale's A Few Hours in a Far-off Age (1883) and Catherine Spence's A Week in the Future (1888-9). While these novels are relatively well known as significant early feminist texts, they have not been the subject of any focussed scholarly analysis. Closer reading reveals that the feminist futures presented in these works were fundamentally based in evolutionary and proto-eugenic theories. Paradoxically, then, these visions relied on biological determinism. They also reflected a racially exclusive worldview. When situated alongside other feminist non-fictional writing and activism, these texts are thus particularly suggestive in terms of understanding how 'race' operated within Australian feminist thought and activism in this period.

Research paper thumbnail of Foremothers VI: Kathleen Fitzpatrick (1905-1990), Margaret Kiddle (1914-1958) and Australian History After the Second World War

Gender <html_ent glyph="@amp;" ascii="&"/> History, 2001

Early in the new academic year of 1958 Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor of History at th... more Early in the new academic year of 1958 Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Associate Professor of History at the University of Melbourne, addressed an audience of members of the Victorian Women Graduates' Association in the University's Wilson Hall. The Vice Chancellor and several other important university dignitaries were also present. She used the occasion of the association's presentation of a memorial screen honouring the university's first women graduates, of some eighty years before, to reflect on the history of the fight for equality and justice for women in Australia and on the challenges that remained. Surely, she said, women's positive contribution to the life of the community was not yet as great as had once been hoped. 'I find it hard to know why in our country the emancipation of women reached a certain point and then, or so it seems, stopped dead.' 1 She objected to the way people declared that the time for militant feminism had passed, and that professional women could help the cause

Research paper thumbnail of EDITORIAL: WHITENESS STUDIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEME IN 2009, SOME COMMENTS

... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 “lip s... more ... Examining media representation of asylum seekers, particularly in relation to the 2002 “lip sewing” protests at Woomera, he argues that they provide the cultural Other against which the text constructs an ideal audience and the reader a moral cultural self: “In both 'negative' and ...

Research paper thumbnail of Indigenous Networks Mobility, Connections and Exchange

This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within gl... more This edited collection argues for the importance of recovering Indigenous participation within global networks of imperial power and wider histories of "transnational" connections. It takes up a crucial challenge for new imperial and transnational histories: to explore the historical role of colonized and subaltern communities in these processes, and their legacies in the present. Bringing together prominent and emerging scholars who have begun to explore Indigenous networks and "transnational" encounters, and to consider the broader significance of "extra-local" connections, exchanges and mobility for Indigenous peoples, this work engages closely with some of the key historical scholarship on transnationalism and the networks of European imperialism. Chapters deploy a range of analytic scales, including global, regional and intra-Indigenous networks, and methods, including histories of ideas and cultural forms and biography, as well as exploring contemporary legacies. In drawing these perspectives together, this book charts an important new direction in research.

Research paper thumbnail of Creating White Australia

The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australia's racial past. Creating White Australia takes a fresh approach to the question of ‘race’ in Australian history. It demonstrates that Australia's racial foundations can only be understood by recognising whiteness too as 'race'. Including contributions from some of the leading as well as emerging scholars in Australian history, it breaks new ground by arguing that ‘whiteness’ was central to the racial ideologies that created the Australian nation.

This book pursues the foundations of white Australia across diverse locales. It also situates the development of Australian whiteness within broader imperial and global influences. As the recent apology to the Stolen Generations, the Northern Territory Intervention and controversies over asylum seekers reveal, the legacies of these histories are still very much with us today.

Research paper thumbnail of Creating White Australia

The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was cruc... more The adoption of White Australia as government policy in 1901 demonstrates that whiteness was crucial to the ways in which the new nation of Australia was constituted. And yet, historians have largely overlooked whiteness in their studies of Australiażs racial past. ...