AustLit

'At this year’s Australian Women’s History Network Symposium ‘The Past is a Position: History, Activism and Privilege’, Dr Chelsea Bond urged that the past is not a position; it is ever-present. If historical representations of Aboriginal women are products of their time, Bond posed, ‘what time are we in now?’1 She suggested that stories and representations of Aboriginal women continue to enact the damage of colonial constructions. The statement resonated with those who attended as Dr Bond, Associate Professor Barbara Baird and Professor Suvendrini Perera reflected on the ways in which their academic work intersected with their activism. Beyond the symposium, the presence of the past, our past, and the academic and political conflict over its meanings and legacies, has not eased its heavy weight on the intellectual and emotional labour of feminist academics in 2018.' (Georgina Rychner : Editorial introduction)

'Intersectionality is a relatively recent term for a deeply historic phenomenon. It refers to the way in which individuals and groups are caught in intersecting systems of oppression, such as class, race and gender. As Ange-Marie Hancock argues, intersectionality has been a ‘pathbreaking analytical framework for understanding questions of inequality and injustice’.1 It has become part of popular culture in recent years as the rise of populism and the growth of inequality in countries across the world have inspired new movements of solidarity between all those who think that black lives matter, or who reject a narrow view of immigration that sees Australia and New Zealand resorting to notions of labour productivity that are closely intertwined with race and gender. Who is understood as deserving in a nation, whether immigrant, refugee, poor, or of colour? Who decides this—and who protests these decisions? How this notion of ‘deserving’ is enacted upon—how this decision is made—is a site upon which individuals negotiate the intersections between huge systems that seek to define populations and individuals. Who gets to use which bathroom or wear which school uniform? Who can go through passport control with ease? The popular rise in engagement with intersectionality evident in these current political examples was anticipated and accompanied by the growth of scholarship on the phenomenon.'  (Editorial introduction)

'At the March 2016 ‘Intersections in History’ Conference, eminent feminist historian Professor Patricia Grimshaw recounted the origins of the Australian Women’s History Network (AWHN). The AWHN ‘helped start a conversation’ with the Australian Historical Association (AHA) ‘about [the] representation of women in Ph.D. programs and lecturing’, Grimshaw asserted; it perhaps even forced the AHA to ‘consider gender politics in academia’.1 Access to these enlightening recollections was made possible not through participants’ memory of the conference held at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre in Melbourne, but through the documentation of the conference on Twitter. Both Lilith: A Feminist History Journal and the AWHN are becoming more engaged with new media technologies, spaces that some argue have a democratising effect and even constitute new forms of feminist activism.2 Indeed, the AWHN will be expanding their efforts in this direction with an upcoming feminist history blog, to be edited by current Lilith Collective members Dr. Alana Piper and Dr. Ana Stevenson. The 2016 AWHN conference topic was in part inspired, or provoked, by the rise of ‘intersectionality’ in online feminist conversations and communities. Conference participants discussed an academic focus on intersections as a productive, but also a seductive, space - one that can illuminate but may also distract.' (Editorial introduction)