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Personal History

Barbara Caine FAHA, FRHS, FASSA, ARC funded Professorial Fellow.

I was the first Director of the Centre for Women's Studies at the University of Sydney before coming to Monash in 1995. Most of my earlier research and teaching centred on questions of gender and of sexuality within a late modern European framework. But I have now turned rather to look at questions about autobiography and biography and more broadly about the many different ways to approach questions about the individual life within history. At Monash, I coordinate a Masters program in Biography and Life Writing. I was awarded an ARC Professorial Fellowship in 2007 for a large project entitled 'History and the individual life.'

Current Research

I am currently involved in a few different individual and collaborative research projects.

I have just begun a large ARC funded project on the history of biography and autobiography in the British World.
I am completing a book on History and Biography for the Palgrave McMillan series on History and Theory which will be published in 2008.
I am working on a series of essays on the role and activities of women in the South African liberation movement.
I am involved in two collaborative projects, one of these involves the history of letters and letter-writing in Europe, the other is concerned with the idea of cosmopolitanism and its history.

Major Publications

Single or jointly authored books
Bombay to Bloomsbury: the Stracheys, c 1850-1950, Oxford University Press, 2005
Gendering European History, (jointly authored with Glenda Sluga)
Leicester University Press, 2000. This book has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Swedish
English Feminism, c1780-1970, Oxford University Press, 1997
Victorian Feminists, Oxford University Press, 1992
Destined to be Wives: The Sisters of Beatrice Webb, Oxford University Press, 1986

Edited Books and Journals
Freindship: A History, Equinox, 2009 forthcoming
Companion to Women's Historical Writing, (jointly edited with Mary Spongberg and Anne Curthoys), Palgrave McMillan, 2005
La bella Liberta: Women and the flight to Italy, Special issue of the journal, Women's Writing, 2002
A Companion to Australian Feminism, (Chief editor of book which was co- edited with Sophie Watson, Elizabeth Webby, Moira Gatens, Jan Larbalestier, Emma Graham) Oxford University Press. 1998
Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, eds B. Caine and R. Pringle, Allen & Unwin, 1995
Australian Feminisms, special issue of Women's History Review, vol.3, no. 3 eds., M. Spongberg, P. Russell, B. Caine,
Crossing Boundaries. Feminisms and the Critique of Knowledges, eds., B. Caine E. A. Grosz and Marie de Lepervanche, Allen and Unwin Sydney, 1988

Selected book chapters and journal articles
'Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Stuart Mill, and the nature of feminist thought', Elizabeth Cady Stanton, feminist as thinker, New York University Press, 2007, pp. 50-65
'Bloomsbury maculinity and its Victorian antecedents', The Journal of Men's Health, Men's Studies Press LLC, USA, 2007, pp. 271-281
'Stefan Collini, Virginia Woolf, and the question of intellectuals in Britain', Journal of the History of Ideas, University of Pennsylvania Press, USA, 2007, pp. 369-373
'Masculinity, emotion and subjectivity: Introduction', The Journal of Men's Health, Men's Studies Press LLC, USA, 2007, pp. 247-250
'Prisons as spaces of friendship in apartheid South Africa', History Australia, Monash University ePress, 2006, pp. 1-13.
'Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Stuart Mill and 19th century feminist thought' forthcoming in Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist as Thinker, ed., Ellen Carol Dubois and Richard Candida Smith, New York University Press, 2006
When did the Victorian period end? Questions of Gender and Generation, contribution to Round Table discussion on topic When did the 19th century end?Victorian Culture, vol.11, no.2, Autumn 2006.
'A Feminist Family: The Stracheys and feminism, c 1860-1950', Women's History Review, vol 14, nos 3 &4, 2005, pp. 385-404
'Feminist Biography', 'Feminism' 'Marriage and Family Life, Companion to Women's Historical Writing, 2005-12-22
'Journalism and women's public writing' in Joanne Shattock (ed) Women and Literature in Britain 1800-1900, Cambridge University Press, 200l
'Mothering feminism/Mothering Feminists: Ray Strachey and The Cause'Women's History Review, 9 (2) 295-310, 2000
'The Stracheys and Psychoanalysis', History Workshop Journal, Issue 45, 1998
'The Rights of Woman' in Iain McCalman Ed., The Oxford Companion to the Age of Romanticism and Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1998
'Victorian Feminism and the Ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft', Women's Writing, 4. ( 2) 1997, 261-275
'Feminism and Ageing', Australian Cultural History, vol. 8,(1995).
'Feminist Traditions, Women's Studies and the Question of History', in B. Caine and R. Pringle Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, Allen Unwin, 1995
'Feminist Biography and Feminist History', Women's History Review, 1994

Areas of Research & Supervision

Nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural history, with emphases on Europe and Australia; women's history; biography and history; life-story writing.

My principal teaching interests lie in the areas of Late Modern European cultural and social history, in debates about historiography and historical method, in questions about gender and history, about sexuality and in the broad area of history and biography. I supervise research in these areas, but also in work on women's history and questions of gender in European, Australian and Southern African History.

Current Supervision
Lisa Curtis-Wendlandt, 'German missionary women in 19th and early 20th century'
Sally Dammery, 'Menarche in cross-cultural perspective'
Patricia Armstrong-Grant, 'A Biography of Dame Joan Hammond'
Carolyn Adams, 'Australian nurses in the Anglo-Boer War'
Chris Child, 'Married women and economic independence in 19th century Victoria'
Margaret Taft, 'The concept of witnessing in the Holocaust'

Recent Completions
Carly Millar, 'A biography of Bessie Rischbieth'
Richard Scully, 'British ideas and representations of Germany, c1870-1914'
Josie Monro, 'Gender in popular culture in early modern England'
Barbara Russell, 'History and the maiden: Searching for women's voices in the History of South Africa'
Jessica Lee-Ack, 'Prostitution and Feminist Theory' (PhD, 2005)
Angela Argent, 'Exotic Creatures: Feminist intellectuals in Prague in the 1990s' (PhD, 2003)

Teaching

HSY4270 - Research methods in Biography and Life Writing
HYM4/5270 - Research methods in Biography and Life Writing