‘Uphill all the way’

Catherine Helen Spence, Mr Hogarth's Will (1865) (Penguin) Ringwood, 1988; Mary Gaunt, Kirkham's Find, (1897) (Penguin) Ringwood, 1988; Ada Cambridge, Sisters (1904) (Penguin) Ringwood, 1989; Lucy Sussex, Ed., The Fortunes of Mary Fortune (Penguin) Ringwood, 1989.     

Feminist forbears

Margaret Foster, Significant Sisters. The Grassroots of Active Feminism 1839–1939 (Penguin Books) Harmondsworth, 1986; David Rubinstein, Before the Suffragettes. Women's Emancipation in the 1890s (Harvester Press) Brighton, 1986.     

Women,ordination and the church

Margaret Ann Franklin (ed), The Force of the Feminine (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1986; Margaret Ann Franklin and Ruth Sturmey Jones (eds), Opening the Cage (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1987; Kate Nelson and Dominica Nelson (eds), Sweet Mothers, Sweet Maids (Penguin) Ringwood, 1986; Karen Armstrong, The Gospel According to Woman (Elm Tree) London, 1986; Kerreen Reiger, The Daughters of Eve and Mary: Women in the Modern World, Occasional Paper No. 6, IPOFAC, Mission of St James & St John, Melbourne, 1987.     

Anthologomania

Drusilla Modjeska (ed.), Inner Cities: Australian Women's Memory of Place (Penguin) Ringwood, 1989; Susan Hawthorne and Jenny Pausacker (eds), Moments of Desire: Sex and Sensuality by Australian Feminist Writers (Penguin), Ringwood, 1989; Gillian Whitlock (ed.), Eight Voices of the Eighties (The University of Queensland Press) St. Lucia, 1989; Guilia Guiffré (ed.), A Writing Life (Allen and Unwin) Sydney, 1990.     

Illness as privilege: Hildegard von Bingen and the condition of mystic writing

Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. By Ann Daly. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1995.

The Penguin Book of Women's Humor. Edited by Regina Barreca. New York: Penguin, 1996.     

Which way to the barricades?

Ann Curthoys, For and Against Feminism. A Personal Journey into Feminist Theory and History (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1988; Elizabeth Wilson, Hidden Agendas. Theory, Politics, and Experience in the Women's Movement (Tavistock) London & New York, 1986; Charlotte Bunch, Passionate Politics. Feminist Theory in Action (St. Martin's Press) New York, 1987.     

Reviews

Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity (Harvard University Press) Cambridge, MA, 1995.

Katie Holmes, Spaces in Her Day: Australian Women's Diaries 1920s‐1930s (Allen & Unwin) St Leonards, NSW, 1995.

Ros Pesman, Duty Free: Australian Women Abroad (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1996.

Frances Porter and Charlotte Macdonald (eds), ’My Hand Will Write What My Heart Dictates’ (Auckland University Press with Bridget Williams Books) Auckland, 1996.

Lucy Bland, Banishing the Beast: English Feminism & Sexual Morality 1885–1914 (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1995.

Margaret Thornton, Dissonance and Distrust: Women in the Legal Profession (Oxford University Press) Melbourne, 1996.

Diane Bell and Renate Klein (eds), Radically Speaking: Feminism Reclaimed (Spinifex Press) North Melbourne, 1996.

Rye Senjen and Jane Guthrey, The Internet for Women (Spinifex Press) North Melbourne, 1996.     

Dréed's drag kinging of race,sex, and the queering of the American racial machine‐désirante

Help Wanted, written by Franz Xavier Kroetz, translated by Gitta Honegger, directed by JoAnne Akalaitis, presented by Mabou Mines at Theatre for the New City, New York City, February and April, 1986.

The Women Here Are No Different, by Nancy Beckett, directed by Jenny O'Hara, presented by 13th Street Repertory Company, New York City. (attended on 8.27.86).

The Early Girl, by Caroline Kava. Directed by Munson Hicks. Circle Repertory Theatre.

Crowsfeet Dance Collective, Performance Space 122, New York City. June 1986.

This Is For You, Anna/A Spectacle of Revenge, directed by June Guralnick; created by The Anna Project (initiated at the Nightwood Theatre in Toronto), Suzanne Odette Khun, Ann‐Marie MacDonald, Patricia Nichols, Banuta Rubess, Maureen White; performed by members of The Women's Ensemble Theatre: Mia Kanazawa, Alonia King, Judith Pucci, Debbie Smith.

Rate It X, produced by Lynn Campbell, Claudette Charbonnear, Paula de Koenigsberg and Lucy Winer. OMT Productions Inc and Channel 4 of London, 1985. NYC Film Forum 1987. Distributed by Interama Inc.

Interview with Filmmaker Marken Gorris, conducted by Katheryn White with Helma Klooss at the Barbizon Plaza Hotel in New York City during Holland Film Week at Carnegie Hall Cinema, Spring, 1986.

Sex &; Dance Series, Dance Theatre Workshop (DTW) and P.S. 122, October‐November, 1986.

L.O.W. in Gaia, by Rachel Rosenthal. The Kitchen. New York City.

Books

Interviews With Contemporary Women Playwrights, by Kathleen Betsko and Rachel Koenig. New York: Beech Tree Books, 1987. 480 pp. Index.

Feminist Theatre: An Introduction to Plays of Contemporary British and American Women, by Helene Keyssar. London: MacMillan Modern Dramatists, 1984. 223 pp. Bibliography and index.

The public forum

A Report on the Women's Preconvention of the National Educational Theatre Conference, Tisch School of the Arts and the Gallatin Division, New York University, August 15–16, 1986.

Founding Mothers: Contemporary Dance as a Canon for Women's Studies, Department of Dance in collaboration with the Women's Studies Program and the Research Center for the Arts and Humanities, University of Maryland, College Park.

The Third Annual Women in Theatre Festival, Boston, March 20–29, 1987.     

Before and after Mau Mau in Kenya

Paul Collier and Deepak Lal, Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900–1980, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp.296. £27.50.

Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, London: James Currey, 1987. Pp.206. £25 and £8.95.

David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–1953, London: James Currey, 1987. Pp.304. £25 and £8.95.

The author discusses three books on Kenya. Tabitha Kanogo's Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau and Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau by David Throup examine why there was agrarian revolt in Kenya during the 1940s and 1950s. This article raises questions about tragedy and community, the two key ideas upon which the two books rest. Another text, Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900–1980 by Paul Collier and Deepak Lal, proponents of the new liberal attack on development, is also reviewed. It is argued that Collier and Lal fail to grasp the basis of state intervention to support schemes of peasant production.     

Work,love and politics: Recent studies of nineteenth‐century British women

Olive Banks, Becoming a Feminist. The Social Origins of ‘First Wave’ Feminism (Wheatsheaf) Brighton, 1986; Barbara Caine, Destined To Be Wives. The Sisters of Beatrice Webb (Clarendon) Oxford, 1986; Sandra Stanley Holton, Feminism and Democracy. Women's Suffrage and Reform Politics in Britain, 1900–1918 (Cambridge University Press) New York, 1986; Pat Jalland, Women, Marriage and Politics 1860–1914 (Clarendon) Oxford, 1986; Sylvia Walby, Patriarchy at Work. Patriarchal and Capitalist Relations in Employment (Polity) Cambridge, 1986.     

Editorial

The whole of this issue of Australian Feminist Studies is devoted to the theme ‘Making us Modern’ guest-edited by Alison Ravenscroft. Modernity was, I have argued myself, an essential element of First-wave Feminism. The articles that Alison has brought togetherm show how mutually imbricated are questions raised by a later feminism and modernism. Alison has written her own introduction for this splendid issue. Accordingly, all that I need to do here is extraneous to it. I want to record our regret at the passing of Oriel Gray, one of Australia's first female playwrights. The Playwrights' Advisory Board voted her work, The Torrents, best play in 1955, alongside Ray Lawler's Summer of the Seventeenth Doll. She wrote a number of stage plays, worked for radio and television, and published an autobiography—Exit Left: Memoirs of a Scarlet Woman (Penguin Books)—in 1985. I want to record our sadness, too, at the death of Glen Tomasetti, singer, song-writer and author. She wrote poetry, articles and reviews, and two novels: Thoroughly Decent People (1976), and Man of Letters (1981). In the Australian Women's Movement she is best known for one of the protest songs that she wrote in the early 1970s; this one, ‘Don't Be Too Polite, Girls’ has often been played as a kind of Women's Movement anthem. As always, I owe thanks to everyone who contributes to this journal—authors, assessors, editorial advisory collective members, review editor Susan Sheridan, assistant editor Mary Lyons, and, for this issue, my very warm thanks to Alison Ravenscroft.     

Women in the U.S.S.R.

Genia K. Browning, Women and Politics in the USSR. Consciousness Raising and Soviet Women's Croups (Wheatsheaf Books) Sussex, 1987; Tatyana Mamonova, Russian Women's Studies. Essays on Sexism in Soviet Culture (Pergamon Press) Oxford, 1989.     

Reading women's bodies

Jane Ussher, The Psychology of the Female Body (Routledge) London, 1989; Emily Martin, The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Open University Press) Milton Keynes, 1989 (1987); Phillida Bunkle, Second Opinion: The politics of women's health in New Zealand (Oxford University Press) Auckland, 1988; Valerie Fildes, Wet Nursing: A History from Antiquity to the Present (Basil Blackwell) Oxford, 1988.     

Book Reviews

MARY SHELLEY &; FRANKENSTEIN; THE FATE OF ANDROGYNY by William Veeder. (The University of Chicago Press, 1986), Cloth, $22.50

THE FEMALE MALADY: WOMEN, MADNESS, AND ENGLISH CULTURE, 1830–1980 by Elaine Showalter. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 312 pp., 29 illustrations.

PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMA by Peter Erickson. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985) xii + 209 pp. $22.00

RECLAIMING A CONVERSATION: THE IDEAL OF THE EDUCATED WOMAN by Jane Roland Martin. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); ALMA MATER: DESIGN AND EXPERIENCE IN THE WOMEN'S COLLEGES FROM THEIR 19TH‐CENTURY BEGINNINGS TO THE 1930s by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. (New York: Knopf, 1984); IN THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED WOMEN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA by Barbara Miller Solomon. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).     

Beyond stereotypes: Mary Wilkins Freeman's radical critique of nineteenth‐century cults of femininity

MARY SHELLEY &; FRANKENSTEIN; THE FATE OF ANDROGYNY by William Veeder. (The University of Chicago Press, 1986), Cloth, $22.50

THE FEMALE MALADY: WOMEN, MADNESS, AND ENGLISH CULTURE, 1830–1980 by Elaine Showalter. (New York: Pantheon Books, 1985), 312 pp., 29 illustrations.

PATRIARCHAL STRUCTURES IN SHAKESPEARE'S DRAMA by Peter Erickson. (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1985) xii + 209 pp. $22.00

RECLAIMING A CONVERSATION: THE IDEAL OF THE EDUCATED WOMAN by Jane Roland Martin. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985); ALMA MATER: DESIGN AND EXPERIENCE IN THE WOMEN'S COLLEGES FROM THEIR 19TH‐CENTURY BEGINNINGS TO THE 1930s by Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz. (New York: Knopf, 1984); IN THE COMPANY OF EDUCATED WOMEN: A HISTORY OF WOMEN AND HIGHER EDUCATION IN AMERICA by Barbara Miller Solomon. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).     

Knowing voices: From silence to wisdom

Mary F. Belenky, Blythe McV. Clinchy, Nancy R. Goldberger, & Jill M. Tarule, Women's Ways of Knowing: The Development of Self, Voice and Mind (Basic Books) New York, 1986.     

Revolutionary Mothers? Interacting Power Relations,Agency, and Social Change

In this article a theoretical discussion about intersectionality is carried out in dialogue with the ways in which battered and separated mothers deal with their children's situation and their relationship to their violent co‐parents/ex‐partners. In line with Connell's (1987) Connell, R. W. 1987. Gender and Power. Society, the Person and Sexual Politics, Cambridge: Polity Press.  [Google Scholar] argument that categories such as gender are shaped by several structures and that the social order is inherently instable due to historic “unevenness”, contradictions, and internal differentiation, it is shown how abused mothers both follow and undermine well‐established notions of childhood, gender, and parenthood when trying to tackle their situation post separation or divorce. What is furthermore shown is how their “doing” of age, gender, and kinship entails both dichotomization and neutralization. It is argued that constructions prominent in public discussions about children at risk—the intrinsic value of childhood, children's right to personal integrity, and need of safety and protection—serve as a resource when the interviewees argue against the norm prescribing contact between children and fathers post separation and divorce. Two established constructions of the child's best interests are set up against each other when the mothers try to undermine power associated with the father position. An empirically sensitive and actor‐centred intersectional analysis must be sophisticated enough to grasp such complexities if we are to be able to fully explore possibilities for social change.     

Stelarc's post‐evolutionary performance art: Exposing collisions between the body and technology

Performance

The Tarnished Angels and The Elizabethan Phrasing of the Late Albert Ayler. Choreographed by Karole Armitage. Performed by The Armitage Ballet Scenery by David Salle. Brooklyn Academy of Music, November 1987.

Eden. Choreographed by Maguy Marin. Performed by Compagnie Maguy Marin (Creteil, France). Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival, October 20–22, 1987.

Elena's Aria. Choreographed by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker. Performed by Rosas. Brooklyn Academy of Music, Next Wave Festival November 3–8, 1987.

Blue Scene Grey. Written, directed and designed by Linda Mussmann in collaboration with Claudia Bruce; music by Semih Firincioglu. Time &; Space Limited production, New York, October, 1987.

Dress Suits to Hire. Written by Holly Hughes in collaboration with Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw. Performed by Lois Weaver and Peggy Shaw. Women's Interart Center, New York, through January 16, 1988.

Improvisations by Simone Forti and Pooh Kaye. 2nd Annual Festival of Women Improvisers, Kraine Gallery, New York City, October 10, 1987.

Blood on the Saddle. Choreographed by Jennifer Monson in collaboration with Zeena Parkins. Danspace, New York City, November 7, 1987.

Active Graphics II and Tangled Graphics. Choreographed by Pooh Kaye. Performed by Eccentric Motions. The Kitchen, New York City, December 5, 1987.

US. Written by Karen Malpede. Directed by Judith Malina. Co‐production of Theater for the New City and Living Theatre. New York, December 1987‐January 1988.

Film

The Golddiggers. Written by Sally Potter, Lindsay Cooper, and Rose English; directed and edited by Sally Potter; music by Lindsay Cooper; Rose English, art director and assistant editor; Babette Mangolte, lighting camera. Released 1983; New York premiere February, 1988.

Books

Technologies of Gender: Essays on Theory, Film, and Fiction, by Teresa de Lauretis. Indiana University Press, 1987.

Women Making Music: The Western Art Tradition, 1150–1950, edited by Jane Bowers and Judith Tick Chicago and Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986.

The public forum

On the Road: Voices of Bay Area Women in Performance. Performed, compiled, edited and produced by Anna Deavere Smith. West Coast Women in Theatre Conference, in conjunction with Julian Theatre, San Francisco, January 8–10, 1988.

Electra: An International Festival of Experimental Performance by Women.Double Edge Theatre, Boston, January 8–24, 1988.     

Modernization,under development,uneven development: Prospects for a theory of third world formations

Taken as a whole, the two books considered in this review article ‐ David Lehmann, ed., Development Theory: Four Critical Studies, Frank Cass: 1979, £9.50, £4.95 (paperback) and John G. Taylor, From Modernisation to Modes of Production: A Critique of the Sociologies of Development and Underdevelopment, Macmillan: 1979, £12.00, £4.95 (paperback) ‐ give a concise but comprehensive picture of the complex debates and the various theoretical impasses of today's ‘Third World’ studies. The four essays edited by David Lehmann are a critical review of both the old orthodoxies (development economics and modernisation theories) and the newer ones (neo‐Marxist theory of underdevelopment); whereas John Taylor's work is an ambitious attempt to go beyond the neo‐Marxist paradigm by laying the foundations of a mode‐of‐production approach to the study of third‐world formations.

Since I believe that the most lively and interesting debates in this field today focus on the various shortcomings of the neo‐Marxist approach, and on attempts within Marxism itself to overcome them, this review will pay particular attention to Henry Bernstein's article “Sociology of underdevelopment vs. Sociology of development?” and to Taylor's book.     

Liberated Alice: Dodgson's female hero as domestic rebel

Sally Patterson Tubach. Memoirs of a Terrorist. Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1996.

Kenneth L. Holmes, ed. Covered Wagon Women: Diaries and Letters from the Western Trails, 1850. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996.

Linda Schelbitzki Pickle. Contented Among Strangers: Rural German‐Speaking Women and Their Families in the Nineteenth‐Century Midwest. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996.

Brigitte Georgi‐Findlay. The Frontiers of Women's Writting: Women's Narratives and the Rhetoric of Westward Expansion. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1996.