Issue Details: First known date: 2016... 2016 'A Key Person Internationally' : Towards a Biography of Freda Brown
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'A woman whose story and achievements are substantially lost to history, Freda Brown (1919-2009) was a political activist in the women's, peace, and anti-apartheid movements, both in Australia and overseas. After beginning her career in Australian left-wing and women's organisations, Freda crossed the globe for twenty-five years, working as the leader of a worldwide organisation of two hundred million members. While some of her greatest achievements can be seen in her work in helping to establish and lead pioneering women's organisations, she travelled widely also in the service of political, peace and anti-racism causes. She placed a great deal of importance on her work in intersecting networks of activists across Australia and the world. Together with casting Freda Brown's story from her own words, recollections of colleagues, and archival research, this article also investigates the importance of networking for Freda. It explores questions around the biographer's task in piecing together a life story, and issues of memory and biography.'  (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Lilith no. 22 2016 12016218 2016 periodical issue

    '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)

    2016
    pg. 21-36
Last amended 13 Oct 2017 09:33:58
21-36 'A Key Person Internationally' : Towards a Biography of Freda Brownsmall AustLit logo Lilith
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