Issue Details: First known date: 2020... 2020 Men-Poodles in the Dress Circle : Competing Masculinities in Colonial Melbourne
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AbstractHistoryArchive Description

'One night in 1865, some men at Melbourne’s Theatre Royal created a disturbance by noisily paying court to married women in the dress circle. A journalist present that night subsequently attacked these “men-poodles” in print. This article examines the models of masculinity that lay behind the different actions and responses of the participants that evening—the normative, domesticated masculinity espoused by the journalist, and dissident models, such as the cavalier-servant, which may have inspired the men-poodles. The article proposes that the incident offers a rare glimpse of queer men creating and exercising a sociability beyond the criminal paradigm that dominates accounts of homosexuality in the colonial era.' (Publication abstract)

Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of

  • Appears in:
    y separately published work icon Journal of Australian Studies vol. 44 no. 1 2020 19038513 2020 periodical issue

    'This issue of the Journal of Australian Studies goes to print at a time when many Australians are questioning a future of climate disruption. The bushfires that continue to burn have sent smoke particles around the globe, choked cities and regional towns, and led to shock, grief and anger at the scale of destruction to Country. As the debate about climate change pivots to reluctant acceptance and the deep divisions over inaction fade, we will likely remember this period as a kind of shared catastrophe and harbinger of change. We humans are agents of change—individually and collectively—some constructive, others less so. Environment, gender, race: each is reinvented, distorted and manipulated, straitjacketing people and land. In this issue, we look to how gender has been subverted, reimagined and repurposed; how literature and art has given voice to alternate imaginings; and how politics remains central in apology.' (Carolyn HolbrookJames KeatingJulie KimberMaggie Nolan  & Tom Rogers  : Editorial introduction)

    2020
    pg. 4-17
Last amended 15 Apr 2020 13:15:32
4-17 Men-Poodles in the Dress Circle : Competing Masculinities in Colonial Melbournesmall AustLit logo Journal of Australian Studies
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