Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia ISBN: 9780511470172 Platform/Publisher: Cambridge Core / Cambridge University Press Digital rights:Users: Unlimited; Printing: Unlimited; Download: Unlimited
This innovative book marks a new way of looking at convict women. It tells their stories in a powerful and evocative way, drawing out broader themes of gender and sexual disorder and race and class dynamics in a colonial context. It considers the convict past in light of contemporary concerns, looking at the cultural meanings of aspects of life in the colony: on ships, in the factories and in orphanages. Using startlingly original research, Joy Damousi considers such varied topics as headshaving as punishment in the prisons and the subversive nature of laughter and play, as well as analysing the language of pollution, purity and abandonment. She also dicusses the nature of sexual relationships, including evidence of lesbianism. The book shows how understanding about sexual and racial difference was crucial for both the maintenance and disturbance of colonial society, and became a focus for cultural anxiety.
Joy Damousi was born on June 17, 1961 in Melbourne, Australia. She is a graduate of La Trobe University , BA (Honours) and Australian National University, PhD in history. She has held various positions at the University of Melbourne, Monash University, La Trobe University in women's studies and history. Her books include Gender and War: Australians at War in the Twentieth Century, Depraved and Disorderly: Female Convicts, Sexuality and Gender in Colonial Australia, Living with the Aftermath: Trauma, Nostalgia and Grief in Post-War Australia, The Labour of Loss: Mourning, Memory and Wartime Bereavement in Australia, Colonial Voices: A Cultural History of English in Australia, 1840-1940, and Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War.
