Professor Lisa Featherstone
Head of School
+61 7 336 52613
Room E335, Forgan Smith Building (1)
Researcher biography
I am an Australian historian whose work focuses on sexuality, medicine and the law. I am interested in the ways these authoritative discourses intersect around the body. My current work focuses on sexual violence, including sexual assaults on women and children.
I have published widely on sexual crimes, including child sexual abuse and rape in marriage. I am the author of two monographs, Let’s Talk About Sex: Histories of Sexuality in Australia from Federation to the Pill, and Sex Crimes in the 1950s (co-authored with Andy Kaldelfos). The latter was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Prize in 2017. I have published extensively in international and local journals in history and gender studies, including articles in Gender and History, Women’s History Review, Feminist Legal Studies, Australian Historical Studies and The Journal of the History of Sexuality. My work is funded by an Australian Research Council Discovery Project, “Sexual Offences, Legal Responses and Public Perceptions: 1880s-1980s”, held with Andy Kaladelfos, Carolyn Strange and the late Nina Westera.
| Featured projects | Duration |
|---|---|
|
Sexual Offences, Legal Responses and Public Perceptions: 1880s-1980s ARC Discovery Project |
2015–2018 |
|
Medicine, Law and Gender in Australian History Summer Research Scholarship |
2016–2017 |
Books
Featherstone, Lisa, Byrnes, Cassandra, Maturi, Jenny, Minto, Kiara, Mickelburgh, Renée and Donaghy, Paige (2024). The Limits of Consent : Sexual Assault and Affirmative Consent. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-46622-9
Featherstone, Lisa (2021). Sexual violence in Australia, 1970s –1980s: rape and child sexual abuse. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-73310-0
Featherstone, Lisa and Kaladelfos, Amanda (2016). Sex crimes in the fifties. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing.
Featherstone, Lisa (2011). Let's talk about sex : histories of sexuality in Australia from Federation to the pill. Newcastle upon Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Book Chapters
Featherstone, Lisa and Byrnes, Cassandra (2018). A history of gender. Gender: time. (pp. 85-102) edited by Karin Sellberg. New York, NY, United States: Macmillan Reference USA.
Kaladelfos, Andy and Featherstone, Lisa (2017). Race and ethnicity in sex crimes trials from 1950s Australia. Legacies of violence: rendering the unspeakable past in modern Australia. (pp. 217-232) edited by Robert Mason. New York, United States: Berghahn Books. doi: 10.1515/9781785334375-013
Kaladelfos, Andy and Featherstone, Lisa (2016). Sexual assault by teachers: historical legislative, policy, and prosecutorial responses. The sexual abuse of children: recognition and redress. (pp. 20-34) edited by Yorick Smaal, Andy Kaladelfos and Mark Finnane. Clayton, VIC, Australia: Monash University Publishing.
Featherstone, Lisa (2015). The curious case/s of Dr. Wallace: sexuality and the medical file in postwar Australia. Case studies and the dissemination of knowledge. (pp. 118-132) edited by Joy Damousi, Birgit Lang and Katie Sutton. New York, NY, United States: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315746777
Featherstone, Lisa and Ward, Haylee (2014). Pleasure, pain, power and politics: Australian feminist responses to pornography, 1970-89. Acts of love and lust: histories of sexuality in Australia, 1945-2010. (pp. 44-63) edited by Lisa Featherstone, Rebecca Jennings and Robert Reynolds. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Press.
Featherstone, Lisa (2013). Snippets and shadows of stories: thoughts on sources and methods when writing an Australian history of sexuality. Intimacy, violence and activism: gay and lesbian perspectives on Australasian history and society. (pp. 74-89) edited by Graham Willett and Yorick Smaal. Clayton, VIC, Australia: Monash University Press.
Featherstone, Lisa (2011). Confined: constructions of childbirth in popular and elite medical culture in late nineteenth-century Australia. Gender, health, and popular culture: historical perspectives. (pp. 3-22) edited by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh. Ontario, Canada: Wilfred Laurier University Press.
Featherstone, Lisa (2011). Even more hidden from history? Male homosexuality and medicine in turn of the century Australia. Out here: lesbian and gay perspectives 6. (pp. 56-68) edited by Yorick Smaal and Graham Willett. Clayton, VIC, Australia: Monash University Publishing.
Featherstone, Lisa (2011). Sex and subculture: Bruce Beresford’s Puberty Blues. Making Film and Television Histories: Australia and New Zealand. (pp. 164-168) edited by James E. Bennett and Rebecca Beirne. London, United Kingdom: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd.
Featherstone, Lisa (2008). Birth. The Dictionary of Sydney. (pp. 1-4) Sydney, Australia: The Dictionary of Sydney.
Featherstone, Lisa (2006). Foucault, feminism and history. Feminist Alliances. (pp. 77-90) edited by Lynda Burns. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Featherstone, Lisa (2005). Infant ideologies: doctors, mothers and the feeding of children in Australia 1880-1910. Children’s health: international historical perspectives. (pp. 131-160) edited by Cheryl Krasnick Warsh and Veronica Strong-Boag. Waterloo, ON, Canada: Wilfrid Laurier University Press.
Featherstone, Lisa (2005). The kindest cut? The origins of the caesarean section in Australia 1880-1990. Motherhood: Power and Oppression. edited by Andrea O'Reilly, Marie Porter and Patricia Short. Toronto, Canada: Women's Press.
Journal Articles
Ginn, Geoff and Featherstone, Lisa (2023). Editorial Note. Australian Journal of Politics & History, 69 (4), 579-579. doi: 10.1111/ajph.12960
Ginn, Geoffrey A. C. and Featherstone, Lisa (2021). Editorial note. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 67 (1), 1-1. doi: 10.1111/ajph.12767
Featherstone, Lisa and Winn, Alexander George (2018). Marital Rape and the Marital Rapist: The 1976 South Australian Rape Law Reforms. Feminist Legal Studies, 27 (1), 57-78. doi: 10.1007/s10691-018-9382-3
Featherstone, Lisa (2018). "Children in a terrible state": understandings of trauma and child sexual assault in 1970s and 1980s Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 42 (2), 164-176. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2018.1455063
Featherstone, Lisa (2018). Look the other way: dealing with child sexual abuse outside of institutions in 1980s Australia. Australian Historical Studies, 49 (3), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2018.1474933
Featherstone, Lisa (2018). Women's rights, men's rights, human rights: discourses of rights and rape in marriage in 1970s and 1980s Australia. Law and History, 5 (2), 1-29.
Featherstone, Lisa (2017). The science of pleasure: medicine and sex therapy in mid-twentieth-century Australia. Social History of Medicine, 31 (3), 445-461. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkx005
Featherstone, Lisa (2017). ‘That's what being a woman is for’: opposition to marital rape law reform in late twentieth century Australia. Gender and History, 29 (1), 87-103. doi: 10.1111/1468-0424.12281
Featherstone, Lisa and Reynolds, Robert (2016). From the Guest Editors: Historicising Sexualities. History Australia, 10 (1), 4-9. doi: 10.1080/14490854.2012.11668443
Featherstone, Lisa and Kaladelfos, Amanda (2014). Hierarchies of harm and violence: historicising familial sexual violence in Australia. Australian Feminist Studies, 29 (81), 306-324. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2014.958122
Kaladelfos, Amanda and Featherstone, Lisa (2014). Sexual and gender-based violence: definitions, contexts, meanings. Australian Feminist Studies, 29 (81), 233-237. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2014.958121
Featherstone, Lisa and Smaal, Yorick (2013). The family in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 37 (3), 279-284. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2013.815574
Featherstone, Lisa (2013). ‘The one single primary cause’: divorce, the family and heterosexual pleasure in postwar Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 37 (3), 349-363. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2013.815256
Featherstone, Lisa (2013). Censoring sex: the case of WJ Chidley. History Australia, 10 (1), 58-76. doi: 10.1080/14490854.2013.11668446
Featherstone, Lisa and Jennings, Rebecca (2012). Introduction: Talking about sex: histories of sexuality in Australia and New Zealand. Women's History Review, 21 (5), 691-695. doi: 10.1080/09612025.2012.658184
Featherstone, Lisa (2012). Rethinking female pleasure: purity and desire in early twentieth century Australia. Women's History Review, 21 (5), 715-731. doi: 10.1080/09612025.2012.658181
Featherstone, Lisa (2010). Sex educating the modern girl: the formation of new knowledge in interwar Australia. Journal of Australian Studies, 34 (4), 459-469. doi: 10.1080/14443058.2010.519103
Featherstone, Lisa (2010). ‘Fitful rambles of an unruly pencil’: George Southern’s challenge to sexual normativity in 1920s Australia. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 19 (3), 389-408.
Featherstone, Lisa (2010). Pathologising white male sexuality in late nineteenth century Australia through the medical prism of excess and constraint. Australian Historical Studies, 41 (3), 337-351. doi: 10.1080/1031461X.2010.493949
Featherstone, Lisa (2008). Opening up women's bodies: new thoughts on the old practice of dissection. Metascience, 17 (2), 311-313. doi: 10.1007/s11016-008-9199-9
Featherstone, Lisa (2008). The value of an infant: the rise of paediatrics in Australia, 1880-1910. Health and History, 10 (1), 110-133. doi: 10.2307/40111596
Featherstone, Lisa (2008). Review of the Sexual Life of US. History Australia, 5 (3), 83.1-83.2. doi: 10.2104/ha080083
Featherstone, Lisa (2008). Sex and the Australian legend: masculinity and the white man's body. Journal of Australian Colonial History, 10 (2), 73-90.
Featherstone, Lisa (2008). Becoming a baby? The foetus in late nineteenth century Australia. Australian Feminist Studies, 23 (58), 451-465. doi: 10.1080/08164640802433340
Featherstone, Lisa (2006). Imagining the black body: race, gender and gynaecology in late colonial Australia. Lilith, 15, 86-96.
Featherstone, Lisa (2005). Sexy mamas? The public and private sexualities of Australian women in the 1940s. Australian Historical Studies, 36 (126), 234-252. doi: 10.1080/10314610508682922
Featherstone, Lisa (2004). Surveying the mother: the rise of antenatal care in early twentieth-century Australia. Limina, 10, 16-31.
Conference Paper
Featherstone, Lisa (2007). “The value of the Victorian infant”: whiteness and the emergence of paediatrics in late colonial Australia. Historicising Whiteness Conference, Melbourne, VIC, Australia, 22-24 November 2006. Melbourne, Victoria: RMIT Publishing.