Rebecca Jennings
Biographic Data
| ID | 521334 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rebecca Jennings |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rebecca |
| FAMILY NAME | Jennings |
| SIGNATURE | JENNINGS R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0094-3530 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 40 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Reading for Hidden Traces of Intimacy and Desire
While clearing out her mother’s personal possessions after her death, a Canadian woman discovered a parcel of letters hidden in the jewellery drawer, which seemed to indicate her mother’s love affair with another woman. This article considers the possibility of lesbian desire hidden in plain sight within the post-war nuclear family as a case study opening up broader questions of the ethics of historical practice. As the ‘imaginative turn’ in hist…
Introducing Lesbian Nation
A common refrain in the on-going and now accelerating right-wing populist attacks on LGBTQ+ existence around the world is the idea that, no matter where they are, members of the LGBTQ+ community do not belong.They are characterized as external corrupting (even colonizing) influences who have no place in the pure nation-state.The history of their presence within the nation is dismissed as wishful thinking on the part of those with the effrontery t…
A meeting of different tribes’? Travelling women and mobility between European and Australasian women’s lands
During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of predominantly white, working- and middle-class women from across Europe, Australasia, North America and elsewhere travelled across the globe, establishing short or longer-term residence in rural and urban separatist communities. This article explores the role of these women in disseminating post-68 feminist ideas and literature, as well as in the creation of transnational lesbian feminist networks. Drawing …
Ethno-Archiving
Tomboys and bachelor girls
Lesbian Motherhood and the Artificial Insemination by Donor Scandal of 1978
In January 1978, the London Evening News informed its readers of its shocking discovery that British lesbians were conceiving babies by artificial insemination by donor (AID). Assisted by a respected London gynaecologist, Dr David Sopher, the women were planning and raising children in the context of lesbian relationships, challenging conventional family models and the widespread presumption that lesbianism and motherhood were mutually exclusive …
The Boy-Child in Australian Lesbian Feminist Discourse and Community
With the development of second wave feminism and the emergence of an increasingly visible and articulate community of lesbians within feminist circles in the 1970s, an influential strand of radical feminism began to advocate separatism as a political strategy for lesbians. Simultaneously, the Australian women’s movement was opening up a space in which it was possible to acknowledge the dual role of some women as lesbians and as mothers, and a sma…
A Fully Formed Blast from Abroad”? Australasian Lesbian Circuits of Mobility and the Transnational Exchange of Ideas in the 1960s and 1970s
A fully formed blast from abroad?": Australasian lesbian circuits of mobility and the transnational exchange of ideas in the 1960s and 1970sIn 1973, three Australian women -Kerryn Higgs, Robina Courtin and Jenny Pausackerreturned to Melbourne having spent two years in London.Later the same year, New Zealander Alison Laurie arrived home after a nine-year stint overseas, which included periods of time living in England, Scandinavia and the USA.The …
Queen and Country
In her new book, Queen and Country: Same-Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945, Emma Vickers sets out to complicate established narratives of the ‘People's War’. Interrogating the silen
Sandra Willson
In 1959, a young Sydney lesbian, Sandra Willson, shot and killed a taxi driver as a form of protest against social attitudes toward lesbianism. She spent 18 years in prisons and psychiatric hospitals before her release in 1977. Taking Sandra Willson as a case study, this article will explore the ways in which social disapproval of lesbianism was expressed in 1950s Sydney and the impact this had on women’s lives, relationships and identities. By t…
Lesbian Mothers and Child Custody
A Room Full of Women
Sydney's lesbian scene changed significantly between the 1940s and 1970s from mixed private social networks to a more gender segregated public scene. For many lesbians in the early post-war decades, private friendship networks defined patterns of socialising and this impacted on the development of lesbian identity, limiting the scope for the emergence of distinctive lesbian subcultures and styles. Increasing numbers of women joined camp men on th…
Introduction
It Was a Hot Climate and It Was a Hot Time
Her Husband Was a Woman! Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture
Tomboys and Bachelor Girls
Between Women
(2008). Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. By Sharon Marcus. Cultural and Social History: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 250-251
The most uninhibited party they’d ever been to”
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
From ‘Woman‐Loving Woman’ to ‘Queer’
Historiographical approaches to 20th‐century British lesbian history have been shaped by a range of political perspectives. Lesbian feminist historians writing in the 1980s and 1990s emphasised the role of female friendships and lesbian relationships in supporting the lives and work of key figures such as Radclyffe Hall, as well as the negative impact of patriarchal oppression. In the 1990s, definitions of ‘the lesbian’ and the notion of the inte…
The Gateways club and the emergence of a post-Second World War lesbian subculture
Despite a considerable body of lesbian oral history collections having testified to the existence of a lesbian bar culture in Britain for much of the twentieth century, the significance of commercial subcultures in histories of female homosexuality has received little scholarly attention in the UK. This article suggests that the reasons for this omission can be located in historical tensions within the lesbian bar community itself, centring on co…
Lesbian Voices
The article examines life history interviews conducted with lesbians, which form part of the Hall Carpenter Oral History Archive at the National Sound Archive. This material is used in order to examine lesbian identities in Britain in the years 1945-1970. The article also explores the issues with using this form of oral history material, in particular, it was necessary to question both how these narratives were constructed to articulate a specifi…
The most uninhibited party they’d ever been to”
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Gateways club and the emergence of a post-Second World War lesbian subculture
Despite a considerable body of lesbian oral history collections having testified to the existence of a lesbian bar culture in Britain for much of the twentieth century, the significance of commercial subcultures in histories of female homosexuality has received little scholarly attention in the UK. This article suggests that the reasons for this omission can be located in historical tensions within the lesbian bar community itself, centring on co…
A Fully Formed Blast from Abroad”? Australasian Lesbian Circuits of Mobility and the Transnational Exchange of Ideas in the 1960s and 1970s
A fully formed blast from abroad?": Australasian lesbian circuits of mobility and the transnational exchange of ideas in the 1960s and 1970sIn 1973, three Australian women -Kerryn Higgs, Robina Courtin and Jenny Pausackerreturned to Melbourne having spent two years in London.Later the same year, New Zealander Alison Laurie arrived home after a nine-year stint overseas, which included periods of time living in England, Scandinavia and the USA.The …
It Was a Hot Climate and It Was a Hot Time
Lesbian Motherhood and the Artificial Insemination by Donor Scandal of 1978
In January 1978, the London Evening News informed its readers of its shocking discovery that British lesbians were conceiving babies by artificial insemination by donor (AID). Assisted by a respected London gynaecologist, Dr David Sopher, the women were planning and raising children in the context of lesbian relationships, challenging conventional family models and the widespread presumption that lesbianism and motherhood were mutually exclusive …
Queen and Country
In her new book, Queen and Country: Same-Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945, Emma Vickers sets out to complicate established narratives of the ‘People's War’. Interrogating the silen
A meeting of different tribes’? Travelling women and mobility between European and Australasian women’s lands
During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of predominantly white, working- and middle-class women from across Europe, Australasia, North America and elsewhere travelled across the globe, establishing short or longer-term residence in rural and urban separatist communities. This article explores the role of these women in disseminating post-68 feminist ideas and literature, as well as in the creation of transnational lesbian feminist networks. Drawing …
Lesbian Mothers and Child Custody
A Room Full of Women
Sydney's lesbian scene changed significantly between the 1940s and 1970s from mixed private social networks to a more gender segregated public scene. For many lesbians in the early post-war decades, private friendship networks defined patterns of socialising and this impacted on the development of lesbian identity, limiting the scope for the emergence of distinctive lesbian subcultures and styles. Increasing numbers of women joined camp men on th…
Lesbian Voices
The article examines life history interviews conducted with lesbians, which form part of the Hall Carpenter Oral History Archive at the National Sound Archive. This material is used in order to examine lesbian identities in Britain in the years 1945-1970. The article also explores the issues with using this form of oral history material, in particular, it was necessary to question both how these narratives were constructed to articulate a specifi…
The Boy-Child in Australian Lesbian Feminist Discourse and Community
With the development of second wave feminism and the emergence of an increasingly visible and articulate community of lesbians within feminist circles in the 1970s, an influential strand of radical feminism began to advocate separatism as a political strategy for lesbians. Simultaneously, the Australian women’s movement was opening up a space in which it was possible to acknowledge the dual role of some women as lesbians and as mothers, and a sma…
From ‘Woman‐Loving Woman’ to ‘Queer’
Historiographical approaches to 20th‐century British lesbian history have been shaped by a range of political perspectives. Lesbian feminist historians writing in the 1980s and 1990s emphasised the role of female friendships and lesbian relationships in supporting the lives and work of key figures such as Radclyffe Hall, as well as the negative impact of patriarchal oppression. In the 1990s, definitions of ‘the lesbian’ and the notion of the inte…
Lesbian Voices
The article examines life history interviews conducted with lesbians, which form part of the Hall Carpenter Oral History Archive at the National Sound Archive. This material is used in order to examine lesbian identities in Britain in the years 1945-1970. The article also explores the issues with using this form of oral history material, in particular, it was necessary to question both how these narratives were constructed to articulate a specifi…
The Gateways club and the emergence of a post-Second World War lesbian subculture
Despite a considerable body of lesbian oral history collections having testified to the existence of a lesbian bar culture in Britain for much of the twentieth century, the significance of commercial subcultures in histories of female homosexuality has received little scholarly attention in the UK. This article suggests that the reasons for this omission can be located in historical tensions within the lesbian bar community itself, centring on co…
From ‘Woman‐Loving Woman’ to ‘Queer’
Historiographical approaches to 20th‐century British lesbian history have been shaped by a range of political perspectives. Lesbian feminist historians writing in the 1980s and 1990s emphasised the role of female friendships and lesbian relationships in supporting the lives and work of key figures such as Radclyffe Hall, as well as the negative impact of patriarchal oppression. In the 1990s, definitions of ‘the lesbian’ and the notion of the inte…
Tomboys and Bachelor Girls
Between Women
(2008). Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. By Sharon Marcus. Cultural and Social History: Vol. 5, No. 2, pp. 250-251
The most uninhibited party they’d ever been to”
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
It Was a Hot Climate and It Was a Hot Time
Her Husband Was a Woman! Women's Gender-Crossing in Modern British Popular Culture
Lesbian Mothers and Child Custody
A Room Full of Women
Sydney's lesbian scene changed significantly between the 1940s and 1970s from mixed private social networks to a more gender segregated public scene. For many lesbians in the early post-war decades, private friendship networks defined patterns of socialising and this impacted on the development of lesbian identity, limiting the scope for the emergence of distinctive lesbian subcultures and styles. Increasing numbers of women joined camp men on th…
Introduction
Sandra Willson
In 1959, a young Sydney lesbian, Sandra Willson, shot and killed a taxi driver as a form of protest against social attitudes toward lesbianism. She spent 18 years in prisons and psychiatric hospitals before her release in 1977. Taking Sandra Willson as a case study, this article will explore the ways in which social disapproval of lesbianism was expressed in 1950s Sydney and the impact this had on women’s lives, relationships and identities. By t…
Queen and Country
In her new book, Queen and Country: Same-Sex Desire in the British Armed Forces, 1939–1945, Emma Vickers sets out to complicate established narratives of the ‘People's War’. Interrogating the silen
The Boy-Child in Australian Lesbian Feminist Discourse and Community
With the development of second wave feminism and the emergence of an increasingly visible and articulate community of lesbians within feminist circles in the 1970s, an influential strand of radical feminism began to advocate separatism as a political strategy for lesbians. Simultaneously, the Australian women’s movement was opening up a space in which it was possible to acknowledge the dual role of some women as lesbians and as mothers, and a sma…
A Fully Formed Blast from Abroad”? Australasian Lesbian Circuits of Mobility and the Transnational Exchange of Ideas in the 1960s and 1970s
A fully formed blast from abroad?": Australasian lesbian circuits of mobility and the transnational exchange of ideas in the 1960s and 1970sIn 1973, three Australian women -Kerryn Higgs, Robina Courtin and Jenny Pausackerreturned to Melbourne having spent two years in London.Later the same year, New Zealander Alison Laurie arrived home after a nine-year stint overseas, which included periods of time living in England, Scandinavia and the USA.The …
Tomboys and bachelor girls
Lesbian Motherhood and the Artificial Insemination by Donor Scandal of 1978
In January 1978, the London Evening News informed its readers of its shocking discovery that British lesbians were conceiving babies by artificial insemination by donor (AID). Assisted by a respected London gynaecologist, Dr David Sopher, the women were planning and raising children in the context of lesbian relationships, challenging conventional family models and the widespread presumption that lesbianism and motherhood were mutually exclusive …
Ethno-Archiving
A meeting of different tribes’? Travelling women and mobility between European and Australasian women’s lands
During the 1970s and 1980s, a number of predominantly white, working- and middle-class women from across Europe, Australasia, North America and elsewhere travelled across the globe, establishing short or longer-term residence in rural and urban separatist communities. This article explores the role of these women in disseminating post-68 feminist ideas and literature, as well as in the creation of transnational lesbian feminist networks. Drawing …
Introducing Lesbian Nation
A common refrain in the on-going and now accelerating right-wing populist attacks on LGBTQ+ existence around the world is the idea that, no matter where they are, members of the LGBTQ+ community do not belong.They are characterized as external corrupting (even colonizing) influences who have no place in the pure nation-state.The history of their presence within the nation is dismissed as wishful thinking on the part of those with the effrontery t…
Reading for Hidden Traces of Intimacy and Desire
While clearing out her mother’s personal possessions after her death, a Canadian woman discovered a parcel of letters hidden in the jewellery drawer, which seemed to indicate her mother’s love affair with another woman. This article considers the possibility of lesbian desire hidden in plain sight within the post-war nuclear family as a case study opening up broader questions of the ethics of historical practice. As the ‘imaginative turn’ in hist…
Sociology (17 works) · Lesbian (15 works) · Gender Studies (14 works) · Political science (12 works) · Gender Studies (11 works) · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies (8 works) · History (8 works) · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes (7 works) · History (7 works) · Law (7 works)