Michelle Arrow
Biographic Data
| ID | 693638 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michelle Arrow |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michelle |
| FAMILY NAME | Arrow |
| SIGNATURE | ARROW M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Macquarie University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-3522-5712 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 26 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1970 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
‘A Priority Area for Attitudinal Change’: Media, Culture and Consciousness-raising in Australia’s International Women’s Year Commemorations
This article argues that International Women's Year was a crucial moment in the women's movement's awareness of the power of the mass media. Australia's commemorations of IWY, which offered funding for media and cultural projects, sharpened feminist thinking on media's role in perpetuating women's oppression. Based on a close reading of a range of media sources and a range of Australian feminist culture produced both before and during 1975, this …
Fifty Years On: Rethinking the Legacies of Australia’s International Women’s Year 1975
In 1996, Australian Historical Studies published a special issue with the theme ‘Twenty Years On’, marking twenty years since International Women’s Year, 1975, a year which also saw the publishing
From the president
Historians and generative AI
Do I Have to Kill My Child? The Royal Commission on Human Relationships and feminist interpretations of child abuse as maternal violence in 1970s Australia
From the president
Where to now
The Shrinking Nation—Response
Media Monsters: The Transformation of Australia’s Newspaper Empires
Challenging the ‘normcore’ version of our history in Who the Bloody Hell Are We: Who the Bloody Hell Are We? John Safran, Cal Wilson and Adam Liaw, hosts, Tony Jackson, director and producer, David Co…
Challenging the 'normcore' version of our history in Who the Bloody Hell Are We?." History Australia, ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print), pp. 1–2
Smash Sexist Movies”: Gender, Culture and Ocker Cinema in 1970s Australia
The 1970s is often characterised as the decade of Australia’s “new nationalism”, expressed most potently in a wave of cultural activity nurtured by government funding. The figure of the ocker was central to this new nationalism, particularly in film. The ocker, a contemporary masculine archetype devoted to beer, sex and swearing, was a star of Australian films such as The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, Alvin Purple, Petersen and Don’s Party. Yet f…
Sound Citizens: Australian Women Broadcasters Claim Their Voice, 1923–1956
Sound Citizens: Australian Women Broadcasters Claim Their Voice, 1923–1956." Australian Historical Studies, 53(1), pp. 167–168
Sexual Citizenship and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Since its beginnings as a parade and protest in 1978, the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras has become something of a national juggernaut of queer pride in Australia, as well as an international tourist destination. At the centre of this event is an annual parade through the queer heartland of Sydney, comprised of floats and marching groups of performers. This article will investigate the changing stories told about the Australian nation a…
In the Wake of the Sexual Revolution: New Histories of Sexual and Gender Politics in Contemporary Australia
(2021). In the Wake of the Sexual Revolution: New Histories of Sexual and Gender Politics in Contemporary Australia. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 52, New Histories of Sexual and Gender Politics in Contemporary Australia, pp. 313-316
How Much Longer Will We Allow This Country's Affairs to be Run by Radical Feminists?’ Anti-Feminist Activism in Late 1970s Australia
The historiography of Australia's feminist and sexual revolutions has focused on activists who articulated new claims for rights and protections on the basis of gender and sexuality. Very few scholars have investigated anti-feminist women's groups as part of this history. This article focuses on two anti-feminist women's groups in late 1970s Australia: Women's Action Alliance, and Women Who Want to Be Women. It argues that they adapted the women'…
The Year Australia Welcomed the World
A critical introduction to The Nightingale: Gender, race and troubled histories on screen
Acclaimed Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent’s film The Nightingale has generated intense debate since its premiere at the 2018 Venice Film Festival. Set during the Black War in Van Diemen’s Land in 1825, the film is an unflinching depiction of colonial and sexual violence. Kent told The Saturday Paper that she ‘wanted to tell a story that is relevant to my history and my country’. Her vision of British colonisation, and its consequences for thos…
These Are Just a Few Examples of Our Daily Oppressions”: Speaking and Listening to Homosexuality in Australia’s Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974–1977
History-Making at the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters , the Museum of Love and Protest, the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, and Riot
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, long viewed as a transgressive celebration of sexual diversity, is now widely regarded as a powerful symbol of social change. ABC News summed it up this way:F
Making Family Violence Public in the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974-1977
Domestic violence emerged as a significant issue for the Women's Liberation movement in the early 1970s. In the history of the response to domestic violence in Australia, the Royal Commission on Human Relationships has been accorded only a minor role, yet it was one of the first sustained government inquiries into the prevalence, causes and impacts of domestic violence. This article argues that the Royal Commission on Human Relationships articula…
Introduction-How the Personal Became Political: The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia
How the Personal became Political presents new research on the events, policy changes and watershed developments in gender and sexuality in Australia in the 1970s. This Special Issue addresses the current political and theoretical significance of the 1970s revolutions, and key questions about the nature of sweeping change. How and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political? What were the key policy shi…
Studying Modern History gives me the chance to say what I think’: Learning and teaching history in the age of student-centred learning
This article critically interrogates university history students’ ‘learning narratives’ in relation to the rise of ideas about student-centred learning in Australian universities. Drawing on interviews with third-year students, it suggests that we need to more carefully consider how students make choices about their educational activities and the ways in which some transformations in student culture may inadvertently sustain the possibility for s…
The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia
The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia." Australian Historical Studies, 47(3), pp. 498–499
Everyone needs a holiday from work, why not mothers?' Motherhood, Feminism and Citizenship at the Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974-1977
The Royal Commission on Human Relationships was an initiative of the Whitlam government, instigated in 1974 to investigate ‘the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships’, with particular attention to the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’. The Commission heard evidence from thousands of Australians on a broad range of topics, and given the Royal Commission's origins in the 1973 Federal Parliamentary …
Invisible Histories? History Features on Australian Radio
While there is a growing literature on the ways that film and television represent the past, there is remarkably little work on the ways that radio features present history. Such an absence is particularly startling in Australia, given the longevity of history features programmes like Hindsight (1996–2014) on ABC Radio National. This article suggests that radio should have a more prominent place in the expanding field of public and media historie…
Everything Stopped forBlue Hills: Radio, Memory and Australian Women's Domestic Lives, 1944-2001
History-Making at the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters , the Museum of Love and Protest, the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, and Riot
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, long viewed as a transgressive celebration of sexual diversity, is now widely regarded as a powerful symbol of social change. ABC News summed it up this way:F
Everyone needs a holiday from work, why not mothers?' Motherhood, Feminism and Citizenship at the Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974-1977
The Royal Commission on Human Relationships was an initiative of the Whitlam government, instigated in 1974 to investigate ‘the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships’, with particular attention to the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’. The Commission heard evidence from thousands of Australians on a broad range of topics, and given the Royal Commission's origins in the 1973 Federal Parliamentary …
Making Family Violence Public in the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974-1977
Domestic violence emerged as a significant issue for the Women's Liberation movement in the early 1970s. In the history of the response to domestic violence in Australia, the Royal Commission on Human Relationships has been accorded only a minor role, yet it was one of the first sustained government inquiries into the prevalence, causes and impacts of domestic violence. This article argues that the Royal Commission on Human Relationships articula…
It Has Become My Personal Anthem: I Am Woman’, Popular Culture and 1970s Feminism
In the Wake of the Sexual Revolution: New Histories of Sexual and Gender Politics in Contemporary Australia
(2021). In the Wake of the Sexual Revolution: New Histories of Sexual and Gender Politics in Contemporary Australia. Australian Historical Studies: Vol. 52, New Histories of Sexual and Gender Politics in Contemporary Australia, pp. 313-316
How Much Longer Will We Allow This Country's Affairs to be Run by Radical Feminists?’ Anti-Feminist Activism in Late 1970s Australia
The historiography of Australia's feminist and sexual revolutions has focused on activists who articulated new claims for rights and protections on the basis of gender and sexuality. Very few scholars have investigated anti-feminist women's groups as part of this history. This article focuses on two anti-feminist women's groups in late 1970s Australia: Women's Action Alliance, and Women Who Want to Be Women. It argues that they adapted the women'…
Introduction-How the Personal Became Political: The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia
How the Personal became Political presents new research on the events, policy changes and watershed developments in gender and sexuality in Australia in the 1970s. This Special Issue addresses the current political and theoretical significance of the 1970s revolutions, and key questions about the nature of sweeping change. How and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political? What were the key policy shi…
The Making History initiative and Australian popular history
In 2004, the Australian Liberal–National Party Coalition Government promised that, if re-elected, they would commission Film Australia to produce ten documentaries on Australia's history. The fruit of this promise was the Making History initiative, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the resulting ten documentaries during 2007–9. The Making History initiative represented a significant funding boost to the documentary sector, and…
Mum Likes Bandstand Too: Creating the Teenage Audience on Australian Television
Television and rock'n'roll both arrived in Australia in 1956, twin symbols of modernity and Americanised consumerism. Television was crucial to the dissemination of rock'n'roll, amplifying its shocks but also rendering it palatable for a broader audience. While it was important in the articulation of the new youth culture, television - unlike film or even radio - had to be more mindful of the familial, domestic context of broadcasting. This artic…
Good entertainment & good family life’: Listener readings and responses to Gwen Meredith's the Lawsons and blue hills
I want to be a TV historian when I grow up: On Being a Rewind Historian
In 2004, I worked as a presenter on a new ABC TV program called Rewind. Produced as part of a special initiative to make programs about Australian history, Rewind used several historians as presenters and promised to tell new stories from Australia's past. Few historians experience the production processes of television in such a detailed way: the media and the academy are arguably a little suspicious of each other. The experience of working on R…
Good entertainment & good family life’: Listener readings and responses to Gwen Meredith's the Lawsons and blue hills
Television Program Yes, History, No’: Australian History According to Rewind
After working (mostly) as an academic historian for six years, in 2004 I became a historian-presenter on the recently axed ABC TV program Rewind, which presented historical stories in a magazine-style format. The program was created and received in the midst of a boom in history on television, but also at a time when history is being scrutinised and raked over in the public sphere as never before. In this paper I would like to consider the Rewind…
JAS review of books
Reviews Marian Sawer and Barry Hindess (eds), Us and Them: Anti‐Elitism in Australia , Bentley, API Network, 2004, pp 300, pb $34.95, ISBN 1920845097. Sally Young, The Persuaders: Inside the hidden machine of political advertising, Sydney, Pluto Australia, 2004, pp 380, pb $29.95, ISBN 1864033045. Julia Baird, Media Taris: How the Australian Press Frames Female Politicians, Carlton North, Scribe Publications, 2004, pp 330, pb $32.95, ISBN 1920769…
Everything Stopped forBlue Hills: Radio, Memory and Australian Women's Domestic Lives, 1944-2001
The most sickening piece of snobbery I have ever heard‘ 1: Race, radio listening, and the ‘aboriginal question’ in Blue Hills
Radio played an important role in the construction of Australia's ‘imagined community’, transcending spatial boundaries and fostering the development of audiences who were fluent in radio's storytelling tools. This article explores the ways Australian radio audiences of the 1950s responded to Gwen Meredith's representations of Aboriginality, whiteness, intermarriage and assimilation in her long‐running ABC radio serial ‘Blue Hills’. Through an in…
It Has Become My Personal Anthem: I Am Woman’, Popular Culture and 1970s Feminism
The Historian's Conscience: Australian Historians on the Ethics of History edited by Stuart Macintyre
orking in television making historical programs throughout 2004, my 'historian's conscience' was occasionally troubled and tested by decisions we had to make about the stories we told.Mostly, these decisions were in the name of brevity, and in some ways, this was extremely useful: you cut to the heart of a story very quickly when you are forced to pare it down to its absolutes.Television resists written history's potential for unruliness, it forc…
Constructing Australia: Complete Series (videorecording)
Australian Media Reception Histories
As the field of Australian media history expands, so too does the need for a broader and more innovative range of questions, issues and debates. This special issue of MIA responds to that need by considering the sources and research questions raised by media reception historians working on film, radio, television and the press. From print to new media, the papers assembled highlight the ingenuity of Australian historians working to recover the ex…
Back to the Eighties
The 80s Are Back , Curator, Peter Cox. Powerhouse Museum. 13 December 2009 to late 2010. Entry: Free with museum entry ($25 family / $10 adult / $5 child / $6 concession). Exhibition website: www.powerhousemuseum.com/the80sareback
Mum Likes Bandstand Too: Creating the Teenage Audience on Australian Television
Television and rock'n'roll both arrived in Australia in 1956, twin symbols of modernity and Americanised consumerism. Television was crucial to the dissemination of rock'n'roll, amplifying its shocks but also rendering it palatable for a broader audience. While it was important in the articulation of the new youth culture, television - unlike film or even radio - had to be more mindful of the familial, domestic context of broadcasting. This artic…
Broadcasting the Past: Australian Television Histories
Many historians have been critical of the ways that television presents history, arguing that television histories are superficial, populist and lack complexity. They often criticise documentaries for their poor standards of evidence and accuracy or for their willingness to reinforce, rather than challenge, well-worn historical narratives. Television histories seek to engage audiences on emotional terms, to evoke empathy and to communicate in vis…
The Making History initiative and Australian popular history
In 2004, the Australian Liberal–National Party Coalition Government promised that, if re-elected, they would commission Film Australia to produce ten documentaries on Australia's history. The fruit of this promise was the Making History initiative, and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation broadcast the resulting ten documentaries during 2007–9. The Making History initiative represented a significant funding boost to the documentary sector, and…
Exhibition Reviews
I Just Feel It’s Important to Know Exactly What he Went Through’: In Their Footsteps and The Role of Emotions in Australian Television History
In Their Footsteps (2011) was an Australian television history program in which individuals retraced the ‘footsteps’ of ancestors who had served in war. Like the British genealogical quest program Who Do You Think You Are? In Their Footsteps was premised on the idea that we can understand the past in experiential and emotional terms. It stressed the connections between present-day individuals and a larger national history through their ancestor’s…
Invisible Histories? History Features on Australian Radio
While there is a growing literature on the ways that film and television represent the past, there is remarkably little work on the ways that radio features present history. Such an absence is particularly startling in Australia, given the longevity of history features programmes like Hindsight (1996–2014) on ABC Radio National. This article suggests that radio should have a more prominent place in the expanding field of public and media historie…
Studying Modern History gives me the chance to say what I think’: Learning and teaching history in the age of student-centred learning
This article critically interrogates university history students’ ‘learning narratives’ in relation to the rise of ideas about student-centred learning in Australian universities. Drawing on interviews with third-year students, it suggests that we need to more carefully consider how students make choices about their educational activities and the ways in which some transformations in student culture may inadvertently sustain the possibility for s…
The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia
The Eighties: The Decade That Transformed Australia." Australian Historical Studies, 47(3), pp. 498–499
Everyone needs a holiday from work, why not mothers?' Motherhood, Feminism and Citizenship at the Australian Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974-1977
The Royal Commission on Human Relationships was an initiative of the Whitlam government, instigated in 1974 to investigate ‘the family, social, educational, legal and sexual aspects of male and female relationships’, with particular attention to the concept of ‘responsible parenthood’. The Commission heard evidence from thousands of Australians on a broad range of topics, and given the Royal Commission's origins in the 1973 Federal Parliamentary …
These Are Just a Few Examples of Our Daily Oppressions”: Speaking and Listening to Homosexuality in Australia’s Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974–1977
History-Making at the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: Witches, Faggots, Dykes and Poofters , the Museum of Love and Protest, the 2018 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Parade, and Riot
The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, long viewed as a transgressive celebration of sexual diversity, is now widely regarded as a powerful symbol of social change. ABC News summed it up this way:F
Making Family Violence Public in the Royal Commission on Human Relationships, 1974-1977
Domestic violence emerged as a significant issue for the Women's Liberation movement in the early 1970s. In the history of the response to domestic violence in Australia, the Royal Commission on Human Relationships has been accorded only a minor role, yet it was one of the first sustained government inquiries into the prevalence, causes and impacts of domestic violence. This article argues that the Royal Commission on Human Relationships articula…
Introduction-How the Personal Became Political: The Gender and Sexuality Revolutions in 1970s Australia
How the Personal became Political presents new research on the events, policy changes and watershed developments in gender and sexuality in Australia in the 1970s. This Special Issue addresses the current political and theoretical significance of the 1970s revolutions, and key questions about the nature of sweeping change. How and why did matters previously considered private and personal, become public and political? What were the key policy shi…
The Year Australia Welcomed the World
Sociology (27 works) · Australian History and Society (24 works) · Political science (22 works) · History (18 works) · Media studies (18 works) · Art (17 works) · Law (15 works) · History (14 works) · Politics (12 works) · Gender Studies (10 works)