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Professor Barbara Caine

FAHA, FRHS, FASSA,
Head of School,
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,
Room 608, Brennan MacCallum Building A18
University of Sydney, 2006

+61 2 9351 5658

Prior to taking up my role as Head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry (SOPHI) in 2011 I was the Professor of History and ARC Professorial Fellow at Monash (1995 to 2010). I was also the first Director of the University of Sydney's Centre for Women's Studies.

Most of my earlier research and teaching centered on questions of gender and of sexuality within a late modern European framework. But I have now turned rather to look at questions about autobiography and biography and more broadly about the many different ways to approach questions about the individual life within history. At Monash, I coordinated a Masters program in Biography and Life Writing. I was awarded an ARC Professorial Fellowship in 2007 for a large project entitled 'History and the individual life.'

Research Areas

  • Nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural history, with emphases on Europe and Australia; women's history; biography and history; life-story writing.

Current Projects

  • I am currently involved in a few different individual and collaborative research projects.
  • I am currently working on a history of modern autobiography.
  • I am also working on a series of essays on the role and activities of women in the South African liberation movement.
  • I am involved in two collaborative projects, one of these involves the history of letters and letter-writing in Europe, the other is concerned with the idea of cosmopolitanism and its history.
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Selected Publications

Books
  • Biography and History, Palgrave Macmillan, History and Theory series, 2010
  • Bombay to Bloomsbury: the Stracheys, c 1850-1950, Oxford University Press, 2005
  • Gendering European History, (jointly authored with Glenda Sluga)
    Leicester University Press, 2000. This book has been translated into Italian, Spanish and Swedish
  • English Feminism, c1780-1970, Oxford University Press, 1997
  • Victorian Feminists, Oxford University Press, 1992
  • Destined to be Wives: The Sisters of Beatrice Webb, Oxford University Press, 1986
Edited Books
  • Friendship: a History, Equinox, 2010
Selected Book Chapters and Journal Articles
  • ‘Writing Cosmopolitan lives: Joseph and Kwame Anthony Appiah’, History Workshop Journal, 70, 2010
  • 'Bloomsbury Friendship and its Victorian Antecedents', Literature & History, Volume 17, Number 1, April 2008 , pp. 48-61(14)
  • ''A South African Revolutionary, but a Lady of the British Empire': Helen Joseph and the Anti- Apartheid Movement', Journal of Southern African Studies, 34:3, 2008, 575?590
  • 'Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Stuart Mill, and the nature of feminist thought', Elizabeth Cady Stanton, feminist as thinker, New York University Press, 2007, pp. 50-65
  • 'Bloomsbury masculinity and its Victorian antecedents', The Journal of Men's Health, Men's Studies Press LLC, USA, 2007, pp. 271-281
  • 'Stefan Collini, Virginia Woolf, and the question of intellectuals in Britain', Journal of the History of Ideas, University of Pennsylvania Press, USA, 2007, pp. 369-373
  • 'Masculinity, emotion and subjectivity: Introduction', The Journal of Men's Studies, Men's Studies Press LLC, USA, 2007, pp. 247-250
  • 'Prisons as spaces of friendship in apartheid South Africa', History Australia, Monash University ePress, 2006, pp. 1-13.
  • 'Elizabeth Cady Stanton, John Stuart Mill and 19th century feminist thought', Elizabeth Cady Stanton: Feminist as Thinker, ed., Ellen Carol Dubois and Richard Candida Smith, New York University Press, 2006
  • 'When did the Victorian period end? Questions of Gender and Generation', contribution to Round Table discussion on topic When did the 19th century end? Victorian Culture, vol.11, no.2, Autumn 2006.
  • 'A Feminist Family: The Stracheys and feminism, c 1860-1950', Women's History Review, vol 14, nos 3 &4, 2005, pp. 385-404
  • 'Feminist Biography', 'Feminism' 'Marriage and Family Life, Companion to Women's Historical Writing, 2005-12-22
  • 'Journalism and women's public writing' in Joanne Shattock (ed) Women and Literature in Britain 1800-1900, Cambridge University Press, 200l
  • 'Mothering feminism/Mothering Feminists: Ray Strachey and The Cause', Women's History Review, 9 (2) 295-310, 2000
  • 'The Stracheys and Psychoanalysis', History Workshop Journal, Issue 45, 1998
  • 'The Rights of Woman' in Iain McCalman Ed., The Oxford Companion to the Age of Romanticism and Revolution, Oxford University Press, 1998
  • 'Victorian Feminism and the Ghost of Mary Wollstonecraft', Women's Writing, 4. ( 2) 1997, 261-275
  • 'Feminism and Ageing', Australian Cultural History, vol. 8,(1995).
  • 'Feminist Traditions, Women's Studies and the Question of History', in B. Caine and R. Pringle Transitions: New Australian Feminisms, Allen Unwin, 1995
  • 'Feminist Biography and Feminist History', Women's History Review, 1994
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Areas of teaching and research supervision

Nineteenth and twentieth-century cultural history, with emphases on Europe and Australia; women's history; biography and history; life-story writing.

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