Associate Professor Penny Russell

PhD Melbourne, BA Hons Monash
Room 849 Brennan Building

+61 2 9351 2362

I am fascinated by snobs and social climbers, scandals large and small, and the mysterious ways people lived, loved and learned in times past. Firmly wedded to the nineteenth century, I avidly pursue the 'small talk' of history in Australia and England, finding within private writing and the intimacies of social encounters (domestic and exotic) the political landscapes of gender and class, race and colonisation. I contribute to the cluster of research interest in 'Nation, Empire, Globe' an analysis of the social experience of colonisation in nineteenth-century Australia, particularly for women and particularly amongst elite groups. All these interests and more intersect in my research on the history of manners in Australia and in my writing on Jane, Lady Franklin (a snob of the first degree), whose bid to rescue her missing Arctic explorer husband Sir John Franklin in the mid-19th century made her a sentimental celebrity in England and across the Western world. My research in both these areas has been widely published both in Australia and overseas, and Arctic Romance: Lady Franklin and the Lost Polar Expedition will shortly be published by University of Toronto Press. Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia was published by UNSW Press in 2010.

These research interests lead naturally to my matching obsession with the craft of history writing. What draws me to history is its unique combination of imaginative reconstruction and hard evidence, the way story telling is enriched by analysis, while analysis unfolds through story. Writing lies at the heart of the discipline of history, and in my teaching and still more in supervision I strive to build in students the confidence and skill to wield the curious power of words. I have received both the SUPRA 'Supervisor of the Year' award and the Vice-Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Higher Research Degree Supervision. I am one of the editors, with Richard White, of History Australia, the official journal of the Australian Historical Association.

Research Areas

• Status and manners in colonial Australia
• Travel, gender and imperialism in nineteenth-century Australia and Britain
• Biography, life writing, subjectivity

Current Projects

Jane, Lady Franklin, 1791-1875 link

Empires of Honour: Violence and Virtue in Colonial Societies, 1750-1850 (with Professor Nigel Worden, University of Cape Town) (ARC Discovery Project Grant 2012-2014)

The moral sentiments and moral practices of any society depend on how that society understands honour. This project investigates the history of honour in colonial societies, showing how different concepts of honour clashed or were recreated through global movements of people in the age of empire, and investigating the enduring effects of such contests in the colonial societies of the India-Pacific region. Focusing on the Cape Colony and Australian colonies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, it traces contested notions of honour among colonisers and colonised and within the transient, transnational populations that swirled through and between colonies. Concepts of honour were used to defend or decry settler violence, to regulate or exacerbate interpersonal disputes, to entrench or transcend cultural difference. Such colonial contests contributed to the reshaping of modern Western ideas of honour, in both local and global contexts.

Selected Publications

Savage or Civilised? Manners in Colonial Australia Sydney: UNSW Press, 2010. Winner, NSW Premiers History Award for Australian History 2011; Alex Buzo Shortlist Award for CAL/Waverley Library Literary Award 2011; Shortlisted for Ernest Scott Prize 2011; shortlisted for Qld Premiers Literary Award (History) 2011.

This Errant Lady: Jane Franklin's Overland Journey to Port Phillip and Sydney, 1839 National Library of Australia, Canberra, 2002

A Wish of Distinction: Colonial Gentility and Femininity Melbourne University Press, 1994

Edited Books

Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity (ed. D.Deacon, P. Russell and A. Woollacott) Palgrave MacMillan (Transnational History series), London and New York, 2010

Transnational Ties: Australian Lives in the World (ed. D. Deacon, P. Russell and A. Woollacott) ANU E-Press, Canberra 2008

Australia's History: Themes and Debates (ed. M. Lyons and P. Russell) University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2005

Memories and Dreams: Reflections on 20th Century Australia (Pastiche II) (ed. R. White and P. Russell) Allen and Unwin, Sydney 1997 (Reprinted, 2002)

Pastiche I: Reflections on 19th Century Australia (ed. P. Russell and R. White) Allen & Unwin, Sydney 1994

For Richer, For Poorer: Early Colonial Marriages Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1994

Adele Nye, Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Jill Roe, Penny Russell, Desley Deacon, Amanda Laugeson and Paul Kiem, ‘Exploring Historical Thinking and Agency with Undergraduate History Students' Studies in Higher Education, 2011, pp. 1-18. DOI:10.1080/03075071003759045.

Adele Nye, Marnie Hughes-Warrington, Jill Roe, Penny Russell, Desley Deacon, Amanda Laugeson and Paul Kiem, ‘Historical Thinking in Higher Education', History Australia, 6(3), 2009, pp. 73.1-73.16. DOI:10.2104/ha090073.

‘Life’s Illusions: The art of feminist biography’ Journal of Women’s History 21 (4) 2009, pp. 152-6.

‘Unhomely Moments: Civilising domestic worlds in colonial Australia’, The History of the Family 2009, pp. 327-339.

(with Marilyn Lake) ‘Miss Australia’, in Melissa Harper and Richard White (eds) Symbols of Australia UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010, pp. 91-97.

‘Citizens of the World? Jane Franklin’s transnational fantasies’ in D. Deacon, P. Russell and A. Woollacott (eds) Transnational Lives: Biographies of Global Modernity Palgrave MacMillan, London and New York, 2010, pp. 195-208.

‘Wife Stories: Narrating marriage and self in the life of Jane Franklin’, Victorian Studies 48 (1) Fall 2005, pp. 35-57.

'Unsettling Settler Society' in Australia's History: Themes and Debates (ed. M. Lyons and P. Russell) University of New South Wales Press, Sydney 2005, pp. 22-40.

'Empathy, Imagination and Feminist History', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, 13, 2004, pp. 1-11 (feature article in 20th anniversary edition).

‘Ornaments of Empire? Government House and the idea of English Aristocracy in Colonial Australia’, History Australia Vol. 1, No. 2, July 2004, pp. 196-208.

‘An improper education? Jane Griffin’s pursuit of self-improvement and “Truth”, 1811-1812’, History of Education Journal (UK), Vol. 33, No. 3, May 2004, pp. 249-265.

‘Imagining Romance: Geneva 1816’, Australian Feminist Studies, 19 (43) March 2004, pp. 9-18.

'A Woman of the Future? Feminism and conservatism in colonial New South Wales', Women's History Review (UK), 13 (1) 2004, pp. 69-90.

‘Antipodean Queen of Sheba’, Meanjin 62 (4) December 2003, pp. 161-7.

'Cultures of Distinction' in R. White and H. Teo (eds) Cultural History in Australia University of New South Wales Press, Kensington 2003, pp. 158-171.

'The Brash Colonial: Class and Comportment in Nineteenth-Century Australia', Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, Sixth Series, XII, Cambridge University Press 2002, pp. 431-453.

Areas of teaching and research supervision

• Australian nineteenth- and twentieth-century history, with a particular interest in 'intimate' history: family and relationships, love and marriage, the minutiae of social life, the politics of gender
• Travel, gender and imperialism in nineteenth-century Australia and Britain
• Biography, life writing, subjectivity
• Scandal

Conference Activity

Co Convenor, Australian Historical Association Conference 1998

Co Convenor, Humanities Research Centre conference on transnational biography and international lives (with Professors Desley Deacon, ANU and Angela Woollacott, Macquarie), 2006

Co Convenor, Network for Research in Women’s History conference, AHA Canberra 2006

Convenor, ‘Sex in History’, Network for Research in Women’s History conference, AHA Melbourne 1998

Other professional contributions

• Editor (with Richard White), History Australia (since 2008)
• Co-convenor, Sydney Feminist History Group (since 2006)
• Convenor, Network for Research in Women's History, Australia, 2004-2008
• Correspondent, International Federation for Research in Women's History
• Correspondent, Australian Historical Studies
• President, History Council of New South Wales, 2003-4
• Judge, NSW Premier's History Awards, 2002