Emeritus Professor Jill Julius Matthews
Areas of expertise
- Culture, Gender, Sexuality 200205
- Screen And Media Culture 200212
- Biography 210304
- Australian History (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander History) 210303
- Historical Studies 2103
Research interests
History of modernity, sexuality, popular culture especially silent and pornographic film, Australian social and cultural history, feminist history.
Biography
Jill came to the ANU in 1984, after teaching History at Flinders, Adelaide, Sydney and Wollongong universities. Appointed to the Women's Studies Program, she became inaugural Director of the Centre for Women's Studies in 1995. In 1997, she took up an appointment in the History Department. From 2008-10, she was Head of the School of Social Sciences in the Faculty of Arts. From 2011-13, she was Head of the School of Cultural Inquiry, Research School of Humanities and the Arts, CASS.
In 1993, she was co-Convenor of one of the most popular theme programs at the Humanities Research Centre, 'Sexualities and Culture'. She has been a Convenor of the Australian Network for Research in Women's History, and was a Ministerial appointee to the first Board of the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia. She has been awarded Research Fellowships at the State Library of NSW and the NFSA. Her book Dance Hall and Picture Palace won the inaugural award for best monograph from the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand, and was short-listed for the Queensland Premier's Literary Award for History. She recently won an award for excellence in supervision from the College of Arts and Social Sciences.
She retired from the ANU at the beginning of 2014. Since then shewas Convenor of the 2014 HRC Conference: "History, Cinema, Digital Archives", and co-edited a special issue of Feminist Media Histories on "Archives and Archivists" (2016).
Researcher's projects
Jill's field of research covers histories of: modernity; popular culture; sexuality; silent cinema; pornography. Australian and transnational cultural, social and gender history.
Past student projects
PhD
2018 Fiona Fraser, 'A City for Music Lovers: Creating a Classical Music Culture in Sydney 1889-1939.' (This began in 2005 as a Musicology PhD exegesis which then separated out into two PhDs, the first in Music, Capital: A Contemporary Opera in Two Acts, awarded 2015; the second, this History dissertation, awarded 2018)
2016 Susan Ford, ‘Conceptions of Space in Homer and Herodotus'
2009 Melissa McEwen, ‘The Construction of the 1960s in Feature Films of the 1980s’
2006 Silke Andris, ‘Essential Challenges: The (Re-)Making of the Body in Women’s Boxing’
2001 Judith Ion, ‘”She Gave Me That Look”. Narratives of Same-Sex Desire (and the Impact of Feminism) in Canberra 1965-85’
2000 Michael Flood, ‘Lust, Trust and Latex. Why Young Heterosexual Men Don’t Use Condoms’
1999 Eleanor Cohen, ‘”Man or the Maddened Beast?” Male Sexuality and Coming of Age in Australia 1918-1938’
1997 Helen Keane, ‘What’s Wrong with Addiction?’
1997 Berenice Carrington, ‘Pekina, An Ethnography of Memory. An Ethnographic Interpretation of Women's Lives in a Small, Insular Farming Community’
1991 Mandy Leveratt, ‘The Relationship Between Socialism and Feminism in England 1883-1921’
1984-6 Wendy Harcourt, ‘The Medical Discourse Relating to Women's Bodies in Late Nineteenth Century Australia, Melbourne 1870-1910’
1984-5 Elizabeth Plumridge, ‘New Zealand Women Painters 1890-1914. The Negotiation of Circumstance’
MA
1990-3 Cordelia Hull, ‘”The Best Place in the Commonwealth”. The Lives of Mothers in Post War Canberra’
LittB
1988 Cordelia Hull, ‘The Modern Home-Maker. Housework and Motherhood in 1920s Australia’
Publications
- Matthews, J 2017, 'Good and Mad Women redux', History Australia, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 461-471.
- Duckett, V & Matthews, J, eds, 2016, "Archives and Archivists", Feminist Media Histories, Vol.2, No.1, Winter
- Matthews, J 2014, 'The History of the Exhibition of Pornographic Film in Australia', in Lisa Featherstone, Rebecca Jennings and Robert Reynolds (ed.), Acts of Love and Lust: Sexuality in Australia from 1945-2010, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Newcastle upon Tyne, pp. 8-22.
- Matthews, J 2013, 'Everyone's equal in the ring: Exhibition review of the "Wild Ones. Sydney Stadium 1908-1970"', History Australia, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 245-247.
- Matthews, J J 2013, ‘Modern Entertainments: Leisure in 1913’, in Michelle Hetherington (ed.), Glorious Days. Australia 1913, Canberra, National Museum of Australia, pp.137-45
- Matthews, J 2012, Talk: 'Women in Australian Silent Cinema', Thoroughly Modern: Women in Early Australian Film, ed. unknown, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane Australia.
- Matthews, J 2011, 'The lust of the eye and the thrill of the flesh', Studies in Australasian Cinema, vol. 5, no. 2, pp. 193-202.
- Matthews, J, 2011, Presentation: ‘The History of Exhibition of Pornographic Film in Australia’, History of Sexualities Conference, Newcastle, 21-22 July
- Matthews, J 2010, 'Hidden Treasures of the Mitchell Library: Sydney Periodicals 1895-1930',Specialist Research Project, AustLit, University of Queensland,
- Matthews, J 2010, Hidden Treasures of the Mitchell Library: Sydney Periodicals 1895-1930. AustLit: The Australian Literature Resource, http://www.austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets/BookHistory/TreasuresOfTheMitchell
- Matthews, J 2009, 'Modern times: The untold story of modernism in Australia - Exhibition Review', reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 5.
- Matthews, J 2008, 'Erotic Modernities', in Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly (ed.), Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s, Sydney University Press, Sydney, pp. 5 -17.
- Matthews, J 2008, ''Blue in Black and White' - curated performance and lecture', Arc, National Film and Sound Archive.
- Matthews, J 2007, 'Blue Movies in Australia: A Preliminary History', NFSA Journal, vol. 2, no. 3, pp. 1-12.
- Matthews, J 2007, 'Book Review: Thoroughly Modern Sydney: 1920s and 30s Glamour & Style', History Australia, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 30.
- Matthews, J 2005, 'Modern nomads and national film history: the multi-continental career of J.D. William', in Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake (ed.), Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective, ANU ePress, Canberra, Australia, pp. 157-169.
- Matthews, J 2005, Dance Hall & Picture Palace: Sydney's Romance with Modernity, Currency Press, Sydney Australia, pp.i-342.
- Matthews, J 2004, 'Beatrice Maude Tildesley Goes to the Pictures', Screening the Past, vol. 16, pp. 1-8.
- Matthews, J 2004, 'Stack, Mary Meta Bagot (1883-1935)', in H.C.G. Matthew and Brian Harrison (ed.), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography: From the earliest times to the year 2000, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 2pp.
- Matthews, J 2003, 'New Challenges for Feminist History', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, vol. 12, pp. 1-5.
- Matthews, J 2000, 'Normalising Modernity', UTS Review, The, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 4-10.
- Matthews, J 2000, 'Book Review: The Use and Abuse of Australian History', Australian Historical Association Bulletin, vol. 91, no. December, pp. 67-71.
- Matthews, J 2000, 'Simone de Beauvoir's The Third Sex', Hecate, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 139-143.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Mapping the movies: the changing nature of Australia's cinema circuits and their audiences 1956-1984 (Secondary Investigator)