Unit rationale, description and aim
Historians often refer to ‘silences’ in history and seek ways to retrieve missing 'voices'. This is needed to explore how interpretations of the past have been constructed and whose history is being told.
This unit explores how historians have worked to record, recover and interpret silenced or forgotten women’s voices, histories of everyday experience and gendered national narratives. Students will undertake their own searches of historical sources to discover the stories of women in Australia’s past. It provides students with opportunities to do ‘hands on’ history investigating the changing experiences and perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous women in Australia from the colonial frontier through to modern times in a variety of cultural and ethnic contexts.
Specific case studies and research challenges will focus on debates and changing perspectives about women in their public and private worlds. The unit discusses a range of approaches to history including practices of women’s, feminist and gender history alongside historical research techniques including oral history.
The aim of this unit is to develop students' understanding of history through the exploration of women's experiences and voices contained in a range of historical records and to explore how public histories of women are told.
Campus offering
No unit offerings are currently available for this unit.Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Examine and compare the changing experiences of In...
Learning Outcome 01
Identify and analyse primary and secondary sources...
Learning Outcome 02
Apply feminist historical approaches and digital h...
Learning Outcome 03
Content
Topics will include:
- Finding women’s voices in Australian History
- Indigenous and non-Indigenous women’s experience, activism and advocacy
- Women’s voices in historical sources; written letters, diaries, images and digital newspaper databases; oral history collections
- Public representations of women’s history
- Women’s History: Rethinking Domesticity
- Migration, women and work.
- The women’s liberation movement: the personal is political
- Sex and Sexuality
- Contemporary issues and debates
- Gender, Transgender, and diverse voices in history
- 19th century case studies may include topics such as: Women and work, the vote and ‘First Wave’ feminism, maternity and childbearing.
- 20th and 21st century case studies may include topics such as: gender and policy, divorce, sex education and contraception, ‘the marriage bar’, women and war, family violence, equal pay, the ‘nuclear family’, adoption, feminisms of the 1950s and 1960s; The MeToo Movement, gender activism and advocacy movements.
Skills:
- Historical Source Analysis and Recovery
- Digital history, primary sources, ownership and ethical applied history
- Gender and Women’s History
- Feminist perspectives on Women’s History
- Critical Evaluation of Gendered Historical Narratives
Assessment strategy and rationale
The assessment tasks will develop students' historical research skills while addressing learning outcomes.
Assessment Task 1: (Public and Private Lives Task) introduces foundational skills in identifying and analysing primary and secondary historical sources enabling students to practice recovering silenced women's voices through guided writing tasks. This scaffolded learning provides structured practice in source interpretation and analysis.
Assessment Task 2: (Hands-On History Project) advances these skills by requiring comparative analysis of Indigenous and/or non-Indigenous women's experiences while developing digital literacy or oral history and public engagement capabilities. Students must synthesise research into accessible formats, demonstrating deeper understanding of gendered historical narratives across cultural contexts. The public nature encourages high-quality research and introduces students to collaborative knowledge creation.
Assessment Task 3: (The Secure Summative Task) provides authentic assessment conditions where students demonstrate mastery of feminist historical methodologies through immediate analysis of unseen sources. This task requires independent application of learned skills, ensuring genuine competency development.
Together, these assessments move from guided practice to independent application, incorporating both academic writing and analysis of historical sources in different formats. They balance individual skill development with collaborative learning while maintaining academic integrity through varied assessment modes that complement different learning styles and career pathways.
Overview of assessments
Assessment Task 1: Public and Private Lives Task ...
Assessment Task 1: Public and Private Lives Task
Students select and analyse primary and secondary sources from a specific decade between 1850-2020s that help build a profile of the public or private life of an individual woman. The purpose of this assignment is to investigate and explain how various types of sources fill gaps in traditional historical narratives and demonstrate the importance of recovering silenced voices.
25%
Assessment Task 2: Hands-On History Project Adva...
Assessment Task 2: Hands-On History Project
Advances skills from Task 1 by requiring comparative analysis of Indigenous and/or non-Indigenous women's experiences while developing digital or oral history literacy and public engagement capabilities. The purpose of this task is to synthesise research into accessible formats, demonstrating deeper understanding of gendered historical narratives across cultural contexts. The public nature encourages high-quality research and introduces students to collaborative knowledge creation.
30%
Assessment 3: Secure Summative Task Students wil...
Assessment 3: Secure Summative Task
Students will complete a secure supervised in-class [MT1] workshop or specified time in the exam period, where they are provided with previously unseen source materials. Working individually students must produce an analysis of the material applying methodologies examined in the unit. The purpose of this assessment is for students to show mastery of unit content, themes and materials.
Adjustments for students with Education Inclusion Plans will be available.
45%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
This unit provides hands-on learning through classes that develop deep understanding of women's history and fundamental historical research skills. Students engage with collaborative activities including searching historic newspaper databases and digital archives, analysing primary and secondary sources, participating in group discussions, attending research workshops, delivering presentations, and solving historical problems through direct engagement with evidence.
The pedagogical approach combines multiple learning formats to support diverse learning styles: lectures introduce key concepts and contexts; small-group tutorials facilitate in-depth discussion and analysis; guided reading develops critical thinking skills; collaborative activities build teamwork and communication abilities; documentary screenings provide visual historical perspectives; digital research workshops teach essential archival and database skills; and progressive assessments build from foundational source analysis to independent research projects.
This varied approach ensures students develop both theoretical knowledge of women's historical experiences and practical competencies in historical methodology. Through active learning strategies, students gain confidence in recovering silenced or forgotten voices, interpreting gendered narratives, and conducting original historical research while building essential academic skills for advanced study.
Representative texts and references
Bellanta, M and Alana Piper, “‘Looking Flash: Disreputable Women’s Dress and ‘Modernity’, 1870-1910”, History Workshop Journal, 78:1 (2014), 58-81.
Carey, J. Taking to the Field: A History of Australian Women in Science, Monash University Publishing, 2023.
Chesser, L. Parting With My Sex: Cross Dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life, Sydney University Press, 2008.
Feathersone, L, ‘The one single primary cause’: Divorce, the Family and Heterosexual Pleasure in Postwar Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, 37: 3 (2013), 349-363.
Forsyth, H. 'Reconsidering women's role in the professionalisation of the economy: evidence from the Australian census 1881-1947' Australian Economic History Review, (2018).
Grimshaw, P., Lake, M., McGrath, A. and Quartly, M. Creating a Nation. Perth: API network, 2006 (2nd edn).
Moreton-Robinson, Aileen, Talkin' Up to the White Woman: Indigenous women and feminism, University of Minnesota Press, 2021.
Nelson, E., Smith, S. and Grimshaw, P. (eds) Letters from Aboriginal Women in Victoria, 1867-1926. History Department, University of Melbourne, 2002.
Nelson, E. Homefront Hostilities: The First World War and Domestic Violence, Australian Scholarly Publishing 2014.
Quartly, Marian, Swain, Shurlee and Cuthbert Denise, The Market in Babies: Stories of Australian Adoption, Monash University Publishing, 2013.