Rachel Harris – special guest speaker on 10 August
Rachel Harris will be the guest speaker at the Oral History Australia SA/NT AGM. Rachel is a third year PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide. Please join us to hear her speak about her oral history project on the lives of civilian women on South Australia’s home front during World War II.
Date: 10 August 2018
Time: 2 – 4 pm
Place: Bronwyn Halliday Learning Studio, Ground Floor, State Library of South Australia, cnr of Kintore Ave and North Terrace
Come and enjoy a sumptuous afternoon tea!
Cost: Free, but RSVP is essential to assist with catering.
RSVP by Friday 3 August to: contact@oralhistoryaustraliasant.org.au
If you are a member of OHA, but are not able to attend the meeting, please fill in this proxy form.
Oral History Australia SA/NT is very pleased that Rachel Harris, OHA member and PhD student at the University of Adelaide, has agreed to talk to us about her oral history project.
Rachel Harris is a third year PhD candidate at the University of Adelaide, where she researches the lives of civilian women on South Australia’s home front during World War II. Focusing on gender history, her thesis particularly examines how social expectations of an ‘ideal womanhood’ shaped women’s response to, and experiences of, unique wartime circumstances as they affected South Australia. As part of this research, Rachel has used the existing oral history collections of the State Library of South Australia, Adelaide City Council Archives and the Australian War Memorial, as well as undertaken 24 of her own interviews, now held by the State Library. The topics she has examined include female employment in the state’s munitions industry and the Australian Women’s Land Army, wartime voluntary work, issues of sexuality and morality, and the experiences of German and Italian women. Her research has been most recently published in the academic journal War and Society.
Rachel has presented her research at the annual Australian Historical Association Conference, Oral History Association Biennial Conference, South Australian State History Conference, and the University of South Australia’s ‘Narratives of War Symposium’. She has also talked about her project at events held by the Labour History Society of South Australia, History Council of South Australia, and the Barr Smith Library, University of Adelaide.
In this talk, Rachel will discuss the findings of her oral history project that accompanies her research and her experiences of attending the 2017 Oral History Association Conference.