‘The question of the unmarried’: Some meanings of being single in Australia in the 1920s and 1930s

But where are you really from?: The ‘crisis’ of multiculturalism examined through the work of four Asian-Australian artists

“…27 In her 2007 analysis of narratives of Australian national identity, Catriona Elder has argued that there are two dominant narratives of Australian ethnicity that are played out concurrently in public culture; an older 'white Australia' story which perpetuates the idea of cultural homogeneity, and a newer 'multiculturalism' story which presents Australia as a nation of immigrants. 28 In an interesting take on both narratives, the anthropologist Ghassan Hage has argued that, irrespective of which model they support, when Anglo-Australians debate these issues they are unwittingly sharing a common idea about national space, where both White racists and White multiculturalists share in a conception of themselves as nationalists and of the nation as a space structured around a White culture, where Aboriginal people and non-White 'ethnics' are merely national objects to be moved or removed according to a White national will. 29 Hage calls this the "White nation" fantasy-the idea that white Australians control the national space and that it is their right to decide who enters the country, and to define what is Australian and what is un-Australian.…”

The spinster teacher in Australia from the 1870s to the 1960s

“…49 Romance was integral to the flapper's life but 'women's access to sexuality was ordered within and around the institution of marriage'. 50 Stanley Hall argued, for example, that 'all of the above are only surface phenomena, and that the real girl beneath them is but little changed', finding fulfillment in marriage and motherhood. 51 Young women teachers were not immune to these discourses about female youth and while the flapper gradually faded from the public imagination in the 1930s, her preoccupation with fashion, leisure and relationships remained indicative of youthful femininity.…”