PROFILE: Dr Judy Lattas, Director of the Institute for Women’s Studies
Room C3B 521 Phone 9850-7947 Fax 9850-9355
Email: jlattas@scmp.mq.edu.au
QUALIFICATIONS AND PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITY
1984: B.A.(Hons.) at Adelaide University in English Language & Literature: First class honours.
1998: Ph.D. at Macquarie University (Women’s Studies)
Editorial Board,AUR (Australian Universities Review)
Member (discipline convenors’ group) AWGSA (Australian Women and Gender Studies Association)
Interactive Weblogs:
1. Punchin’ Judy: a Women’s Studies blog
http://wpmu.innovation.cfl.mq.edu.au/talkingpoint/2006/11/06/punchin-judy-a-womens-studies-blog/
2. Is Feminism Necessary?
http://wpmu.innovation.cfl.mq.edu.au/talkingpoint/2006/10/06/is-feminism-necessary/
BACKGROUND
Dr Judy Lattas has been teaching in Gender and Women’s Studies at Macquarie since 1989. She came to Macquarie with a background in feminist activism as well as intellectual engagements in the disciplines of Women’s Studies, philosophy and literature. Dr Lattas’s early concerns were for understanding and addressing the problem of violence and its political and sexual foundations. In 1979 she led the establishment of a Rape Crisis Centre in Cairns, North Queensland, and worked as one of the first coordinators of Ruth’s women’s shelter in Cairns in the early 1980s. She has been employed as a youth worker for teenagers at risk ( Adelaide), and helped open up the subject of child sexual abuse in Australia with surveys and submissions from the Adelaide Rape Crisis Centre in the 1970s. She was active in the feminist campaign to expose rape in war, and rape in marriage, at that time, as well as in the anti-nuclear and anti-racist movements.
These interests have continued in her academic research and teaching.
TEACHING
Dr Lattas convenes the core undergraduate units available within the Institute for Women’s Studies. The courses she offers teach feminist and critical theory through explorations of popular culture and sexual difference in a domestic and international context. She also convenes the IWS Honours and postgraduate research program.
In 2004 she was awarded an Outstanding Teacher Award at Macquarie University.
RESEARCH
Dr Lattas’s research interests are broadly in the area of political philosophy and more specifically in the field of Australian Studies in Extremism and Democracy.
In 1998 she was awarded her PhD for a thesis entitled “Politics in Labour”, a deconstructivist reading of Hannah Arendt on the philosophical conditions of totalitarianism. She is interested in the extreme right in Australia, publishing on Pauline Hanson; on gun activism; on secessionist micronations; and on culture and gendered harm.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Rifts: new right-left hybridities in Australian popular culture (project incorporating research on Australian gun activism, micronationalism, culture and gender issues, the extreme right, “right wing babes”, political correctness and the left in Australia).
On gun activism:
- Nationwide survey conducted of female sporting shooters in SSAA (analysis of questionnaire and follow up in-depth interviews).
- Port Arthur conspiracy (analysis incorporating ethnography of Port Arthur conspiracy authors)
On secessionist micronations:
- “Technicalities” (analysis incorporating ethnography of Australian secessionist movement)
Film on secessionist micronations:
- Research consultant in the making of the film EMPIRE SABOTAGE - NEW WORLDS ARE HAPPENING (Feature Film Documentary by Award Winning Filmmaker Paul Poet, produced by Navigator Film in Coop with Germany and the EU Austria/Germany, HDTV, ca. 90 - 120 Min, planned filming 06/07, Release:07).
On culture and gendered harm:
- ‘Bikini vs Burka’ in contemporary Australia: a Women’s Studies response to the Cronulla riots (analysis of sexual harassment incorporating ethnography at Cronulla beach)
- Cruising: ‘moral panic’ and the Cronulla riots (analysis incorporating ethnography on Shire schoolies on the P & O cruise at the time of the Cronulla riots)
PUBLICATIONS
2006 forthcoming – “Gunning for Australia” Journal of Australian Studies , issue 86
2005 (December) “The left, the right and ‘academic orthodoxy’”, AUR (Australian Universities Review), Vol 48, No.2, 2005. ISSN: 0818-8068
(September) “21 st Century Feminism, Armed and Ready” Social Alternatives, Vol 24, No. 2, 2nd Quarter 2005, co-edited by Elizabeth Webby and Marilla North, entitled ‘Australian and International Feminisms 1975 – 2005: Where we’ve been and where we’re going’. A selection of controversial papers and poetry from the 12 - 14 December 2004 International A & IF Conference.ISSN: 0155-0306
(September) Book review of Paul Carter's Material Thinking: The Theory and Practice of Creative Research, published in AUR (Australian Universities Review), Vol 48, No.1, 2005. ISSN: 0818-8068
(May) “DIY Sovereignty and the Popular Right in Australia”, refereed edited collection of papers “ Mobile Boundaries / Rigid Worlds” published through the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, available at: http://www.crsi.mq.edu.au/mobileboundaries.htm. ISBN 1-74138-0472
2003 “Jimi Hendrix, editor of Lock, Stock and Barrel”, refereed edited collection of papers “Casting New Shadows” on CD-Rom ISBN 1-86408-887-7
2002 "Ida da Spida", limerick in the collection Australian Limericks 2002
2001 “We wouldn’t be dead for quids”: Hansonism, fascism, death and difference” in Oceania, vol. 71, no. 3, March
1994 Book Reviews of Brodribb, Somer, Nothing Mat(t)ers: A Feminist Critique of Postmodernism, (Nth Melbourne: Spinifex Press, 1992), and Porter, Elisabeth J., Women and Moral Identity, (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1991), in Thesis 11, no. 37, pp. 176-180
1992 “French Feminisms”, chapter in Social Theory: A Guide to Central Thinkers, ed. Peter Beilharz, ( Sydney: Allen & Unwin)
- “Forum: Women’s Studies in the 90s”, with Barbara Caine, Marilyn Lake, Bronwen Levy, interviewed by Maria Veber, Antithesis (Sex, Death, Narrative) 4:1
1989 “Feminism as a Proper Name”, Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 4.