History - Pen Hetherington

Penelope Hetherington, who was born in 1928, gained an Ordinary Degree in Bachelor of Arts, majoring in History and English, at the University of Adelaide in 1951. She taught in State Secondary schools until 1957 and then retired to care for three children, including twin sons, born between 1958 and 1962. She undertook further study between 1960 and 1972, gaining an Honours Degree in History, First Class, at the University of Adelaide in 1966 and a Degree in Master of Arts with Distinction at the University of Western Australia in 1972. She worked in the History Department at the University of Western Australia from 1970 until 1993, teaching European history, African history, the history of women and children and Historiography. She was awarded a D.Litt in 2004 and is a Research Fellow of the UWA Department of History. She has contributed several entries to the Western Australian Encyclopaedia and is currently writing a history of the Poor Houses in 19th Century Western Australia.

Books Published

Author of:
British Paternalism and Africa 1920-1940, Frank Cass, London, 1978.
The Making of a Labor Politician: Family and Politics in South Australia, 1900 - 1980, Perth, 1982.
The Third Ear: Explorations in Poetic Form, 1984 to 1996, Perth, 1996.
Settlers, Servants and Slaves: Aboriginal and European Children in 19th Century Western Australia, Perth, 2002.

Editor of:-
Childhood and Society in Western Australia: Essays in Social History, Perth, 1988.
Incest and the Community: Australian Perspectives, Perth, 1991.
Sexuality and Gender in History: Selected Essays (with Philippa Maddern), Perth, 1993.

Articles in Australian History
‘Oral sources and biography: the writing of The Making of a Labor Politician’, Oral History Association of Australia Journal , 4, 1981-82, pp. 19-20.
‘The history of Australian women’, Studies in Western Australian History, VI, 1984, pp. 1-21.
‘Childhood and youth in Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies, 18, 1986, pp. 3-18.
‘William George James Mills’, in Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Searle, General Editors, Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1986, volume 10, pp. 51-52.
‘Writing the history of childhood in Western Australia’, in P. Hetherington, ed., Childhood and Society in Western Australia, UWA Press, 36, 1, 1990, pp. 51-61.
‘European children in Swan River Colony 1829-1850’, The Push: A Journal of Early Australian Social History, 28, 1990, pp. 2-11.
‘Aboriginal children as a potential labour force in Swan River Colony, 1829-1850’, Journal of Australian Studies, 23, 1992, pp. 41-58.
‘Child labour in Swan River Colony, 1829-1850’, Historical Studies, 25, 1992, pp. 34-52.
‘One Woman's Crusade: an interview with Nancy Rehfeldt, Founder Member of the Incest Survivors Association of Western Australia’, in P. Hetherington, ed., Incest and the Community: Australian Perspectives, 1991, pp. 139-147.
‘The Origins of Incest: a Feminist Reading of Freud's Totem and Taboo’, 1991, in P. Hetherington, ed., Incest and the Community: Australian Perspectives, 1991, pp.159-172.
‘The legal construction of childhood in Colonial Australia, 1829-1900: the example of Western Australia’, in Diane Kirkby, ed., Sex, Power and Justice: Historical Perspectives of Law in Australia, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp. 118-132.
‘Western Australia in the Commonwealth, 1939-1945’, in J. Gregory, ed., On the Homefront: Western Australia in the Second World War, Perth, UWA Press, 1997, pp. 1-10.
‘Families and Children in Wartime Western Australia’, in J. Gregory, ed., On the Homefront: Western Australia in the Second World War, Perth, UWA Press, 1997, pp. 94-105
‘History, feminism and the reconstruction of childhood’, Journal of Australian Studies, number 59, 1998, pp. 2-7.
‘Women and Children as Subjects in Western Australian History’, Studies in Western Australian History, 19, 1999, pp. 212-227.
‘Baby-Farming in Western Australia: the Case against Alice Mitchell, 1907’, Studies in Western Australian History, 2006, forthcoming.

Articles in African History
‘By Tazara Rail: From New Kapiri Mposhe to Dar Es Salaam’, African Studies Association of Australia and the Pacific Newsletter, 6, 2, 1984, pp.24-27.
‘Reproduction and the Family: the African Contribution to Women's Studies’, AFSAAP Conference Papers, 1987.
‘Apartheid and South African Historiography’, Teaching History, 21, 3, 1987, pp. 11-14.
‘African Journey’, Indian Arts Association Newsletter, August, 1988, p.1.
‘Generational Change and Class Formation in the Kikuyu Highlands: The Kamore Family’, Australian Journal of Politics and History, 36,1, 1990, pp. 51-61.
‘Female Circumcision and the Writing of History’, Indian Ocean Studies Review, 5, 3, 1992.
‘The Literature in English on Women in South Africa’, International Journal of African History, 26, 2, 1993, pp. 241-269.
‘Explaining the Crisis of Capitalism in Kenya?’, African Affairs, 92, 1993, pp. 89-103.
‘The Politics of Female Circumcision in the Central Province of Colonial Kenya, 1920-1930’, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, 26, 1, 1998, pp. 93-126.
‘The Politics of the Clitoris: Contaminated Speech, Feminism and Female Circumcision’, African Studies Review and Newsletter, 19, 1, 1997, pp. 4-9.
‘Generational Changes in Marriage Patterns in the Central Province of Kenya, 1930-1990’, Journal of Asian and African Studies, 36, 2, 2001, pp.157-180.