Rebecca Jennings

Biography

Professor at Macquarie University

Research Interest

I am currently commencing an ARC-funded project, 'Lesbian Cultures of Intimacy in Australia since 1945'. Drawing on oral history interviews and archival research, this project aims both to inform contemporary debates and to begin to heal the traumatic legacy of past social oppression by exploring the history of lesbian relationships, families and patterns of intimacy in Australia from 1945 onwards. This period has witnessed the development of a range of different conceptualisations of same-sex intimacy, from discreet partnerships to open lesbian feminist relationships and from married mothers building a new life with their children and a female partner to out lesbian couples starting a family with the assistance of reproductive technologies. Although new models of lesbian intimacy have continued to emerge throughout the period, older concepts have persisted, with women who became aware of their same-sex desire and forged partnerships in the 1940s and 1950s maintaining notions of intimacy developed at that time and this research will contribute to our understanding of the range of patterns of intimacy which have emerged between women since 1945.