Rose Selwyn – Women and Intellectual Life in New South Wales

Rose Selwyn (nee Rusden) playing chess with husband Rev. Arthur Edward Selwyn Dean of Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle. c.1890s
Rose Selwyn (nee Rusden) playing chess with husband Rev. Arthur Edward Selwyn Dean of Christ Church Cathedral Newcastle. c.1890s

If you are interested in trail blazing women of distinction, who also happen to be watercolour artists, then join the University of Newcastle’s  Historical, Cultural and Critical Inquiry Group and co-host Gender Research Network for:

“Women and Intellectual Life in New South Wales 2 – Rose Selwyn.”
Dr Paula Jane Byrne

When: Friday 24 March 2023, 10-11am Australian Eastern Daylight Time (UTC+11)

Where: For in-person attendance: Room W202, Behavioural Science Building, Callaghan Campus, University of Newcastle (Australia).

Citation: Byrne, Paula Jane. 2023.
Tracing a Female Mind in Late Nineteenth Century Australia: Rose Selwyn. Genealogy 7: 30. https://doi.org/10.3390/genealogy7020030

For online attendance: 

Zoom meeting ID: 870 4036 3272 (Open from 9:45am)
Password: 783069
To Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://uonewcastle.zoom.us/j/87040363272?pwd=QTJQait4ZFFMa1pKYVgzQzhPTHF5Zz09

This event will be recorded. Presentation recordings will be available from our YouTube channel, History@Newcastlehttps://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiju7vKLANeSX4QxBpMwJow

Dr Paula Jane Byrne:

“When I considered the intellectual life of Ann Rusden I thought there to be a neat line of development from Ann’s use of reason and her ideas of strong women to the public involvements of her daughter Rose Selwyn and her granddaughter Rose Scott. In piecing together records from the Mitchell Library’s Selwyn papers I found that this was not the case at all.

This paper considers that piecing together and the kinds of ideas that went into the making of Rose Selwyn. It takes us far from reason and into the realms of the dead and dying. It picks up threads of thinking that would inform Rose’s sense of ‘suffering’. While the paper considers some of Rose’s speeches and addresses it does not concentrate on Rose as a public woman. Jude Conway’s work lies in that direction. Rather, it deals with scrapbooks, watercolours and poetry as well as some of the slippages and omissions that give a picture of Rose as a colonising woman.”


Dr Paula Jane Byrne is author of Criminal Law and Colonial Subject (Cambridge 1993) and The Diaries and Letters of Ellis Bent (Desert Pea 2012). She has lectured in Australian and Aboriginal History at Macquarie University, Murdoch University, and the Australian National University, and held research positions at Sydney University, ANU and the University of New England. At present, and for a project on Women and Intellectual Life in New South Wales 1830-1880, she is a Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales.

 

Dr. Sacha Davis
School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences
Sacha.Davis@Newcastle.edu.au


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