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HomeUpcoming EventsReading For Pleasure: Australian Girls, Intimate Knowledge and Print Culture, 1970–2010
Reading for pleasure: Australian girls, intimate knowledge and print culture, 1970–2010

An unpublished letter to Dolly from the 1990s. Courtesy S.Roberts

A condom placed on a banana; a dated video explaining puberty to teenagers who had already experienced it; a teacher’s voice drowned out by awkward laughter: school-based sex education in the recent Australian past often left students confused, bored and uncomfortable. So how did Australian girls actually learn about sex? In this presubmission seminar, PHD candidate Saskia Roberts examines how girls supplemented their often narrow and superficial classroom lessons with teen magazines, novels, sex education manuals, pornography and other publications that discussed sexuality, puberty, relationships, contraception and similar topics. Saskia's research extends beyond the texts girls consulted. Instead, she foregrounds how, where and with whom they read, asking: how did girls’ engagements with print culture influence their understandings and experiences of intimacy? To answer this, she analyses approximately forty oral histories, she has conducted with a diverse range of narrators; a set of five thousand unpublished letters to Dolly magazine’s notorious medical advice columns; and a large number of books, magazines and pamphlets popular among girls in this era. By working at the previously understudied intersections of the histories of girlhood, reading and sexuality, Saskia centres the ways girls themselves contested and shaped sexual norms, as these shifted rapidly across Australia and the world.

Saskia Roberts is a History PhD candidate at the Australian National University. She has written for Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, The Conversation and the Northern Territory Treaty Commission. She is the 2025 winner of the Australian Historical Association Jill Roe Prize, and received a commendation for the 2025 History Council of New South Wales Max Kelly Award.

Zoom details: https://anu.zoom.us/j/82197553899?pwd=rk7GIaKKoo5wuDA6a03mZuzMy7ono7.1

Meeting ID: 821 9755 3899

Password: 635387

Date & time

  • Wed 15 Oct 2025, 4:00 pm - 5:15 pm

Location

Lectorial 1 (room 1.21) and online

Speakers

  • Saskia Roberts

Event Series

School of History Seminar Series

Contact

  •  Ananyo Chakraborty
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