« Place and self (even settlers should think about it): Kerri Malloy, ‘Invoking Place to Confront the Settler-Colonial Self’, in Saghar Shahidi-Birjandian, Sarah Seiselmyer-Snyder (eds), Intergenerational Survivors of Genocide and Mass Atrocities: Lived Experiences of Knowledge Providers, Routledge, 2026

The sex of settler statues: Sharon Crozier-De Rosa, Vera Mackie, Ana Stevenson, Andrea Witcomb, ‘Statuary and a Gendered Reckoning with Australia’s Settler-Colonial Past’, in Sherene Baugher, John H. Jameson (eds), Monuments, Statues, and Commemorations of Women, Routledge, 2026

23Jul26

Abstract: It has long been commented – particularly by feminist scholars – that women are underrepresented in statues in public places. Statues across the Commonwealth and former British Empire overwhelmingly depict prominent white men who engaged in military pursuits, colonising ventures, politics, or industry. In recent years, these statues have become sites of protest because of their association with imperialism, militarism, dispossession, and oppression. Women, on the other hand, tend to be depicted in statuary as allegorical figures, representing abstract qualities of love, charity, or compassion. In these countries, Queen Victoria (1819–1901) stands out as one of the few ‘real’ women to be memorialised in statuary. However, in Australia, a settler-colonial nation that still maintains close ties with the British metropole, statues of Victoria have attracted criticism and protests. Not content for this monarch to be the sole representation of actual women, demands have emerged for a more diverse memory landscape, as seen in the Monument of One’s Own campaign, as well as campaigns for the memorialisation of specific women. To examine stories emerging from female statuary erected in Australia since 2021 for what they reveal about national memory, this chapter focuses on three case studies featuring Indigenous athlete and politician Nova Peris (b. 1971), pioneering politicians Dame Enid Lyons (1897–1981) and Dame Dorothy Tangney (1907–1985), and wartime nurse Vivian Bullwinkel (1915–2000). We analyse the intersections of gender, ethnicity, and racialised positioning as they play out against prevailing masculinised narratives of colonialism, the sporting nation, and the so-called ‘working man’s paradise’.


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