The University of Western Australia

W/Prof Susan Broomhall

Winthrop Professor
History

Contact details

Address

History
The University of Western Australia (M208)
35 Stirling Highway
CRAWLEY WA 6009
Australia

Phone

6488 2139

Fax

6488 1069

Email

susan.broomhall@uwa.edu.au

Location

Room 1.04, Arts Building, Crawley campus

Qualifications

BA PhD W.Aust.

Key research

Early modern European history; specifically the history of women and gender, science, medicine and technologies, religious change, poverty, and work.

Publications

Susan Broomhall, Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France, Ashgate, 2002. 



Susan Broomhall, Women's Medical Work in Early Modern France, Manchester University Press, 2004.

Mesdames du Verger, Le Verger Fertile des Vertus (1595) (eds) Susan Broomhall and Colette H. Winn, Honore Champion, 2004.

Susan Broomhall, Women and Religion in Sixteenth-Century France, Palgrave, 2005. 


Les femmes et l'histoire familiale (XVI-XVIIe siecles): Descrittione della vita et morte del Sig Michele Burlamachi (1623). Genealogie de Messieurs du Laurens (1631). (eds) Susan Broomhall and Colette H. Winn, Honore Champion, 2008.

Susan Broomhall (ed.) Emotions in the Household, 1200-1900, Palgrave, 2008.



Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (eds), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe, Ashgate, 2008.

Susan Broomhall, Tim Pitman, Joanne McEwan, A Classroom like No Other: Learning and Teaching in Australian Educational Tourism, Uniprint, 2011

Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks, Early Modern Women in the Low Countries: Feminising sources and interpretations of the past, Ashgate, 2011.

David G. Barrie and Susan Broomhall (eds), A History of Policing and Masculinities, 1700-2010, Routledge, 2011.

Susan Broomhall and Jacqueline Van Gent (eds), Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period: Regulating Selves and Others, Ashgate, 2011.

Teaching

Doctoral students currently supervised

Ildy Button, The double paradox: nature and gender. Epistemology and allegory as response to these problems in the work of three 12th century writers 


Lisa Elliott, Poor Relief and the Hotel-Dieu in sixteenth-century Paris 

This thesis analyses the role the Hotel-Dieu of Paris played in administering poor relief in the sixteenth century. As well as looking at how the Hotel-Dieu operated in relation to the Grand Bureau, I wish to examine the rhetoric used in reference to the poor and examine how changing views of the poor influenced their treatment by the administrators of the Hotel-Dieu. The research will situate Paris in the context of a wider study of urban poor relief measures (Broomhall, ARC, 2006-8).

Ben Fuller, The Nature and Influence of the Idea of the Holy Roman Emperor as Head of Christendom and Wielder of International Authority, 1254 - 1648. 

This thesis examines the role that the Holy Roman Emporers played, not as territorial rulers but as figures of international authority, in western European society as a whole in the late medieval and early modern periods. It will argue that the idea of imperial authority remained powerful for much longer than is commonly thought; show how this enduring institution and ideal affected ideas of how a society should be constituted and governed; discuss the change to the imperial idea over this period and why those changes occurred. 



Erin Jackson Vis, Painting Women: Exploring Identity in the Visual Egodocuments of Artistic Women in the Dutch Golden Age (1650-1750)
This thesis will explore the self-fashioning of identity in the visual egodocuments produced by women in the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Dutch Republic. It will investigate how women participated within contemporary social and artistic networks; and the influence of this participation on their depictions of the self and identity. It will also use egodocument methodology to examine how women self-fashioned identity in their visual egodocuments, drawing on a wide range of visual source material including self-portraits, art albums, collections, album amicorum, prints, medals, embroidery, botanical illustrations, gardens, and dollhouses. Finally, the thesis will consider the lasting significance of these works, exploring how women preserved visual egodocuments through inheritance and archives, as well as the importance of historical identity in modern exhibitions of extant visual egodocuments by painting women. 





Rebecca Martin, Deviant Sexualities in Restoration England

Ann Minister, Family Strategies and Relationships: the labouring poor of Derby and south Derbyshire c.1750-1834 

This thesis will focus on the ways in which families of the labouring poor in Derby and three south Derbyshire parishes of Ticknall, Melbourne and Repton managed their survival during the period 1750 - 1834. It will use contemporary sources including trade directories to establish a clear sense of place in the tradition of English local history. However, despite being clearly located in the area, the focus of the study will be those members of the labouring poor who used an 'economy of makeshifts' to enable them to survive the difficulties of the period. Links between the county town and the southern parishes will be researched using marriage registers and Poor Law documents related to the laws of settlement and removal. It will be asked to what extent crime played a part in the family economy and it will also question the use of apprenticeship by the overseers of the poor. Family relationships will be explored using settlement examinations and one of the main findings of the study will be to determine, in the lives of the labouring poor in Derby and south Derbyshire, what 'family' meant to them and if the 'quality' of their relationships could be defined in wider terms than simply affection or emotion.

Sandy Riley, Charlotte de la Tremoille, Countess of Derby, a Cavalier heroine of the English Civil War

Charlotte de La Tremoille, Countess of Derby, was perceived to be a significant elite woman during the English Civil War. She was the central subject of a book published by a middle-ranked Cavalier officer, in 1644 - highly unusual for a woman in the seventeenth century. How did contemporaries understand her impact on the English Civil War? Writers of history in the nineteenth century also saw her as important, producing fiction, non-fiction and a travel guide that reinforced memories of her activities in folklore. Why was Charlotte de La Tremoille perceived to be of such interest to these authors at this period? This thesis aims to investigate presentations of Charlotte's identity in differing social, political and military contexts, as they are presented by her, by her contemporaries and by historians, using contemporary documents such as letters, eye-witness accounts, and pamphlets as well as nineteenth-century representations. 


Lesley Silvester, A longitudinal study of poor families in early modern Norwich c. 1560-1700 

The intent of this thesis is to demonstrate the possibilities that genealogical sources and methods offer in addressing major historical research questions. By collecting and analysing records in a genealogical manner and combining the findings into a database to carry out a longitudinal study I will explore social changes over time to expand understanding and contribute to current historical debate. Firstly, to what extent can these techniques help to capture and shed new light on the experiences of the poor, and secondly, can poverty be seen to be inherited intergenerationally? Where the data allows I will look at demographic questions of fertility rates, age at marriage and mortality rates to determine whether there were changes over time. Family strategies of remarriage, co-residence and unequal marriage have been revealed by the census. Did these practices continue over time or develop differently? Can kinship and community links be demonstrated? Was there a symbiotic relationship between the poor and the Norwich authorities? Finally, what was the extent of mobility within and between parishes?

Scilla Stack, The Education of Vision? Reading Mary Ward's mission in Catholicism in her own lifetime and in the twenty-first century

In the year of the celebrations for the four-hundredth anniversary of Mary Ward's founding vision (1609-2009) in Rome, the aim of this thesis is to merge feminist historical inquiry with twenty-first-century Catholic feminist theology and debate to examine boundaries given to shared faith community and religious authenticity in Catholicism. The study looks at continuity and change in the place of belief in Catholic social order. The overarching question of my thesis is why were Mary Ward's plans for a new open religious order found to be incommensurable by the papacy in the seventeenth century, yet lauded in the Holy See today?

Useful links

View Publications

Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409432388

Early Modern Women in the Low Countries
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754667421

Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754661849

Women and the Book Trade in Sixteenth-Century France
http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9780754606710

New and noteworthy

Doctoral completions

2007: Kate O'Shaughnessy, Divorce, gender and state and social power: an investigation of the impact of the 1974 Indonesian marriage law.
Now published as Gender, state and social power in contemporary Indonesia: divorce and marriage law (Taylor & Francis, 2009)

2010: R.L. Weston, Medical Consulting by Letter in France, circa 1650-1789.

2011: Karl Birkelbach, Plague Debate: Methodology and meaning in the retrospective diagnosis of the Black Death.

2011: Alicia Marchant, “Mech harm upon þe borderes of Ynglond”: Imagining the Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr in English Chronicle Narratives 1400 to c.1580

Current projects

Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions 1100-1800, (2011-2017) CI1 Philippa Maddern (UWA), CI2 Susan Broomhall (UWA), Jane Davidson (UWA), Yasmin Haskell (UWA), Peter Holbrook (Qld), David Lemmings (Adelaide), Juanita Ruys (Syd), Stephanie Trigg (Melbourne), Robert White (UWA), Charles Zika (Melbourne)

"Gender, Power, and Identity in the Early Modern Nassau Family" Australia Research Council Discovery Grant, 2010-2014. 
Cl1 Susan Broomhall (UWA), Cl2 Jacqueline Van Gent (UWA), APD Susie Protschky (Monash), Ol Michaela Hohkamp

"Police Courts in Nineteenth-Century Scotland" Team leaders: David G. Barrie and Susan Broomhall (UWA) Associated researchers: Joanne McEwan (UWA) and Iain Hutchison (Stirling)

Research profile

Research profile and publications