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\A crowned and selected band of women\" : Tasmanian actress/celebrities of the nineteenth century & \"home-grown\" identity"

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posted on 2023-05-26, 23:57 authored by Anae, N
Australian celebrity culture of the nineteenth century combines personal success, and the ideal constructions.of the individual and homeland, with the persuasive power of the media to offer the celebrated a means of public visibility and nationality. This thesis engages with the intersections between media and celebrity culture of the nineteenth century by exploring the intimate relationships between the construction of gender and the \localisation\" of place. It examines the representation of a number of Tasmanian-born actresses received as celebrities during the period and historicises about the slippery nature of state of origin when contextualised in what developed into a greater picture of global media culture. It places these representations alongside those of off-shore actresses and presents a \"new\" picture of women's engagement in colonial culture and their social power. The thesis also argues that the Tasmanian provenance of celebrated stage women such as Emma and Clelia Howson Hattie Shepparde the Carandini Sisters Lucy Chambers Amy Sherwin and others offered the State's population a lively and highly visible collection of cultural exemplars. The thesis will interweave the narratives of their careers into an analysis of contemporary and modern-day understandings of Australian identity in two ways. First it contends that these women heralded the dawn of a new public visibility for women as professionals decades before the mobilisation of women's groups and suffrage leagues in this country. Second it traces their international successes as a way of demonstrating their contribution to establishing the cultural roots of what is now known collectively as \"the Australian context.\" My research reveals that an important cultural breakthrough coincided with the international tours of these women because their achievement popularised and therefore revolutionised a new means of gesturing Australian homeland offshore. A historicised and \"localised\" concept of celebrity is a valuable tool of analysis when considering that actresses generally are continually overlooked as proactive conduits of social change and especially since their achievements as legitimate cultural agents were celebrated in an era that is routinely considered as oppressive and restrictive for women. The aim of the thesis is to explore how colonial society relied on Tasmanian-born actresses as sources of cultural identification and how such figures enabled the performance of identity as a result. There is in the development of Australian celebrity culture from the 1840s until the early twentieth century an overt politicisation of Tasmanian cultural identity. Coupled with this phenomenon is a social evolution in changes to attitudes about \"Tasmanian-ness\" that can be traced directly to the instrumental achievements of Tasmanian-born celebrity actresses of the period."

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Copyright 2005 the Author - The University is continuing to endeavour to trace the copyright owner(s) and in the meantime this item has been reproduced here in good faith. We would be pleased to hear from the copyright owner(s). Thesis (PhD)--University of Tasmania, 2005.

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