Tyrants, Heroes, Sex and Secrets: Foundational Histories of Domestic Violence, Turning Points in Historiography and the Legacy of Judith A. Allen in Australia

Between 1986 and 1990, three pioneering histories of domestic violence in the United States and Australia appeared. Their publication coincided with a verdant period in the generation of historical accounts of women’s experiences and debates about the linguistic turn, histories of masculinity and race that were transforming the field of feminist history and of history more broadly. While these books established the field of domestic violence history, in their writing and their reception they also raised issues of representation at the heart of these broader debates. I trace these histories and their reverberations with an emphasis on Australian feminist historiography, and examine closely the important legacy of Judith A. Allen’s early historical work in Australia.