Paper short abstract:

Drawing from Marie Reay’s archival and collection sources, this paper will situate her as a significant figure in Australian anthropology, capture her defiance of and critical outlook towards the societal expectations of women, as well as illustrate the lasting importance of her work and archive.

Paper long abstract:

Dr. Marie Olive Reay once declared: “If I were writing an autobiography I would entitle it Against the Tide, though I can easily imagine a review headed Against the Grain.” Reay’s life in academia is emblematic of a period during which, by simply pursuing research as a same sex attracted woman anthropologist, her career was decidedly ‘against the grain’. As a result she often felt that her pioneering work in the male dominated field of anthropology was undervalued and over-managed as a direct result of her gender. Marie Reay was a pioneering anthropologist and a leading contributor to Australian and Pacific anthropology. Reay was the first to study contemporary conditions of Aboriginal communities in rural NSW, as well as the first woman to conduct extensive fieldwork in the Highlands region of PNG. As a lecturer at the Australian National University (ANU) from 1958-1988, she contributed substantially to the early history of the university; in particular as one of very few women academics. Drawing from Reay’s archival and collection sources, this paper will provide an overview of Reay’s career that situates her as a significant figure in Australian anthropology, captures her defiance of and critical outlook towards the societal expectations of women, as well as illustrates the lasting importance of her work and archive.