Author(s): Barbara Brookes

NZ Non Fiction

The sense of belonging to a community is fundamental, but it is not tied to a locality; it exists in the mind. Communities can be vast -empires, nations, a huge religious community -or small isolated groups. What distinguishes them is the style in which they are imagined. This book explores communities that are small-scale, of peripheral importance in the broad flow of history, and usually informal in their organisation. Sometimes they are simple clusters of women. In time and place, they range from 12111 century Swabia to 20111 century Australasia. They are equally varied in their focus, whether on place, kin, romance, religion, dispossession, education, occupation or political commitment. What they share is that they are communities of women. Contents: Preface 1 Community, life-cycle, diaspora: a daughter's view 2 The communities of a 131h century holy woman, Ida of Nivelles 3 Herrad of Hohenbourg's 'Garden of Delights' and the creation of images for medieval nuns 4 Native American women's use of Connecticut's courts 5 'Women's Peculiar Mission': ladies' benevolence in the NZ setting 6 Sustaining the vision from Adelaide to Temuka: a Josephite community is founded in 1883 7 Anything but a roll in the hay: romance in rural communities in colonial Australia 8 Dissecting a community: women medical students at the University of Otago 9 Women working for women at work: factory inspectors in Britain 10 Gender and politics of keeping left: Wellington Labour women and their community 11 Political communities of women