In Australia, 'country girl' names a field of experiences and life-stories by girls and women who have grown up outside of the demographically dominant urban centres. It also names a set of ideas about Australia that is surprisingly consistent across the long twentieth century despite also working as an index of changing times. This book offers a fresh perspective on this history and a new focus on the ever-changing experience of Australian rural life. It argues that the country girl has not only been a long-standing counterpart to the Australian bush man she has, more importantly, figured as a point of dialogue between the country and the city for popular culture and for public sphere narratives about Australian society and identity.

The Australian Country Girl: History, Image, Experience

Catherine Driscoll is Associate Professor of Gender and Cultural studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. She is the author of Teen Film: A Critical Introduction (Berg Publishers); Modernist Cultural Studies (University Press of Florida) and Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culture and Cultural Theory (Columbia University Press).