Joanna Cruickshank

In White Women, Aboriginal Missions and Australian Settler Governments, Joanna Cruickshank and Patricia Grimshaw provide the first detailed study of the central part that white women played in missions to Aboriginal people in Australia. As Aboriginal people experienced violent dispossession through settler invasion, white mission women were positioned as 'mothers' who could protect, nurture and 'civilise' Aboriginal people. In this position, missionary women found themselves continuously navigating the often-contradictory demands of their own intentions, of Aboriginal expectations and of settler government policies. Through detailed studies that draw on rich archival sources, this book provides a new perspective on the history of missions in Australia and also offers new frameworks for understanding the exercise of power by missionary women in colonial contexts.

Pain, Passion and Faith: Revisiting the Place of Charles Wesley in Early Methodism is a significant study of the 18th-century poet and preacher Charles Wesley. Wesley was an influential figure in 18th-century English culture and society; he was co-founder of the Methodist revival movement and one of the most prolific hymn-writers in the English language. His hymns depict the Christian life as characterized by a range of intense emotions, from ecstatic joy to profound suffering. With this book, author Joanna Cruickshank examines the theme of suffering in Charles Wesley’s hymns, to help us understand how early Methodist men and women made sense of the physical, emotional and spiritual pains they experienced. Cruickshank uncovers an area of significant disagreement within the Methodist leadership and illuminates Methodist culture more broadly, shedding light on early Methodist responses to contemporary social issues like charity, slavery, and capital punishment.