Wild Man from Borneo: species, race, representation. This project addresses the representation of species boundaries in Western accounts of the orangutan in the 19th and 20th centuries. Darwinian theory raised the possibility that animals could ?evolve?. Orangutans seemed ?closest? to humans and therefore raised key questions about the border between humans and animals. These questions were addressed in a vast range of scientific, popular, imaginative and juvenile literature. Even when ecolo ....Wild Man from Borneo: species, race, representation. This project addresses the representation of species boundaries in Western accounts of the orangutan in the 19th and 20th centuries. Darwinian theory raised the possibility that animals could ?evolve?. Orangutans seemed ?closest? to humans and therefore raised key questions about the border between humans and animals. These questions were addressed in a vast range of scientific, popular, imaginative and juvenile literature. Even when ecological models of the environment shifted attention from evolutionary potential to ecological role, orangutans retained a special status as ?sentinel? species. This project will produce a monograph examining the construction, maintenance and erosion of ideas of species boundaries.Read moreRead less
The world novel, distant suffering and humanitarian sensibility after 1989. As war and terror flicker across our televisions, writers like Rushdie, McEwan and Hosseini have turned the novel into a global form, expressing a new humanitarian ethic. This project explores the makings of these World Novels across sites of ongoing global conflict, and traces their plea for sympathy back to the novel's beginnings, in the eighteenth-century.
Early modern women and the poetry of complaint, 1540-1660. This project aims to discover how early modern women used the widespread, powerful and diverse mode of complaint to voice expressions of protest and loss during the English Renaissance. The project will highlight women’s roles as writers, patrons and textual producers and consumers of the mode of complaint. The project expects to uncover how the imagined voices of the disempowered shaped the literary and political cultures of early moder ....Early modern women and the poetry of complaint, 1540-1660. This project aims to discover how early modern women used the widespread, powerful and diverse mode of complaint to voice expressions of protest and loss during the English Renaissance. The project will highlight women’s roles as writers, patrons and textual producers and consumers of the mode of complaint. The project expects to uncover how the imagined voices of the disempowered shaped the literary and political cultures of early modern England. Reconceptualising a mode in Renaissance literature will benefit Australia's standing at the forefront of research in early modern studies.Read moreRead less
New Electronic Archives for Australian Literature. Information capacity in Australian literary studies has been dramatically expanded by national investment in electronic archives, while trends in the discipline increasingly demand empirical support for claims about literary history and literary value. At the same time, research about Australian literature remains primarily theoretical, insufficiently informed by newly available data. This project aims to further enrich the new data sets, and to ....New Electronic Archives for Australian Literature. Information capacity in Australian literary studies has been dramatically expanded by national investment in electronic archives, while trends in the discipline increasingly demand empirical support for claims about literary history and literary value. At the same time, research about Australian literature remains primarily theoretical, insufficiently informed by newly available data. This project aims to further enrich the new data sets, and to use them in an innovative return to the classical issues in Australian literary criticism and history. It will provide demonstration applications of data in new electronic archives.Read moreRead less
An Open University: Public lecturing in the Romantic period. This project aims to investigate and account for an under-researched and radically underestimated aspect of our intellectual and literary culture, the public lecture, focusing specifically on public lecturing in the Romantic period and on the lecture institutions that sprang up in the early nineteenth century. It will examine, amongst other things, the role public lectures played in the (self-) education of women and the development o ....An Open University: Public lecturing in the Romantic period. This project aims to investigate and account for an under-researched and radically underestimated aspect of our intellectual and literary culture, the public lecture, focusing specifically on public lecturing in the Romantic period and on the lecture institutions that sprang up in the early nineteenth century. It will examine, amongst other things, the role public lectures played in the (self-) education of women and the development of 'English' as a discipline. The first ever comprehensive study of an extensive pedagogical practice that was also a popular diversion. This project will position public lecturing in the history of education and the knowledge economy of the early nineteenth century.Read moreRead less
Making the case: the case study genre in sexology, psychoanalysis and literature. Questions of sexual subjectivity continue to concern scholars in the humanities and social sciences today as they did in the 19th and early 20th centuries. An astonishing number of discourses around the self with regard to love, sex and desire originated in the European and American debates to be studied here. With its focus on the case study and its modalities this project will benefit Australian scholars working ....Making the case: the case study genre in sexology, psychoanalysis and literature. Questions of sexual subjectivity continue to concern scholars in the humanities and social sciences today as they did in the 19th and early 20th centuries. An astonishing number of discourses around the self with regard to love, sex and desire originated in the European and American debates to be studied here. With its focus on the case study and its modalities this project will benefit Australian scholars working in the fields of literary and cultural studies, psychoanalysis as well as historical studies. Mapping the circuits of knowledge through which the sexed subject became a topic to be written about in the West will led to a better understanding of the confluence of disciplinary knowledge, as well as their transnational dimensions.Read moreRead less
War, Literary Culture and Masculinity in Romantic Period Britain, 1750-1850. The Romantic period represents a formative moment in the history of Australia and my reconsideration of Romantic culture and war has relevance for understanding this history. Australia's own experience of war first originated with the frontier wars of 1788-1838. My research into British Romantic military and naval war writing will provide key insights into the military culture that dominated this formative moment of Aus ....War, Literary Culture and Masculinity in Romantic Period Britain, 1750-1850. The Romantic period represents a formative moment in the history of Australia and my reconsideration of Romantic culture and war has relevance for understanding this history. Australia's own experience of war first originated with the frontier wars of 1788-1838. My research into British Romantic military and naval war writing will provide key insights into the military culture that dominated this formative moment of Australian military history. War has, more broadly, been pivotal in the formation of Australian nationhood and identity. My project will contribute to our understanding of the role of war in Australian culture by providing fresh insight into the historical role of war writing in constructing modern forms of identity.Read moreRead less
Hannah Arendt, Émigré Intellectuals, and the Ethos of World Literature. My project will bring an inspiring movement of ethical resistance to the dehumanising forces of fascism, nationalism, and parochialism to the Australian public's attention. It will help ensure that Australia, a nation that now successfully exports its literature to the world, is also at the centre of a fruitful dialogue about methods of research and interpretation appropriate to the study of the world's literatures. It will ....Hannah Arendt, Émigré Intellectuals, and the Ethos of World Literature. My project will bring an inspiring movement of ethical resistance to the dehumanising forces of fascism, nationalism, and parochialism to the Australian public's attention. It will help ensure that Australia, a nation that now successfully exports its literature to the world, is also at the centre of a fruitful dialogue about methods of research and interpretation appropriate to the study of the world's literatures. It will address the relative paucity of the historiography and theory of comparative literature in Australian Universities and suggest the educational and moral value of comparative literature studies for future generations of Australian students.Read moreRead less
Exploration and Nation: the Cultural Impact of Exploration Literature from the Cook Voyages to the 'Novara' Circumnavigation. This comparative analysis of the cultural impact of the Cook voyages and the lavishly state-sponsored "Novara" expedition will improve our understanding of the international entanglements that affected the course of our history. Examining the broad cultural impact of publications about Pacific exploration will offer valuable new insights into the cross-fertilisations betw ....Exploration and Nation: the Cultural Impact of Exploration Literature from the Cook Voyages to the 'Novara' Circumnavigation. This comparative analysis of the cultural impact of the Cook voyages and the lavishly state-sponsored "Novara" expedition will improve our understanding of the international entanglements that affected the course of our history. Examining the broad cultural impact of publications about Pacific exploration will offer valuable new insights into the cross-fertilisations between colonisation and the formation of 19th-century nation states. A detailed study of how European nations employed the publication industry in their competition for colonial control will illuminate the conflicts over the boundaries of nation and empire and enhance the understanding of prominent issues in Australian humanities research.Read moreRead less
Gender, sexuality and class as represented in the literature associated with adultery trials in Britain c.1760-1830. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, this project will examine the texts relating to trials for adultery in Britain c.1760-1830. While they have been examined by historians of divorce, the trials have not been studied in their own right. They illuminate issues of gender and sexuality; the history of the book; Georgian architecture, domesticity and household structures; urban c ....Gender, sexuality and class as represented in the literature associated with adultery trials in Britain c.1760-1830. Using an interdisciplinary methodology, this project will examine the texts relating to trials for adultery in Britain c.1760-1830. While they have been examined by historians of divorce, the trials have not been studied in their own right. They illuminate issues of gender and sexuality; the history of the book; Georgian architecture, domesticity and household structures; urban culture, particularly leisure and sociability; master-servant relations; and class relations, particularly the impact of the rise of professional groups. The project will investigate the meanings of adultery as a contribution to the histories of sexuality, the public sphere and gender.Read moreRead less