| Name |
Title |
Supervisor/Associate Supervisor |
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Robert Allison
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The Use of Embedded Narrative in Contemporary Postmodern American Fiction
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Dr Julian Murphet
Dr Melissa Hardie
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| Synopsis
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The aim of this dissertation is a consideration of the use of embedded narrative as a specific postmodern narrative trope against a backdrop of increasingly complex media ecology in a selection of contemporary postmodern American texts (including writers such as Mark Danielewski, William Gass, David Foster Wallace and Thomas Pynchon). One of my central assertions remains that with expanding technologies comes greater complexity, but also an attendant discomfort with such complexity. Contemporary postmodern fiction often seeks to replicate both this complexity and this discomfort asking always about the possibility of the literary, the event, the affective and, ultimately, the ethical in a world increasing defined by its uncertainty. |
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Jennifer Beckett
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Heroes, Hitmen and Leprechauns: Irish National Identity and Cinema
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Dr Margaret Rogerson
Dr Jan Shaw
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Synopsis
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My thesis explores the ways in film culture interplays with notions of "Ireland" and "Irishness". It seeks to build upon arguments around the constitution of a 'national' body of film. As part of this it proposes a new taxonomy of national identity that expands on more traditional and narrow viewpoints of the 'national' in culture. Ideas of the role of film in creating and perpetuating a national identity as well as the ways in which film is used to reflect upon and move through the stages of identity formation are explored.
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Rebecca Beirne
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Pixelated Lesbians: Representing Lesbianism after the Millennium
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Professor Penny Gay
Dr Natalya Lusty (gender studies)
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| Synopsis
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My thesis is interested in the ways in which texts produced after the millennium reflect or perpetuate earlier discourses that have constructed the lesbian subject, and also in the productive spaces that these texts open up for new configurations of the lesbian subject. I undertake close analysis of television series Queer as Folk and The L Word, lesbian burlesque club Gurlesque and long-running comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For as well as engaging with the theoretical, political and cultural concerns of key relevance to the contemporary era. |
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Kathryn Burns
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Lost and Found: Landscapes and Living Spaces in Some Post War Reconstructions of Australian Childhoods.
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Professor Elizabeth Webby
Dr Noel Rowe
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Synopsis
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This study investigates the formation of a sense of place and belonging (or lack thereof) in relation to childhood landscapes. Part of this thesis engages in a regional comparison between the states of Western Australia, Queensland and Victoria, noting distinctive features of the natural and man-made environments, and how these influence both the child persona's developing sense of place as well as the adult writer's personalising of national mythologies concerning self and landscape. |
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Bonny Cassidy
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Romanticism in the poetry of Jennifer Maiden and Jennifer Rankin
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A/Professor Deirdre Coleman
Dr Bernadette Brennan
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Synopsis
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The 1970s work of Australian poets Jennifer Maiden and the late Jennifer Rankin has been largely ignored, however the potential of their poetry to offer a model of progressive, contemporary Romantic poetics is massive. Adopting a discourse of early German Romantic philosophy and current Romantic critique, this thesis explores how both Maiden and Rankin can be considered conventionally Romantic poets, and what kind of Romanticism is theirs. In doing so, it hopes to contribute to debate as to what the place of the Romantic work can be in a post-structuralist era. |
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Andrew Court
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A Dialogue on Interpretation: Evolution and Literary Theory
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Dr Bruce Gardiner
Dr William Christie
|
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Synopsis
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A contribution to the debate between scientific and humanistic modes of understanding, taking as exemplary poles Darwinian literary theory and contemporary hermeneutics. There are four main aspects: (1) A summary of the recent Darwinian approach to literary interpretation, compared with similar arguments made in the late nineteenth century; (2) The question of common ground between the new evolutionism and hermeneutical theories of interpretation, resulting in a dialogue between the positions rather than the polemic typifying their engagement; (3) An account of the differences between explanation and interpretation in scientific and literary inquiry; (4) A demonstration of the dialogic approach with readings of free indirect discourse in James and Conrad. |
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Marian De Saxe
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Sing me a song of history: South African poets and singers in exile 1900-1990
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A/Professor Adrian Mitchell
Dr Bernadette Brennan
|
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Synopsis
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This thesis will examine theories of loss, displacement and exile as a frame for the South African poets and singers who wrote, in exile, from the beginning of the 20th century to the end of the apartheid era. I will be examining the connection between South African exile poetry and poetry in other parts of Africa and the role of the ANC in actively promoting thriving literary and cultural alternatives to apartheid culture in South Africa. By examining the poetry, journalism, cartoons and films of South African exiles I hope to contribute to writings on the cultural history of South African exiles during the apartheid years and to the writings on, and theories of, exile in general.
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Bryce Douglas-Baker
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Medieval Maculinites and Chaucer
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Dr Diane Speed
Associate Professor Geraldine Barnes
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| Synopsis
|
To the modern mind, knightly masculinity appears immediately accessible. This is because the violence symbolised by the figure of the knight has come to represent a prominent ideal of manhood: the popular 'knight in shining armour' mode of masculinity. Implicit in this idea is the assumption that masculinity can be derived from a physical and psychological capacity for violence. Previous discussions of knightly masculinity have shared this view, arguing that knightly masculinity was characterised by competition and violence. However, the general observation that violence was the mechanism through which knights competed with other men for power is inadequate for a thorough understanding of knightly masculinity. Through an examination of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, I will argue that the chivalric code functioned as a complex mode of social organisation through which different forms of knightly power were disseminated, replicated and imposed. |
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Angie Dunstan
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Keeping Myself Alive': The Afterlives of Elizabeth Siddal
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Professor Margaret Harris
Professor Penny Gay
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Synopsis
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The life story of Pre-Raphaelite poet, painter and muse Elizabeth Siddal has inspired a remarkable number of biographies and fictive biographies that offer fascinating insight, into not only the cumulative process of myth creation over time, but to the societies in which the texts are created. The thesis aims to explore various versions of such fictive biographies and to construct a more definitive biography than has previously been produced. My research particularly highlights the role of the passage of time in the evolution of Siddal's mythologised life story, and emphasises the manner in which each representation or interpretation of her story contributes to the myth in its entirety. |
|
Kate Flaherty
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Shakespeare in Australia: Practices of Production
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Professor Penny Gay
A/Professor Tony Miller
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Synopsis
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The thesis investigates ways in which Australian theatre artists and theatre companies make Shakespeare's plays meaningful for Australian audiences. Detailed case studies of Hamlet, As You Like It, and A Midsummer Night's Dream in production during the past fifteen years permit identification of recurring preoccupations. Only in stage production can critically emphasised motifs such as gender identity, social order, wilderness, and magic be seen to intersect directly with exigencies of the Australian cultural moment. In turn, the study urges, these living and fertile points of intersection prompt revision of existing assumptions about the relationship between Shakespeare's works and cultural identity.
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Sarah Golsby-Smith
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Investigating the HSC Stage 6 English Syllabus: pursuing dialogical reading in the classroom
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Dr Will Christie
Dr Jenny Gribble
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Synopsis
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This thesis investigates some of the theories behind the Stage 6 English syllabus, and determines what practical effect these theories have on students and teachers subject to the syllabus. I have looked at deconstruction, feminism, postcolonialism and cultural materalism as evident influences on the theoretical direction of the syllabus and have brought my own experiences as a high school English teacher to bear on the successes and failures of such a syllabus. The thesis seeks to reflect on the broader issue of the place of the hermeneutics of suspicion in high school classrooms and the place of conversation to truly usher in a place for the elusive Other. In this respect, this thesis stalks a dialogical hermeneutics as a truly compassionate way of reading.
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Dyalan Govender
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The writer figured in film.
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Dr William Christie
Dr Susan Thomas
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| Synopsis
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The thesis intends to apply Scheme theory, as well as a range of structuralist and post-structuralst theories to establish a model for the formulation of film meaning. The figure of "the writer" in film offers a particularly useful subject for such an endevour as it operates across genres, auteurs, and time, and furthermore, brings the issue of reflexivity to the fore. The thesis inteneds to identify any trends in the use of "the writer" character focusing on writers of fiction (that is, excluding journalists), and will attempt to explain the various ways these characters are used to contribute to textual meaning. This will involve the textual analysis of a cross-section of films. |
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Vicki Hastrich
(D.Arts in Creative Writing)
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The Great Arch - a novel
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Ms Sue Woolfe
Dr David G. Brooks
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Synopsis
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The Great Arch (working title) is a novel about an Anglican minister's lifelong obsession with the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge |
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Bruce Isaacs
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"Film Cool": Toward an Alternative Film Aesthetics.
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Dr Axel Kruse
Dr David Kelly
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| Synopsis |
"Film Cool" implies looking at film in an aesthetic way, or at least returning film to some notion of aesthetics, and more specifically, its capacity to affect the spectator through visual, aural and other means. I focus on a shift away from the notion of cinematic realism in Welles and Hitchcock, and trace this legacy in contemporary film with The Matrix Franchise, Tarantino's Kill Bill films (and their indebtedness to Sergio Leone) and what some theorists have called the "Hollywood Independent". A second focus is to rethink the relation of contemporary cinema to theories of culture, especially popular culture and its cinema |
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Diana Jefferies
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The Justification of War and Malory's Tale of the Sangreal
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Dr Diane Speed
Dr Margaret Rogerson
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Synopsis
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Since 1947, when Eugene Vinaver published his edited version of Malory's Morte Darthur based on the Winchester manuscript, the critical debate has surrounded whether the eight books of the Morte Darthur are separate tales or whether they are all one book. My thesis will argue that the Morte Darthur is, in fact, one entire book, and the thread that holds all the tales together is Malory's exploration of Just War Theory. It is in Malory's version of the Grail Story that he explores this particular thread to its most complete conclusion, and in doing so he also outlines the reasons for the failure and eventual destruction of the Arthurian civilisation. |
|
Adrian Jones
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Against Therapy
|
Dr Kate Lilley
Dr Bruce Gardiner
|
| Synopsis
|
I am interested in Anne Sexton's use of autobiographical narratives in her early poetry. How did the confessional label shape the therapeutic potential of her work? Access to her early therapy tapes and the transcripts from her therapy sessions have encouraged backwards, biographical readings of her poetry. If her suicide is the starting point for criticism, Sexton is always already the failed patient/poet, her poetry a 'bad' kind of therapy. I’m also interested in writers such as Joe Brainard, Gary Fisher and more recently J T Leroy and Joan Didion who, like Sexton, have used confessional narratives to walk the (potentially) therapeutic line between autobiographical fact and fiction. |
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Robin Marsden
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French and German influence in the work of Christopher Brennan
|
Professor Elizabeth Webby
Dr Vivian Smith
|
| Synopsis
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Robin Marsden's PhD thesis draws on her earlier bio-bibliographical research on Christopher Brennan (1870-1932) and discoveries made in Australia, Paris and Berlin in the 1970s. The dispersed library of the Australian scholar-poet is being traced, listed and studied for its remarkable annotations. Some volumes are located in Cambridge and some remain in private hands. All accessible books, letters and manuscripts are being examined in the contexts of "influence" and the confluence of Brennan's French and German , as well as his English literary precursors. |
| Rod McDonald |
Old Norse Loanwords in Old Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic |
A/Professor Geraldine Barnes
Dr Alex Jones
|
| Synopsis
|
This thesis is concerned with loanwords that derive from the presence of Scandinavians in the Celtic West, and the capacity of these loanwords to be used as evidence of social and cultural conditions. The thesis: - reviews the origins and history if scholarship around the Scandinavian expansion into the Celtic West, in the process clarifying issues of methodology, definition, political and national identity and geography;
- critiques the philosophical and methodological issues around the relationship between language and society, and the limits to linguistic evidence as cultural or social evidence,
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| Will Noonan |
Inappropriate Humour in Literature |
Dr David Kelly
Dr Bronwyn Winter (French studies)
|
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Synopsis
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While the formulation "inappropriate humour" is in some sense a tautology, I aim to use humour as a means to explore the boundaries of what is considered (socially or textually) "appropriate" in different contexts. Drawing on a broad range of texts written in Ancient Greek, English, French and other languages, from the fifth century BC to c.1950, this will involve a comparative discussion both of the ways in which humour can help define a text in relation to its context, and of differences in the reception of humour within European literary history. This discussion is informed in part by theories of humour (Freud, Bergson, Bakhtin...), and by the notion of historicist negotiation (Greenblatt and others). However, the apparent capacity of comic and/or self-conscious texts to resist and even undermine coherent interpretative frameworks implies the need for a continuing appraisal of critical methodologies. |
| Lydia Saleh Rofail |
Postcolonial Constructions of the Feminine in Indian Women's Literature. |
Dr Penny van Toorn
Dr Peter Marks
|
| Synopsis
|
Sanskrit mythology is marked by rebellious female deities who dare to transgress preordained socio-cultural structures and unless appeased, can cause havoc upon the universe. For the Indian woman, the renegade deity offers an alternative feminine depiction to counter the more benign submissive female consort. This thesis will explore forms of "feminine transgression" and frame them within the context and concerns of Postcolonial India from 1887 to the present. In the cases where the books are biographical, I will also be examining the performative act of writing as rebellion in the face of colonial and/or postcolonial hegemony. I am particularly interested in the way oppressive structures such as religion, caste, culture, colonialism and patriarchy can be resisted by Indian women. Acts of rebellion can be organised or spontaneous, quiet or deliberate, open or subversive, solitary or collective. They can be enacted by small seemingly innocuous cultural transgressions, bold political statements or subverted mythological allusions.
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| Yvonne Smith |
Brightness Under Our Shoes: the redress of the poetic imagination in the poetry and prose of David Malouf, 1959 - 1982 |
Dr David G. Brooks
Professor Elizabeth Webby
|
|
Synopsis
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Malouf's earlier works established his reputation as a poet and a writer of "poetic prose". How might his work be more fully explored and interrogated using Seamus Heaney's notion of the "redress" of the poetic imagination? A study of extant manuscripts of Johnno, An Imaginary Life, Child's Play and Fly Away Peter, together with letters and diaries of Malouf give insights into his intentions as a writer in this period as he develops his distinctive prose style. Malouf's view of poetic imagination as a "brightness" underlying ordinary life and redressing perceived limitations of knowing, thinking and feeling is also placed in relation to developments in Australian literature, cognitive psychology (especially the work of Jean Piaget), Carl Jung's concepts of "feeling states" and "idea images" and competing views of intelligence, learning and brain function in the 1960s and 1970s. |
| Lynda Stevens |
Sisters Tried and True: The Bond of True Sisterhood in Jane Austen's Life and Works. |
Dr Will Christie
Professor Penny Gay
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| Synopsis
|
The central role played by sisterhood in Jane Austen's novels led to my fascination with this relationship, its role in the family and within society. The possibility that sisterhood in her novels may have reflected, or indeed influenced, Austen's close relationship with her own sister, Cassandra, makes this analysis significantly more intriguing. The modern day proliferation of women's studies has seen the emergence of several studies of sisterhood in literature, most of which have focussed on negative sororal relationships. My research will consider the bond of true sisterhood in Jane Austen's life and works, with particular reference to Sense and Sensibility (1811) and [[i||Pride and Prejudice] (1813).
|
| Rodney Taveira |
Cinematic Literature |
Dr Melissa Hardie
Dr Richard Smith (Art History)
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| Synopsis
|
My research focuses on the influence of cinema and visual culture on post-1950s literature. Using the film theory of Gilles Deleuze, I explore the manner in which the novel has competed with, reacted to, incorporated, rejected, and extended, "visuality." I also focus on the consequences this has for literary theory, delineating, following C. S. Peirce and Paul de Man, a "rhetoric of images." I am also interested in popular, B-grade film and literature, and the interaction between different aesthetic, intellectual, and formal, cultural domains. Principal authors: Thomas Pynchon, William Gaddis, Don DeLillo, David Foster Wallace, Donald Barthelme, James Ellroy.
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Elizabeth Wulff
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Becoming” Heroic –Exploring alternative notions of the heroic in feminist science fiction
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Assoc Professor Rosemary Huisman
Dr Margaret Rogerson
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Synopsis
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Feminist science fiction, with its generic possibility of exploring alternative social realities, provides a site to explore alternative notions of the heroic inspired by feminist critiques of the traditional heroic, critiques which come from feminist philosophical, as well as literary critical sources. Utilizing particularly the work of Elizabeth Grosz on Deleuze & Guattari, and Moira Gatens and Genevieve Lloyd on Spinoza, I engage with concepts organised around the fluidity of gender, subjectivity and the heroic as a process of "becoming". This enables me to discuss the specificity of "multiplicit subjects" involved in events, such as occur in the particulars of narrative (cf: Adriana Cavarero) as in, for example, The Holdfast Chronicles of Suzy McKee Charnas.
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Liliana Zavaglia
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Belonging and Reconciliation in Post Mabo White Australian Literature
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Dr Penny Van Toorn
Dr Bernadette Brennan
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| Synopsis
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This thesis examines the literary response to the anxieties generated in the national psyche by Mabo and the dismantling of the discursive terrain labelled "Terra Nullius". Under the sign of belonging and reconciliation the recent body of white Australian literature reveals the traumatic fissures which fractured the white imaginary following the Mabo decision and the implementation of native title by white legal processes. This thesis traces the desire to spiritually re-attach to land which was once considered unproblematically 'white' and explores how how this recent body of work acts on behalf of white identity concerns rather any expressed desire to resolve and explore the historical excesses of colonialism enacted in the Black/white contact zone.
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