University of Sydney / Faculty of Arts / Department of English / Staff / Academic Staff

Prof. Geraldine Barnes

PhD Lond. BA
McCaughey Professor of English Language and Early English Literature
Associate Director of the University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies
Co-General Editor of the series Making the Middle Ages (Brepols) and [Medieval Voyaging (Brepols)

+61 2 9351 2571

Research areas

Current Research Funding

ARC Discovery Project (co-Chief Investigator Magaret Clunies Ross) "Writing from the Edge of the World: Medieval Icelandic Literature and the quest for social identity" (2006-2008)

Selected publications (2000-2006)

  • 'Curiosity, Wonder, and William Dampier’s Painted Prince.’ Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 6/1 (2006), 31-50
  • 'Medieval Murder - Modern Crime Fiction' in Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (University of Wales Press: Cardiff, 2006), 241-54.
  • 'Margin vs. centre: geopolitics in Nitida Saga (a cosmographical comedy?), in John McKinnell et al. (eds) The Fantastic in Old Norse Icelandic Literature, Preprint Papers of the 13th International Saga Conference, Durham and York 6th-12th August 2006 (Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Durham University, 2006), I 104-12.
  • Travel and Travellers from Bede to Dampier Papers from the University of Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies Workshop 22-23 August 2001, ed. Geraldine Barnes, Cambridge Scholars Press, (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 2005).
  • (Co-authored with Mitchell, A.) 'Passing Through Customs: William Dampier's medieval baggage,' in Medievalism and the Gothic in Australia, ed. Stephanie Trigg (Melbourne: Brepols Publishing and Melbourne University Press, 2005), pp. 131-45.
  • (Co-authored with Mitchell, A.) 'William Dampier’s Itinerarium,’ in Travel and Travellers from Bede to Dampier (2005), 207-30.
  • 'The drama of faith West of Iceland', in R. Simek and J. Meurer, (eds). Scandinavian and Christian Europe in the Middle Ages. Papers of the 12th International Saga Conference, Bonn/Germany, 28th July – 2nd August 2003 (Bonn: Hauskruckeri der Universität Bonn 2003), pp. 20-25.
  • Viking America: The First Millenium (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2001).
  • (co-author Adrian Mitchell) 'Measuring the Marvellous: Science and the Exotic in William Dampier,' Eighteenth-Century Life 26/3 (2002), 45-57.
  • 'The Norse Discovery of America and the American Discovery of Norse (1828-1892),' in Studies in Medievalism XI (Appropriating the Middle Ages: Scholarship, Politics, Fraud), eds. Tom Shippey and Martin Arnold (Cambridge: Boydell and Brewer 2001), 167-88.
  • 'Funding the Chair of Australian Literature: a brief history of the public record.' In Matters of the Mind. Poems, Essays and Interviews in Honour of Leonie Kramer, eds. Lee Jobling and Catherine Runcie (Sydney: the University of Sydney 2001), pp. 113-28.
  • 'The V'nland voyages: records of discovery and loss.' In Beschreibung der Welt. Zur Poetik der Reise- und Länderberichte Vorträge eines interdisziplinären Symposiums vom 8. bis 13 Juni 1998 an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Giesseed. Xenja von Ertzdorff (Rodopi: Amsterdam and Atlanta 2000), pp. 97-117.
  • 'Romance in Iceland.' In Old Icelandic Literature and Society, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2000), pp. 266-86.
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Areas of current research supervision

  • Crime and pulp fiction
  • Children in Old Icelandic sources
  • Scholarly writers of fantasy literature
  • Postcolonialism in Middle English literature
  • Fantasy in children's literature
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