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

Dr Katherine Bode

Dr Katherine Bode

BA JCU, PhD UQ
ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow

+61 2 9351 7448

My research spans the areas of feminist literary theory, gender studies, and Australian literary and cultural studies. My book engages with these research areas by exploring how contemporary Australian women writers depict men’s bodies, and how these depictions relate to debates about feminism and masculinity crisis. In my current research, I use quantitative methods to explore Australian literary history, and the history of the novel more broadly. I am particularly interested in the potential of quantitative analyses of literary databases to enhance our understandings of the role of gender in literary culture and criticism.

Research areas

  • Quantitative methods in literary studies
  • Feminist literary theory and gender studies
  • Australian fiction, particularly contemporary fiction
  • Masculinity, especially representations of male corporeality

Selected publications

Books

  • Damaged Men/Desiring Women: Male Bodies in Contemporary Australian Women's Fiction. Germany: VDM, 2008

Articles

  • "Along Gender Lines: A quantitative study of the relationships between Australian novels, gender and genre from 1930 to 2006." Australian Literary Studies Forthcoming in 2009.
  • "Graphically Gendered: A quantitative study of the relationships between Australian Novels and Gender from the 1830s to the 1930s." Australian Feminist Studies. 23.58 (December 2008): 435-50.
  • "'Opportunistic Transpositions and Elisions': Roger McDonald's The Ballad of Desmond Kale; or, The Fiction Question: Who Owns Stories?" Antipodes 22.2 (2008):5-12.
  • "Beyond the Colonial Present: Quantitative Analysis, 'Resourceful Reading' and Australian Literary Studies." JASAL Special Issue: The Colonial Present edited by Gillian Whitlock and Victoria Kuttainen, 2008. http:www.nla.gov.au/openpublish/index.php/jasal/article/view/666
  • "'Unexpected Effects': Marked Men in Contemporary Australian Women's Fiction." Australian Literary Studies 22.4 (2006): 443-459.
  • "Aussie Battler in Crisis? Shifting Constructions of White Australian Masculinity and National Identity." Journal of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association 2.1 (2006): 1-18.
  • "Reading (in/and) Miranda." Australian Literary Studies 22.3 (2006): 357-367.
  • "The Pregnant Man: Gender, Identity and Sexuality in the Poetry of Dorothy Porter's 'Akhenaten'." LiNQ 28.1 (May 2001): 22-29.

Book Chapters

  • "Looking (im)properly: Women Objectifying Men's Bodies in Contemporary Australian Women's Fiction." Women Constructing Men. Ed. Sarah Frantz and Katharina Rennhak. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. Forthcoming in 2008.
  • "The Aussie Battler in Crisis: Shifting Constructions of White Australian Masculinity and National Identity." Creative Nation: Australian Cinema and Cultural Studies Reader.. Ed. Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal. New Delhi: SSS Publications, 2009.

Reviews

  • "Divergent Convergences: Manifesting Literary Feminisms Conference. Monash University and the University of Queensland, 13-14 December, 2007." Australian Feminist Studies 23.58 (2008) 435-50.
Back to Top