Current Postgraduates

Anna Donald
Landscape, Identity, and 'Belonging': The Tasmanian Landscape in Literature

Supervisor: A/Prof Van Ikin

The thesis, currently titled "Landscape, Identity, and 'Belonging': The Tasmanian Landscape in Literature", will contribute to scholarship by tracing aspects of the depiction of landscape in selected key works set in Tasmania: Marcus Clarke's For The Term of his Natural Life (1870-1872), Robert Drewe's, The Savage Crows (1978), James McQueen's Hook's Mountain (1982) and Richard Flanagan's Death of a River Guide (1994). The thesis will argue that the desire within humans to "belong" and to establish an identity is inextricably linked to landscape and place. Further, the concept of the place to which we feel we "belong" extends beyond the physical, beyond "the view": it extends into emotion and intellect.

The novel, A Traveller's Guide will explore notions of "belonging" in relation to place, family, and a person's sense of self. The development of the main character will reveal the way in which an identity is built; from relationships with people, with place, with possessions, and with ideas.

Brooke Dunnell
Supervisor: A/Prof Brenda Walker

My thesis looks at contemporary family novels from both a theoretical and practical point of view. The dissertation component examines how works by Jonathan Franzen, Rick Moody and Zadie Smith utilise the perspective of all the members of a family to tell a complete and realistic story of their love and conflict. The creative component is a novel-length manuscript that does the same.

dunneb01@student.uwa.edu.au

Lynette Field
Investigating Empire: Imperialism and the Detective Fiction of Dorothy L Sayers and PD James

Supervisor: A/Prof Brenda Walker

I am interested in the conjunction of imperialism and detective fiction in the work of Dorothy L Sayers and P D James. My other research interests include feminist theory, popular culture, film and Australian literature.

lfield@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Marina Gerzic

The intersection of Shakespeare and popular culture; an intertextual examination of some millennial Shakespearian film adaptations (1999-2001), with special reference to music

Supervisor: Prof Bob White

My research interests are: film, Shakespeare, creative writing, cultural studies and music in film

gerzim01@student.uwa.edu.au

Rachael Hains-Wesson

Towards an 'imaginal' theatre for children aged 7-12.

Supervisor: Dr Steve Chinna

Is 'children's theatre' an appropriate term to describe the interrelated manifestation of theatre designed by adults for children and can the imagination be purposely utilized in children's plays? In this study, children's theatre will be defined as a production that has been written and performed by adults for the purpose of providing a 'best possible' theatre experience for children. The aim of this study is to firstly investigate and complete a historical analysis of children's theatre in Australia from an international perspective and secondly, examine the role of the imagination as a scriptwriting and performance technique. This will be achieved by historically contextualizing and analyzing J. M Barrie's Peter Pan, Charlotte Chorpenning's The Emperor's New Clothes and David Holman's The Small Poppies. Furthermore, I will also be developing a full-length children's play that implements the research findings, focusing on divorced families and the effects on young people when separated parents decide to date or remarry.

Websites:

http://www.ozscript.org/profiles.php?letter=H

http://www.doollee.com/PlaywrightsH/hains-wesson-rachael.html

http://australianplays.org/playwrights/H

brownr08@student.uwa.edu.au

Aaron Hales
Enter Stage East! A Critique of Original Singaporean Musical Theatre

Supervisor: Dr Steve Chinna

The creative and performing arts provide a democratic litmus test of any nation's tolerance to dissent. My PhD intersects three key disciplines - music, English and Asian studies, examining the type of control the democratic nation-state of Singapore applies to writers and practitioners of performing arts within the island-nation. Extending James Scott's theory of domination and resistance, I am examining the musical theatre productions of Michael Chiang and composer Dick Lee, as Singaporean artists who exist within such governance, by addressing the subversive subtexts present within their musicals.

halesa02@student.uwa.edu.au

Alison Jaquet
Detection and the Domestic: Discursive Practices in the Writing of Ellen Wood

Supervisor: A/Prof Judith Johnston

My research interests are in nineteenth-century literature and culture. In my doctoral thesis, I examine the writings of Victorian author, editor and journalist, Ellen Wood (1814-1887). I am particularly interested in Victorian gothic, sensation and detective fiction but my broader interests include popular culture, gender studies and literary theory.

jaquea01@student.uwa.edu.au

Sally-Ann Jones
"Naturally Not Selected: Anita Brookner's writing protagonists"
Novel: Stella's Sea

Supervisor: A/Prof Brenda Walker

Stella's Sea explores the redemptive power of the creative process through Stella's painting. Stella was a beekeeper until the recent change of circumstance that brings her to live in Cottesloe and the imagery of the bee, especially the queen, is an integral part of the story.

The exigesis examines Brookner's use of Darwinian theory to explain her characters' struggle in their 'jungle city', London, and her writing protagonists' escape from extinction via their craft.

sallyjones@iinet.net.au

Lee-Von Kim
Supervisor: A/Prof Tanya Dalziell

My thesis examines the legacies of historical trauma in recent visual cultural productions by Kara Walker, Clara Law, Tracey Moffatt and William Kentridge. My research interests include postcolonial literature and theory, literary theory, trauma studies, film studies and art and cultural theory.

leevon@student.uwa.edu.au

Supervisor: A/Prof Andrew Lynch

My research interests include contemporary Irish and British Literature, postcolonial literature and literary theory and tracing connections between Victorian and contemporary literature.

caitlinf@cyllene.uwa.edu.au

Adam Nicol
Everything Through a Lens: The Natural Histories of Philip Henry Gosse
Supervisor: A/Prof Judith Johnston

My thesis looks at the writings of the Victorian naturalist Philip Henry Gosse. My wider research interest include Victorian literature, the elder Romantics, literature and science, the Lunar men and evolutionary theory.

nicola01@student.uwa.edu.au

Meriel Owen Griffiths
The Construction of Cultural Identity in Contemporary English-language Welsh Poetry

Supervisors: Prof Dennis Haskell and Prof Gareth Griffiths

My research focuses on four main areas in contemporary English-language Welsh poetry: language, the sense of place, the past and nationality/nationhood. The enquiry into cultural identity has been at the core of Welsh poetry in English throughout the twentieth century and recent poetry reflects the complexities of defining cultural identity in a multicultural and globalised environment.

owengh01@student.uwa.edu.au

Rebecca Rey

How the Novelist Got His Eyes: Don DeLillo's Ventures into the Genre of Theatre

Supervisor: Dr Steve Chinna

Don DeLillo is a prolific and critically acclaimed contemporary New York novelist, but what has become of his plays? My thesis's overarching concern is with genre and the translation of a writer's attributes from the genre of fiction into the genre of theatre, assessed through past performance reviews, literary analyses of the playtexts themselves, and relevant critical material.

rey@arts.uwa.edu.au

Hila Shachar
The Afterlife of Wuthering Heights: Screen Renovations

Supervisors: Dr Kieran Dolin and A/Prof Judith Johnston

I am currently working towards the completion of my doctoral thesis, which explores the cultural "afterlife" of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and is particularly concerned with screen adaptions of the novel. My genereal research interests include film adaption, gender studies and Romantic and Victorian literature.

hilla@iinet.net.au or shachh01@student.uwa.edu.au

Supervisors: Prof Chris Wortham and Prof Bob White

I am interested in the way masculinity is represented in the plays of William Shakespeare. This has particular ramifications for the reinterpretation of the roles of men and women in the Medieval and Early Modern period in England.

browo@cygnus.uwa.edu.au