Fields of Research (FoR)
Literary StudiesBiography
Fiona Morrison is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW, where she teaches and supervises in the areas of postcolonial and world literatures, Australian literature and women’s writing. Her most recent book is Christina Stead and the Matter of America (2019), and she is currently working on two projects: a book-length study of Henry Handel Richardson an edited volume of scholarly essays on Eleanor Dark: Time, Tide...view more
Fiona Morrison is an Associate Professor in the School of the Arts and Media at UNSW, where she teaches and supervises in the areas of postcolonial and world literatures, Australian literature and women’s writing. Her most recent book is Christina Stead and the Matter of America (2019), and she is currently working on two projects: a book-length study of Henry Handel Richardson an edited volume of scholarly essays on Eleanor Dark: Time, Tide and History: Selected Essays on Eleanor Dark (forthcoming SUP 2023).
Publications
Books
Morrison, F and B. Rooney. Eds. Time, Tide and History: Selected Essays on Eleanor Dark. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2023 (in press)
Morrison, F. Christina Stead: The Matter of America. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2019 (Won the Walter McRae Russell Award for Literary Scholarship 2021; nominated and shortlisted for the AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship 2020 and nominated and shortlisted for the Dean’s Research Awards for Best Monograph 2020.
Morrison, F. Ed. Dorothy Hewett: Selected Prose. Nedlands: University of Western Australian Press, 2011.
Morrison, F and M. Parker. Masters in Pieces: The English Canon for the Twenty-First Century. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Journal articles
Morrison, F. “Leaving the Party: Dorothy Hewett, literary politics and the long 1960s.” Southerly 73.4 (2012) In press.
Morrison, F. “’I must have a mask to hide behind’: Signature, Imposture and Henry Handel Richardson.” JASAL Special Issue: Archive Madness (2011).
“The Quality of 'Life': Dorothy Hewett’s Literary Criticism” JASAL 10 (2010).
“The Elided Middle: Christina Stead’s For Love Alone and the Colonial ‘Voyage In. ’ Southerly 69:2 (2009): 155-174.
“On Foreign Ground: Expatriate Masculinity and the Unhomely Woman in Henry Handel Richardson’s Maurice Guest.” Southerly 61:2 (2001): 64-79.
“Figures of the Many and the One: Gender, Genre and Narrative Structure in Tim Winton's Cloudstreet.” Sydney Studies in English 25 (1999): 133-151.
Morrison, F. (2021). “’Deep Digging’: Henry Handel Richardson, Transnational Allegory and the Unsettled Epic.” Affirmations: of the Modern 7.1 (2021): 72-83.
Morrison, F. (2018). “The Antiphonal Time of Violence in Leah Purcell’s The Drover’s Wife. Southerly 78 (3): 173-191. Print.
Morrison, F. (2017). “A Transfiguration of my Local Patriotism”: Christina Stead, the figure of oceanic totality and ‘A Night on the Indian Ocean’. Westerly, 2 (62): 87-100. Print
Morrison, F., & Rooney, B. (2016). Introduction "Rediscovering Christina Stead". Australian Literary Studies. Web
Morrison, F. (2016). ‘A Vermeer in the Hayloft’: Christina Stead, Unjust Neglect and Transnational Improprieties of Place and Kind. Australian Literary Studies. Web
Book chapters
Morrison F. and B. Rooney. "Introduction". Time, Tide and History: Selected Essays on Eleanor Dark. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2023 (in press)
Morrison, F. “Harbour Views: Dramatising Collective Life in Eleanor Dark’s Waterway. In Time, Tide and History: Selected Essays on Eleanor Dark. Eds. F. Morrison and B. Rooney. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2023 (in press)
Morrison, F. “Dimensions of Movement: Henry Handel Richardson, Christina Stead and Provincial Novel of Development.” In The Cambridge History of the Australian Novel. Ed. David Carter. New York: Cambridge UP, 2023. (in press)
Morrison, F. “’Rich and Strange’: Christina Stead and the Australian Transnational Novel”. In The Cambridge Companion to the Australian Novel. Eds. Nicholas Birns and Louis Klee. New York: Cambridge UP, 2022. (in press)
Morrison, F. ‘The American Introduction: Perfect Readers, Unread Books and Christina Stead’s The Man Who Loved Children.’ Republics of Letters: Literary Communities in Australia. Ed. Peter Kirkpatrick. Sydney: Sydney UP (forthcoming, January, 2012)
Morrison, F. “The ‘American Dilemma’: Christina Stead’s Cold War Anatomy”. Reading Across the Pacific: United States-Australian Intellectual Histories. Edited by Nicholas Birns and Robert Dixon. Sydney: University of Sydney Press. In press.
Morrison, F. “’The Cruel Book’: Political Satire and the Female Satirist in I'm Dying Laughing.” 2000. In The Magic Phrase: Critical Essays on Christina Stead. Ed. M.A. Harris. Studies in Australian Literature Series. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2000. Reprinted in Gale/Cengage. Twentieth Century Literary Criticism vol. 226. Belmont: Gale/Cengage Learning 2010.
Morrison, F. “The Rhetoric of Sensation: Austen, Bronte and the ‘Gothic Romance.’” Proceedings of the English Association Conference, 2010. Ed. Richard Madeleine. Sydney: The English Association, 2010.
Morrison, F. “To Have Loved and Lost: Life Writing and the Rhetoric of Consolation.” New Directions: Proceedings of the English Association Conference, 2008. Ed. Richard Madeleine. Sydney: The English Association, 2008. 110-121.
F. Morrison and M. Harris. Introduction. The Little Hotel. By Christina Stead. Sydney: Richmond, 2003.
Conference proceedings
“Anglo-Celtic Elegy: Reading the Cultural Hyphen.” Origins and Revivals: Proceedings of the First Australian Conference of Celtic Studies 2001. Ed. G. G. Evans. Sydney Series in Celtic Studies. Sydney: The Centre for Celtic Studies, 2001. 457-470.
Academic reviews
Morrison, F. Review of Nine Lives by Susan Sheridan
Morrison, F. The Young Dancer.” Review of Dorothy Hewett. The Gypsy Dancer. Ed. Christine Alexander and others. Sydney: Juvenilia Press, 2009. Accepted for Southerly 71:2 (2010).
Morrison, F. “Ghostbusting”. Review of Teresa Peterson. The Enigmatic Christina Stead: A Provocative Re-reading. Melbourne: MUP, 2000. In Overland 168 (2002): 102-106.
My Grants
Research Support Income and Grants
SRG 2022: Henry Handel Richardson, "Hearing Voices: Psychical Research and the disruption of Realism in The Fortunes of Richard Mahony": $4200
FRG 2021: Faculty Research Grant funding to support application for Cat 1 grant funding: $3500
SRG 2020: Eleanor Dark Symposium - $1849 (contracted book with SUP, 2021)
SRG 2019: Provincial Modernity and the novel of development - $4994 (publication in Affirmations)
SRG 2018: Australian/Provincial/Modern: Richardson, Stead, Mansfield - $1300 (ARC project on HHR)
SRG 2016: ALS guest edited issue on Christina Stead ‘Rediscovering Again: $3195 (ALS issue 2016)
SRG 2015: Rediscovering Again: Christina Stead & Elizabeth Harrower Symposium: $5729 (ALS issue)
ARC DP 2012: I was the recipient of a Category 1 Grant: $110,000 for the ARC DP Scheme (DP120103310) “Christina Stead in America” (sole CI, 2012-2015). This ARC grant supported the production of 6 outputs: a scholarly symposium (2015), an edited collection for the prestigious Australian Literary Studies (2016), three peer- reviewed essays (2016-2018) and one prize-winning monograph (2019)
2010-2011: At the University of Sydney I was awarded (4) Faculty and School funding grants to the total of $10,680. This funding supported the production of my edition of Dorothy Hewett’s non-fiction prose (UWAP 2011) and scoping work for my ARC Grant “Christina Stead in America” (2012-2015)
My Qualifications
BA (H1, University of Sydney) PhD (University of Sydney), Grad. Cert. Adult Education (AIW)
My Awards
2021: I won the Walter McRae Russell Award (a biannual prize for the best work of literary criticism in Australian literary studies 2019-2020) for my monograph Christina Stead and the Matter of America. This prize is judged by three peers in the field of Australian literary studies and is open to national and international entrants. The Panel for the 2019-2020 award was chaired by Professor Tony Hughes-D’Aeth, the Chair of Australian Literature at UWA.
In 2020 Christina Stead and the Matter of America was also shortlisted for: •The Australian University Heads of English (AUHE) Prize for Literary Scholarship and •The Award for Best Monograph as part of the Dean’s Research Awards (Faculty of Art, Design and Architecture [FADA], UNSW)
2020: I won the Excellence in HDR Supervision Award at the Dean’s Research Awards (FADA, UNSW) 2014: I was nominated for and completed the prestigious UNSW Academic Women in Leadership program
My Research Activities
I am currently interested in the intersection of gender, genre and transnational authorship in the work of Australian women writers in the period 1890-1940. This work involved a particular focus on twentieth century forms of the novel by mobile colonial women writers, where various negotiations of modernist and realist modes are both complex and striking. Two current projects express my current research focus: a book-length study of the fiction of Henry Handel Richardson (Ethel Florence Lindsay Richardson) and a co-edited collection of scholarly essays on Eleanor Dark (SUP, forthcoming 2023).
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Member, Advisory Board of JASAL
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President - Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL), 2019-2021
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Executive member – Australian University Heads of English (AUHE), 2019-2021
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Non-fiction editor - Southerly, 2019-present
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Member, Editorial Board - Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 2017-2021
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Vice-President - ASAL, 2017-2019
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Lecturer and workshop convenor: UNSW Indigenous winter school, 2013 & 2017-9
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NSW State Representative - ASAL, 2015-2017
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Vice President - English Association Sydney, 2011-2015
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Book manuscript reviewer for Palgrave Macmillan and Routledge
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Reviewer for leading Australian academic journals - Australian Feminist Studies, Overland, and Southerly.
My Engagement
I am an executive committee member of the English Association, Sydney.
Since 1996, I have given over twenty invited lectures and/or keynote presentations to teachers and students involved with the NSW HSC curriculum.
My Teaching
I have taught widely in the English and Australian literary curriculum for a number of years.
Since I joined UNSW I have convened and taught the following courses:
ARTS 3041: Literary Mobilities
ARTS2037 Reading Women's Writing
I have contributed lectures/modules to the following courses:
ARTS4200 Advanced Literary Studies (English Honours course)
ARTS2031 Australian Literature
I will convene and teach Postcolonial Literature in 2013.
I am currently supervising PhD, Masters and Honours students working in Australian literature, literary modernism and mobility, transnational literary cultures, contemporary British fiction and feminist science fiction and fantasy.