Dr Elizabeth McMahon is a Professor in the School of the Arts and Media. Her research interests are in Australian literature, Island Studies and Gender studies.
In Island Studies, she has published ten scholarly works, including one sole-authored monograph (2016) and one co-authored monograph (2023). Her 2016 monograph, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (New York and London: Anthem) is the culmination of research funded by an...view more
Dr Elizabeth McMahon is a Professor in the School of the Arts and Media. Her research interests are in Australian literature, Island Studies and Gender studies.
In Island Studies, she has published ten scholarly works, including one sole-authored monograph (2016) and one co-authored monograph (2023). Her 2016 monograph, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination (New York and London: Anthem) is the culmination of research funded by an ARC Discovery grant titled Our Island Home: The Shifting Map of Australian Literature. The monograph won the 2017 Walter McRae Russell Award for 'the best work of literary criticism on an Australian subject published within the previous 2 calendar years'; and the inaugural (2017) Australian University Heads of English Prize for 'best book of literary scholarship published by an Australian-based author in the previous twelve months'. Her most recent monograph, co-authored with Elaine Stratford and Godfrey Baldacchino, is titled Rethinking Island Methodologies (Rowman 2023).
Professor McMahon has also published widely in Australian Literary Studies, especially on women writers and the representation of gender and sexuality. These outputs include 16 articles or book chapters, and with Dr Brigitta Olubas, three edited collections on Australian writers: Antigone Kefala (University of Western Australia Press, 2021), Elizabeth Harrower (University of Sydney Press, 2016 ) and Patrick White, (Rodopi, 2010).
From 1998-2007 Professor McMahon edited Australian Humanities Review. From 2008 to 2023 co-edited Southerly, Australian oldest literary journal, and from 2013 to 2023 co-edited a book series titled Rethinking the Island for Rowman and Littlefield International.
My Grants
My Qualifications
BA (Hons 1st Class ) (English and Australian Literature) University of Sydney;
PhD (Australian Literature), University of Sydney;
My Awards
1. In 2017 Elizabeth's monograph, Islands, Identity and the Literary Imagination won two awards:
i. The Walter McRae Russell Award for 'the best book of literary scholarship on an Australian subject published in the preceding two calendar years', awarded by the Association for the Study of Australian Literature;
ii. The inaugural AUHE Prize for Literary Scholarship, awarded by the association of the Australian University Heads of English for the best work of literary criticism by an academic at and Australian university in the calendar year.
2. The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Dean's award for postgraduate supervision, 2011.
3. Vice Chancellor's Teaching Merit Award, The University of Tasmania, 2000.
4. Eva Vidak Memorial Award for the best thesis in Australian Literature (PhD), University of Sydney, 1995.
My Research Supervision
Supervision keywords
Areas of supervision
- PhD Supervision:
Elizabeth has extensive experience as a supervisor with 15 successful PhD completions and 4 current students, as a primary or joint supervisor. She has supervised an additional 10 PhD students as a secondary supervisor. The topics of the theses range from Australian, New Zealand and and US literature, to Foucauldian theory, and trash aesthetics. In 2011 she received a Dean's Award for Learning and Teaching for Postgraduate Supervision. The list below includes primary and joint supervisions only.
Successful PhD completions:
- Bonaventure Munganga, Australian Indigenous Speculative Fiction (joint with Brigitta Olubas) UNSW, 2024.
- Penelope Stavrou, Re-defining yourself in some other terms’: Reading/Weaving Self, Space and Art in the Oeuvre of Antigone Kefala (Joint with Brigitta Olubas), UNSW, 2022.
- Sarah Pope, Girl, Woman, Spinster—‘Desire, Fear, Ridicule’: The Impossible Fate of The Australian Girl(s), UNSW, 2021.
- Gabrielle Dixon-Ritchie, Ecocriticism and Postmodernism, UNSW, 2018.
- Joseph Cummins, The Space and Time of Imagined Sound: Australian Literature and Music, 1945 to Present (joint with John Napier), UNSW, 2016.
- Naomi Riddle, Anderson, Harrower, Hazzard: The Interiority of Modernity (joint with Brigitta Olubas), UNSW, 2015;
- Laura Joseph, Brimstone Flowers: Towards and Antipodean Poetics of Space, UNSW, 2011;
- Kate Mason, Paradoxes and substitutions: charting patterns in the American novels of 9/11, UNSW, 2010;
- Heather Moritz, "You are will to power and nothing besides": Nietzsche, Foucault, Yoga, and Feminist s/Self-Actualisation, UNSW, 2010;
- Helen O’Reilly, Time and Memory in the Novels of Eleanor Dark, UNSW, 2009;
- Sandra Knowles, The Performances of a Psychic Privacy: Waiting for the Real Miles Franklin, UNSW, 2007;
- Diana Jenkins, Don DeLillo’s Promiscuous Fictions: the Adulterous Triangle of Sex, Space, and Language, UNSW, 2005;
- Marita Bullock, Timely Figurations: The Metaphorics of Trash in Four Recent Australian Artists' work (joint with Dr Brigitta Olubas), UNSW 2004;
- Angela Rockel, ReFraming: Transformations of Subjectivity through Writing, The University of Tasmania 2000.
Successful Master of Arts Supervision
- Sophia Compton, Reading Treaties, Sharing Power: Invitations found within Aboriginal Women's Contemporary Fiction (Joint with Fiona Morrison), UNSW 2023.
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Honours Supervisions
Elizabeth has successfully supervised 35 Honours students, many of whom have progressed to complete PhD theses at UNSW and at other universities in Australian and internationally.
Currently supervising
Current PhD supervisions:
- Maria Jackson, Slave Narratives (joint with Brigitta Olubas). Thesis successfully examined. Graduating in the next round
- Rebecca Hamilton, Women and Homelessness. Under examination
- Celeste White, Postcolonial Gothic (joint with Fiona Morrison) Under examination
- .Nelani de Costa: Space and Spatiality in Diasporic Fiction: Mapping the Complexities of Identities and Experiences in Contemporary Sri Lankan-Australian Fiction
My Engagement
Elizabeth is a member of the Australian Association of the Study of Australian Literature.
She is on the editorial board of Studies in Australian Cinema and on the Editorial Advisory Committee for the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature.
Elizabeth was an elected member of The University of New South Wales Council 2010-2012.
Editorial roles
Since 2008 Elizabeth has co-edited Southerly, Australia's oldest literary journal. Southerly includes peer-reviewed scholarly essays, new creative fiction and poetry, and is funded by the Australia Council for the Arts and the NSW Ministry for the Arts. Issues edited by Elizabeth include:
- The Sister Arts, 68.2 (2008)
- Southerly at Seventy, 69.2 (2009)
- Romance, 70.2 (2010)
- Modern Mobilities, 71.1 (2011)
- Mid-century Women Writers, 72.1 (2011)
- Islands and Archipelagos, 72.3 (2012)
- Forward Thinking: Utopia and Apocalypse, 74.1 (2013)
- Elemental, 75.1 (2014)
- Naked Writer 2, 75.2 (2015)
- War and Peace, 75.3 (2015) co-edited with David Brooks
- Words and Music, 76.1 (2016) co-edited with Hannah Fink
- Questionable Characters, 77.1 (2017) co-edited with David Brooks
- Mixed Messages, 77.3 (2018) co-edited with Michelle Hamadache]
- Violence, 78.2 (2019)
- Southerly at 80! 79.1 (2020)
- Writing Through Fences 79.2 (2021).
From 1998-2007 Elizabeth edited Australian Humanities Review, an AVCC-funded initiative to take Australian debate in the humanities online and showcase research to an international readership.
FRom 2013-2023 Elizabeth co-edited a book series titled, Rethinking the Island for Rowman and Littlefield International.
Elizabeth served on the executive of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature for 6 years, with 2 years as President.
My Teaching
Elizabeth convenes and teaches
The First Year English and Creative Writing hybrid course, The Literature Laboratory
The Second Year English course, Australian Literature
The Second Year English course, Queer Modernisms.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7447-2292
