Department of English
Staff
Academic Staff
Antonina Harbus
Head of Department
Professor, BA Hons (Qld), MA, PhD Toronto, GradCert.Ed. (Higher Ed.) Sydney
Poetry and poetic language; cognitive approaches to literature metaphor; constructing the self in narrative;
dreams and the unconscious in English literature; modes of reading; Old English and Middle English language and literature.
Office: W6A 636
Telephone: (02) 9850 6802
Email: antonina.harbus@mq.edu.au
Professor Tony Cousins
Professor MA (Syd); PhD (Monash); FAHA; AM. PhD (Macq)
Special interests: Renaissance literature and cultural history, Utopian narratives, Australian colonial poetry, and historiography of the history of ideas.
Office: W6A 624
Telephone: (02) 9850 8772
Email: tony.cousins@ mq.edu.au
Dr Rosemary Colmer
Senior Lecturer BA (Adel); PhD (Macq)
Director of Undergraduate Studies
Special interests: Post-colonial women's writing, African fiction in English, and African theatre.
Her main areas of teaching are in contemporary literature, twentieth-century drama, and post-colonial writing.
Office: W6A 623
Telephone: (02) 9850 8731
Email: rosemary.colmer@ mq.edu.au
Dr Toby Davidson
Lecturer BA Hons (UWA); PhD (Deakin)
Special interests: Australian metaphysical and religious poetry, postcolonial texts and criticism,
histories of Western Christian mysticism in world literature
Office: W6A 637
Telephone: +61 2 9850 6792
Email: toby.davidson@ mq.edu.au
Dr Victoria Flanagan
Lecturer BA Hons (Macq); PhD (Macq)
Special interests: Gender representations in Children's literature and film; queer theory; posthumanism and its application to children's texts
Office: W6A 627
Telephone: (02) 9850 6804
Email: victoria.flanagan@ mq.edu.au
Dr Marcelle Freiman
Senior Lecturer BA (Wits); MA, PhD (Macquarie)
Special interests: Post-colonial literature and theory, the literature of diasporic communities, and the theory and practice of creative writing.
Office: W6A 621
Telephone: (02) 9850 6892
Email: marcelle.freiman@ mq.edu.au
Dr Robyn McCallum
Lecturer Assoc. Dip. Visual Arts (U.W.S. Nepean), BA; Phd (Macq)
Special interests: Children's literature, film and television; theories of subjectivity; semiotics; and literature and the visual arts.
Office: W6A 628
Telephone: (02) 9850 8883
Email: robyn.mccallum@ mq.edu.au
Dr Jane Messer
Senior Lecturer BA (Macquarie), MA (John Hopkins), DCA (UTS) Co-ordinates and teaches the post-graduate courses in Creative Writing.
Special interests: The practice and theory of teaching creative writing, with particular interest in novel and short story writing; ethnography and writing corporate culture; literature and mothering.
Office: W6A 632
Telephone: (02) 9850 8738
Email: jane.messer@ mq.edu.au
Professor Marea Mitchell
Professor BA (London), MA., DPhil. (Sussex)
Special interests: Medieval studies, especilally The Book of Margery Kemp; early modern studies, especially Sir PhilipSidney's Arcadia, Shakespeare, Ben Johnson & John Donne; Cornish Studies; Dennis Potter; Women Studies; Feminism; Marxism and Cultural Materialism.
Office: W6A 634
Telephone: (02) 9850 8754
Email: marea.mitchell@ mq.edu.au
Dr Lee Christine O'Brien
BA Hons (NSW), MA Hons (Macq), PhD (Macq)
Special interests: the impact of the ballad on nineteenth-century women's lyric poetry, the cultural politics of genre, readership and material print culture in the nineteenth century, gender politics and crime/detective
fiction 1860 - 1960.
Office: W6A 633
Telephone: (02) 9850 8776
Email: lee.obrien@mq.edu.au
Dr Paul Sheehan
Senior Lecturer BA Hons (NSW)., PhD (London)
Special interests: Modernism, Literary theory, film studies, Samuel Beckett.
Office: W6A 622
Telephone: (02) 9850 8757
Email: paul.sheehan@ mq.edu.au
Dr Ryan Twomey
BA Hons (ACU), M.Ed (UNE), PhD (UNSW)
Special interests: Juvenilia and the development of the child writer into the adult author; Historiography;
Victorian Literature; Hiberno-English literature.
Office: W6A 621
Telephone: (02) 9850 8743
Email: ryan.twomey@mq.edu.au
Profile
Dr Louise Colbran
Office: W6A 634
Phone: 61-2-9850 7009
Fax:61-2-9850 6593
Email: louise.colbran@ mq.edu.au
Dr Geoff Payne
Office:W6A 631
Phone:61-2-9850 8726
Fax:61-2-9850 6593
Email: geoffrey.payne@ mq.edu.au
Profile
Administrative Staff
Mrs Frances Thompson
Departmental Administrator
Office: W6A 641
Telephone: (02) 9850 8739
Fax: (02) 9850 6593
Email: frances.thompson@mq.edu.au
Office Hours
Monday 9.00 - 4.00pm
Tuesday 9.00 - 4.00pm
Wednesday 9.00 - 4.00pm
Thursday 9.00 - 4.00pm
Emeritus Professors
Professor John Stephens
BA (Hons) Melbourne, MA (Hons) Sydney, DLitt Macquarie
John's research spans a diverse range of fields, but is broadly unified by his long-standing interests in ideology of text, discourse analysis, and narrative. His principal impact on international scholarship and research has been in the field of children's literature.
His research currently focuses on comedy and humour in children's literature and film.
Tony Gibbs
BA (Melb); MA (Oxf), BLitt (Oxf), FAHA
Professor Gibbs retired in 1998 after holding the Chair of English at Macquarie University for more than twenty years.
His research ranges from the Renaissance to the twentieth century, with special interests in modern drama, literature and biography, in relation to intellectual, cultural and social history.
email: tony.gibbs@mq.edu.au
Yasmine Gooneratne
AO, BA (Ceylon); PhD (Camb), DLitt (Macq)
Professor Gooneratne holds a Personal Chair in English. She was Foundation Director of the Post-Colonial Literatures and Language Research Centre at Macquarie University 1988-1993 and was awarded the Order of Australia for distinguished service to literature and education in 1990.
Research Fellows
Adjunct Professors
Virginia Blain
BA (Tas); BLitt.,(Oxon) FAHA
Special interests: nineteenth-century British literature, nineteenth and twentieth-century Australian literature,feminist theory,literary biography,gay and lesbian theory, and Virginia Woolf.
Honorary Associates
Alice Curry, PhD Macq.
Ursula Dubosarsky, BA USyd, PhD Macq.
Alison Halliday, MA Macq., PhD Macq.
Sung-Ae Lee, BA Ewha, MA Calif. State, MA Syd., PhD Macq.
Daniella Napton, BA, MA, PhD Macq.
Teresa A. Petersen, BA Macq., PhD Macq.
Nicole Pluss, BA, LLB USyd, PhD Macq.
Shale Preston, BA(Hons) Syd., PhD Macq.