A/Prof. Joan Kirkby

Tel: 9850 8755

Fax: 9850 6893

Email: jkirkby@scmp.mq.edu.au

Literature and psychoanalytic theory (Member of Executive Board of Literature and Psychoanalysis Association which co hosts an annual conference at Macquarie with the Sydney Institute for Psychoanalysis).

Emily Dickinson in Context (Member of Editorial Board of The Emily Dickinson Journal published by John Hopkins University Press)

Feminist theory and textual practice.

American and Australian literatures.

Literature as social practice.

Current Projects

Theories of Mourning from Freud to Butler

Emily Dickinson and Evolutionary Theology.

Emily Dickinson's debate with the nineteenth century philosophical tradition, an ARC Large Grant project which examines Dickinson's writing in the context of nineteenth century periodical literature and a spinoff project The Emily Dickinson Compendium..

Is Julia Kristeva's defense of art defensible?

American gothic: from Emily Dickinson to Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Publications

Books:

The American Model: Influence and Independence in Australian Poetry, edited by Joan Kirkby. Sydney: Hale and Iremonger, 1982.

Emily Dickinson. London: Macmillan, 1991.

Emily Dickinson. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.

Chapters:

"The Corrupt Defense Systems of Catch-22.' Perspectives79, eds. Jan Fox and Brian McFarlane (Melbourne: Sorrett PublishingPty. Ltd., 1978), pp. 137-147.

"The Memphis Faun." Elvis: Images and Fancies, ed. Jac Tharpe (London: W.H. Allen & Co., 1983), pp. 19-37.

"Finding a Voice in this 'fiercely fathered and unmothered world':The Poetry of Fay Zwicky." Poetry and Gender, ed. by DavidBrooks and Brenda Walker (St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1989), pp. 175-195.

"The Spinster and the Missing Mother in the Fiction of Elizabeth Jolley." Old Maids to Radical Spinsters, ed. Laura L. Doan(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1991), pp. 235-258.

"The Lure of Abjection: Kristeva's Borderliner and Australian Masculinity in Hal Porter, A.D. Hope, Patrick White." Australian Contemporary Culture and Critical Theory, ed. Patrick Fuery (Melbourne: Longman,1992), pp. 151-175.

"The Joseph Complex or the Father/Daughter Bond in the Fiction of Elizabeth Jolley." ed. Delys Bird and Brenda Walker (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1991), pp. 63-82.

"The Lure of Abjection: 'The Vertigris of Glory' in The Astley's The Acolyte." Into the Nineties: Post-colonial Women's Writing, ed. by Anna Rutherford, Lars Jensen and Shirley Chew (Australia and Denmark: Dangaroo, 1994), pp. 27-45.

"Abject Discourse and the Imperial Gaze in Rosa Cappiello's Oh Lucky Country." A Talented Digger, ed. Hena Maes-Jelinek, Gordon Collier, Geoffrey V. Davis (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), pp. 221-226.

"The Lure of Abjection: A Colonial Legacy?", An Australian Mind: Collected Papers of The Literature and Psychiatry Conference 1993,ed. by Craig Powell (Sydney: Mathew J.C. Powell, 1996), pp. 21-35.

"The Politics of Self Hatred: The Fiction of David Ireland", The Roots of Aggression: Collected Papers Number 2, The Literature andPsychiatry Conference, ed. by Dr. Craig Powell (1998), pp. 47-56..

"Julia Kristeva's Celebration of the Inner Life: The Imaginary Father and the Elaboration of Psychic Space", A Grain of Eternity, ed. by Michael Griffiths and Jim Tulip (Sydney: Berget, 1998), pp. 115-122..

"Julia Kristeva: A Politics of the Inner Life", After the Revolution: On Kristeva, ed by John Lechte and Mary Zournazi (Sydney, ArtSpace, 1998), p. 109-127.

"Australian Grunge Fiction", AmericaniZation and Australia, ed. by Philip and Roger Bell (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1998), pp. 228-245.

"The Text as Analyst; the Patient as Text", forthcoming in Interpretation: Dream or Delusion? (Papers of the Literature and Psychoanalysis Association, 2001).

Articles:

"Old Orders, New Lands: The Earth Spirit in Picnic at Hanging Rock." Australian Literary Studies, Vol. 8, No. 3 (May,1978), pp. 255-268.

"The Memphis Faun." The Southern Quarterly", Vol.XVIII, No. 1 (Fall, 1979), pp. 11-26.

"Spengler and Apocalyptic Typology in F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is the Night." Southern Review, Vol. XII, No. 3 (November,1979), pp. 246-262.

"A Woman is Watching Things: The Work of Anna Couani." Meanjin,Vol. 42, No. 4 (December, 1983), pp. 491-499.

"The Nights Belong to Elizabeth Jolley: Modernism and the Sappho-Erotic Imagination of Miss Peabody's Inheritance." Meanjin, Vol. 43,No. 4 (December, 1984), pp. 484-493.

"The American Prospero." Southern Review, Vol. 18,No. 1 (March, 1985), pp. 90-109.

"What Prisoners We Are: Sexuality and System in Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Blithedale Romance. " Australasian Journal of American Studies,Vol. 4, No. 1 (1986), pp. 12-27.

"Is There Life After Art: The Metaphysics of Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping." Tulsa Studies in Women's Literature, Vol. 4,No. 1 (1986), pp. 90-109.

"Daisy Miller Down Under: The Old World/New World Paradigm in the Fiction of Barbara Hanrahan." Kunapipi, Vol. 8, No. 3 (1986),pp. 10-27.

"The Call of the Mother in the Fiction of Elizabeth Jolley."SPAN: Journal of the South Pacific Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies, ed. William McGaw, No. 26 (April, 1988), pp.46-48.

"Melville's 'Tale of Love': A Lacanian Reading of Pierre." Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1 (July, 1989),pp. 12-21.

"Barbara Baynton: An Australian Jocasta." Westerly, No. 4 (December, 1989), pp. 114-124.

"Whatever Happened to Charles Harpur: Egalitarianism versus Authoritarianismin Australian Culture." Australasian Journal of American Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (December, 1990), pp. 67-74.

"Fetishising the Father: David Tacey on Patrick White." Meridian, Vol. 10, No. 1 (May, 1991), pp. 35-44.

"The Lure of Abjection: 'The Vertigris of Glory' in The Astley'sThe Acolyte." Kunapipi, Vol. XVI, No. 1 (1994), pp. 27-45.

"'Big My Secret/ But It's Bandaged': Emily Dickinson and Jane Campion's The Piano." Emily Dickinson International Newsletter, Vol.3, No. 1 (1994), pp. 4-6.

"Reading Dickinson Reading." The Emily Dickinson Journal,Vol. V, No. 2 (1996), pp.

"The Atlantic Monthly", 'Books and Reading', 'Crisis', 'TheHampshire and Franklin Express', 'Harper's New Monthly Magazine', 'Scribner's Monthly', entries in The Emily Dickinson Encyclopedia ed. by Jane Donahue Eberwein (New York: Greenwood Press, 1998).

"The Pursuit of Oblivion: In Flight from Suburbia", Writing the Everyday: Australian Literature and the Limits of Suburbia edited by Andrew McCann (a special issue of Australian Literary Studies, Vol. 18, No. 4, pp. 1-19. .

Film Script:

The Nights Belong to the Novelist: Elizabeth Jolley, Australian Writer,a film by Christina Wilcox. Script: Joan Kirkby and Christina Wilcox; Research and Interviews: Joan Kirkby. This film co won the prize for best Australian film at the Melbourne Film Festival (June, 1987) and the script was nominated for the Greater Union Awards at the Sydney Film Festival (June, 1987).