Humanities and Social Sciences

Cinema Studies Program

Staff Directory

Research Interests

- Australian National Cinema

- Australian Film and Television Comedy

- Gender and Spectatorship Theory

- Historical Fiction, Memory, Allegory

- Colonial Violence and Postcolonial Ethics

Teaching

- Hollywood Cinema

- Australian Cinema

- Storytelling and Cinema

- Gender and Spectatorship

- Film and Interpretation

Select Research and Teaching Grants

2006-9 Australian Research Council Discovery Grant ($297,350)

Australian Screen Comedy, Project Leader and Chief Investigator

with Sue Turnbull and Susan Bye.

2008 Australian Cultural Studies Network Grant ($15,000)

Television and the National Conference, with Sue Turnbull.

2008-9 Faculty HUSS Teaching and Learning Development Grants ($3000 + $6000)

Screen Literacy for students and teachers in Humanities and Social Sciences .

With Gabrielle Murray, Anna Dzenis, Rolando Caputo and Harry Kirchner.

- School CACE Research Enhancement Grant ($8,325)

Identity, Memory, History: David Gulpilil and Russell Crowe

Archival Research Project on the media profiles of two star-celebrities.

2003-5 La Trobe University Industry Collaborative Grant ($13,000)

The innovative role of ABC Television in the production of Australian Screen Comedy , with Sue Turnbull.

Industry Partners ($15,000):

Australian Broadcasting Corporation Television Archive

National Film and Sound Archive, Oral History Collection

Australian Centre for the Moving Image

Select Publications

Books

- Australian Cinema After Mabo , Cambridge University Press, 2004 (with T. Davis) • The Films of Gillian Armstrong , ATOM & AFI, 1999.

Journal articles

'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, Special Issue “Memory Between Disciplines”, 12.3, 2008 (276-286).

'The Ethical Violence of Celebrity Chat: Russell Crowe and David Gulpilil', Social Semiotics , 18.2, 2008 (191-204).

'Historical Fiction and the Allegorical Truth of Colonial Violence in The Proposition', Cultural Studies Review , 14.1, 2008 (55-71).

'Aunty Jack, Norman Gunston and ABC Television Comedy in the 1970s', Australian Cultural History , 26, 2007 (131-152) (with S. Turnbull and S. Bye).

'Kenny : The Return of the Decent Aussie Bloke in Australian Film Comedy', Metro , 154, 2007 (84-90).

'Disputing History, Remembering Country in Australian Cinema', Australian Historical Studies , 37.128, 2006 (35-54). (with T. Davis)

'A Proper Sorry Film: Call Me Mum ', Metro , 150, 2006 (44-51).

'Transforming the Truth: an interview with Margot Nash director of Call Me Mum ', Metro , 150, 2006 (46-52).

'The Hedonistic Modernity of Sydney in They're a Weird Mob ', Senses of Cinema , 40, 2006.

'Memory in Ruins: The Woman Filmmaker in her Father's Cinema', Special Issue: Women, Autobiography and New Media. Screening the Past , 13, 2001.

'Death and the Face of the Mother in the Auto/biographical Films of Rivka Hartman, Jeni Thornley and William Yang', Metro , 126, 2001 (48-54).

'The Experimental Practice of History in the Filmwork of Jeni Thornley', Screening the Past , 3, 1998.

Book Chapters

'Larrikin ockers and decent blokes: the national type in Australian film comedy', in Amit Sarwal and Reema Sarwal (ed), Creative Nation: Australian Cinema and Cultural Studies Reader , SSS Publications, Delhi, 2009 (154-165).

'Remembering the lost child and black tracker in Australian cinema', in Lucy Burke, Simon Faulkner and Jim Aulich (eds), The Politics of Cultural Memory , Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009. (65% with T. Davis)

'Sydney' in Gareth Griffiths and Djamel Zeniti (eds), City + Cinema: Essays on the Specificity of Location in Film , Datutop 29, Occasional Papers, Tampere University of Technology, Finland, 2007 (124-135)

'The Year of Living Dangerously', in Geoff Mayer and Keith Beattie (eds), The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand , Wallflower Press, London, 2007 (119-27)

'Il ritorno a casa degli antenati', in Silvana Tuccio (ed), Lorenzo

Perrona (trans), Sguardi Australiani, Torino, Italia: Le Mani. 2005 (49-66). [Revision and Translation from Twin Peaks , Deb Verhoeven (ed), 1999]

'Brazen Brides, Grotesque Daughters, Treacherous Mothers: Women's Funny Business in Australian Cinema from Sweetie to Holy Smoke ', in Lisa French (ed), Womenvision: Women and the Moving Image in Australia , Damned Publishing, Melbourne, 2003 167-182). [reprinted Senses of Cinema , No. 23]

'Bringing the ancestors home: dislocating white masculinity in Floating Life, Radiance and Vacant Possession ', in Deb Verhoeven (ed), Twin Peaks , Damned Publishing: Melbourne, 1999 (107-116).

Forthcoming

'Wogboys and the Australian national type', in Renata Murawska and Catherine Simpson (eds), Diasporas of Australian Cinema , Intellect, UK, (forthcoming, 2009).

'The ethical violence of coercive aboriginality' in Robert Clarke (ed), Postcolonial Celebrity , Cambridge Scholars, UK (forthcoming 2010).

Books in Progress

- Australian Screen Comedy , (with Sue Turnbull and Susan Bye)

- The ABC of Television Comedy , (with Sue Turnbull and Susan Bye)