Humanities and Social Sciences

Cinema Studies Program

Staff Directory

Teaching Areas

CST2/3CAC: Australian cinema (n/a 2009)
CST2/3CLH: Hollywood cinema (2nd semester 2008)
CST4/5FAI: film and interpretation (1st semester 2009)
CST2/3GSP: gender and spectatorship (n/a 2009)
CST2SAC: storytelling and cinema (1st semester 2009)

Research Areas
Australian National Cinema
History, Memory and Identity
Gender and Spectatorship theory
Film and Television Comedy
Colonial Violence and White Settler Cinemas

Select Research and Teaching Grants
2006 - 2009: Australian Research Council Discovery Grant ($297,350)
Australian Screen Comedy, Project Leader and 1st Chief Investigator. With 2nd chief Investigator Sue Turnbull, Australian Postdoctoral Fellow Susan Bye, Senior Research Assistant Desiree Jacobson.

2008: Australian Cultural Studies Network Grant($15,000)
Television and the National Conference, with Sue Turnbull.

2008: Faculty HUSS Teaching and Learning Development Grant ($3000)
Screen Literacy for students and teachers in Humanities and Social Sciences. With Gabrielle Murray, Anna Dzenis, Rolando Caputo and Harry Kirchner.

2005 - 2008: School CACE Research Enhancement Grant ($8,325)
Identity, Memory, History: David Gulpilil and Russell Crowe. Archival Research Project on the media profiles of two celebrity-stars.

2003 - 2005: 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)
ABC Television Archive
National Film and Sound Archive
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
'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).

'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 (online).

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

'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 (online)

Book Chapters
'Sydney' in City + Cinema: Essays on the Specificity of Location in Film, Datutop 29, Occasional Papers, Tampere University of Technology, Finland, 2007 (124-135) [reprint of 'The hedonistic modernity of Sydney in They're A Weird Mob', Senses of Cinema, 40, 2006.

‘The Year of Living Dangerously' in Geoff Mayer and Keith Beattie (eds), The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand, Wallflower Press, London, 2007 (119-127).

‘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 Peeks, 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 , 23]

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

Forthcoming 2008 - 2009
'Wogboys and the Australian national type', in Renata Murawska and Catherine Simpson (eds), Diasporas of Australian Cinema, Intellect, UK, [refereed chapter accepted April 2008, forthcoming, 2009].

'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, Delhi [forthcoming 2008, revised from Metro 154, 2007].

'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, [in press 2008, revised from Australian Historical Studies, with T. Davis].

'History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema', Trames, Special Issue "Memory Between Disciplines", [revised from Cultural Studies Review 14.1, 2008, in press, 2008].

Books in Progress
Screen Comedy and National Identity, (with S. Turnbull and S. Bye).

The ABC of Television Comedy, (with S. Turnbull and S. Bye).