Staff profile
Dr Felicity Collins
Associate Professor
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
School of Communication, Arts and Critical EnquiryHU2 321, Melbourne (Bundoora)
- T: +61 3 9479 2571
- F: +61 3 9479 3638
- E: f.collins@latrobe.edu.au
Qualifications
BA (Communication – NSWIT), Phd (UTS).
Area of study
Creative Arts
Cinema Studies
Australian Studies
Brief profile
Felicity Collins works on the politics of subjectivity and spectatorship in the visual culture of modernity. Earlier work looked at nation, gender and genre in Australian cinema. Current project is a comparative study of settler colonial cinemas and anti-colonial ethics. Recent postgraduate completions include doctoral theses on motifs of innocence in the films of Peter Weir, the woman warrior or nuxia in Hong Kong and Malaysian cinema, and the cosmopolitics of magical realism.
Research interests
Australian History
- Colonial Violence and Postcolonial Ethics
Creative Writing
- Historical Fiction, Memory, Allegory
Film and Television
- Australian Film and Television Comedy
Media Studies
- Gender, Modernity, Spectatorship
Screen and Media Culture
- Australian National Cinema
Teaching units
CAC2/3 - Australian Cinema.
CST2/3CLH - Imagining Hollywood.
CST2SAC - Storytelling and Cinema.
FAI4/5 - Film and Interpretation.
Recent publications
Collins, F 2010, ‘After the Apology: Re-framing Violence and Suffering’, in First Australians, Australia and Samson and Delilah’, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 24.1, 65-77.
Collins, F 2009, ‘Resisting the Ethical Violence of Coercive Aboriginality: David Gulpilil’, in Postcolonial Celebrity, ed. Clarke R, Cambridge Scholars Press, 189-207.
Collins, F 2009, ‘Wogboys and the Australian National Type’, in Diasporas of Australian Cinema, ed. Murawska R et al. Intellect, 73-82.
Collins, F 2009, ‘Larrikin Ockers and Decent Blokes: The national type in Australian film comedy’, in Creative Nation: Australian Cinema and Cultural Studies Reader, ed. Sarwal A et al. Delhi: SSS Publications, 154-165.
Collins, F 2008, ‘History, Myth and Allegory in Australian Cinema’, Trames, Memory Between Disciplines, 12.3, 276-286.
Collins, F 2008, ‘The Ethical Violence of Celebrity Chat: Russell Crowe and David Gulpilil’, Social Semiotics, 18.2, 191-204.
Collins, F 2008, 'Historical Fiction and the Allegorical Truth of Colonial Violence in The Proposition', Cultural Studies Review, 14.1, 55-71.
Collins, F, Turnbull, S & Bye, S 2007, 'Aunty Jack, Norman Gunston and ABC Television Comedy in the 1970s', Australian Cultural History, 26, 131-152.
Collins, F 2007, ‘Kenny: The Return of the Decent Aussie Bloke in Australian Film Comedy’, Metro, 154, 84-90.
Collins, F 2007, ‘The Year of Living Dangerously’, in The Cinema of Australia and New Zealand, ed. Mayer G et al. London: Wallflower Press, 119-27.
Collins, F, Davis, T 2006, ’Disputing History, Remembering Country’, in The Tracker and Rabbit-Proof Fence’, Australian Historical Studies, 37.128, 35-54.
Collins, F 2006, ‘A Proper Sorry Film: Call Me Mum’, Metro, 150, 44-51.
Collins, F 2006, ‘The Hedonistic Modernity of Sydney in They’re a Weird Mob’, Senses of Cinema, 40.
Older publications
Collins, F Davis, T 2004, Australian Cinema After Mabo, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Collins, F 1999, The Films of Gillian Armstrong, Melbourne: The Moving Image/ATOM.
Research projects
Anti-Colonial Ethics and Screen Violence
Australian Cinema and the History Wars
Australian Screen Comedy


