Visiting Fellow
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Professional Background
Susan was educated at ANU (BA) and the University of Sydney (MA, PhD). Apart from more than twenty-one years of teaching at UNSW @ ADFA, she has taught at ANU and Griffith University as well as spending two semesters as the Käthe Leichter guest professor for feminist studies at the University of Vienna (2000 and 2001). She has served in various public roles, including a term on the Literature Board of the Australia Council and two years as President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). She was Deputy Rector (Research) for UNSW at ADFA, 2000–2002. She is currently editor of JASAL, the Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, and its online manager.
Research Interests
All aspects of Australian literature, including drama and television. Specialisation is in contemporary fiction, with a recently completed book on David Foster’s fiction and a project on Australian television writing.
Consulting Interests
Aspects of Australian contemporary writing, literary history and television writing.
Publications
These include:
Real Relations: The Feminist Politics of Form in Australian Fiction (Sydney: Halstead /ASAL, 2000).
Henry Handel Richardson: The Getting of Wisdom, stories, selected prose and correspondence, Co-editor with Catherine Pratt (St Lucia: UQP, 1997).
Oxford Book of Australian Women's Verse (ed.) (Melbourne: OUP, 1995).
A Question of Commitment: Australian literature in the Twenty Years after the War (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1989).
Entries on Thea Astley, Martin Boyd, David Foster, Helen Garner, Henry Handel Richardson and Mary Theresa Vidal for the Dictionary of Literary Biography (Detroit: Bruccoli Clark Layman, 2001-2006) edited by Selina Samuels.
Articles accessible on the web:
‘Ratbag writers and Cranky Critics: in their praise’ Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 4, 2005:11-22.
‘Christina Stead’s Workshop in the Novel: How to Write a ‘Novel of Strife’’ Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 2, 2003: 81-92.
‘”The Night of Which No one Speaks”: Christina Stead’s Art as Struggle’, Span, vol 37, 1993.
'The Comedy of Misreading in the Fiction of R.K.Narayan' from R.K. Narayan: Critical Perspectives ed. A.L. McLeod. New Delhi: Sterling, 1994.76-85.
'An Interview with David Adams Richards' Australian-Canadian Studies 12.1 (1994): 91-97
'Against the Stream: the fiction of David Adams Richards' Australian-Canadian Studies, 12.1 (1994): 81-89.
Accessible through the AUSTLIT Gateway (via ADFA Library):
'Much Else in Boyd: the relationship between Martin Boyd's non-fiction work and his later novels' Southerly, 38.3, 1978: 309-330.
‘A Kind of Romance: Richardson’s Maurice Guest’, chapter 2, Real Relations: the feminist politics of form in Australian fiction, Sydney: Halstead/ASAL, 2000: 41-54.
Conference Papers
'Hibberd and Humphries: For or Against the People?' ASAL conference, TSIT, Launceston, July 1987.
'Classical Tragedies: Black Harvest and Palu, two Australian versions of New Guinea' Crossing Cultures conference, ADFA, November, 1995.
'Postmodernism, History and Satire: Salman Rushdie and David Foster' ASAL conference, QUT, Brisbane, 1996.
Courses Taught
English 1A and 1B, Contemporary Australian Literature, Australian Drama, Film and Television, Postcolonial Literature.
Please visit the open access webpage for JASAL and ASAL’s webpage for information about events in Australian literary studies.