Project Archive
Spinoza and Literature for Life: a Practical Theory of Art
Professor Anthony Uhlmann and Professor Moira Gatens are working on this project that aims to work across literary and philosophical sources in order to construct a novel Spinozistic theory of art. »Read More
J. M. Coetzee and Making Sense in Literature
Professor Anthony Uhlmann leads this ARC Discovery grant. It is a French-Australian collaboration is considering level of 'translatability' of meaning in J. M. Coetzee's work. »Read More
Northern Ireland: Post-Conflict Literature
Dr Matt McGuire is examining why it is now fiction rather than poetry that is predominant in documenting and interrogating the reality of post-conflict Northern Ireland. His project considers what it is about the novel that makes it conducive to the critical examination of post-conflict society.»Read More
The Digital Lives and Archives of Irish Literature and History
Dr. Anne Jamison is collaborating on two major digital initiatives to reconfigure existing narratives of Irish literature and history and deepen and challenge scholarly research and research practices in this field. The projects further aim to enhance the ambitions of feminist historiographers in challenging the conventional linear narratives of women's literary history in Ireland. »Read More
Literature, Music, Voice, Technology
Adjunct Professor Hazel Smith is working on this project that focuses on a range of sonic/verbal intersections, and relationships between literature and music, in the growing field of musico-literary discourse. »Read More
The Writer's Best Friend: A computational assistant for creative writing
Adjunct Professor Hazel Smith, Professor Roger Dean (MARCS) and Dr Jason Shaw (MARCS) are the researchers on this project that seeks to augment human expressive capability in creative writing with computational agents that help writers extend their stylistic range.»Read More
Creating Literature in Western Sydney
The Crown Resorts Foundation and the Packer Family Foundation are supporting four projects led by award winning authors from Writing and Society Research Centre — Mohammad Ahmad, Felicity Castagna, Fiona Wright and Luke Carman. »Read More
Australian Indigenous Storytelling
Lead researcher Alexis Wright is working with Professor Ivor Indyk on this ARC project that examines how Aboriginal stories have been told in recent years, and which stories have been used in the creation of a national narrative for re-shaping Aboriginal Australia.»Read More
The Contours of 'Provincial Imagination'
Professor Ivor Indyk is researching this idea through essays on Les Murray, Murray Bail and Gerald Murnane, the expressive techniques of Patrick White, as part of a larger exploration of the expression of emotion and the baroque aesthetic in Australian Literature.
Australia India Literatures International Forum
Dr Mridula Nath Chakraborty led this Writing and Society initiative that developed links between Indian and Australian authors and publishers. »Read More
Spanish America – a Literary Laboratory
Dr Christopher Andrews was the recipient of an ARC discovery grant to study recent fiction by Spanish American writers and how their compositional procedures are related to their political, ethical and aesthetic values. »Read More
Creative Nation: Writers and Writing in the New Media Culture
Associate Professor Anna Gibbs and Dr Maria Angel together with partner investigator Professor Joseph Tabbi from the University of Illinois, Chicago studied the impact of the culture of new media on literary writing with the assistance of an ARC discovery grant. »Read More
Australian Literary Publishing and its Economies, 1965-1995
Researchers: Ivor Indyk, John Arnold, Mark Davis, David Carter and Louise Poland
Partner/Funding Body: Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant
Period: 2007-2009
The effectiveness of Literature Board subsidies 1995-2005
Researchers: Ivor Indyk, Louise Poland, and Kath McLean
Partner/Funding Body: the Australia Council
Period: 2009-2010
Download the final report 'A Case for Literature: The effectiveness of subsidies to Australian publishers 1995 -2005'
The research project aims to assess the efficacy and significance of Literature Board subsidies to publishers of Australian literary works in the period 1995-2005. Over the ten-year period under examination, some 1200 titles were subsidised by the Literature Board. The project examines the range of titles and publishers supported by the subsidies, and considers the extent to which those titles made a significant contribution to Australian literature, either directly, in recognition of their value, or indirectly through the contribution they made to the authors' careers and reputations, and to the reputations and lists of the publishers concerned.
Literature, Music, Voice
Researcher: Hazel Smith
This project focuses on a range of sonic/verbal intersections, and relationships between literature and music, in the growing field of musico-literary discourse. It is particularly concerned with the formal/cultural hybridities, mixes and impurities created by such intersections, and the way they are changing concepts of the literary. Focusing on the contemporary scene, it includes work on new media poetry, sound and affect; cultural eclecticism in the work of American jazz singer Kurt Elling; the blues-inflected African American performance poetry of Harryette Mullen, Wanda Coleman and Tracie Morris; the politics of the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra (a youth orchestra initiated by Daniel Barenboim and Edward Said), and its implications for Palestinian-Israeli cooperation; the voice in computer music and its relationship to identity, place and community; and the representation of musical meaning, musical performance and musical communities in literary fiction, particularly Vikram Seth's An Equal Music and Richard Powers' A Time of Our Singing.
Western Sydney Writing Projects
Researchers: Ivor Indyk, Mireille Astore, Anna Poletti and associate researchers
Partner/Funding Body: Arts NSW - 2006 Western Sydney Strategic Initiatives Grant
Writing in the Image Culture
Researchers: Anna Gibbs, Maria Angel, Rachel Morley
Partner/Funding Body: Western Sydney University Research Grant
Period: 2008
The Power of the Image: Affect, Audience and Disturbing Imagery
Researchers: Anna Gibbs and Virginia Nightingale
Partner/Funding Body: Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant
Period: 2006-2009
» Fact sheet (PDF, 26Kb)
The Image of Thought: Literature as a Way of Thinking
Researcher: Anthony Uhlmann
Partner/Funding Body: Australian Research Council, Discovery Grant
Period: 2005-2006
» Fact sheet (PDF, 41Kb)