My research is in the fields of Modernist art and literature and Human-Animal Studies. In Modernism I have worked on the genre of the roman à clef and sexuality in the work of writers such as Hope Mirrlees, Renee Vivien, H.D., Gertrude Stein and Djuna Barnes. In the visual arts I have undertaken biographical and curatorial research into Australian modernist artists Mary Alice Evatt and Moya Dyring. I convened the interdisciplinary Animal Studies conference, Global Animal, at UOW in 2011: http://ro.uow.edu.au/globan10/ My research in the field of Human-Animal Studies currently focuses on the impact of literary and visual representations of the cattle industries in Australia. I have developed, with colleague Dr Denise Russell, the Replace Animals in Australian Testing (RAAT) website which provides information on alternatives to the use animals in scientific experiments and medical research in Australia: http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/research/raat. I am editor of the new online AustralAsian Animal Studies Journal, which is being launched in mid-2012.
Journal articles
Animal Studies Journal: Editorial. Cover Pages, Table of Contents, Animal Studies Journal (2012)
Editorial by Melissa Boyde and Cover page, Contents and Editorial Advisory Board details of the...
The Modernist roman à clef and Cultural Secrets, or I Know That You Know That I Know That You Know, Faculty of Arts - Papers (2009)
Roman à clef, a French term meaning ‘novel with a key’, refers to fictional works...
The poet and the ghosts are walking the streets: Hope Mirrlees – life and poetry, Faculty of Arts - Papers (2009)
Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978), a British writer, was until recently perhaps best known for her fantasy...
Art and Advocacy: Mary Alice Evatt in the 1930s and '40s, Faculty of Arts - Papers (2005)
On her return to Australia from Europe in 1939, Mary Alice Evatt remarked in an...
Book chapter
‘You for Whom I Wrote’: Renée Vivien, H.D. and the Roman à Clef, The Unsociable Sociability of Women's Lifewriting (2010)
Paris at the turn of the twentieth century was a creative hub for writers and...
Making it Accessible: Mary Alice Evatt and Australian Modernist Art, Faculty of Arts - Papers (2008)
In his autobiography art historian Bernard Smith recounts how, as a young art teacher posted...
Book review
Antipodean wanderer in the Mediterranean, Faculty of Arts - Papers (2005)
The opening image of the writer as a young girl in Australia putting together jigsaw...
Catalogue essay
Art and Politics: Mas Evatt and the Evatt Collection, Faculty of Arts - Papers (2006)
Mary Alice Evatt hung her large collection of paintings in every room of her Canberra...
Conference papers
‘“Out of her emotional depth”: Gertrude Stein’s Queer Demonstration’, Modernism, Intimacy and Emotion, Writing and Society Research Group and the School of Humanities and Languages, University of Western Sydney (2012)
Gertrude Stein’s novella Q.E.D., written in 1903, but not published until 1950, has three central...
No subject area
Introduction, in M. J. Boyde (ed), A Kingdom and a Place of Exile: Critical Essays on Postcolonial Women's Writing - Dorothy Jones (2010)
A Kingdom and a Place of Exile: Postcolonial Women Writers is a collection of essays...
Making it accessible: Mary Alice Evatt and Australian modernist art, in R. Dixon & V. Kelly (eds.), Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s (2008)
This chapter explores the history of taking modern art to country towns in NSW, particularly...