Dr Brigid Rooney

BA PhD Macq.
Senior Lecturer

+61 2 9351 4517
Room N327, John Woolley Building (A20)

Research Interests

I am currently researching the nexus between fictional and real suburbia in Australian novels over the past century and encompassing a wide range of writers, including Christina Stead, Eleanor Dark, Patrick White, Elizabeth Harrower, George Johnston, David Malouf, Melissa Lucashenko and Steven Carroll, among others. I am interested in the ways that fictional works index the real times and places of particular suburbs and suburban communities: how these are framed by national and global contexts, and how fiction works to transform and reinvent such local resources, often through an engagement with modernist forms and styles of narration. My teaching and research are also informed by a longstanding interest in public and national debates about Australia’s colonial legacy, and about the relationship of settler culture to place. I have a continuing interest in theorising the relationship between literature and the public sphere, especially in an Australian context, as exemplified by my recent book, Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and Australian Public Life (University of Queensland Press, 2009).

My research interests are:

• Australian literature and the representation of suburbia
• Australian literary culture and the public sphere
• Contemporary Australian writers as public intellectuals
• Time, place and modernism in Australian literature
• Cultural theories of Pierre Bourdieu
• Contemporary Australian fiction
• Individual authors of particular interest to me: Christina Stead, Patrick White, David Malouf, Helen Garner, Steven Carroll, Gail Jones, Gerald Murnane, among other contemporary Australian writers.

Publications 2005-2011

Books

• Rooney, B A 2009, Literary Activists: Writer-Intellectuals and Australian Public Life, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia
• Dale, L, Rooney, B A (eds.) 2007, New reckonings: Australian literature past, present, future. Essays in honour of Elizabeth Webby, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia

Journal articles

• Rooney, B A 2009, Manifesto of the senses: blind sightedness in Christina Stead's 'For Love Alone', Australian Literary Studies, 24(3-4), 53-65
• Rooney, B A 2007, Desert Hauntings, Public Interiors and National Modernity: from 'The Overlanders' to 'Walkabout' and 'Japanese Story', Southerly, 67(1-2), 410-422
• Rooney, B A 2007, Remembering Inheritance: David Malouf and the Literary Cultivation of Nation, Journal of Australian Studies (JAS), 90, 65-75
• Rooney, B A 2005, The Sinner, the Prophet, and the Pieta: Sacrifice and the Sacred in Helen Garner's Narratives, Antipodes: a North American journal of Australian literature, 19(2), 159-165
• Rooney, B A 2006, Review: 'Dearest Munx: The Letters of Christina Stead' and William J. Blake; 'The Equal Heart and Mind: Letters between Judith Wright and Jack McKinney', JASAL - Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, 5
• Rooney, B A 2005, Words and Worth, Southerly, 65(1), 168-171

Book chapters

• Rooney, B A 2012, ‘The ruin of time and the temporality of belonging: Journey to the Stone Country and Landscape of Farewell’, Robert Dixon (ed). The Novels of Alex Miller, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 201-216
• Rooney, B A 2011, ‘Kate Grenville as Public Intellectual’, Lighting Dark Places: Essays on Kate Grenville. Ed. Sue Kossew (Cross/Cultures Series). Rodopi Press, Amsterdam, 17-38
• Rooney, B A 2010, Public recluse: Patrick White's literary-political returns, Remembering Patrick White, Rodopi, Amsterdam, 3-18
• Rooney, B A 2007, Christina Stead, A Companion to Australian Literature Since 1900, Camden House, Rochester, 235-246
• Rooney, B A 2007, Reluctant Prophets and Gadfly Laureates: The Australian Writer as Public Intellectual, Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 96-118