Professor Barry Spurr

MLitt Oxf. MA PhD, FACE
Personal Chair in Poetry and Poetics

+61 2 9351 2689

Research areas

• Early Modern Literature and Culture
• Modernism
• Poetry and poetics
• Human Animal Research Network
• History of the Emotions (Associate Investigator, ARC Centre of Excellence)

Current projects

Book on representations of solitude in poetry, from the early modern period to today

Book on representations of animals in poetry, from the early modern period to today

Professional associations

Fellow of the Australian College of Educators (elected 2007)

Council member, University of Sydney Association of Professors (co-opted 2011)

Publications 2006-2011

Books

• Spurr, B 2011, ‘The world shall come to Walsingham’: The Blessed Virgin Mary in English Poetry, St Laurence Press, Sydney
• Spurr, B 2010, Anglo-Catholic in Religion: T.S. Eliot and Christianity, Lutterworth Press, Cambridge, UK
• Spurr, B 2007, See The Virgin Blest: The Virgin Mary In English Poetry, Palgrave MacMillan, New York
• Spurr, B 2006, Studying Poetry, revised edition, Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke
• Spurr, B 2006, Successful Public Speaking, Debating and Oral Presentations, New Frontier, Epping

Edited journal volumes

• Spurr, B (ed.) 2008, The Legacy of T.S. Eliot, Literature and Aesthetics 18(1)

Journal articles

• Spurr, B Forthcoming 2012, Anglo-Catholicism and the ‘religious turn’ in Eliot’s poetry and thought, Religion and Literature
• Spurr, B 2011, The Fame and Nurture of Poetry, Sydney Studies in English, 37, 1-18
• Spurr, B 2011, ‘And God said’: the King James version and English Literature, mETAphor, 4, 3-8
• Spurr, B 2008, The legacy of Eliot's poetry, Literature and Aesthetics, 18(1), 19-30

Book chapters

• Spurr, B Forthcoming 2012, The Twentieth-Century Literary Tradition, Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement, Oxford University Press, Oxford
• Spurr, B 2011, ‘Anglo-Catholic in religion’: T.S. Eliot and Christianity, T.S. Eliot in Context Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 305-315
• Spurr, B 2010, The national curriculum for English, The National Curriculum: A Critique, Institute of Public Affairs, Melbourne, 29-40
• Spurr, B 2010, The poetics of incarnation: T.S. Eliot's 'Shrine' and Robert Lowell's 'Walsingham', Walsingham in Literature and Culture from the Middle Ages to Modernity, Ashgate Publishing, Surrey, 233-242
• Spurr, B 2006, What is the difference between King Lear and 'Ginger Meggs', Postmodernism in Education, Warrane College (UNSW), Kensington, 11, 8-13

Encyclopaedia entries

• T.S. Eliot, Time-lines of life and works, Literary Encyclopedia www.LitEncyc.com, 2012
• T.S. Eliot: 'Journey of the Magi' Literary Encyclopedia www.LitEncyc.com, 2009
• T.S. Eliot: Ash-Wednesday, 1930, Literary Encyclopedia www.LitEncyc.com, 2008

Conference proceedings

• Spurr, B Forthcoming 2012, Animals in Early Modern Poetry, Global Animal Conference, Australia
• Spurr, B Forthcoming 2012, T.S. Eliot and the Western classical tradition, The Christian view of history and the revival of the liberal arts, Australia
• Spurr, B 2008, The Legacy of Eliot’s Poetry, The Legacy of T.S. Eliot Conference, Australia, 19-30

For a full list of Barry Spurr’s publications, please download this PDF.

Areas of teaching and specific topics

Teaching

• Renaissance studies
• Modernism
• Religious literature
• Poetry and poetics

Specific topics

• Donne
• Milton
• T.S. Eliot
• Canonical and confessional poetry