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Professor Wenche Ommundsen

Licence ès letters, Dip. Ed. (Lausanne)
MA (London)
PhD (Melbourne)

Telephone: +61 02 4221 3369
E-mail: wenche@uow.edu.au

Wenche joined the University of Wollongong in 2006 as Professor of English Literatures. Formerly of Deakin University, she has taught across a number of fields in English, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies, with particular interest in:

• Australian literature and culture
• Postcolonial, diasporic and multicultural writing
• Literary and cultural theory
• Postmodern fiction
• Research methodology

Wenche is a member of the executive committee of EASA (European Association of Australian Studies) and of the board of the AustLit, the comprehensive electronic database of Australian literature.

Research Profile

Wenche has published widely on multiculturalism and multicultural writing, with special emphasis on Asian diasporas and on theories of transcultural literary formations.

Her current research projects include:

Australian literature and public culture
Supported by an ARC Discovery grant (2003-2005, with co-researchers Michael Meehan and David McCooey) this research aims to determine the role of contemporary public culture in shaping the national literature. Text-based academic approaches to literature have, we argue, largely failed to acknowledge the impact of phenomena such as celebrity culture, new media and events-based cultural consumption. The project focuses specifically on literary journalism, the publishing industry, literary festivals, support schemes for writers and literary websites.

Building Cultural Citizenship: Multiculturalism and Children’s Literature
(ARC Discovery 2005-2008, with Clare Bradford) Bringing the concept of cultural citizenship to bear on the study of literary texts and their production and reception, this project examines the mediation of cultural values and meanings relating to cultural diversity in literature aimed at young readers.

AustLit: The Resource for Australian Literature (ARC Infrastructure funding 2001-2003 and 2006)
Major bibliographical database project involving eight universities and the National Library of Australia. Professor Ommundsen has main responsibility for the project’s multicultural subset. http://www.austlit.edu.au/

Refugees in contemporary Australian literature
A study of post-9/11 representation of refugees and issues relating to mandatory detention and border control in Australian literary writing.

Asian diaspora literatures
An on-going research project examining literature and other forms of cultural production in diasporic Asian communities. Research to date has concentrated on writing from the Chinese diaspora.

Selected Publications

Searchable publications from 2000 to date

Books

• Cultural Citizenship and the Challenges of Globalisation, co-edited with Michael Leach and Andrew Vandenberg, Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press, in press.
• Bastard Moon: Essays on Chinese-Australian Writing, edited by Wenche Ommundsen, Melbourne: Otherland Publications, 2001.
• Appreciating Difference: Writing Postcolonial Literary History, co-edited with Brian Edwards, Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1998.
• From a Distance: Australian Writers and Cultural Displacement, co-edited with Hazel Rowley, Geelong: Deakin University Press, 1996.
• Refractions: Asian/Australian Writing, co-edited with Marian Boreland, Geelong: Centre for Research in Cultural Communication, 1995.
• Metafictions?  Reflexivity in Contemporary Texts, Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1993.

Chapters in books

• 'In the wake of the Tampa: Multiculturalism, cultural citizenship and Australian refugee narratives', in Charles I. Armstrong and Øyunn Hestetun, eds, Postcolonial Dislocations: Travel, History, and the Ironies of Narrative, Oslo: Novus Press, 2006, 21-35.
•  'Behind the mirror: Searching for the Chinese-Australian self' in Charles Ferrall, Paul Millar and Keren Smith, eds, East by South: China in the Australasian Imagination, Wellington, N.Z.: Victoria University Press, 2005, 405-21.
• 'Sleep no more: Ouyang Yu's wake-up call to multicultural Australia', in Kam Louie and Tseen Khoo, eds, Culture, Identity, Commodity: Diasporic Chinese Literatures in English, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005, 231-51.
• 'Cultural citizenship in diaspora: A study of Chinese Australia', in Shawn Wong and Robbie Goh, eds, Asian Diasporas: Cultures, Identities, Representation, Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2004, 77-94.
• 'From "Hello freedom" to "Fuck you Australia": Recent Chinese-Australian writing', in Xavier Pons, ed., Departures: How Australia Reinvents Itself, Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2002, 61-69.
• 'Birds of passage? The new generation of Chinese-Australian writers' in Ien Ang, Sharon Chalmers, Lisa Law and Mandy Thomas, eds, Alter/Asians: Asian/Australian Identities in Art, Media and Popular Culture, Sydney: Pluto Press, 2000, 89-106.
• 'In backlash country: Revisiting the multicultural literature debate in the wake of Pauline Hanson', in Adi Wimmer, ed, Australian Nationalism Reconsidered: Maintaining a Monocultural Tradition in a Multicultural Society, Tubingen: Stauffenberg, 1999, 223-33.

Articles

• '"If it's Tuesday, this must be Jane Austen: Literary tourism and the heritage industry"', TEXT: The Journal of the Australian Association of Writing Programs, vol. 9, no. 2 (Special Issue no. 4: Literature and Public Culture, edited by Wenche Ommundsen and Maria Takolander), October 2005.
• 'Sex, soap and sainthood: Beginning to theorise literary celebrity', JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature), vol. 3, 2004, 45-56.
• 'Floating lives: Cultural citizenship and the limits of diaspora', Life Writing, vol. 1. no.2, 2004, 101-21.
• 'Too close to home: Evelyn Lau, Ouyang Yu and the performing self', in New Literatures Review, vol. 40, Winter 2003, 42-56.
• 'Tough ghosts: Modes of cultural belonging in diaspora', Asian Studies Review, vol. 27, no.2, 2003, 181-204.
• 'Of dragons and devils: Chinese-Australian life stories', JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature), vol. 1, no. 1, 2002, 67-80.
• 'Not the m-word again: Rhetoric and silence in recent multiculturalism debates', Overland, 159, Winter 2000, 5-11.