Dr Debra Dudek

BA, MA (Manitoba), PhD (Saskatchewan)

Location: 19:1086
Telephone: (02) 4221 5692
Email: debrad@uow.edu.au

Current Positions

Debra teaches in the English Studies Program with particular interests in:

• Australian Literature
• Canadian Literature
• Children's Literature

Subjects:

• Coordinator, ENGL120 Introduction to Literature and Screen Studies
• Coordinator, ENGL259 An Introduction to Canadian Literature
• Coordinator, ENGL375 Australia Fair: Nation, "Race", Culture
• Coordinator, ENGL377 Social Justice and Children's Literature

Debra is Director of the Centre for Canadian-Australian Studies, President of the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand (ACSANZ) and Sub Dean, Faculty of Arts.

Research Profile

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date >

Research Interests

In general, my research interests include: feminist theories, especially theories of the body; postcolonial and diaspora studies; Australian studies; Canadian literature; children's literature; popular culture and media studies; film and other visual arts studies; women's literature; creative writing.

Currently, I am researching the representation of emotions, embodiment, and monsters in literary and visual texts for young adults.

Selected Publications

Articles:

“Saying Yes with an Outreached Hand: Homelessness and Hospitality in Canadian and Australian Literature for Young People.” Australasian Canadian Studies 28.1 (December 2010): 15-27.

'Embodying a Racialised Multiculturalism: Strategic Essentialism and Lived Hybridities in Hoa Pham's No One Like Me.' Papers: Explorations into Children's Literature 17.2 (2007): 43-49.

"Approaching the Other in Twelve Canadian Picture Books." CCL/LCJ: Canadian Children’s Literature/ Littérature canadienne pour la jenuesse 33.1 (Spring 2007): 107-22.

"Over My Dead Body: Multicultural Social Cohesion in Veronica Mars." The Looking Glass 11.1 (2 January 2007). On-line.

"Under the Wire: Detainee Activism in Australian Children's Literature." Papers (December 2006): 17-22.

"Of Murmels and Snigs: Detention-Centre Narratives in Australian Literature for Children." Overland 185 (November 2006). 38-42.

"Dogboys and Lost Things; or Anchoring a Floating Signifier: Race and Critical Multiculturalism." Ariel 37.4 (October 2006): 1-20.

"'Blood Gashed and Running Like Rain': A Diasporic Poetics in Dionne Brand’s In Another Place Not Here and Simone Lazaroo’s The Australian Fiancé." Australasian Canadian Studies 23.2 (2005): 39-54.

"Desiring Perception: Finding Utopian Impulses in Shaun Tan’s The Lost Thing." Papers 15.2 (November 2005): 58-66.

"Between Eight and Infinity: Mobilising the Fragment in Fred Wah’s Faking It." Open Letter (Autumn 2004): 38-52.

Contributions to Books:

“Multicultural.” Keywords for Children’s Literature. Eds. Philip Nel and Lissa Paul. New York: NYU Press, 2011. 155-160.

"‘Prairie as flat as the sea’: Realising Kroetsch’s Spending the Morning on the Beach.”  West of Eden: Essays on Canadian Prairie Literature.  Ed. Sue Sorensen.  Winnipeg, MB: Canadian Mennonite University Press, 2008.  260-271.

“"A Timeless Imagined Prairie: Return and Regeneration in Margaret Laurence’s Manawaka Novels." History, Literature, and the Writing of the Canadian Prairies. Winnipeg, MB: University of Manitoba Press. 2005. 235-258.

"Begin with the Text: Canadian Aboriginal Literatures and Postcolonial Theories." Creating Community: A Roundtable on Canadian Aboriginal Literatures. Brandon, MB: Bearpaw Publishing & Theytus Books, 2002. 89-108.