School of English Literatures & Philosophy

Melissa BoydDr Melissa Boyde

PhD (Macq); MA (UWS); BA Hons (UOW)

Office: 19:1073
Phone: +61 (02) 4221 3746
Email: boyde@uow.edu.au

Research Profile

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date

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. 

Recent Publications

Edited Books

Forthcoming: Editor, Captured: the Animal within Culture.  

Editor and Introduction, A Kingdom and a Place of Exile: Critical Essays on Postcolonial women’s writing by Dorothy Jones, University of Wollongong Press, 2010.

Referred articles and chapters in books

  • ‘Cultural secrets and the roman à clef’. Chapter in The Unsocial Sociability of Women’s Life Writing, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2010. 
  • ‘The RAAT Project: Alternatives to using animals in research’ with D. Russell, The SInet 2010 eBook, pp. 25-35, http://ro.uow.edu.au/sinet/1
  • ‘The Modernist roman à clef and Cultural Secrets, or, I Know that You Know that I Know that You Know’, Australian Literary Studies, 24(3-4), 2009, 155-166.  Online at: http://works.bepress.com/boyde/2/  
  • ‘The poet and the ghosts are walking the streets: Hope Mirrless - life and poetry’, Hecate: an interdisciplinary journal of women's liberation, 35(1/2), 2009, 29-41. Online at: http://works.bepress.com/boyde/5/  
  • ‘Making it Accessible: Mary Alice Evatt and Australian Modernist Art’, in Dixon, R & Kelly, V (eds), Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s-1960s, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 2008, 125-136. Online at: http://works.bepress.com/boyde/1/  
  • ‘Art and Politics: Mas Evatt and the Evatt Collection’, catalogue, exhibition and paper, Flinders University Art Gallery, August- September, 2006. Online at: http://works.bepress.com/boyde/3/  
  • ‘Art and Advocacy: Mary Alice Evatt in the 1930s and 40s’, Kunapipi, vol. XXVI, 2005. Online at: http://works.bepress.com/boyde/4/  
  • Mary Alice Evatt ‘MAS’ 1898-1973. Curator of exhibition on the work of Mary Alice Evatt, modernist painter and writer. The exhibition toured from 2002 – 2006 commencing at Bathurst Regional Gallery followed by Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, S.H. Ervin, Sydney, Albury Regional Art Gallery, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery and Canberra Museum and Gallery. 
  • ‘A fresh point of view – the life and work of Mary Alice Evatt’, online publication: http://evatt.org.au/papers/fresh-point-view.html

Selected Presentations

  • Out of her emotional depth’: Gertrude Stein’s Queer Demonstration, Modernism Intimacy and Emotion conference, the Australian Modernist Studies Network and the Writing and Society Research Group University of Western Sydney. 
  • ‘Cultural myths and open secrets: the cattle industries in Australia’, Animals, People, a shared environment, Australian Animal Studies Group and Environmental Futures Centre, Griffith University Brisbane, 2011 
  • ‘The RAAT project’, Social Innovation Network conference, University of Wollongong, September 2009. 
  • ‘Travels With My Art: The Transnational Work of Artist Moya Dyring’, Women Writers/Artists and Travelling Modernisms conference, University of Queensland, May 2009.  
  • ‘"Mrs Boss! We gotta get those fat cheeky bullocks into that big bloody metal ship!": Live export as romantic backdrop in Baz Luhrmann’s Australia’: Minding Animals Conference, Newcastle, June 2009 and the  Baz Luhrmann’s Australia Reviewed conference, National Museum of Australia, Canberra, December 2009. 
  • ‘Cultural representations of the Live Export industry’, Theatre and Drama Program and the Institute for Human Security, La Trobe University, August 2009. 
  • ‘The Life and Work of Artist Moya Dyring’, Modernist Women and the Scene of Displacement: An Interdisciplinary Symposium, Centre for Women’s Studies and Gender Research, Monash University, August 2009. 
  • ‘Replace Animals in Australian Testing’, Minding Animals Conference, Newcastle, 2009 
  • ‘Chez Moya: An Australian Salon in Paris’, AAANZ Conference, ANU, 2009. 
  • ‘The poet and the ghosts are walking the streets: Hope Mirrlees’s Paris – A Poem’, Poetry and the Trace: an international poetry conference, Monash University, 2008. 
  • ‘Making it accessible:  Mary Alice Evatt and Australian modernist art’,  Australian Modernities Vernacular Performers and Consumers International Conference, University

Awards and Fellowships

  • NSW Premier’s History Fellowship, 2003
  • Mary Alice Evatt Art Prize, University of Western Sydney and Evatt Foundation, 2002

Professional Memberships

Last reviewed: 12 June, 2012