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My book is out now with @PalgraveLit's Urban Literary Studies series. Instead of talking about me I want to highlight a few of the scholars & work that inspired, generated & challenged the study. So here’s a thread of some good stuff on water & Sydney & space & Aust lit:
This project was first inspired by @DeliaFalconer's book 'Sydney' and its beautiful evocation of my home city’s pleasures and paradoxes. It has just been re-released & you can find it here https://www.newsouthbooks.com.au/books/9781742237084/
@AstridaNeimanis's work first made me see water’s potential as a serious subject for scholarly inquiry. Find Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology here https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bodies-of-water-9781474275385/
@BrigidRooney's work on Australian space is better than mine (see https://bit.ly/3clFgOx ) and her essay on ferry wrecks in Sydney Harbour is as poetic as it is critically rigorous: https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/6959417
@nicrmoore wrote on every writer in my book long before I did & her work on gender & modernity is exemplary. I love her essay on the ‘maternal strike’ in mid-century women’s writing: https://www-austlit-edu-au.ezproxy.uws.edu.au/austlit/page/C34856
Christina Stead was the somewhat malevolent ghost that haunted this project from its beginning, & Fiona Morrison is one of the best Stead-wranglers we have. See 'Christina Stead & The Matter of America': https://sydneyuniversitypress.com.au/products/84678
@stevermentz's book on Shakespeare’s Ocean is field-changing but also an absolute delight to read https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/at-the-bottom-of-shakespeares-ocean-9781847064936/
Sydney was built on the unceded lands of the Gadigal, Wangal, Gai-mariagal and other clans. What the Colonists Never Knew by Dennis Foley and Peter Read is a history of Aboriginal Sydney and out in bookshops right now https://tinyurl.com/y6pthkwp
If you are as interested in urban water infrastructure as I am (who wouldn’t be), Matthew Gandy’s The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination is excellent https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/fabric-space
This Modernity/Modernism forum on Weak Theory helped me to clarify my queasy relationship to capital M modernist studies, & to academic ‘authority’ more broadly https://tinyurl.com/pefw8sef
Working with @ALSjournal & @JVLamond made me a better critic & a more generous thinker & the book benefits from sustained engagement with the newest work in Aust Lit. if you’re interested in the best of what our small but plucky field has to offer, please go subscribe to ALS.
There are many many more people & texts I could mention but I'll finish up here. If you read any part of my book pls read the Acknowledgements and the Bibliography. Ignore the dodgy bits, those are all me.
