University of Wollongong

Faculty Member, English Literatures Program

About

Louise is a Senior Lecturer in the English Literatures Program. She received a BA (Hons) specializing in medieval literature from the University of Sydney in 1990. Her 1997 PhD thesis, also completed at the University of Sydney, examined the concepts of political and literary authority in the writings of medieval women. Her two main current research areas are medievalism and medieval women’s writing. Medievalism examines post-medieval receptions and constructions of the Middle Ages, and considers the impact of these constructions on modern cultural, political, and social life. Louise’s work on Australian medievalism examines the cultural and ideological role played by medievalism in colonial and former-colonial societies. Her work on Christine de Pizan focuses on Christine’s political writings, examining how Christine deploys notions of gender and ethnicity to formulate models of political action and to authorize her own intervention into the late medieval political sphere.

Louise currently holds an Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant for the project “Medievalism in Australian Cultural Memory” (2008-2011). She is a Chief Investigator along with Professor Stephanie Trigg (University of Melbourne), Associate Professor Andrew Lynch (University of Western Australia), and Professor John Ganim (University of California, Riverside). She is also leader of the Cultural Memories research theme of the ARC-funded Network for Early European Research, and is co-ordinator of the Network’s Australasian Medievalisms research cluster. She is also a member of the Advisory Committee of the Sydney Centre for Medieval Studies.