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Centre for Asia Pacific Social Transformation Studies (CAPSTRANS)

CAPSTRANS Research Associate

Professor Wenche Ommundsen

Dean, Faculty of Arts, University of Wollongong.
Professor of English Literatures, 
School of English Literatures & Philosophy
Email: wenche@uow.edu.au

Qualifications

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

Research Programs

Culture and Representation

Research Specialisation

• Postcolonial, multicultural and diasporic literatures (with particular focus on Asian diasporas)
• Globalisation and cultural production
• Cultural citizenship and transnationalism
• The sociology of cultural production
• Australian literature and public culture
• Multiculturalism and children's literature

Languages

English
Norwegian
French
Some German

Current Research Projects

• Australian literature and public culture. ARC Discovery project 2003-2005. Current research on literary festivals, celebrity writers and theories of cultural production.
• Building Cultural Citizenship: Multiculturalism and Children’s Literature. ARC Discovery 2005-2008. Current research on refugee narratives and on life stories by young women of Asian background.
• AustLit Partner and board member of major infrastructure development. Coordinator of multicultural subset of AustLit database. ARC infrastructure funding since 1999, current 2007.
• Globalising Australian literature: ARC Discovery application 2008-2012. Focus on literary interactions between Asia and Australia.

Recent Publications

Searchable RIS publications from 2000 to date

Books

• in press: Cultural Citizenship and the Challenges of Globalisation, co-edited with Michael Leach and Andrew Vandenberg, Cresskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press.
• 2001: Bastard Moon: Essays on Chinese-Australian Writing, edited by Wenche Ommundsen, Melbourne: Otherland Publications.

Book Chapters

• in press: 'Disappearing race: Normative whiteness and cultural appropriation in Australian refugee narratives', in Robbie B. H. Goh, ed., Ethnic Nationalisms: Narration and Cultural Politics in Asian Societies from Independence to Globalization, Hong Kong University Press.
• in press: 'Work in progress: Australian multicultural literature', in Nicholas Birns and Rebecca McNeer, eds, Companion to Australian Literature of the Twentieth Century, Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press.
• 2006: ‘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, 21-35.
• 2005: ‘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, 405-21.
• 2005: ‘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, 231-51.
• 2004: ‘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, 77-94.

Journal Articles

• 2004: ‘Floating lives: Cultural citizenship and the limits of diaspora’, Life Writing, vol. 1. no.2, 101-21.
• Winter 2003: ‘Too close to home: Evelyn Lau, Ouyang Yu and the performing self’, in New Literatures Review, vol. 40, 42-56.
• 2003: ‘Tough ghosts: Modes of cultural belonging in diaspora’, Asian Studies Review, vol. 27, no.2, 181-204.
• 2002: ‘Of dragons and devils: Chinese-Australian life stories’, JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature), vol. 1, no. 1, 67-80.

Current Research Students

Ingeborg van Teeseling