Kristine Moruzi

Staff member

Kristine Moruzi is a senior lecturer in Writing, Literature and Culture. She is a literary historian who does archival work in children’s print culture in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her first monograph, Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 (Ashgate 2012) examines the debate about the shifting nature of British girlhood in the nineteenth century. Her second book, From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand Children’s Literature (1840-1940) (with Michelle J. Smith and Clare Bradford and published by University of Toronto Press 2018), develops a new history of colonial girlhoods to reveal how notions of girlhood in each of these nations is connecting through transnational print culture while also reflecting the distinct political, social, and cultural contexts of white settler colonies. Her current project, funded by an ARC DECRA, is on children and philanthropy in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

  • Research

    Kristine has made sustained contributions to the field of children’s literature and culture through her doctoral work, her postdoctoral work, and her DECRA. Her doctorate was an archival project conducted at the University of Melbourne that explored the ways in which British girls’ periodicals reflected broader Victorian concerns about women’s health, education, employment, religion, suffrage, and modernity.

    This research into nineteenth-century British girlhood led to a related project on colonial girls’ print culture between 1840 and 1950. This research was supported by a two-year Grant Notley Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Alberta in Canada. From 2011-13, Kristine was a Partner Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project ‘From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australian, New Zealand, and Canadian Print Cultures, 1840-1940’, with Dr Michelle J. Smith and Professor Clare Bradford.

    Kristine’s current research project (supported by an ARC DECRA) continues to explore children’s print culture of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Britain and its colonies. In the first comprehensive study of children and charity, this project explores how children operated as agents of philanthropy in England, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

  • Publications

    Books

     

    Edited collections

     

    Book chapters and journal articles

  • Teaching

    Kristine’s teaching primarily is focused on children’s literature and culture, but she also teaches in nineteenth-century literature, particularly related to gender and sexuality.

  • Supervision

    Kristine is especially interested in supervising projects on:

    • girlhood
    • children’s and young adult literature and culture
    • Victorian literature
    • gender and sexuality studies
    • popular culture

     

    Current PhD supervisions

    • The Soldier Artists of World War 1: Sexuality, masculinity, performance and the aftermath
    • Mainstream women’s digital news sites and the production of femininity
    • Women’s relationships and social networks in revisionist fairy tales
    • Subjectivity, liveability and agency in contemporary young adult fiction
    • Constructing girlhood through young adult literature
    • Young adult dystopian literature: fears and the future
    • Queering a space: queer girls in young adult fantasy
    • The normalisation of coercive control in young adult Gothic literature

     

    Completed PhD supervisions

    • Postfeminism in Fairy-Tale Adaptations

     

    Current Honours and Masters supervisions

    • Masculinity in Middle Grade Fiction
    • Rape Spaces in Literary Fiction
    • Fairy Tales and the Gothic

     

    Completed Honours and Masters supervisions

    • Institutional Abuse in Historical Fiction. (Now completing a PhD at ANU)
    • Reclaiming Land, Family, Language and Identity by Confronting the Other in Contemporary Canadian and Australian Picture Books about the Colonization of Indigenous Peoples
    • Sara, Anne, and Dorothy: Girlhood and Social Mobility in Edwardian Literature
    • Doubt, Faith and Coming-of-Age: Representations of Christian Spirituality in the Maturation Narratives of Contemporary Australian Young Adult Fiction

     

  • Awards, fellowships, and honours

    • Constructing Girlhood through the Periodical Press, 1850-1915 (Ashgate 2012) was shortlisted for the Colby Book Prize offered by the Research Society for Victorian Periodicals, which honours the book that most advances the understanding of the nineteenth-century British newspaper or periodical press.
    • 2014-17. ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA). The Charitable Child: Children and Philanthropy in the Nineteenth Century
    • 2012. Monash University Library Fellowship: $6,100
    • 2011-13. ARC Discovery Grant. From Colonial to Modern: Transnational Girlhood in Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, 1840-1940. With Michelle J. Smith and Clare Bradford.
    • 2010-12. Grant Notley Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada.
    • 2004-08. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Doctoral Fellowship.

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