Meet Dr. Christine Owen

Lecturer

"I enjoy teaching creative writing, because I enjoy language – its playfulness, expressiveness, intensities - and literature: the worlds it opens up to me, and the identities it calls into being.

In workshops, students are sometimes surprised to find that while imagination is essential it is the hard work of crafting and redrafting that makes stories come to life. Just a few details – such as using sights, sounds and smells - bring an immediate improvement to a draft.

I have worn quite a few hats in my career and, in my view, creative writing teaches essential writing techniques and critical thinking skills that are not only relevant, but essential to many occupations.

I have worked as a writer all my life: in the public service, as a consultant, as a creative writer and as an academic. Once I was a Murdoch undergrad in my twenties with two small children, a Guild Women’s officer radicalised by the absence of childcare on campus. Many years later, when my kids had left home, my love of literature led me to leave my government job to do a PhD in literature, and to try to write creatively. Since completing my PhD at the ANU in 1998 I have taught at Curtin and at the University of Melbourne - now I am back at Murdoch (among many of my old tutors and friends). My academic book is now out, so when I am not supervising postgraduates and teaching undergraduates, I research and write my creative work (I am working on a novel, wish me luck!)"

Education

PhD, Literature (ANU), BA (Hons) History and Social and Political Theory

Publications

Book

Owen, C. M., The Female Crusoe: Hybridity, Trade and the Eighteenth-Century Individual, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010

Book Chapters

Owen, C. M., ‘Robinson Crusoe and the ‘Female Goddesses of Disorder’ in Grapard, Ulla and Hewitson, Gillian, in Robinson Crusoe's Economic Man: A Construction and Deconstruction. Series: Routledge Frontiers of Political Economy. (Forthcoming 2011).

Owen, Christine, “Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury”, Dictionary of Literary Biography: Eighteenth-Century British Historians. Vol 338. Bruccoli Clark Layman. 2007.

Owen, Christine, “Robinson Crusoe: A Gendered and Judaic Reading” in Rosamund Dalziell. (ed) Selves crossing cultures: autobiography and globalisation. Kew: Australian Scholarly Pub. 2002.

Owen, Christine, ‘Moving Meanings’ in Dancers and Communities, a collection of writings about dance as a community art, edited by H. Poyner and J Simmonds, AUSDANCE, Sydney, NSW.

Articles

Owen, Christine, “Academic Research and Creative Writing: Redrawing the Map and Finding One’s Allies (and avoiding the Corbett phenomena)”, TEXT, Vol 10, No 2, October 2006.

Owen, Christine, Review of Sylvia Lawson, How Simone de Beauvoir Died in Australia. Journal of Australian Studies Review of Books No 9, October 2002.

Fiction

2007. ‘Man Over the Top’ Poem. Overland 186, p. 59.

2005. ‘Luxuria, Or Reading Pleasure’. Short Fiction. antiTHESIS. 15: 126-127

2005. ‘Larger than Life’. Poem. Hecate 31:1, 124.

2005. ‘North not West’. Poem. Overland 178 (Autumn): 71.

2005. ‘Skinned Alive’ Short Story. Acupuncture for Turtles. Ed. Glen Phillips, Sally Clarke and Bronwyne Thomason. Perth: Black Swan Press, 147-154.

2004. 'Night: a rough hammock'. Poem. Hecate, 30.2., 205-6.

1994. ‘Skinned Alive’. Short Story. Shrieks: A Horror Anthology. edited by Jillian Bartlett, Cathi Joseph, Anne Lawson, Broadway, NSW: Women’s Redress Press.

1990. ‘The Day the Smiths Made a Baby’. Short Story. No Substitute, ed. Anna Gibbs, Noel King, Terri-Ann White and Wendy Jenkins, Fremantle Arts Centre Press.

Literary prizes

2006. Runner-Up for Peter Blazey Award. University of Melbourne. “The Autobiography of East and West”.

1992. Katherine Susannah Prichard Short Fiction Award for 'Skinned Alive'.

Website

http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/people/christine-owen.html

(This site is at the University of Melbourne where I am a research fellow and it contains links to some of my writings)

Research

A key aspect of the work of an academic is research and I have studied and published on eighteenth century literature. I am now researching the lives of British people who lived in Morocco in the nineteenth century. Recently I was appointed as an Oz Reader for the Australian Research Council, which requires me to read and comment on other academics’ research. This is a privilege and I am looking forward to reading the work being done all around Australia. As well as being a Murdoch staff member, I am also a Research Fellow at University of Melbourne.

Another important aspect of my research is the work I do to prepare interesting, worthwhile units for the undergraduates. Currently I am looking at different ways to help my students visualise their scenes and my latest unit involves working with paintings and film – will it work? Watch this space!