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AProf Maureen Perkins

Image of Staff Member
    • Role:
    • Associate Professor
    • Department:
    • Department of Social Sciences
    • Location:
    • Humanities 301
    • Telephone:
    • +61 8 9266 4612

Maureen teaches History and Anthropology/Sociology, with a special interest in issues that benefit from interdisciplinary, postcolonial perspectives. She also edits the journal Life Writing.  Her particular areas of research expertise are: race and ethnicity studies, especially mixed race, and autoethnography and life narrative.  She has published on popular belief and magic and is currently working on a chapter about religion and popular belief in the twentieth century for a new cultural history of women to be published by Berg.

Research Projects

During 2008-2010 Maureen has been researching the subject of regional life writing (the interplay between nation/race/culture and autobiographical writing).  This has been funded by an Australia Research Council Discovery grant. A book, Locating Life Stories, that is an outcome of the project, will be published in December 2011 by the University of Hawaii Press.

Teaching - Postgraduate

Enquiries are welcome from students who would like to undertake Honours or Postgraduate research in the areas of British history or autobiography, memoir and biography.  I have been supervising dissertations which involve the use of autobiography to approach wider social analysis (a form called autoethnography). I also have expertise in the analysis of religious experience, and of racial difference.

Memberships

Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Editor of Routledge Journal, Life Writing.

Series editor of the Peter Lang series Asia-Pacific Mixed Race.

Awards

ARC Discovery grant 2008-2010 for a project studying regional life writing.

Publications

Books (Authored, Research)

  • Perkins, M. 2001. The Reform of Time. London, United Kingdom: Pluto Press.
  • Perkins, M. 1996. Visions of the Future: Almanacs, Time and Cultural Change. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Book Chapters (Authored, Research Quality)

  • Perkins, M. 2004. THE MEANING OF DREAM BOOKS. In DREAMS AND HISTORY, eds DANIEL PICK & LYNDAL ROPER, 124-136. LONDON: ROUTLEDGE.
  • Perkins, M. 2004. False Whiteness: 'passing' and the stolen generations. In Whitening Race, eds Aileen Moreton-Robinson, 164-175. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press.
  • Perkins, M, and McCalman, I. 1999. Popular Culture. In An Oxford Companion to The Romantic Age: British Culture 1776-1832, eds General Editor Iain McCalman, 214-223. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.

Refereed Articles (Scholarly Journals)

  • Perkins, M. 2005. The Role of Colour and 'Ethnic' Autobiography: Fannon, Capecia and Difference. Auto-Biography: an international & interdisciplinary journal 13(1): 1-15.
  • Perkins, M. 2005. Thoroughly Modern Mulatta: Rethinking "Old World" Stereotypes in a "New World" Setting. Biography 28: 104-116.
  • Perkins, M. 2004. australian mixed race. European Journal of Cultural Studies 7: 177-199.
  • Besemeres, M, and Perkins, M. 2003. Translated Lives. Mots Pluriels et Grands Themes de Notre Temps 23: 1-10.
  • Perkins, M. 2001. The Trial of Joseph Powell, Fortune-teller: public and private in early nineteenth-century magic. Journal of Victorian Culture 6(1): 27-45.
  • Perkins, M. 1996. A History of the Future. Mots Pluriels et Grands Themes de Notre Temps 1(1): 1-4.
  • Perkins, M. 1993. 'An Era of Great Doubt to Some in Sydney': Almanacs and Astrological Belief in Colonial Australia. The Journal of Religious History 17(4): 465-474.

Minor Creative Works

  • Perkins, M, and Tridgell, S. 2005. Conversations. ACT, Australia: Pandanus Books.