This is a fictitious and interdisciplinary speculation on the signification of engendered subjectivities, engaging with concepts from art history, critical theory, philosophy, religious philosophy and iconography, science, visual art, fiction and poetry. The ‘actions’ in the work are mental processes involving durational perception in time. Narrative, if it appears at all, does not arrive, derive or result – rather it accumulates as consciousness. Operating as a zootrope, the work revolves around eight ‘openings’ in the body, chosen for their visceral, metaphysical and ideological permeabilities, which act as ‘Doors’ into each chapter: cleavage, the tiniest mappable distance in cell division; hymen, controversial site of female ‘virginity’; larynx, cleft ‘lips’ vulnerable to colonization and ‘possession’; ear, the uncloseable organ, always open to suggestion; blindspot, the gap in vision that allows vision to be processed; synapse, the tiny impulse-sensitive interval between neurons in the brain; navel, the point of absolute memory or uroboric continuity with the mother, a vampire’s memory, blood-permeable; cloaca, non-function specific passage, viscerally absent in humans, but ‘fissured’ into existence through desire. Each opening is ‘cloacal’, functioning simultaneously as both entry and exit point of/for experience. Linking the intervals of the ‘zootrope’ are passages of ‘Descent’ interspersed between openings. The descent into word is a continuum: a fall into hermaphroditic being. There is no arrival because word, being always flesh-held, is always only ever beginning. / Master of Arts (Hons) Writing

Thesis (Ph.D. 1981) from the Department of English, University of Adelaide.

The creative component of a Doctor of Creative Arts thesis submitted under the general title The shelter of honour. / Doctor of Creative Arts

Thesis (M.A.) (Hons.) -- University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 2000. / A thesis submitted for the degree of Master of Arts (Honours), Creative Writing, University of Western Sydney, Nepean, 2000.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English, 1990? / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 502-514).

Thesis (M.Phil.) - University of Queensland, 2006. / Includes bibliography.

'The Concerto Inn' is a work of fiction that tells the story of two sisters, each of whom kills a person she loves, each of whom is on the run. The novel traces the strand of betrayal and violence that Madeleine and Isobel enact, and in its conclusion makes it clear that the two stories are the same story repeated. 'The architect's dream - project manual for The Concerto Inn' presents itself as the workbook of the Architect who has been commissioned by the elusive author of 'The Concerto Inn' to design and construct a library. It stands as an endnote, a companion piece to the novel and is part architectural treatise and part ficto-criticism. Infiltrated by a number of different voices in different registers. it considers aspects of narrative structure using the language and metaphors of architecture. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) (Communication and Media)

Family is a work of creative fiction concerning four women and their relationships with each other. It is threaded with scenes from their past lives which hint at their previous connections with each other. These images of the past start to intrude into and affect their present lives. The central character, and storyteller of the present,is Margaret, a married woman who is finding that the 'comfort' of stereotypical behaviour and a prescribed marital relationship is a fiction. For Margaret, the intrusions of these past memories reveal to her traits in her character, aiding an understanding of herself, and eventually gives her freedom from her present situation. / Master of Arts (Hons) (Writing)

The novel Riverweed, which forms the substantial part of this thesis, is an experiment with strategies in writing across cultures and across time, from Australia to Malaysia, from 1997 to 1956. The method of writing the novel was,in the most part, informed by viewing the television dramas and films and reading the novels of the late Dennis Potter. Riverweed is a novel in five parts. The essay, with tender contempt : history, fiction auto/biography : writing across cultures, discusses many of the issues related to the research for the novel. The author had hoped to write a novel that crossed political and cultural borders in a seamless exploration of nostalgic love for a place - George Town, Penang. She believes she has written an Australian novel which includes in its imaginative sphere a migration from the loneliness of the mythologised paddock forward to nostalgia, understanding nostalgia as part of the anxious energy characterising the middle-class neuroses of civil society in both Australia and Malaysia. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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