My thesis comprises a creative and a critical component. The creative component is a novel entitled Ambergris. Ambergris in both its synthetic and natural states is a fixative to contain the evanescence of scent; it is also a metaphor for my novel which is set against the background of perfume making and deals with expatriates and migrants. Through the formal structure of the novel I hope to make a contribution to literature and to engage with critical and social concerns of the expatriate condition such as the place of home, the experience of longing, and whether or not one can really ‘belong’. My critical essay is entitled "The Smell of Dislocation: Olfactory Imagery in Selected Works of Janette Turner Hospital". The words 'olfactory imagery' may seem to be a contradiction in terms due to the difficulty of containing scent and the paucity of olfactory language. Scent, however, has strong links to memory and place, and through its non-visual and associative qualities may bypass language. I argue that engagement with the representation of scent in fiction can expand the current categories of formalist criticism found in narrative theory and Creative Writing pedagogy. My essay examines how Janette Turner Hospital employs olfactory imagery in her ‘Australian’ stories and novels to represent the recurring themes of dislocation underscoring the lives of many of her characters. Despite the difficulty of representing smell in fiction, I explore possibilities for thematic considerations triggered by the percept of smell as experienced by Janette Turner Hospital's characters, narrators, and possibly readers. Such explorations deal with the links between scent and memory, the liminality of both scent and the expatriate condition, as well as a narrative methodology which considers psychological and cognitive reactions to scent and culminates in their 'mapping' and the 'slippage' of personal associations. Both thesis components examine expatriate identity and approach its fictional representation through the filter of expatriate perceptions. Awareness by readers of such perceptions may serve to amplify their own appreciation of the dislocation of such identities in fiction, and in our current world of growing and even shifting diasporas.

My thesis comprises a creative and a critical component. The creative component is a novel entitled Ambergris. Ambergris in both its synthetic and natural states is a fixative to contain the evanescence of scent; it is also a metaphor for my novel which is set against the background of perfume making and deals with expatriates and migrants. Through the formal structure of the novel I hope to make a contribution to literature and to engage with critical and social concerns of the expatriate condition such as the place of home, the experience of longing, and whether or not one can really ‘belong’. My critical essay is entitled "The Smell of Dislocation: Olfactory Imagery in Selected Works of Janette Turner Hospital". The words 'olfactory imagery' may seem to be a contradiction in terms due to the difficulty of containing scent and the paucity of olfactory language. Scent, however, has strong links to memory and place, and through its non-visual and associative qualities may bypass language. I argue that engagement with the representation of scent in fiction can expand the current categories of formalist criticism found in narrative theory and Creative Writing pedagogy. My essay examines how Janette Turner Hospital employs olfactory imagery in her ‘Australian’ stories and novels to represent the recurring themes of dislocation underscoring the lives of many of her characters. Despite the difficulty of representing smell in fiction, I explore possibilities for thematic considerations triggered by the percept of smell as experienced by Janette Turner Hospital's characters, narrators, and possibly readers. Such explorations deal with the links between scent and memory, the liminality of both scent and the expatriate condition, as well as a narrative methodology which considers psychological and cognitive reactions to scent and culminates in their 'mapping' and the 'slippage' of personal associations. Both thesis components examine expatriate identity and approach its fictional representation through the filter of expatriate perceptions. Awareness by readers of such perceptions may serve to amplify their own appreciation of the dislocation of such identities in fiction, and in our current world of growing and even shifting diasporas.

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Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Note: This version has been edited to remove names for privacy reasons. For a full copy please contact the author. / Writers of PhDs have a unique, personal and in-depth relationship with their subject-matter, which develops over a number of years. What happens when life intrudes so much into the research and writing that it takes over the subject matter, so that the original struggle for objective scholarship threatens to become subsumed in emotion and self-discovery? How does the supervisor, forced to keep a certain distance from an intimate and tumultuous relationship, still teach? The supervisor can do worse than guide their student towards the genre of Life-Writing, within which a flourishing of sub-genres may be accommodating to such a journey. For a closed-records adoptee caught up in the reunion processes sparked by the 1990 changes to the Adoption Act, critical readings of Peter Carey and Janette Turner Hospital developed into the invention of the Adopted Body, the Subject Adoptee and a new way of seeing: ado/aptive reading and writing. Perhaps in the field of ado/aptive theory, the stolen generations, intercountry adoptees and the white closed-record adoptees of Australia can re-invent themselves, develop their identities and create a genre of academic theory unique to Australia.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / Note: This version has been edited to remove names for privacy reasons. For a full copy please contact the author. / Writers of PhDs have a unique, personal and in-depth relationship with their subject-matter, which develops over a number of years. What happens when life intrudes so much into the research and writing that it takes over the subject matter, so that the original struggle for objective scholarship threatens to become subsumed in emotion and self-discovery? How does the supervisor, forced to keep a certain distance from an intimate and tumultuous relationship, still teach? The supervisor can do worse than guide their student towards the genre of Life-Writing, within which a flourishing of sub-genres may be accommodating to such a journey. For a closed-records adoptee caught up in the reunion processes sparked by the 1990 changes to the Adoption Act, critical readings of Peter Carey and Janette Turner Hospital developed into the invention of the Adopted Body, the Subject Adoptee and a new way of seeing: ado/aptive reading and writing. Perhaps in the field of ado/aptive theory, the stolen generations, intercountry adoptees and the white closed-record adoptees of Australia can re-invent themselves, develop their identities and create a genre of academic theory unique to Australia.