Emeritus Professor Will Christie

BA (Sydney), DPhil (Oxford), FAHA
ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
T: +61 2 6125 0151

Areas of expertise

  • British And Irish Literature 200503
  • Other Literatures In English 200508
  • Comparative Literature Studies 200524
  • Literary Theory 200525
  • Cultural Theory 200204
  • Australian Literature (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Literature) 200502
  • British History 210305
  • Biography 210304
  • European History (Excl. British, Classical Greek And Roman) 210307
  • History And Philosophy Of Specific Fields 2202

Research interests

  • British Romantic literature and culture
  • Public lecturing during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
  • Modern Scottish intellectual and cultural history
  • The culture of science in Romantic Britain
  • The Edinburgh Review 1802-1829 and its ediitor, Francis Jeffrey
  • Cultural relations between Britain and China in the Qing dynasty
  • Poetry and poetics
  • Literary influence
  • Shakespeare in critical and cultural history
  • William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge
  • Jane Austen
  • Dylan Thomas

 

Biography

A graduate of the universities of Sydney and Oxford, Emeritus Professor Will Christie was Head of the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU from 2015 to 2021. Professor Christie was founding President of the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia (RSAA) from 2010 to 2015 and his scholarly work in Romantic studies has been widely published in English Literary HistoryRomanticismStudies in RomanticismEuropean Romantic Review, and other journals specialising in Romantic literature. His monograph, Samuel Taylor Coleridge: A Literary Life (2006), was awarded the NSW Premier’s Biennial Prize for Literary Scholarship in 2008 and his other publications include The Letters of Francis Jeffrey to Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle (2008),The Edinburgh Review in the Literary Culture of Romantic Britain: Mammoth and Megalonyx (2009), Dylan Thomas: A Literary Life (2014), and The Two Romanticisms, and Other Essays (2016). With the aid of Discovery Project grants from the Australian Research Council, he is currently researching (1) a critical biography of the Scottish critic, politician, and judge, Francis Jeffrey, editor of the early nineteenth-centuryEdinburgh Review; (2) a major study of public lecturing in the Romantic period; and, most recently, (3) ‘The Emotional Register of Liberal Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century’, along with A/Prof. Jock Macleod and Dr Peter Denney, with whom he has edited a volume of critical essays, Politics and Emotions in Romantic Periodicals (2020).

Professor Christie is also Director of the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (ACHRC), co-ordinator of the Romanticism Section of the International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE), on the International Advisory Board of the journal European Romantic Review, and general editor of the series China and the West in the Modern World for Sydney University Press. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2011. 

For many years president of the Dylan Thomas Society of Australia and an active member of a number of literary societies, Professor Christie is also the author of Under Mulga Wood (2004), an award-winning 'play for voices' that has enjoyed performances around Australia and been broadcast and recorded by the ABC.

Researcher's projects

  • Liberal culture in the long 19th century
  • The Edinburgh Review under Francis Jeffrey: A website
  • Cultural relations between Britain and China in the Qing dynasty
  • An Open University: Public lecturing in the Romantic period
  • The Periodical Enlightenment of the early 19th century
  • Better Strangers: Complexity and creativity in the teaching of Shakespeare
  • The life and correspondence of Francis Jeffrey
  • 'Eating Their Words': a study of literary influence
  • A critical study of the writings of Dylan Thomas
  • The novels of Jane Austen

 

Publications

Projects and Grants

Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.

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Updated:  19 March 2024 / Responsible Officer:  Director (Research Services Division) / Page Contact:  Researchers