Dr Tamlyn Avery

• Biography/ Background

  I am Lecturer in English Literature in the Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film, specialising in modern literature and modernism. I previously worked at the University of Queensland (2020–2025), where I was Senior Lecturer in American Studies. Before that, I taught at UNSW, Flinders University, and the Australian Catholic University. I received my doctorate in English Literature from UNSW, after completing my undergraduate degree there with First Class Honours. I also have a Masters of Teaching, specialising in teaching English Literature.

  My research is situated in literary and modernist studies. I have published widely on topics including gender, race, and literary representations of white-collar labour in the context of the 'typewriter revolution' and the rise of managerial capitalism (c. 1890–1950); as well as the relationship between classical music and modernist literature. I am co-editor of the Australasian Modernist Studies Network's journal, Affirmations: of the Modern. My first book, "The Regional Development of the American Bildungsroman, 1900–1960" (Edinburgh University Press 2023), examined how regional politics and aesthetics informed the development of a key genre of the novel in the U.S., during an era that is typically associated with both modernism and surging nationalism. I am also editor of the forthcoming edited volume, "The Women of 1922: Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism" with Palgrave, which investigates the contributions of women's writing to modernism's so-called miracle year, 1922. My research appears in PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, American Literature, the Oxford Handbook of African American Women’s Writing (forthcoming), and elsewhere. I am currently preparing a new book entitled "Writing the Collar-Line" about the racial politics of white-collar bureaucratization and the typewriter revolution, as told through the lens of African American literary history.

• Teaching Interests

  I welcome HDR proposals on areas relating to modernism, modern (19th/20th) century literature, and American and African American literature.

Entry last updated: Thursday, 6 Feb 2025

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