Professor Rosalind Smith
Areas of expertise
- British And Irish Literature 200503
- Australian Literature (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Literature) 200502
Research interests
My key contributions in the field of early modern studies focus on the ways in which early modern women used their writing to intervene in the literary, social, political and religious cultures of sixteenth and early seventeenth century England, Scotland and France. I have a particular interest in the forms in which women made such interventions, and am a leading international expert on the sonnet, the sonnet sequence, marginal annotation and complaint, as well as on the reception of early modern women’s writing from the sixteenth century to the present. This work is at the forefront of what is known as the material turn in early modern studies, scholarship that attends to the material forms in which early modern writing was produced, circulated, transmitted over time, and read. My research projects always combine formal, material and theoretical approaches with digital methods, exploring how digital forms can make us view the past in new ways. I am interested in the intersection of digital humanities with traditional literary scholarhip, and my current research includes scholarship on digital editing, archival longevity, and new bibliographical tools for the digital age.
Biography
Professor Rosalind Smith is the Chair of English at the Australian National University and Director of the Centre for Early Modern Studies. Her primary research area focuses on the intersection of form, politics and history in early modern women’s writing, examining women’s participation in large formal categories in order to rewrite literary histories of genres (the sonnet), modes (complaint) and textual practices (marginalia), Her secondary research area focuses on true crime, specifically true crime in Australia and women and true crime in the English Renaissance.
She has a sustained record in academic leadership, including as Acting Pro Vice Chancellor Research and Innovation (2019), Assistant Dean Research and Research Training (2013-17), Director of the Centre for 21st Century Humanities (2018) and Deputy Head of School Teaching and Learning (2012).In 2008, Ros co-founded the Early Modern Women’s Research Network (EMWRN) with Dr Patricia Pender. Under their leadership EMWRN has become a internationally renowned centre for innovative early modern research, using methods combining theoretical, material and digital scholarship.
She has served on the HCA panel of the ARC College of Experts (2015-17) and has over $3 million in external research funding, including a current Future Fellowship (2019-23). She is also the lead CI on a 2019 ARC Linkage Project grant with State Library Victoria, lead CI on a current ARC Discovery Project, and was CI5 on an ARC LIEF project in 2020. She is also a CI on a nationwide ARDC grant in 2021 on humanities mapping in Australia. In 2012 she led a large international team examining the material cultures of early modern women's writing, also funded by the ARC Discovery scheme. She has also been awarded funding from the Marsden Trust and was a Senior Common Room Fellow at Merton College Oxford 2019-20. In 2019, Ros was appointed general editor of the Palgrave Online Encyclopaedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing, the largest project of its kind in the world, with over 400 entries, 15 section editors and a million plus words. In 2021, she became the editor of the journal Parergon.
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Researcher's projects
Funded research:
2020-24: FT180100371: Marginalia and the Early Modern Woman Writer, 1530-1660. $1066079 (CI1)
2019-23: LP180100704: Transforming the Early Modern Archive: The Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria. $247000 (CI1)
2020: ARDC: Time-Layered Cultural Map of Australia. $100000 (CI9)
2019-20: LE190100019: Time-Layered Cultural Map of Australia. $420000 (CI5)
2017-20: DP170103439: Early Modern Women and the Poetry of Complaint, 1540-1660: $116000 (CI1)
2012-15: DP Material Cultures of Early Modern Women's Writing, 1540-1660. $211000 (CI1)
Current student projects
Rayner, Emma. Early Modern Women and Discourses of Civility. PhD (2021-2024)
Upton, Hannah. Early Modern Women's Education and Marginalia. PhD (2021-2024)
Rodwell, Julia. Digitising the Emmerson Collection at State Library Victoria. PhD (2021-2024)
Greaves, Laura. Finding Caroline: Silent victims and gender bias in true crime writing. PhD (2019-2023)
Publications
- Rodwell, J, Whitelaw, M, Smith, R et al. 2023, Beyond the Book: A digital journey through the treasures of the Emmerson Collection.
- Smith, R 2022, 'Authorship, Attribution, and Voice in Early Modern Women's Writing', in Danielle Clarke, Sarah C.E. Ross, Elizabeth Scott-Baumann (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English, 1540-1700, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, pp. 22-38.
- Smith, R 2019, 'Prosopopoeia, gender and religion: the poetry of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots', in Kimberly Anne Coles, Eve Keller (ed.), Routledge Companion to Women, Sex, and Gender in the Early British Colonial World, Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, London, pp. 170-188.
- Pender, P & Smith, R, eds, 2014, Material Cultures of Early Modern Women's Writing, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
- Pender, P & Smith, R 2014, 'Introduction: Early Modern Women's Material Texts: Production, Transmission and Reception', in Patricia Pender, Rosalind Smith (ed.), Material Cultures of Early Modern Women's Writing, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 1-13.
- Smith, R 2014, ''Le pouvoir de faire dire': Marginalia in Mary Queen of Scots' Book of Hours', in Patricia Pender, Rosalind Smith (ed.), Material Cultures of Early Modern Women's Writing, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 55-75.
- Palmer, L, Levett-Jones, T, Smith, R et al. 2014, 'Academic literacy diagnostic assessment in the first semester of first year at university', International Journal of the First Year in Higher Education, vol. 5, no. 1, pp. 67-78.
- Smith, R 2013, 'Lost in the media: Evil Angels and late twentieth-century Australian true crime', in Tanya Dalziell & Paul Genoni (ed.), Telling Stories: Australian Life and Literature 1935-2012, Monash University Publishing, Clayton, Victoria, pp. 418-424.
- Pender, P & Smith, R 2013, 'Afterword: Reading early modern women and the poem', in Susan Wiseman (ed.), Early Modern Women and the Poem, Manchester University Press, Manchester, New York, pp. 244-252.
- Smith, R 2013, 'A 'goodly sample': exemplarity, female complaint and early modern women's poetry', in Susan Wiseman (ed.), Early Modern Women and the Poem, Manchester University Press, Manchester, New York, pp. 181-200.
- Smith, R 2012, 'Reading Mary Stuart's Casket Sonnets: Reception, Authorship, and Early Modern Women's Writing ', Parergon, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 149-173.
- Pender, P & Smith, R 2012, 'From Paratext to Epitext: Mapping the Authorial Apparatus in Early Modern Women's Writing ', Parergon, vol. 29, no. 2, pp. 193-201.
- Smith, R 2012, 'The case of Frederick Deeming: The true crime archive as publication event', Southerly, vol. 72, no. 2, pp. 56-73.
- Smith, R 2012, 'The Case of Mary Queen of Scots, Lord Darnley and Lord Bothwell: Initiating the Literature of Husband-Murder in Sixteenth-Century England', Notes and Queries, vol. 59, no. 4, pp. 498-501.
- Smith, R 2010, 'Babysitter Killers and Daughters of Death: Women, True Crime and the Media in 1970s Australia', Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 25, no. 65, pp. 325-336.
- Smith, R 2008, 'Dark Places: True Crime Writing in Australia', Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, vol. 8, pp. 17-30.
- Smith, R 2008, 'Lady Mary Wroth's Pamphilia to Amphilanthus and Lindamira's Complaint: The Politics of Withdrawal', English Literary Renaissance, vol. 30, no. 3, pp. 408-431.
- Smith, R 2005, Sonnets and the English Woman Writer, 1560-1621, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.
- Smith, R 2001, 'Clara Morison: The politics of Feminine Heterotopia', Southerly, vol. 61, no. 3, pp. 40-51.
- Smith, R 2001, ''I thus goe arm'd to field': Lindamira's Complaint', Meridian: The La Trobe University English review, vol. 18, no. 1, pp. 72-85.
- Smith, R 2000, ''In a mirrour clere': Protestantism and Politics in Anne Lok's Miserere mei Deus', in Danielle Clarke, Elizabeth Clarke (ed.), 'This Double Voice': Gendered Writing in Early Modern England, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, pp. 41-60.
- Smith, R 1994, 'The Sonnets of the Countess of Oxford and Elizabeth I: Translations from Desportes', Notes and Queries, vol. 41, no. 1, pp. 446-450.
- Smith, R, Ross, S, O'Callaghan, M, Arthur, J and Whitelaw, M 2022, The Early Modern Women's Complaint Poetry Index.
- Ross, S & Smith, R, eds, 2020, Early Modern Women's Complaint:Gender, Form, and Politics. Cham, Palgrave Macmillan.
- Arthur, J & Smith, R 2020, 'Women's Complaint, 1530-1680: Taxonomy, Voice, and the Index in the Digital Age', in Sarah C. E. Ross & Rosalind Smith (eds), Early Modern Women's Complaint: Gender, Form, Politics, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 291-312.
- Ross, S & Smith, R 2020, 'Beyond Ovid: Early Modern Women's Complaint', in Sarah C. E. Ross & Rosalind Smith (ed.), Early Modern Women's Complaint: Gender, Form, Politics. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 1 - 26.
- Smith, R 2020, 'Fictions of Production: Misattribution, Prosopopoeia, and the Early Woman Writer', Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 33-52.
- Smith, R 2019, ''Woman-like complaints': lost love in the first part of The Countess of Montgomery's Urania', Textual Practice, vol. 33, no. 8, pp. 1341-1362.
- Smith, R 2019, 'Narrow Confines: Marginalia, Devotional Books and the Prison in Early Modern Women's Writing', Women's Writing, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 35-52.
- Smith, R 2019, 'Mary, Queen of Scots is newly relevant in the age of #MeToo', The Conversation, vol. online.
- Smith, R 2017, 'Paratextual Economies in Tudor Women's Translations: Margaret More Roper, Mary Roper Basset and Mary Tudor', in Andrea Rizzi (ed.), Trust and Proof: Translators in Renaissance Print Culture, Brill, The Netherlands, pp. 185-208.
- Smith, R 2018, 'Cultures of Complaint: Protest and Redress in the Age of #Metoo', Australian Humanities Review, vol. 63, pp. 172-179.
- Palmer, L, Levett-Jones, T & Smith, R 2018, 'First year students� perceptions of academic literacies preparedness and embedded diagnostic assessment', Student Success, vol. 9, no. 2, pp. 49-61.
- Smith, R, O'Callaghan, M & Ross, S 2018, 'Complaint', in Catherine Bates (ed.), A Companion to Renaissance Poetry, Wiley-Blackwell, United Kingdom, pp. 339-352.
- Smith, R 2017, 'Perdita: Frames-Based Version and Perdita Manuscripts: Women Writers, 1500-1700', Early Modern Women, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 145-151.
- Smith, R 2017, 'Paratextual Marginalia, Early Modern Women, and Collaboration', in Patricia Pender (ed.), Gender, Authorship, and Early Modern Women's Collaboration, Palgrave Macmillan, United Kingdom, pp. 175-200.
- Pender, P & Smith, R 2016, 'Editing Early Modern Women in the Digital Age', in Sarah C E Ross and Paul Salzman (ed.), Editing Early Modern Women, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom, pp. 255-269.
- Collins-Gearing, B & Smith, R 2016, 'Burning Off: Indigenising the Discipline of English', The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, vol. 45, no. 2, pp. 159-169.
- Smith, R. & Pender, P. eds, 2015, Material Cultures of Early Modern Women's Writing. Digital Archive.
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- Time Layered Cultural Map of Australia: Advanced Techniques and Big Data (Secondary Investigator)
- Transforming the early modern archive: the Emmerson Collection at SLV (Primary Investigator)
- Marginalia and the Early Modern Woman Writer (Primary Investigator)
