University of Melbourne

Graduate Student, English

PhD Candidate, Subject Tutor, and Sessional Lecturer

Thesis Title: Frontier Justice in the American Imagination: James Fenimore Cooper, Cormac McCarthy, and the Literary Response to Popular Politics

About

My name is Daniel Wood; I am a graduate student, subject tutor, and sessional lecturer in Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. My research focuses primarily on the legacy of the Western frontier in American literature, cinema, and popular culture, from the late eighteenth century through to the present day. My other research interests include postcolonial literature, Australian literature, socio-political literature, the philosophy of literature, avant-garde literature, and literary aesthetics.

In 2009, I was president and fundraiser of a committee that organised a humanities-oriented interdisciplinary graduate student symposium at the University of Melbourne, at which graduate students and early career academics from around Australia were able to share their research findings with a public audience. In 2009-10, I was president, fundraiser, and editor of the journal Antithesis, based at the University of Melbourne, which publishes the work of graduate students and early career academics in accordance with double-blind refereeing guidelines. Throughout 2010, I coordinated a series of skills seminars at the University, bringing graduate students together with established academics in order to provide them with expert advice on publishing articles, attending conferences, and teaching classes while conducting their research. Throughout 2011, I edited a collection of scholarly essays on the work of the American writer Edward P. Jones. In addition to conducting my own research, I'm currently one of the coordinators of the fortnightly American Literature Reading Group based at the University but open to the general public, and I'm due to submit my PhD thesis in the first half of 2012.

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