Associate Professor Alex Joseph Calder

MA , PhD

Associate Professor

In: English and Drama » Humanities » Faculty of Arts

Biography

Associate Professor
Head of English, Drama and Writing Studies

Research interests

New Zealand literature, American literature, literary theory and criticism, Herman Melville, Literature and Settlement.

Research | Current

Literary studies, especially New Zealand and American Literature

Alex's research, for which he has received a Marsden award, focuses on processes of cultural contact and settlement, particularly with regard to writings from New Zealand, the Pacific, and the United States. Book length publications include: The Writing of New Zealand, a non-fiction anthology; Voyages and Beaches, an interdisciplinary collection of essays on early European encounters with the Pacific; and Old New Zealand and other Writings, the first scholarly edition of the writings of the 19th century ‘Pakeha-Maori’ author, F. E. Maning. His most recent book is The Settler’s Plot: How Stories Take Place in New Zealand (Auckland University Press, 2011).

Teaching | Current

ENGLISH 102 Great Books: Seduction and Betrayal

ENGLISH 112 Global Literatures: Contested Spaces

ENGLISH 221 New Zealand Literature

ENGLISH 230 Literary Theory and Critical Practice

ENGLISH 321 Theory and the Gothic

ENGLISH 255 New Zealand Literature

ENGLISH 727 Melville and Conrad

Postgraduate supervision

Current PhD

Elizabeth Wilson, Marianne Moore

Tracy Miao, Katherine Mansfield and Impressionism

Andrew Clark, Space and Genre in Science Fiction

Sasha Mathewman, Ecocriticism and Education for Sustainability

Current MA

Joe Barnes, Herman Melville and Slavery

Responsibilities

Head of English, Drama and Writing Studies.

Areas of expertise

Literary Studies, especially New Zealand and American Literature

Selected publications and creative works (Research Outputs)

Calder, A. J. (2011). Blubber: Melville's Bad Writing. In S. Otter, G. Sanborn (Eds.) Melville and Aesthetics (pp. 11-31). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/13015
Calder, A. J. (2011). Herman Melville. In P. Rawlings (Ed.) Emerson, Melville, James, Berryman: Great Shakespeareans Volume VIII (pp. 51-94). London and New York: Continuum.
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/11783
Calder, A. J. (2011). The Settler's Plot: How Stories Take Place in New Zealand. Auckland, New Zealand: Auckland University Press. Pages: 310.
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/10492
Calder, A. J. (2011). Wreckage and Writing: Problems of Pseudo-Autobiography in Melville's Omoo and Conrad's Mirror of the Sea. In P. Jedrzejko, M. M. Reigelman, Z. Szatanik (Eds.) Secret Sharers: Melville, Conrad and Narratives of the Real (pp. 143-156). Zabrze: M-Studio.
Calder, A. J. (2006). Pacific Paradises. In Wyn Kelley (Ed.) A Companion to Herman Melville (pp. 98-112). Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd. 10.1111/b.9781405122313.2006.00011.x
URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2292/13014