Melissa Bellanta
Associate Professor
National School of Arts and Humanities
Areas of expertise: histories of masculinity; history of popular entertainment; histories of dress and fashion; australian social history; histories of emotions
HDR supervisor accreditation status: Full
Email: melissa.bellanta@acu.edu.au
Location: ACU North Sydney Campus
Location: ACU Strathfield Campus
ORCID ID: 0000-0003-0797-7618
Melissa Bellanta is a social and cultural historian of Australia with interests in the history of menswear and masculinities, histories of street and youth culture, popular entertainment and culture, and social histories of crime. Her first career was in law, after which she was awarded a PhD at the University of Sydney. She held postdoctoral fellowships and a position in history at the University of Queensland before moving to ACU in Sydney. She now teaches Australian social history, the history of the present, film and history and the history of human rights.
Select publications
Books
- Larrikins: A History (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 2012).
Edited books/special issues
- "Fashion, Embodiment and the 'Making Turn'", special issue of Fashion Theory co-edited with Peter McNeil, 23, no. 3 (2019).
- "The Girl in Australian History", special issue of Journal of Australian Studies, 34, no. 4 (2010).
Journal articles and book chapters
- "Fashion and First Peoples in European Settler Societies, c.1700-1850", in The Cambridge Global History of Fashion, ed. Christopher Breward, Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello, vol. 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
- "Well-Dressed in Suits of Australian Wool: The Global Fiber Wars and Masculine Material Literacy, 1950-1965" (co-authored with Lorinda Cramer), Fashion Theory, published online 30 June 2023, DOI: 1080/1362704X.2023.2228009
- "The Comfort of Things in White Australia: Male Immigrants, Race and the Three-Piece Suit, c.1910-39" (co-authored with Lorinda Cramer), Australian Historical Studies, published online 16 February 2023, DOI: 1080/1031461X.2022.2161587.
- "Tropical Whites: Hegemonic Masculinity and Menswear at the Crossroads of Australia and Asia, 1900-1939" (co-authored with Lorinda Cramer), Gender & History, published online 27 August 2022, DOI: 1111/1468-0424.12640.
- "'Clothes Shall Mark the Man': Wearing Suits in Wartime Australia, 1939-1945" (co-authored with Lorinda Cramer), Cultural and Social History, 19:1 (2022), 57-76, DOI: 1080/14780038.2022.2031424.
- "Business Fashion: Masculinity, Class and Dress in 1870s Australia", Australian Historical Studies 48, no. 2 (2017): 189-
- "Poor Gordon: What the Australian Cult of Adam Lindsay Gordon Tells Us About Turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Masculine Sentimentality", Gender & History 28, no. 2 (2016): 401-
- "His Two Mates Around Him Were Crying: Masculine Sentimentality in Late-Victorian Culture", Journal of Victorian Culture 20, no. 4 (2015): 471-
- "Uncle Tom in the White Pacific: African-American Performances of the Slave Sublime in Australasia, 1878-1889", Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History(2014):
- "The Leary Larrikin: Street Style in Late-Colonial Australia" (co-authored with Simon Sleight), Cultural and Social History (2014) 11.2: 263-
- "Looking Flash: Disreputable Women's Dress and Modernity" (co-authored with Alana Piper) History Workshop Journal (2014) , Vol.78 (78), 58-
- "The Sentimental Bloke: Australian Romance in the First World War Era", Journal of Popular Romance Studies, special issue edited by Hsu-Ming Teo (2014) 4.2: https://www.jprstudies.org/2014/10/a-masculine-romance-the-sentimental-bloke-and-australian-culture-in-the-war-and-early-interwar-yearsby-melissa-bellanta/
- "Bury Me Deep Down Below: Sentimentality, Masculinity and Death on the Colonial Frontier", Outskirts 31 (November 2014): https://www.outskirts.arts.uwa.edu.au/volumes/volume-31/melissa-bellanta
- "Rethinking the 1890s", in The New Cambridge History of Australia, Alison Bashford and Stuart Macintyre (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), ch. 9.
Projects
- "Masculinity and Social Change: Men's Dress in Twentieth-Century Australia" (2019-ongoing). Subject of ARC DP190103341 (2019-2023).
- "Sentimental Blokes: Masculinity Sentimentality and Tenderness in Australia, 1900-1980".
Accolades and awards
- Powerhouse Research Fellowship, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 2023- (Project: "Dress and the Making of Queer Worlds in Sydney c.1980-1995").
- Article shortlisted for Patricia Grimshaw Prize in Australian Historical Studies 2018.
- Ernest Scott Prize 2013 (for best book on history of Australia/NZ/colonisation in 2012).
- ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship (forerunner of DECRA), University of Queensland (July 2010-2013).
- University of Queensland Postdoctoral Fellowship (July 2007-June 2010).
Appointments and affiliations
- Associate Professor in Modern History, ACU (Feb 2014-ongoing)
- Lecturer in History, University of Queensland (July 2013-Jan 2014)
- ARC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Queensland (July 2010-June 2013)
- University of Queensland Postdoctoral Fellow (July 2007-June 2010)
- Associate Lecturer in History, University of Sydney (2006-June 2007).
- Member of Australian Historical Association, Association of Dress Historians, Australian Women's History Network.
Public engagement activities
