Our people

Associate Professor Lisa O’Connell

Associate Professor of Literature
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences

Areas of expertise: British literature of the long eighteenth century; history and theory of the novel; Enlightenment; women and gender; history of sexuality; postcolonial studies

HDR Supervisor accreditation status: Full

Email: Lisa.OConnell@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-7659-1626

Lisa O’Connell is an Associate Professor of English Literature in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Australian Catholic University. She is the author of The Origins of the English Marriage Plot: Literature, Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge 2019), co-editor of Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century (Palgrave, 2004) as well as the journal special issues, “Spaces of Enlightenment” (Eighteenth-Century Life 2021), “Catalysts of Change: Colonial Transformations of Anglo-European Literary Culture” (Postcolonial Studies 2020). She specializes in 18th-century British literature and also works on the history and theory of the novel, theories and processes of secularization as well as the relation between settler colonialism and early global literatures.

Select publications

Books and co-edited collections

• The Origins of the English Marriage Plot: Literature, Politics and Religion in the Eighteenth Century. Cambridge UP, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108757706
• “Spaces of Enlightenment.” Special issue of Eighteenth-Century Life, edited with Peter Denney, vol. 45, no. 3, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-9272978
• “Catalysts of Change: Colonial Transformations of Anglo-European Literary Culture in the Long Eighteenth Century.” Special issue of Postcolonial Studies, edited with Jennifer Wawrzinek, vol. 23, no. 3, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2020.1809068
• Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell, Palgrave, 2004. https://doi.org/10/1057/9780230522817

• “Before Frankenstein: Therese Huber and the Antipodean Emergence of Political Fiction.” Postcolonial Studies, vol. 23, no. 3, 2020, pp. 348-59. https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2020.1802113
• --- and Simon During. “Mansfield Park and Political Theology.” Political Theology, vol. 19, no. 7, 2018, pp. 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1080/1462317X.2018.1513201
• “Nationalism.” Samuel Richardson in Context, edited by Peter Sabor and Betty Schellenberg, Cambridge UP, 2017, pp. 319-26. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316576755.039
• “Literary Sentimentalism and Post-Secular Virtue.” Eighteenth-Century Life, vol. 41, no. 2, 2017, pp. 28-42. https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-3841348
• “‘Mum Budget’: Henry Fielding and the Articulations of Audibility.” Noise, special issue of Republics of Letters: A Journal for the Study of Knowledge, Politics, and the Arts, vol. 5, no. 2, 2017, https://arcade.stanford.edu/rofl/“mum-budget-henry-fielding-and-articulations-audibility.
• “The Libertine, the Rake, and the Dandy: Personae, Styles, and Affects.” The Cambridge History of Gay and Lesbian Literature, edited by Ellen McCallum and Mikko Tuhkanen, Cambridge UP, 2014, pp. 218-38. https://doi.org/10.1017/CHO9781139547376.015
• “Sir Charles Grandison, Natural Law and the Fictionalised English Gentleman.” Discourses of Humanity in the Enlightenment, special issue of Intellectual History Review, vol. 23, no. 3, 2012, pp. 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2012.723339
• “‘By Ordinance of Nature’: Marriage, Religion and the Modern English State.” Reason of State, Natural Law and Early Modern Statecraft, special issue of Parergon, vol. 28, no. 2, 2011, pp. 149-66. https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.2011.0101
• “Vicars and Squires: Religion and the Rise of the English Marriage Plot.” The Drift of Fiction: Reconsidering the Eighteenth-Century Novel, special issue of The Eighteenth-Century: Theory and Interpretation, vol. 52, no. 3-4, 2011, pp. 383-402. https://doi.org/10.1353/ecy.2011.0022
• “Gretna Green Novels.” The Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, edited by David Scott Kastan, et al., vol. 2, Oxford UP, 2006, pp. 477-81. https://doi.org/10.1093/acref/9780195169218.001.0001
• “Authorship and Libertine Celebrity: Harriette Wilson’s Regency Memoirs.” Libertine Enlightenment: Sex, Liberty and Licence in the Eighteenth Century, edited by Peter Cryle and Lisa O’Connell, Palgrave, 2004, pp. 161-81. https://doi.org/10/1057/9780230522817
• “Matrimonial Ceremonies Displayed: Popular Ethnography and Enlightened Imperialism.” Exoticism and the Culture of Exploration, edited by Robert Maccubbin and Christa Knellwolf, Duke UP, 2003, pp. 98-116. https://doi.org/10.1215/00982601-26-3-98
• “Dislocating Literature: The Novel and the Gretna Green Romance.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction, vol. 35, no. 1, 2001, pp. 5-23.
• “Marriage Acts: Stages in the Transformation of Modern Nuptial Culture.” differences, vol. 11, no. 1, 1999, pp. 68-111.

Projects

• Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Secularization and British Literature, 1600-1800’ (DP130102381; $170,000), 2013-15. Co-CI.
• Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence in the History of Emotions, Europe 1100-1800, UQ node, 2011-17. Duration-AI.
• Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘The Cultural Impact of Irregular Marriage in the Age of British Colonialism’ (DP0343795; $70,000), 2003-06. CI.

Accolades and awards

• Visiting Research Scholar, Department of English and American Studies, Humboldt University, Berlin, 2019.
• Australian Visiting Research Scholar, Institute of English Language and Literature, Freie Universität Berlin, 2016.
• Faculty Research Fellow, Centre for the History of European Discourses, University of Queensland, 2012.
• Postdoctoral Fellow, English Department, Johns Hopkins University, 2004-07.

Appointments and affiliations

• Vice-President, Australian and New Zealand Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2014-present.
• Honorary Associate Professor of Literature, University of Queensland, 2022-25.
• ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, Europe 1100-1800, UQ node, 2019-present.
• Member, Society for Novel Studies, 2012-present.

Public engagement

• Interviewee, ‘Frankenstein Day’ ABC Radio Brisbane, Steve Austin’s ‘Drive,’ August 2021.
• Public seminar host, ‘The Novel and the History of the Book’ Fryer Library Rare Book Room, University of Queensland, April 2021 (Rescheduled due to Covid).
• Speaker, ‘Nature and Narrative: Jon McGregor’s Reservoir 13’ Sustainability Space Reading Group, Barracks Shopping Centre, Brisbane. April 2020 (Rescheduled due to Covid).
• Speaker, ‘Reading the English Marriage Plot’ American Women’s Club Berlin, May, 2020 (Rescheduled due to Covid).
• Opening address, ‘Mary Shelley’s Legacy: Horror & Sympathy,’ Panel discussion with Moira Gatens and Patricia Piccinini, Queensland Art Gallery /Gallery of Modern Art, May 2018.
• Interviewer, ‘Zero Waste: An interview with Bea Johnson,’ Berlin International School, Berlin, June 2016.
• Speaker, ‘Jane Austen’s Bad Girls,’ Jane Austen Society, Brisbane, March
• Panelist, ‘Histories of Melancholia.’ Brisbane Writers Festival, UQ Art Museum, October 2014.