Morrissey, Belinda Dr
Position: Lecturer in Literature
Discipline: Humanities and Social Sciences
Location: Gippsland Campus
Phone: 5122 6301
Email: belinda.morrissey@federation.edu.au
Qualifications
Doctor of Philosophy – Murdoch University – 1999
Master of Arts (Literature and Communication) – Murdoch University – 1991
Bachelor of Arts (Hons) – University of Queensland – 1989
Bachelor of Arts – University of Central Queensland - 1986
Teaching
Course(s)
- Bachelor of Arts
Units
- Popular Writing and Criticism (LITCI2497/3497)
- Contemporary Fiction (LITCI2498/3498)
- Literature and History (LITCI2773)
- Gender, Race and Journalism (ATSGC2895/3895)
- Reading Drama (BALIT2003)
- Australian Literature (BALIT2005/3005)
- Ways of Reading and Seeing (BATCC1002)
- Adaptations: Literature and Screen (LITCI2106/3106)
- Literature and its Contexts (LITCI1001)
Biography
Belinda teaches literature in the School of Arts. Belinda joined Federation University Australia in 2014 moving in the merger with Monash Gippsland. Previous to Monash, Belinda worked at the University of Canberra where she was a senior lecturer in Communications and Media Studies. Belinda is the author of When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity (London: Routledge, 2003), and has chapters published in Millennial Cinema: Representations of Memory in Cinema (Columbia University Press, Oxford UK, 2012), and in Geography and Memory: Explorations in Identity, Place and Becoming (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2012). Belinda has also published in journals including Social Semiotics, Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Southerly, Australian Feminist Studies and Australian Women’s Law Journal. Her current research considers the impact of trauma on memory, place and space.
Areas of expertise
- Belinda’s research into a disappearance case that took place in a small town in 1972 explores the ways in which understandings of space and place change in the face of violent trauma. In particular, she is interested in the ways in which the sudden vanishing of a child, never to return, completely reconceptualised the idea of ‘community’ for this town.
- Belinda’s work on trauma and storytelling has largely considered the ways in which Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder intervenes in one’s ability to tell a life narrative. This work has also coincided with a discussion of the ways that credibility can suffer in the cases of such people, as they cannot develop coherent stories of either their abuse or their lives.
- Belinda’s work on the impact of storytelling on criminal justice processes focusses primarily on the ways that counsel for defence and prosecution use the stories generated by women accused of violent acts, such as murder, to present them in stereotypical, stock stories. She has investigated legal transcripts of women who have killed others – their husbands, young women, strangers – to demonstrate the ways in which stories of violent women form a continuum, from those who can still be made to fit within the parameters of traditional femininity, to those who are completely beyond such neat descriptions.
Research interests
- Trauma theory and studies
- Cultural legal studies
- Cultural geography and the concepts of space and place
- Literature – from the Victorian period to contemporary literature
- Crime fiction
- True crime media narratives
Publications
Books
Morrissey, B. (2003) When Women Kill: Questions of Agency and Subjectivity London: Routledge.
Book chapters
Morrissey, B. (2012) ‘The Geography of Everyday Terror: Childhood Trauma, Faulty Memory and the House I Grew Up In’ in Geography and Memory, Owain Jones and Joanne Garde-Hansen (eds) Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan 184-198.
Morrissey, B. (2011) 'Gone: The Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman' in The Reinvention of Everyday Life: Culture in the Twenty-first Century. (Chinese Edition) H. McNaughton and A. Lam (eds.) Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 247-257.
Morrissey, B. (2011) ‘Impossible Memory: Traumatic Memories in Memento and Mulholland Drive’, in Millennial Cinema: Memory in Global Film, Terence McSweeney (ed) London: Columbia University Press 97-116.
Morrissey, B. and K. Davis (2010) ‘Fear and Horror in a Small Town: The Legacy of the Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman’ in Fear Itself: Reasoning the Unreasonable, Stephen Hessel and Michéle Huppert (eds) Probing the Boundaries series, Amsterdam: Rodophi 175-188.
Morrissey, B. and K. Davis (2009) ‘Fear and Horror in a Small Town: The Legacy of the Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman’ in Where Fear Lurks, Michéle Huppert (ed) At The
Interface series, Oxford: Inter- Disciplinary Press, e-book: http://www.inter-disciplinary.net/publishing/id-press/ebooks/where-fear-lurks/
Morrissey, B. (2008) ‘Killing ‘Just for Fun’: Amoral Monsters” Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Proceedings, At The Interface series, Vol. 54, Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, e-book: http://www.interdisciplinary.net/publishing/idp/eBooks/miohindex.html.
Morrissey, B. (2006) 'Dealing with the Devil: Karla Homolka and the Absence of Feminist Criticism' in Killing Women: The Visual Culture of Gender and Violence, Annette Burfoot and Susan Lord (eds.), Toronto, Wilfred Laurier University Press, 83-104.
Morrissey, B. (2006) 'Gone: The Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman' in The Reinvention of Everyday Life: Culture in the Twenty-first Century. H. McNaughton and A. Lam (eds.) Christchurch: University of Canterbury Press, 155-163.
Morrissey, B. (1997) ‘Narrative Indigestion: The Unprocessable Case of the Lesbian Vampire Killer’ in Off the Sheep’s Back, F. Sheaves, K. Schlunke, M. Lee and A. Johnson (eds.) Sydney: University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury.
Refereed journal articles
Morrissey, B. (2019) “Leaving Srebenica” Pink Cover Zine, 5. 27.
Morrissey, B. and S. Yell (2016) ‘Performative trolling: Szubanski, Gillard, Dawson and the nature of the utterance’ Persona Studies, 2:1. 27-40.
Morrissey, B. (2012) ‘A Palimpsest of Abjection: Brendan Sokaluk and the Burning of Churchill’, Southerly , 72: 2, 100-117.
Morrissey, B. (2010) ‘Monstrous Semantics: The Case of the Criminal Diary’ Australian Feminist Studies 25:65, September, 295-311.
Morrissey, B. and K. Davis (2007) ‘Trace Evidence: The Uncertainty of the Real’ Cultural Studies Review 13:2, September, 205 – 217.
Morrissey, B. (2005) 'The Ethical Foundation of Performativity' Social Semiotics 15:2, August, 165-184.
Morrissey, B. (2005) '’I'm Not That Innocent”: Teenage Girls and the Problem of Consensual Sex' Southern Review 37:3, 58-72.
Morrissey, B. and Davis, K. (2003) ‘Utilities and Utilitarianism’ Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 17:4, December, 387-396.
Morrissey, B. (2002) ‘Crises of Representation or why don't feminists talk about Myra?’ Australian Feminist Law Journal, 16, June, 109-131.
Refereed conference proceedings
Morrissey , B. and K. Davis (2007) ‘Fear and Horror in a Small Town: The Legacy of the Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman’ First Global Conference on Fear, Horror and Terror Proceedings, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, UK. (http://www.wickedness.net/Fear/f1/s3.html)
Morrissey, B. (2007) ‘Killing ‘Just for Fun’: Amoral Monsters’, Fifth Global Conference on Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil Proceedings, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, UK. (http://inter-disciplinary.net/ati/Monsters/M5/s1.html)
Morrissey, B. (2007) ‘The Medea Complex: Radical Evil and Modern Motherhood’, Eighth Global Conference on Evil and Human Wickedness Proceedings, ed. Amy Lee Bell, Inter-Disciplinary Press, Oxford, UK. (http://interdisciplinary.net/ati/Evil/Evil%208/s4.html)
Refereed conference presentations
Morrissey, B. (2012) ‘The Materiality of Place: Remembrance and Forgetting in Crime Scene Photography’ Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference, Sydney University.
Morrissey, B. (2012) ‘A Palimpsest of Abjection: Brendan Sokaluk and the Burning of Churchill’, Createc Symposium, Edith Cowan University.
Morrissey, B. (2009) ‘The Geography of Everyday Terror: Childhood Trauma, Faulty Memory and the House I Grew Up In’ Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) Annual International Conference, presented in Manchester, England: keynote speaker.
Morrissey, B. and K. Davis (2008) ‘Haunted Places and the Ghost That Never Was: The Legacy of the Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman’ Missing Persons Conference, UWS, presented in Sydney.
Morrissey, B. (2007) ‘Killing ‘Just for Fun’: Amoral Monsters’ Fifth Global Conference on Monsters and the Monstrous: Myths and Metaphors of Enduring Evil, Inter-Disciplinary Press, presented in Oxford, UK.
Morrissey, B. and K. Davis (2007) ‘Fear and Horror in a Small Town: The Legacy of the Disappearance of Marilyn Wallman’ First Global Conference on Fear, Horror and Terror, Inter-Disciplinary Press, presented in Oxford, UK.
Morrissey, B. (2007) ‘The Medea Complex: Radical Evil and Modern Motherhood’ Eighth Global Conference on Evil and Human Wickedness, Inter-Disciplinary Press, presented in Salzburg, Austria.
Morrissey, B. (2007) ‘Criminal Magic: Henry VIII as an Equal Opportunity Executioner’ presented at Truth Will Out: Crime and Criminals 1500 -1700 Conference, Canterbury Christ Church University, presented in Canterbury, Kent, UK.
Morrissey, B. (2006) ‘Monstrous Semantics: The Case of the Criminal Diary’, presented at UnAustralia: Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference, University of Canberra.
Morrissey, B. (2005) ‘The Things We Leave Behind: Craving a ‘Fix’ of Materiality in Disappearance Cases’, presented with Kristen Davis, at the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Conference, University of Technology, Sydney.
Book and manuscript reviews
Morrissey, B. (2013) Review of ‘Emotion and Allegiance in Research Four Mid-Twentieth-Century Cases of Women Accused of Murder’ for Qualitative Research
Morrissey, B. (2012) Review of ‘Guilty Houses: Dealing with Places of Crime in Belgium (Dutroux), the United Kingdom (Wests), and Austria (Fritzl)’ for Journal of Material Culture
Morrissey, B. (2012) Review of Women, Murder and Femininity: Gender Representations of Women who Kill by Lizzie Seal for Crime, Media, Culture Vol. 8, No. 1, 107-114
Morrissey, B. (2011) Review of ‘The Unseen Female Serial Killer: Mary Ann Cotton’ for Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology
Morrissey, B. (2011) Review of Cultural Constructions of the Lethal Woman: From Pandora’s Box to Amanda Knox by Stevie Smith for Palgrave Macmillan
Morrissey, B. (2010) Review of Murdering Stepmothers: The Execution of Martha Rendell by Anna Haebich for Australian Women’s Book Review Vol. 22, No. 2.
Morrissey, B. (2009) Review of Thelma and Louise Live! for Continuum.
Morrissey, B. (2009) Review of Going to the Movies for Continuum.
Interviews
New York Times and CBS All Access, “Why Women Kill: The Podcast” (2019)
Investigation Discovery Channel, “Deadly Women” with Beyond Productions, Sydney, for US distribution (2010)
Reviewer of submissions: manuscripts and books
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Journal of Qualitative Research
- Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology
- Journal of Crime, Media and Culture
- Ashgate Publishing
- Australian Women’s Book Review
- Criminology
- Continuum
- Cultural Studies Review
Associations
- The Cultural Studies Association of Australasia