Dr Tamlyn Avery

Lecturer

School of Humanities

College of Creative Arts, Design and Humanities

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.


I am Lecturer in English Literature in the Department of English, Creative Writing, and Film, specialising in modern literature and modernism. I previously worked at the University of Queensland (2020–2025), where I was Senior Lecturer in American Studies. Before that, I taught at UNSW, Flinders University, and the Australian Catholic University. I received my doctorate in English Literature from UNSW, after completing my undergraduate degree there with First Class Honours. I also have a Masters of Teaching, specialising in teaching English Literature. My research is situated in literary and modernist studies. I have published widely on topics including gender, race, and literary representations of white-collar labour in the context of the 'typewriter revolution' and the rise of managerial capitalism (c. 1890–1950); as well as the relationship between classical music and modernist literature. I am co-editor of the Australasian Modernist Studies Network's journal, Affirmations: of the Modern. My first book, "The Regional Development of the American Bildungsroman, 1900–1960" (Edinburgh University Press 2023), examined how regional politics and aesthetics informed the development of a key genre of the novel in the U.S., during an era that is typically associated with both modernism and surging nationalism. I am also editor of the forthcoming edited volume, "The Women of 1922: Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism" with Palgrave, which investigates the contributions of women's writing to modernism's so-called miracle year, 1922. My research appears in PMLA, Modernism/Modernity, American Literature, the Oxford Handbook of African American Women’s Writing (forthcoming), The African American Review (forthcoming), and elsewhere. I am currently preparing a new book entitled "Writing the Collar-Line" about the racial politics of white-collar bureaucratization and the typewriter revolution, as told through the lens of African American literary history.I welcome HDR proposals on areas relating to modernism, modern (19th/20th century) literature, and American and African American literature.

Date Position Institution name
2025 - ongoing Honorary Senior Research Fellow University of Queensland
2020 - 2025 Senior Lecturer in American Studies University of Queensland
2020 - 2020 English Language Coordinator Flinders University
2018 - 2020 English Language Proficiency Expert UNSW Australia
2017 - 2020 Sessional Tutor and Lecturer Australian Catholic University
2016 - 2019 Sessional Tutor and Lecturer UNSW Australia

Date Institution name Country Title
2017 - 2018 UNSW Australia Australia Master of Teaching
2012 - 2017 UNSW Australia Australia PhD
2008 - 2011 UNSW Australia Australia Bachlor of Arts (Hons 1)

Year Citation
2026 Avery, T. (2026). Reconstructing the Stenographic Romance of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s ‘As Told Over a Typewriter.’. African American Review.
2024 Avery, T. (2024). Playing Amanuensis to Inner Urges: Masculinity, Authorial Anxiety, and Wallace Thurman's Typewriter. Modernism Modernity, 31(4), 635-657.
DOI
2024 Avery, T. (2024). Passing as White Collar: The Black Typewriter and the Bureaucratization of the Racial Imaginary. PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, 139(1), 66-81.
DOI
2020 Avery, T. (2020). "Split by the Moonlight": Beethoven and the Racial Sublime in African American Literature. American Literature, 92(4), 623-652.
DOI
2019 Avery, T. (2019). Gretel Adorno, the Typewriter: Sacrificial Lambs and Critical Theory’s ‘Risk of Formulation’. Australian Feminist Studies, 34(101), 309-324.
DOI WoS3
2019 Avery, T. (2019). The Métis and the Multiple "Me" in Carson McCullers's The Member of the Wedding. The Mississippi quarterly, 72(1), 69-93.
DOI WoS2
2017 Avery, T. (2017). Women’s Work: The Bildungsromance of Theodore Dreiser’s Sister Carrie. Affirmations: of the Modern, 5(1), 1-28.
2014 Avery, T. (2014). Alienated, Anxious, American: The Crisis of Coming of Age in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man and the Late Harlem Bildungsroman. Limina: A Journal of Historical and Cultural Studies, 20(2), 1-17.
- Avery, T. (2021). Fredric Jameson, Richard Wright, and the Black National Allegory. Affirmations: of the modern, 7(1), 1-29.
DOI

Year Citation
2025 Avery, T., & Morrell, S. (Eds.) (2025). Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism: The Women of 1922. Palgrave.
2023 Avery, T. (2023). The Regional Development of the American Bildungsroman, 1900-1960. Edinburgh University Press.

Year Citation
2025 Avery, T. (2025). Typewritten by Herself: The Means of African American Women’s Literary Modernity, 1900–1930.. In S. Drake (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of African American Women’s Writing. Oxford University Press.
2025 Avery, T., & Morrell, S. (2025). Revisiting the Women of 1922. In T. Avery, & S. Morrell (Eds.), Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism: The Women of 1922 (pp. 1-35). Palgrave.
2025 Avery, T., & Morrell, S. (2025). Revisiting the Women of 1922. In T. Avery, & S. Morrell (Eds.), Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism: The Women of 1922 (pp. 1-35). Palgrave.
2025 Charlesworth, C., & Avery, T. (2025). Willa Cather's 'April Twilights' Revisitation. In T. Avery, & S. Morrell (Eds.), Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism: The Women of 1922 (pp. 176-207). Palgrave.
2025 Charlesworth, C., & Avery, T. (2025). Willa Cather's 'April Twilights' Revisitation. In T. Avery, & S. Morrell (Eds.), Revisiting the Poetics and Politics of Modernism: The Women of 1922 (pp. 176-207). Palgrave.
2024 Avery, T. (2024). Notes to Literature: Scores as Musical Reproduction in the Literary Text. In H. Groth, & J. Murphet (Eds.), The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Sound Studies (pp. 81-98). Edinburgh University Press.
2022 Avery, T. (2022). Classical Music. In K. A. Burnett, M. C. Miller, & T. Hagstette (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Literature of the U.S. South (pp. 157-161). Routledge.
DOI
2020 Avery, T. (2020). The Current of Music in Carson McCullers's Short Fiction. In A. Bertolini, & C. Kaser (Eds.), Understanding the Short Fiction of Carson Mccullers. Mercer University Press.
2019 Avery, T. (2019). Doctorow and the Halbbildungsroman. In J. Murphet, & M. Wutz (Eds.), E. L. Doctorow A Reconsideration (pp. 33). EUP.

Year Citation
2025 Avery, T. (2025). A true-crime twist on a cult classic: Chris Kraus’ latest novel is her most ambitious and politically charged to date.. The Conversation.
2024 Avery, T. (2024). “Julia Phillips’ Bear is a post-pandemic novel with a fairytale twist.”. The Conversation.
2023 Avery, T. (2023). “Lydia Davis’ amusing, insightful stories address the estrangements of everyday life.”. The Conversation.
2023 Avery, T. (2023). “Jean Toomer’s Cane at 100: the ‘everlasting song’ that defined the Harlem Renaissance.”. The Conversation.

Recent funding awarded: 

  • Australian Research Council Discovery Project 2026, Chief Investigator (with Andrew van der Vlies [Lead] and Benjamin Madden): "Reclaiming and Activating Australia’s Modernist Print Heritage" ($411,790.00)
  • Short-Term Research Fellowship – Emory University, USA (2025–6)

I currently teach and am developing courses on the cultural history of the 1960s; prison writing; and the history of the novel.

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2025 Principal Supervisor Consider “anti-Tom” novels as proslavery propaganda in comparison to slave narratives. How did these texts represent female sexuality and motherhood within the plantation system? Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Miss Jacqueline Victoria Cook
2025 Co-Supervisor Rethinking diasporic identities through the gathering of maternal storylines in Maryse Condes Segu and Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift. Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Miss Letitia Rajamma McNamara
2025 Principal Supervisor Developmental Rhythm in Modernist Prose Fiction: Henry James, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Thomas Edward Lewis
2025 Co-Supervisor Tracing Charlotte Jay: The Geraldine Halls Project Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Ms Jane Costessi
2025 Principal Supervisor Developmental Rhythm in Modernist Prose Fiction: Henry James, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Thomas Edward Lewis
2025 Co-Supervisor Tracing Charlotte Jay: The Geraldine Halls Project Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Ms Jane Costessi
2025 Co-Supervisor Rethinking diasporic identities through the gathering of maternal storylines in Maryse Condes Segu and Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift. Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Letitia Rajamma McNamara
2025 Principal Supervisor Consider anti-Tom novels as proslavery propaganda in comparison to slave narratives. How did these texts represent female sexuality and motherhood within the plantation system? Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Miss Jacqueline Victoria Cook

Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
2025 - 2025 Co-Supervisor Beyond the Puzzle: Uncovering Literary Complexity in Agatha Christie’s Crime Fiction Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Mrs Margaret Mary Donovan

Date Role Committee Institution Country
2025 - ongoing Treasurer Executive Committee Australasian Modernist Studies Network Australia

Date Role Editorial Board Name Institution Country
2019 - ongoing Editor Affirmations: of the Modern UNSW Australia

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