Associate Professor Caroline Webb

Associate Professor Caroline Webb works at the University of Newcastle, Australia, where she specialises in English literature since 1900, especially fantasy literature.  She is interested in how the politics of form emerges through subtle textual details, and has examined this in the writings of Modernist authors, especially Virginia Woolf, as well as in contemporary fiction.  Her analyses of writings by Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson take a feminist affective narratological approach.  Her current projects include studies of British fantasy literature of the 1920s, and of guilt in English children’s literature.  Her monograph on the children's fantasies of J.K. Rowling, Terry Pratchett, and Diana Wynne Jones, Fantasy and the Real World in British Children's Literature: The Power of Story, was published by Routledge in October 2014.

Associate Professor Webb completed her PhD in English Literature and Language at Cornell University, aided by a Fulbright Postgraduate Travel Grant and the Andrew D. White Fellowship, and subsequently taught for eight years at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts. She took up the position of Lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle in July 1995, and was promoted to Senior Lecturer from January 2002 and to Associate Professor from January 2016. She studies and teaches English literature since 1900, and has also been active in University governance.  She held a University of Newcastle Career Enhancement Fellowship for Academic Women in 2012, and served as Secretary of the Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research for two two-year terms (2010-14); she is currently President of ACLAR (2018-20).  In addition to her book on Rowling, Pratchett, and Jones, she has published articles and book chapters on works by them and other authors including Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter, Jeanette Winterson, and Lewis Carroll. Her interests as reflected in teaching include narrative and representation, the power of words in literary history, tradition and innovation in modern British literature, representations of female identity in English and Australian women's writing especially since 1900, and the relationship between cultural issues and narrative in science fiction and fantasy literature (including children's fantasy).  She has extensive experience in supervision; many current HRD student projects relate to her expertise in science fiction and fantasy literature, especially children's/young adult fantasy.  In 2015 she was awarded the Faculty of Education and Arts Dean's Award for Research Supervision Excellence (Individual) at the University of Newcastle.  In 2014 she was awarded an Australian Office of Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. 

Research Expertise
Associate Professor Webb studies English literature since 1900. She is especially interested in how the politics of form emerges through subtle textual details, and has examined this in the writings of Modernist authors, especially Virginia Woolf. Her analyses of writings by Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson take a feminist affective narratological approach. She is currently studying the British fantasy tradition and is interested in its relationship to British postmodern fiction, especially in the form of rewritten fairy tales; she has recently commenced a project examining British fantasy literature of the 1920s. Her study of fantasy literature includes popular novels for children such as J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter sequence and the children's fiction of Diana Wynne Jones and Terry Pratchett; her scholarly monograph on these authors, titled Fantasy and the Real World in British Children's Literature: The Power of Story, was published by Routledge in late 2014.  In 2016 she and Helen Hopcroft received the School of Humanities and Social Science HDR Co-Publication Prize for their article “'A Different Logic': Animals, Transformation, and Rationality in Angela Carter’s 'The Tiger’s Bride,'” published in Marvels & Tales 31.2 (2017).

Teaching Expertise
Associate Professor Webb has developed a range of successful courses at the University of Newcastle, including honours seminars on Fictions of Female Identity, Virginia Woolf, and Orlando and Feminism. She has developed and taught a range of courses at introductory and advanced undergraduate level, including the current courses ENGL1650 Fiction, Drama, Film: An Introduction, ENGL2007 Contemporary Literature, ENGL3013 Women's Writing, ENGL3656 Issues in Speculative Fiction, and ENGL3664 Children's Fantasy Literature.  In 2013 she co-developed the new core first-year course in the English & Writing major, now called ENGL1000 Reading English Literature, and has co-ordinated and taught both face-to-face and online offerings.  She is especially interested in how the literature both of a period and of a genre can be studied to explore intellectual history, both in its content and in its approaches to representation, and has explored this in courses on Victorian to Modernist literature and on twentieth-century British and Irish literature. In 2014 she was awarded an Australian Office of Learning and Teaching Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.

Administrative Expertise
Associate Professor Caroline Webb has performed substantial administrative and governance service to the University of Newcastle. In 1999 she was appointed Assistant Dean (Academic) in the newly established Faculty of the Central Coast, a position she held (later retitled Assistant Dean (Teaching and Learning)) for the three years of the Faculty's existence. This position involved, most importantly, developing protocols for curriculum development and review and for teaching and learning. She was therefore appointed as a (working) observer to the University-level Curriculum Review Committee in 1999 and was a full member in 2000-01, reviewing curriculum proposals at course and program level. She was elected to Academic Senate from April 2000 and served continuously to the end of 2011. In 2002-03 and 2009 she also served on the Faculty of Education and Arts Curriculum, Teaching and Learning Committee. In 2003-04 she served on the working party responding to the external review of the Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Social Science, and in 2004 was an internal member of the panel reviewing the Bachelor of Fine Art programs at both campuses. In 2004 she served on the Course and Program Review committee that assessed the viability of all courses in the university, and has since served on the University Program and Course Approval Committee (2008) and Teaching and Learning Committee (2011).  More recently, as Head of the discipline of English & Writing, she participated in the Master of Creative Industries and Bachelor of Creative Industries working groups that developed programs commencing respectively in July 2016 and January 2017.  She has thus developed considerable and wide-ranging expertise in university academic procedures, and especially in curriculum development and review. In 2002 Associate Professor Webb was appointed Deputy Head of the Ourimbah-based School of Humanities, a position she held for four years; for the latter two she was 0.5 Head of School/0.5 Deputy Head. As the School was multidisciplinary (containing staff from Teacher Education and Fine Art as well as a range of areas in the Humanities and Social Sciences) this role required a broad understanding of disciplinary expectations in a wide range of fields as well as the day-to-day management of very different staff and student needs. The School's activities in many cases paralleled those in other Schools in the Faculty, so this role also involved negotiation with other Heads and senior Faculty members. Later, following restructure of the Faculty, she served for two years (2008-09) as Deputy Head of the School of Humanities and Social Science, initially with specific responsibility for the School's Ourimbah campus operations, later for the whole School, with special responsibility for Teaching and Learning. This School is also multidisciplinary and operates across three campuses with well over 2000 EFTSL. Associate Professor Webb served on the Faculty Executive during 2002-05 and 2008-09 and developed understanding of budgetary issues at School, Faculty, and University level.