Assoc.
Prof. Philip
Armstrong
Qualifications
- M.A. (Auckland)
- Ph.D. (Wales)
Contact Details
Phone: +64 3 364 2987
Internal Phone: 7929
philip.armstrong@canterbury.ac.nz
Postal address:
English Programme
School of Humanities
University of Canterbury
Private Bag 4800
Christchurch, New Zealand
Physical address:
Room 309, English/Education Building
Office Hours:
TBA
Research
Philip's most recent book is What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity (Routledge, 2008), a study of human-animal relations in narrative fiction in English from the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. He is the editor (with Laurence Simmons) of Knowing Animals (Brill, 2007), a collection of cultural studies essays on animality. He is also the author of two books on Shakespeare (Shakespeare's Visual Regime, Palgrave, 2000; Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis, Routledge, 2001), and various articles on the literatures of Aotearoa New Zealand and the Pacific. His current research, as co-principal investigator of the Marsden-funded Kararehe project, is on the representation of human-animal relationships in New Zealand historical, literary and popular narratives.
Selected Publications
Books
What Animals Mean in the Fiction of Modernity. London and
New York: Routledge, 2008: viii + 256 pp.
Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis. London and New York, Routledge, 2001: xii + 269 pp.
Shakespeare's Visual Regime: Tragedy, Psychoanalysis and the Gaze. Houndmills, Palgrave; New York, St Martin's Press, 2000: x + 240 pp.
Chapters in Books and Books Edited
(with Laurence Simmons). Knowing Animals. Leiden and Boston:
Brill, 2007: xv + 296 pp.
‘Farming Images: Animals Rights and Agribusiness in the Field of Vision'. In Laurence Simmons and Philip Armstrong (ed.), Knowing Animals. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007: 105-130.
(with Laurence Simmons) ‘Bestiary: An Introduction'. In Laurence Simmons and Philip Armstrong (ed.), Knowing Animals. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2007: 1-26.
(with Annie Potts) 'Serving the Wild'. In Anna Smith and Lydia Wevers (ed.), On Display: New Essays in Cultural Tourism. Wellington, University of Victoria Press, 2003: 15-40.
Articles in Refereed Scholarly Journals
‘What Animals Mean, in Moby-Dick, for Example'. Textual Practice 19.1 (Spring 2005): 93-111.
‘“Leviathan is a Skein of Networks”: Translating Nature and Culture in Moby-Dick'. ELH 71 (2004): 1039-63.
‘Moby-Dick and Compassion'. Society & Animals 12.1 (2004): 19-38.
'Oceangoing Craft: The Writing of Contemporary Polynesia'. Landfall 206 (2003): 64-80.
'The Postcolonial Animal'. Society & Animals 10.4 (2002): 413-19.
'Shakespeare and the Space of Adolescence'. English in Aotearoa 47 (October 2002): 18-28.
Teaching
In ENGL 102, Introduction to English, Philip lectures on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds and Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. In ENGL132/CULT132, Cultural Studies: Reading Culture, he offers introductory lectures on cultural studies concepts and terms, followed by modules on globalization and taste, and on the cultural mediation of nature and of human-animal relations. In ENGL 333/CULT 333, The Exotic, he presents material on Aphra Behn, Robert Louis Stevenson, and contemporary postcolonial writers including Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Ben Okri, Salman Rushdie and Yann Martel. Philip's Honours course, ENGL 424 Postcolonial Writing: Animals and Settlement, which draws closely on his current research, covers a wide range of topics concerned with the representation of animals in relation to colonisation, decolonisation and globalisation. Philip also contributes to AMST 236/AMST331/GEND 213/GEND311/CULT 206 From Bambi to Kong: The Animal in American Popular Culture.
Supervision
Philip would be happy to consider supervision of selected topics within the following general areas:
- Human-Animal Studies
- Postcolonial and Cultural Studies
- Shakespeare
Administration
Co-Director, NZ Centre
for Human-Animal Studies
English Honours Co-Ordinator
Background
Philip completed his BA and MA in English at Auckland University before moving to Cardiff in 1992 to complete a PhD in Critical and Cultural Theory at the University of Wales. On his return to Aotearoa, he taught in the English Department at Auckland for three years before coming to Canterbury in 1998.