Hsu-Ming Teo, Lecturer
PhD (1998) Department of History, University of Sydney
BA Honours (1994), Class I & University Medal, University of Sydney
| Office: | W6A 403 |
| Phone: | +61 2 9850 7018 |
| Fax: | +61 2 9850 6594 |
| Email: | hsu-ming.teo@humn.mq.edu.au |
Hsu-Ming Teo is a cultural historian and novelist who works in the area of twentieth-century European history, British imperial culture, travel and tourism, and popular literature, She is the co-editor of Cultural History in Australia (UNSW Press 2003). In 1999 she won The Australian/Vogel Literary Award for her first novel Love and Vertigo , which was also short-listed for the inaugural Tasmania Pacific Region Literary Prize and the Dobbie Award for women's fiction. It has been translated into German, Italian, Chinese and Thai. Her second novel, Behind the Moon , was published in 2005 and short-listed for one of the 2006 NSW Premier's Literary Awards. She was a member of the NSW Premier's Literature and History committee in 2004, one of the judges of the 2007 NSW Premier's Literary Awards, and was on the advisory council of the 2007 Man Asian Literary Prize. She is currently serving as one of the editorial board members of the Journal of Australian Studies.
Research supervision
Available to supervise in topics in the following areas: history of travel and tourism; British imperial culture and postcolonialism; history of popular culture; history of western Europe in the twentieth century.
Current Research Projects
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• Loving the Orient: Representations of Arabs in western women's popular culture'.
This project examines orientalist representations of Arab culture in women's 'sheik romance' novels, films and television miniseries. It traces historical antecedents of popular orientalism from medieval chivalric romances onwards, then contextualises twentieth-century spurts of interest in these 'sheik novels' against the background of 1920s British imperial ambitions in the Middle East and American involvement in the 1991 Gulf and 2003 Iraq wars. It looks at the influence of feminism and the politics of cultural pluralism on representations of Arab culture in the Anglophone world.
- 'Colonialism, Race and the Mass-market Romance Novel'.
During the twentieth century, the output and consumption of romance novels increased until romances currently comprise over 50% of the international fiction market. While a number of feminist studies have compared ideals of class, gender, romance and sexuality in British and American romances, the subject of colonialism, whiteness and race relations has been virtually ignored, while very few romances from the white settler dominions have been analysed even though a substantial number of romance authors originated from these countries. This project explores how the English-language romance novel has perpetuated and naturalised the culture of European colonialism throughout the twentieth century, leaving a legacy of race relations still evident in popular culture today.
- 'The popular culture of romantic love in twentieth-century Australia '.
In western culture 'love' is commonly cited as the reason for cohabitation or marriage, yet 46% of marriages are likely to end in divorce in Australia today. This project examines how the culture of romantic love has changed in Australia over the course of the twentieth century as changing patterns of work and gender relations, consumerism, and the supplanting of spiritual ideals by sexuality and the cult of the body modified representations of love in literature, film, and periodicals. The popular discourse of romantic love has transformed expectations of love, placing different demands upon what it is supposed to achieve.
Research funding and fellowships
Macquarie University New Staff Research Grant ($15,056), ‘Representations of Arabs in women’s popular culture’, September 2006 to September 2007.
Australia Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship ($208,000), ‘The popular culture of romantic love in twentieth century Australia’, 2002-2005.
Macquarie University Research Fellowship ($92,000), ‘A comparative history of women’s romance writing in the UK, USA and Australia’, 2000-2002
Macquarie University Research Grant for ‘Colonialism, race and the romance novel’, ($9,000) 2001.
Australia Research Council Post-Doctoral Fellowship for ‘A comparative history of women’s romance writing in the UK, USA and Australia’, January 2000 – not accepted.
Edited book
Fiction
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Refereed journal articles
- ‘Love Writes: Gender and Romantic Love in Australian Love Letters, 1860-1960’, Australian Feminist Studies, vol. 20, no. 48, November 2005, pp. 343-361.
- ‘Amputations of the Self’, Life Writing, vol. 2, no. 1, 2005, pp. 129-139.
- ‘Romancing the Raj: Interracial Relations in Anglo-Indian Romance Novels’, History of Intellectual Culture, vol.4, no.1, October 2004, http://www.ucalgary.ca/hic/hic/website/2004vol4no1/framesets/2004vol4no1teoarticleframeset.htm
- ‘Future Fusions and a Taste for the Past: Literature, History and the Imagination of Australianness’, in Kate Darian-Smith, ed., Challenging Histories: Reflections on Australian History, Australian Historical Studies Special Issue, No. 118, 2002, pp. 127-139.
- ‘Women’s Travel, Dance, and British Metropolitan Anxieties, 1890–1939’, Gender and History, vol. 12, no. 2, July 2000, pp. 366-400.
- ‘Constructions of Gender and Racial Identities in Interwar Women’s Travel Writing’, Limina, vol.5, 1999, pp. 124–137.
- ‘Shanghaied By Sheiks: Orientalism and hybridity in women’s romance writing’, Olive Pink Society Bulletin, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1999, pp. 12–21.
- ‘The Continuum of Sexual Violence in Occupied Germany, 1945–1949’, Women’s History Review, vol.5, no.2, 1996, pp. 191–218. Reprinted in Fiona Montgomery, ed., European Women’s History: A Reader, Routledge, London, 2001.
- ‘“Space … the Final Frontier”: American nationalism and mid-twentieth visions of the future’, Australasian Journal of American Studies, vol.13, no.1, 1994, pp. 27–44.
Chapters in books
- 'Transnational romantic love', Dictionary of Transnational History , ed. Pierre-Yves Saunier and Akira Iriye ( London : Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming 2009)
- 'Popular Culture', together with Richard White, in Australia's Empire , Oxford History of the British Empire , ed. Deryck Schreuder and Stuart Ward (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 336-362.
- ‘ 'Orientalism and mass-market romance novels in the twentieth century', in Edward Said: The Legacy of a Public Intellectual , ed. Debjani Ganguly and Ned Curthoys ( Melbourne : MUP e-press, 2007), pp. 241-262
- 'The Americanisation of Romantic Love in Australia ', in Connected Worlds: History in Transnational Perspective , ed. Ann Curthoys and Marilyn Lake ( Canberra : ANU E-Press, 2006), pp. 171-192.
- 'Orientalism', in Companion to Women's Historical Writing , ed. Barbara Caine, Ann Curthoys, and Mary Spongberg ( London : Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), pp. 389-398.
- 'Travel', in Companion to Women's Historical Writing , ed. Barbara Caine, Ann Curthoys, and Mary Spongberg ( London : Palgrave-Macmillan, 2005), pp. 551-559.
- 'The Britishness of Australian Popular Fiction', in Exploring the British World , ed. Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw, Kiera Lindsey & Stuart Macintyre (Melbourne: RMIT Publishing, 2004), pp.721-747.
- 'Introduction', Cultural History in Australia , ed. Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White ( Sydney : UNSW Press, 2003).
- 'Multiculturalism and the Problem of Multi-Cultural Histories: An Overview of Ethnic Historiography', Cultural History in Australia , ed. Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White ( Sydney : UNSW Press, 2003), pp. 142-155.
- 'The Romance of White Nations: Imperialism, Popular Culture and National Histories', in After the Imperial Turn , ed. Antoinette Burton ( Durham : Duke University Press, 2003), pp. 279-292.
- 'Femininity, Modernity and Colonial Discourse', in In Transit: Travel, Text, Empire , ed. Helen Gilbert and Anna Johnston ( New York : Peter Lang, 2002), pp.173-190.
- 'Wandering in the Wake of Empire: British Travel and Tourism in the Post-Imperial World', in British Culture and the End of Empire , ed. Stuart Ward ( Manchester : Manchester University Press, 2001), pp. 163-189.
- 'Clean Spaces, Dirty Bodies: The Middle Eastern Desert in British Women's Travel Writing, 1890-1914', in Dealing With Difference: Essays in Gender, Culture and History , ed. P. Grimshaw and D. Kirkby (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1997), pp. 23-33.
Reviews
• Liz Conor, The Spectacular Modern Woman: Feminine Visibility in the 1920s , Australian Historical Studies , vol. 36, no. 126 (Oct 2005), p.
• J.V. D'Cruz and William Steele's Australia 's Ambivalence Towards Asia : Politics, Neo/Post-colonialism, and Fact/Fiction , Australian Book Review , February 2004, no. 258, pp.53-53.
• 'Condition critical: love's labour's lost. A review of John Armstrong's Conditions of Love: The Philosophy of Intimacy . The Age , 12 May 2002.
• Shirley Geok-lin Lim's Joss and Gold , Far Eastern Economic Review , May 2001
• Deirdre Coleman, Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: Two Women's Travel Narratives of the 1790s , and Marion Tinling, With Women's Eyes: Visitors to the New World 1775-1918 , Women's History Review , vol.10, no.1, 2001
Undergraduate units
HIST 264/364: Travel, tourism and cultural production
http://online.mq.edu.au/public/HIST264/
HIST 270/370: Twentieth century Europe: From Empire to EU
http://online.mq.edu.au/pub/HIST270/
HIST 480-99: Debates in Modern Historiography (co-convenor with Dr Marnie Hughes-Warrington)
Postgraduate units
MHPG914: Weimar and Nazi Germany (2008)
MHPG 811: Colonialism, sex and gender
Committees
Modern History Research committee
Division of Humanities research committee
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