Our people

Dr Matthew Ryan

National School of Arts and Humanities

Areas of expertise: irish literature; literary and cultural theory; dystopian and utopian literature; creative nonfiction writing

Email: Matthew.Ryan@acu.edu.au

Location: ACU Melbourne Campus

ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4510-6514

My research considers the ways in which contemporary writing presents and contributes to the constitution of self in relation to place, social and environmental circumstances and to more attenuated - national and transnational - forms of sociality and polity. I focus my research on the ways contemporary novels and short stories negotiate this set of relations. I have specialised in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Irish writing but have extended my consideration to other contemporary literatures such as dystopian writing.

I have supervised a wide variety of student research projects to successful completion at Honours, Masters, and Doctoral levels.

Publications

Edited books

• Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique(eds) Matthew Ryan and Simon Sellars, Issue 17, August, 2009
• Demanding the Impossible: Utopia and Dystopia (eds) Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan, Simon Sellars, Arena Publications, 2008.
• Imagining the Future: Utopia and Dystopia (eds) Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan, Robert Savage, Arena Publications, 2006.

Journal articles and book chapters

• 'Uses for ruins: Anne Enright's The Green Road' Textual Practice,35:1, DOI: 1080/0950236X.2019.1652678, 2021.
• 'Place, History and Story: Tony Birch and the Yarra River' with Carolyn Masel, Australian Literary Studies,2016
• 'Popular Culture: pessimism and hope' Arena Journal, no.45/46 2016.
• 'Art, Utopia and the Aestheticized Self' Arena Journal, no.39/40, 2012-13.
• 'What am I like?: Writing the Body and the Self' in Anne Enright: Irish Writers in Their Time(eds) Claire Bracken, Susan Cahill, Irish Academic Press, 2011.
• 'Hope is Critical: Cormac McCarthy's The Road' in Demanding the Impossible: Utopia and Dystopia (eds) Andrew Milner, Matthew Ryan, Simon Sellars, Arena Publications, 2008.
• 'Abstract Homes: Deterritorialisation and Reterritorialisation in the work of Colm Tóibín' Irish Studies Review, no.16, vol.1, 2008.
• 'Solipsism as Cultural Condition: Some recent Irish Examples' Arena Journal,27, 2006.
• 'Vanguards and Avant-gardes: The Reason in Revolt Online Project on Political and Cultural Radicalism' Simon Booth, Verity Burgmann, Stuart Macintyre, Andrew Milner and Matthew Ryan, The Past is before Us: Proceedings of the 9th Annual Labour History Conference, University of Sydney, 2005.
• 'Ourselves Alone: Solipsism in Neil Jordan's Novels and Films' Barcelona English Language and Literature Studies, no.11, 2000.
• 'A Postmodern Ireland?' Arena Journal, no.11, 1998.

Appointments and affiliations

• Secretary of Irish Studies Association of Australia and New Zealand (ISAANZ)
• Member of International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures (IASIL)

Public engagement

• 'Time Together', Scroll Magazine, 2022
• 'The Rooney Effect' Scroll Magazine, 2021
• 'For years, I could hear my dead father's voice', The Guardian, 9 February, 2020
• 'Last Call' Kill Your Darlings, 28 January, 2020
• 'Explainer: how Romanticism rebelled against cold-hearted rationality' The Conversation, 26 July, 2018
• 'Betrayal and guilt: past and future collide in Easter Rising commemorations' The Conversation, 22 April, 2016
• 'Dystopian Donald: the horror and the hope in Trump's presidential campaign' The Conversation, 17 October, 2016
• 'Permablitz' Arena MagazineOct-Nov 2009
• 'First Australians: the politics of recognition', Arena Magazine, no.98, Dec-Jan, 2008
• 'Mothers and Sons' A review of Colm Tóibín's Mothers and Sons'. In The Age29 March, 2008
• 'Non-violence: The History of a Dangerous IdeaA review of Mark Kurlanky's book. The Age February 23, 2007
• 'On Non-Indigenous Belonging' Arena Magazine, 2006
• 'From Precarity to Precarious' Arena Magazine, April-May 2006
• 'Risking It', Arena Magazine, no.80, 2005
• 'The Stench of Abandonment: Hurricane Katrina', Arena Magazine, no.79, 2005
• 'Return of the Repressed', Editorial, Arena Magazine, no. 53, 2001
• 'After Consumerism'. Editorial, Arena Magazine, no. 52, 2001
• 'Race, sex and power'. A review of Mark Kurlansky's The White Man in the Tree. In TheAge, Saturday Extra, 26 May, 2001)
• 'Emerald Germs'. A review of Patrick McCabe's The Emerald Germs of Ireland. In TheAge, Saturday Extra, 24 February, 2001
• 'A Writer of Absence'. A review of John Banville's Eclipse. In the Age, Saturday Extra, 7 October, 2000
• 'Ground Control', Arena Magazine, no. 48, 2000
• 'George W. Bush: Linking God, Death and Votes' Arena Magazine, no. 46, 2000
• 'Three Geeks, Three Films: Existenz, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club'. In Arena Magazine, no. 45, 2000