Jayne Regan is a cultural, literary, and environmental historian. Her research focuses on the changing nature of literary engagement with the environment in early to mid-twentieth century Australia. Jayne’s Rachel Carson Center project explores the way landscapes were co-opted into the Australian literary community’s efforts to enhance Australia’s cultural “value” during the 1930s and 1940s, a period when an atmosphere of international catastrophe mingled with a variety of distinctly Australian colonial insecurities. Jayne was an undergraduate at the University of Wollongong, before completing her PhD at the Australian National University in 2017. She is the manager Australia’s leading literary studies journal, Australian Literary Studies. She has also worked at the National Museum of Australia, creating history, geography and civics education resources for the Museum’s new “Defining Moments Digital Classroom”, to be launched in 2020. Jayne has presented her research at a range of conferences, taking her from Canberra to Cologne, Beijing to Ballarat, and Humpty Doo to Helsinki.
RCC Research Project: National Landscapes: The Australian Literary Community and Environmental Thought in the 1930s and 1940s
Selected Publications:
“‘Racy of the Soil’: Ian Mudie, Right-Wing Nationalism, and the South Australian Soil Erosion Crisis.” Environment and History 24, no. 3 (2018): 403–426.
“Irrigation Nation or Pacific Partner? Visions for Postwar Australia.” RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, no. 2 (2017): 49–58.
“Campbell, Robert Jnr (1944-1993).” Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 2017.
“A Cosmopolitan Jindyworobak: Flexmore Hudson, Nationalism and World-Mindedness.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 15, no. 3 (2015).