DOCTOR Molly Brown

The Department of English congratulates Dr Molly Brown, who was awarded her D.Litt. in English on 3 April 2013.

In her thesis, Memes, magic and the making of meaning in re-visioning fantasy for young adults, she shows how, by reading innovative works of fantasy, young adult readers can gain access to a flexible yet safe narrative space in which to confront the psychosocial crises attendant on coming of age, and thereby begin the process of shaping adult identity. She uses new theoretical constructions of both the dynamics of power and the experience of reading itself to explore how characteristically postmodern techniques can allow works of young adult fantasy to complicate awareness of issues of time, space, causality, gender and ethnicity, and how metafictional devices may be used to encourage a divided and thus more aware mode of reading by foregrounding the constructed nature of the story itself. Her study provides a scholarly reassessment of an influential literary genre that is frequently dismissed or undervalued.     

The thesis was acclaimed by the external examiners as a highly significant, even ground-breaking study on the value of works of fantasy in relation to the processes of maturation. Prof. Margot Hillel of the Australian Catholic University described it as ‘an impressive piece of scholarship’, while Prof. Claudia Mitchell of McGill University in Montreal, Canada, hailed it as ‘a superb piece of work’.