My name is Daniel Davis Wood; I’m a graduate student, tutor, and lecturer in Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne, Australia. My research focuses primarily on the legacy of the Western frontier in American literature and popular culture, from the late eighteenth century through to the present. My other research interests include postcolonial literature, Australian literature, socio-political literature, the philosophy of literature, and literary aesthetics.
In 2009, I was president and fundraiser of a committee that organised a humanities-oriented interdisciplinary graduate student symposium at the University of Melbourne, at which graduate students and early career academics from around Australia were able to share their research findings with a public audience. In 2009-10, I was president, fundraiser, and editor of the journal Antithesis, based at the University of Melbourne, which publishes the work of graduate students and early career academics in accordance with double-blind refereeing guidelines.
I started this blog in January 2010 for reasons best explained in my first post.
Throughout 2010, I coordinated a series of skills seminars at the University, bringing graduate students together with established academics in order to offer students expert advice on publishing articles, attending conferences, and teaching classes while conducting research.
Throughout 2011, I edited a collection of scholarly essays on the work of the American writer Edward P. Jones. In addition to conducting my own research, I’m currently one of the coordinators of the fortnightly American Literature Reading Group based at the University but open to the general public, and I’m due to submit my PhD thesis in the first quarter of 2012.
Finally, a quick note on my name. My name was Daniel Wood, and from time to time I am still credited by that name when I publish my work. After I married my wife in June 2011, however, she and I both changed our surnames to combine — without a hyphen — each of our original surnames. My surname, now, is Davis Wood. I can’t say that I feel troubled when I’m still referred to as Daniel Wood, of course, but the name change has elicited questions from some people and so I thought it best to offer a quick explanation here.
