Sharon Bickle

University of Southern Queensland, Arts and Communication, Faculty Member

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Sharon Bickle is a lecturer in English Literature at University of Southern Queensland, Springfield Campus.
Email: [email protected]
Phone: +61 734704610

Her research interests are in Late-Victorian Women's writing with a particular interest in the life writings and works of the collaborative partnership known as "Michael Field" (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper).

She is involved in the editing of several journals associated with her key research interests:

Co-Editor with , The Latchkey: A Journal of New Woman Studies
Editorial Board Member, Hecate: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Women's Liberation
Editorial Board Member, Australian Women's Book Review
Co-Editor with Prof. Carole Ferrier, forthcoming Issue, Hecate

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Tanja S Nathanael

San Jose State University

Takis Kayalis

Hellenic Open University

David Seamon

Kansas State University

Erica Haugtvedt

South Dakota School of Mines and Technology

Sharon Crozier-De Rosa

University of Wollongong

Barbara Braid

University of Szczecin, Poland

Armando Marques-Guedes

UNL - New University of Lisbon

Naomi Hetherington

The University of Sheffield

Didier COSTE

Université Bordeaux-Montaigne

Elodie Rousselot

University of Portsmouth

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Book by Sharon Bickle

The Fowl and the Pussycat: Love Letters of Michael Field, 1876-1909

Book Chapters by Sharon Bickle

"Love, Forgery and Strange Desires: Textual Editing as Research Practice"

Publishing and Culture, 2019

For academics, working in the archive is often a romanticised journey—its letters, diaries, and b... more For academics, working in the archive is often a romanticised journey—its letters, diaries, and billets-doux retain the frisson of history (Steedman 2001; Dever, Newman and Vickery 2009). In contrast, the work of the textual editor is seldom considered more than dry scholarship.
This chapter puts aside the idea of textual editing as detached, rational scholarship in order to re-think its obsessive passions as research practice and discuss how the editing of life-writings can bring relationships and events to life in a meaningful way.

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"The Book of Revelation : othering the centre"

Ana Kokkinos An Oeuvre of Outsiders, 2019

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“Rethinking Michael Field: The Case for the Bodleian Letters.” Michael Field and their World, eds. Margaret Stetz and Cheryl Wilson. High Wycombe: Rivendale Press, 2007:39-47.

“A Woman of Women for ‘A Sonnet of Sonnets’: The Ideal Translator and Female Subjectivity in Christina Rossetti’s Monna Innominata.” Tradition and the Poetics of Self in Nineteenth-Century Women’s Poetry, ed. Barbara Garlick. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002: 117-136

Refereed Journal Articles by Sharon Bickle

Digital storytelling and the 'problem' of sentimentality

by Kelly McWilliam and Sharon Bickle

Media International Australia, 2017

‘Sentimentality’ is typically used to refer to the excessive, self-indulgent and banal use of aff... more ‘Sentimentality’ is typically used to refer to the excessive, self-indulgent and banal use of affect to manipulate audiences into ‘tender’ emotional responses Sentimentality is also one of the most common criticisms of ‘digital storytelling’, a co-creative media practice in which ‘ordinary’ people are taught to create short, usually autobiographical ‘digital stories’. Indeed, scholars and practitioners alike have noted the frequent reception of digital storytelling as ‘too sentimental’, ‘sentimental navel-gazing’ and ‘sentimental tripe’ This article uses Stories of Service – an American programme that facilitates the creation of war veterans’ digital stories – as a case study to investigate such criticisms, finding that not only does the programme make extensive use of the tropes and conventions of sentimentality but also that its ‘distinctive media logic’ is actually constitutive of the very sentimentality with which the practice is so frequently charged.

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Re-imagining the rape-revenge genre: Ana Kokkinos’ The Book of Revelation

by Kelly McWilliam and Sharon Bickle

The Book of Revelation focuses on modern dancer Daniel’s (Tom Long) abduction by three masked wom... more The Book of Revelation focuses on modern dancer Daniel’s (Tom Long) abduction by three masked women. As its biblical title suggests, Daniel experiences a personal apocalypse: he is chained naked to a floor, raped and, on release, embarks on a violent quest to find his attackers. In this article, we discuss the film as the site of two distinct, but interwoven re-imaginings. First, we discuss the film as a re-imagining of the rape-revenge genre through its reversal of gendered norms: its replacement of a female rape victim with a male, and male perpetrators with females. Second, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s interdisciplinary notion of Queer Phenomenology, we examine the implications of this gendered shift in terms of its depiction of the experience of rape. We argue that the film’s focus on the vulnerable heterosexual male body and its privileging of spatial relations presents rape as a trauma of disorientation in which the victim is unable to reassert control, to achieve stability, even after release. Ultimately, we argue that the film can be read as a critique of its own genre and an intervention into ways of understanding the experience of rape.

Living " Willfully " : The Same-sex Marriage Ceremony of " Michael Field " by the Smutt River

This article focuses on the relationship and life writings of the late- Victorian writing collabo... more This article focuses on the relationship and life writings of the late- Victorian writing collaboration known as “Michael Field.” It considers the notion of willfulness developed by Sara Ahmed in Willful Subjects as a way of interpreting Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper (“Michael Field”) and their use of willfulness as a productive narrative strategy particularly in the joint diary, “Works and Days.” This becomes apparent through the examination of the account of Bradley and Cooper’s wedding ceremony by Smutt River, and Bradley's symbolic and Eucharistic absorption of the spirit of Cooper’s dead father James into a new and explicitly willful narrative of their married life in Richmond.

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"Twisting Dickens: Modding Childhood for the Steampunk Marketplace in Cory Doctorow's 'Clockwork Fagin.'" Special Issue on NeoVictorianism, Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies. 18.3 (2013): 58-71.

"'The Fierce Earth: Michael Field's Pagan Politics."Special Issue: Hecate: Women, Feminism and the Environment, 38.1 and 2 (2012): 78-91.

"Disability and Gender in the Visual Field: Seeing the Subterranean Lives of Michael Field's William Rufus." Victorian Literature and Culture, 40.1 (2012): 137-52.

"Victorian Mænads: On Michael Field’s Callirrhoë and Being Driven Mad." The Michaelian, 2 (2010).

“Finding Love in the Archives: Editing the ‘Lost’ Love Letters of Michael Field.” Lifewriting Annual, 2 (2008): 71–91.

"'Kick [Ing] Against the Pricks': Michael Field's Brutus Ultor As Manifesto for the'New Woman.'" Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 33.2 (2006).

Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Jan 1, 2006

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"A Fellowship: the Michael Field Letters." Thesis submitted for PhD, Monash University.

"A Woman of Women for "A Sonnet of Sonnets:" The Ideal Translator and Female Subjectivity in Christina Rossetti's Monna Innominata" in Tradition and the Poetics of Self in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry, ed. Barbara Garlick (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002): 117-136.

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“Christina Rossetti’s Monna Innominata: The Amatory Love Sonnet Sequence as Palimpsest” in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, 3.2 (May 1998):. 37-45.

Book Reviews by Sharon Bickle

Rev. of Alison Bartlett and Margaret Henderson (eds.). Things that Liberate: An Australian Feminist Wunderkammer. Forthcoming in Australian Women’s Book Review 2014.

Rev. of Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Nineteenth Century Literature, 65.1 (2010): 127-30.

Rev. of Lucy Chesser, Parting with My Sex: Cross-dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life. Australian Women’s Book Review 21.1 (2009).

The Fowl and the Pussycat: Love Letters of Michael Field, 1876-1909

"Love, Forgery and Strange Desires: Textual Editing as Research Practice"

Publishing and Culture, 2019

Download

"The Book of Revelation : othering the centre"

Ana Kokkinos An Oeuvre of Outsiders, 2019

Download

“Rethinking Michael Field: The Case for the Bodleian Letters.” Michael Field and their World, eds. Margaret Stetz and Cheryl Wilson. High Wycombe: Rivendale Press, 2007:39-47.

Digital storytelling and the 'problem' of sentimentality

by Kelly McWilliam and Sharon Bickle

Media International Australia, 2017

Download

Re-imagining the rape-revenge genre: Ana Kokkinos’ The Book of Revelation

by Kelly McWilliam and Sharon Bickle

Living " Willfully " : The Same-sex Marriage Ceremony of " Michael Field " by the Smutt River

Download

"'The Fierce Earth: Michael Field's Pagan Politics."Special Issue: Hecate: Women, Feminism and the Environment, 38.1 and 2 (2012): 78-91.

"Disability and Gender in the Visual Field: Seeing the Subterranean Lives of Michael Field's William Rufus." Victorian Literature and Culture, 40.1 (2012): 137-52.

"Victorian Mænads: On Michael Field’s Callirrhoë and Being Driven Mad." The Michaelian, 2 (2010).

“Finding Love in the Archives: Editing the ‘Lost’ Love Letters of Michael Field.” Lifewriting Annual, 2 (2008): 71–91.

"'Kick [Ing] Against the Pricks': Michael Field's Brutus Ultor As Manifesto for the'New Woman.'" Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, 33.2 (2006).

Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, Jan 1, 2006

Download

"A Fellowship: the Michael Field Letters." Thesis submitted for PhD, Monash University.

Download

“Christina Rossetti’s Monna Innominata: The Amatory Love Sonnet Sequence as Palimpsest” in Australasian Victorian Studies Journal, 3.2 (May 1998):. 37-45.

Rev. of Alison Bartlett and Margaret Henderson (eds.). Things that Liberate: An Australian Feminist Wunderkammer. Forthcoming in Australian Women’s Book Review 2014.

Rev. of Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England. Nineteenth Century Literature, 65.1 (2010): 127-30.

Rev. of Lucy Chesser, Parting with My Sex: Cross-dressing, Inversion and Sexuality in Australian Cultural Life. Australian Women’s Book Review 21.1 (2009).

Rev. of Jill Ehnenn, Women’s Literary Collaboration, Queerness and Late-Victorian Culture (2008). The Michaelian, 1 (2009).

Mrs. Beeton: The Fashioning of a Domestic Goddess. Rev. of Kathryn Hughes, The Short Life and Long Times of Mrs Beeton. London: HarperCollins, 2005. Australian Women’s Book Review, Vol 18.2 (2006).

Rev. of Lorraine York, Rethinking Collaborative Women’s Writing. Social Semiotics 13.2 (2003): 223-225.

Petra Dierkes-Thrun and Sharon Bickle. Editorial. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Studies, 5 (Summer 2013).

Petra Dierkes-Thrun and Sharon Bickle. Editorial. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Studies, 4 (Summer 2012).

Petra Dierkes-Thrun and Sharon Bickle. Editorial. The Latchkey: A Journal of New Studies, 3 (Summer 2011).

Michelle Lee and Sharon Bickle. Editorial: “Fieldnotes.” The Michaelian, 2 (2010).

Michelle Lee and Sharon Bickle. Editorial: “Fieldnotes.” The Michaelian, 1 (2009).

“‘Michael Field,’” Fifty books for fifty years: Celebrating a half century of collecting : an exhibition of material from the Monash University Library rare books collection (2009).

“‘No place on earth’: The Theatre, the ‘Fan’ and the Plays of ‘Michael Field.’” MLA Convention, Seattle, Jan 2012.

“Unweaving the Body: Composition and Decomposition in the Plays of ‘Michael Field.’” British Association of Victorian Studies (BAVS) Conference, Birmingham, Sept. 2011

“Understanding Nineteenth-Century Celebrity: Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetic Poet and Fame.” Australasian Victorian Studies Association (AVSA) Conference, Adelaide, Feb 2011.

“Re‐orienting English Tradition: Paganism in Michael Field’s ‘Ordinary’ English Historical Dramas.” Re-Orienting Victorian Studies: AVSA Conference, Singapore, Jun. 2010

“‘My Subterranean Life’: Uncovering the Invisible Goddess in ‘Michael Field’ (Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper).” Australasian Women’s Studies Conference (AWGSA), Adelaide, Jun. 2010.

“’Since I have Entered the Holy Catholic Church, I have Never Fallen into Fleshly Sin’: Reading Incest in the Life-Writings of ‘Michael Field.’” MLA Convention, Chicago, Dec. 2007.

“Disembodied Spirit: ‘Michael Field’ and the Spirit of the 1890s.” The Spirit of the Age: Debating the Past, Present and Future of Life Writing. Kingston University, London, Jul. 2007.

“’Plunging down among the wraps’: Reading the Lesbian Bodies of ‘Michael Field.’” Lesbian Existence and The Lesbian Continuum, University College Dublin, Jun. 2007.

“Towards a Feminist Biography of ‘Michael Field.’” AWGSA Conference, Monash University, Jul. 2006.

“Love in the Archives: Editing the ‘Michael Field’ letters.” Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century British Women Writers Conference, University of Florida, Gainesville, Mar. 2006.

“The Case for the Bodleian Letters.” ‘Michael Field’ and their World Conference, University of Delaware, Feb. 2004.

I 'Believe in Willie Hughes': The Portrait of Mr W.H

Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr W. H. positions itself at the site of one of Literary History’s ... more Oscar Wilde’s The Portrait of Mr W. H. positions itself at the site of one of Literary History’s great mysteries: the identity of the young man of William Shakespeare’s sonnets. Framing the narrator’s obsessive pursuit of the young man is the title’s portrait of Willie Hughes, which is presented from the very start in the context of a discussion of literary forgeries. In fact, the portrait is a doubled lie: the name of Shakespeare’s boy-actor, Willie Hughes, is created from the fabric of the sonnets themselves, while the portrait is revealed as the work of a print shop in Holborn. Nevertheless, the forgery exists not to conceal the lie of Willie Hughes, but rather to reveal a truth. This chapter contextualise this unusual and often overlooked text within Wilde’s oeuvre. While it is often the question of the forgery that draws the attention of critics here we focus not on the way it spotlights the factitious passions of the “inexpert” reader and the way this then authorises Shakespeare’s, and ultimately Wilde’s, male-centred desire

3 The Book of Revelation: othering the centre With Sharon Bickle

Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Dec 17, 2019

Living 'wilfully': the same-sex marriage ceremony of 'Michael Field' by the Smutt River

Hecate, Aug 1, 2016

This article focuses on the relationship and life writings of the late- Victorian writing collabo... more This article focuses on the relationship and life writings of the late- Victorian writing collaboration known as 'Michael Field.' It considers the notion of willfulness developed by Sara Ahmed in Willful Subjects as a way of interpreting Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper ('Michael Field') and their use of willfulness as a productive narrative strategy particularly in the joint diary, 'Works and Days'. This becomes apparent through the examination of the account of Bradley and Cooper’s wedding ceremony by Smutt River, and Bradley's symbolic and Eucharistic absorption of the spirit of Cooper’s dead father James into a new and explicitly willful narrative of their married life in Richmond

Tsiolkas in the Classroom: Confronting Our Discomfort

Antipodes

A Woman of Women for “A Sonnet of Sonnets”: Exploring Female Subjectivity in Christina Rossetti’s “Monna Innominata”

Tradition and the Poetics of Self in Nineteenth-Century Women's Poetry, 2002

A fellowship : the Michael Field letters, 1876-1899

This thesis was scanned from the print manuscript for digital preservation and is copyright the a... more This thesis was scanned from the print manuscript for digital preservation and is copyright the author. Researchers can access this thesis by asking their local university, institution or public library to make a request on their behalf. Monash staff and postgraduate students can use the link in the References field.

Michael Field: Decadent Moderns

Nineteenth-Century Contexts

Feminism in Australian uni's

There is something gloriously madcap about the NTEU's Bluestocking Week. As everyone who has ... more There is something gloriously madcap about the NTEU's Bluestocking Week. As everyone who has tried to festoon an open area with balloons and stockings knows, it's impossible to stop them kicking up their heels. While there is an underlying sense of anachronism to the celebrations - who would question the value of women staff and students to Australian universities? - we are not so far removed from those early bluestockings to recapture the frisson of forbidden books and forbidden spaces.

Edith Cooper's Sin

The Routledge Handbook of Victorian Scandals in Literature and Culture, Oct 10, 2022

Cat in a Spat Scrapping DR Seuss Books is Not Cancel Culture

The Conversation Media Trust, Mar 4, 2021

Let’s start by putting aside the bugbear that it is even possible to 'cancel' children’s ... more Let’s start by putting aside the bugbear that it is even possible to 'cancel' children’s author Dr Seuss. As Philip Bump wrote yesterday in The Washington Post, 'No one is ‘cancelling’ Dr Seuss. The author, himself, is dead for one thing, which is about as cancelled as a person can get.' Laying aside a multimillion-dollar publishing business, tattered copies of Dr Seuss books clutter children’s bedrooms around the globe. Parents still grapple nightly with the tongue-twisters of Fox in Socks, Horton Hears a Who! or Hop on Pop, and try their best to keep their eyes open through a 20th reading of Green Eggs and Ham. However, on Tuesday (what would have been Dr Seuss’s 117th birthday), the company that protects the late author’s legacy announced its plan to halt publishing and licensing six (out of more than 60) Dr Seuss books

The Book of Revelation: othering the centre

This chapter is focused on Kokkinos’ most controversial film, The Book of Revelation (2006). In t... more This chapter is focused on Kokkinos’ most controversial film, The Book of Revelation (2006). In this chapter I, with Sharon Bickle, am interested in the depiction of the film's protagonist Daniel, who, as a successful white hetero-masculine man is the only hegemonic protagonist of Kokkinos’ oeuvre. It is therefore interesting that he is also the only protagonist that does not witness traumatic social injustice but is instead the victim of it. We argue that Daniel’s abduction and torture disorientates him so profoundly that is forcibly recast as an outsider to his own life—he changes his name and leaves his previous job, house, partner, and profession on his release from capture. Moreover, where Head On focused on or ‘centred’ a marginalised character or ‘Other’, we argue that The Book of Revelation can be read as the reverse: as ‘othering’ the standard hero of much Australian cinema, namely the white, heterosexual, Anglo-Irish man (Seco 2008). We examine how this occurs through ...

The Book of Revelation: othering the centre with Sharon Bickle

Living "Willfully": The Same-Sex Marriage Ceremony of "Michael Field" by the Smutt River

Hecate, 2015

This article focuses on the relationship and life writings of the late- Victorian writing collabo... more This article focuses on the relationship and life writings of the late- Victorian writing collaboration known as 'Michael Field.' It considers the notion of willfulness developed by Sara Ahmed in Willful Subjects as a way of interpreting Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper ('Michael Field') and their use of willfulness as a productive narrative strategy particularly in the joint diary, 'Works and Days'. This becomes apparent through the examination of the account of Bradley and Cooper’s wedding ceremony by Smutt River, and Bradley's symbolic and Eucharistic absorption of the spirit of Cooper’s dead father James into a new and explicitly willful narrative of their married life in Richmond.

Love, forgery and strange desires: textual editing as research practice

For academics, working in the archive is often a romanticised journey—its letters, diaries, and b... more For academics, working in the archive is often a romanticised journey—its letters, diaries, and billets-doux retain the frisson of history (Steedman 2001; Dever, Newman and Vickery 2009). In contrast, the work of the textual editor is seldom considered more than dry scholarship. This chapter puts aside the idea of textual editing as detached, rational scholarship in order to re-think its obsessive passions as research practice and discuss how the editing of life-writings can bring relationships and events to life in a meaningful way.

Download

Re-imagining the rape-revenge genre: Ana Kokkinos’ The Book of Revelation

Continuum, 2017

Abstract The Book of Revelation focuses on modern dancer Daniel’s (Tom Long) abduction by three m... more Abstract The Book of Revelation focuses on modern dancer Daniel’s (Tom Long) abduction by three masked women. As its biblical title suggests, Daniel experiences a personal apocalypse: he is chained naked to a floor, raped and, on release, embarks on a violent quest to find his attackers. In this article, we discuss the film as the site of two distinct, but interwoven re-imaginings. First, we discuss the film as a re-imagining of the rape-revenge genre through its reversal of gendered norms: its replacement of a female rape victim with a male, and male perpetrators with females. Second, drawing on Sara Ahmed’s interdisciplinary notion of Queer Phenomenology, we examine the implications of this gendered shift in terms of its depiction of the experience of rape. We argue that the film’s focus on the vulnerable heterosexual male body and its privileging of spatial relations presents rape as a trauma of disorientation in which the victim is unable to reassert control, to achieve stability, even after release. Ultimately, we argue that the film can be read as a critique of its own genre and an intervention into ways of understanding the experience of rape.

Digital storytelling and the ‘problem’ of sentimentality

Media International Australia, 2017

Twisting Dickens: Modding Childhood for the Steampunk Marketplace in Cory Doctorow’s “Clockwork Fagin” (2011)

Australasian Journal of Victorian Studies, Nov 28, 2013

This article provides a critical comparison between Cory Doctorow’s adapted short story “Clockwor... more This article provides a critical comparison between Cory Doctorow’s adapted short story “Clockwork Fagin” and Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist. It focuses particularly on Doctorow’s use of the posthuman “modded” child in order to question firstly whether the text performs a neo-Victorian critique of the Dickensian text and secondly whether its Young Adult “rebelling to conform” narrative structure compromises any anti-materialist steampunk politics presented in the text—and whether this affects its claim to the steampunk genre.

Disability and Gender in the Visual Field: Seeing the Subterranean Lives of Michael Field's William Rufus

Victorian Literature and Culture, 2012

When the UK'sGuardiannewspaperfeatured “La Gioconda” as poem of the week in January 2010, the... more When the UK'sGuardiannewspaperfeatured “La Gioconda” as poem of the week in January 2010, the paper's popular readership discovered what many late-Victorian scholars had known about for some time: the poetic partnership of Katharine Bradley (1846–1914) and Edith Cooper (1862–1913), known as “Michael Field.” The successful recovery of the Fields as significant late-Victorian writers – a project now in its second decade – seems poised to emerge into popular awareness driven as much by interest in their unconventional love affair as by the poetry itself. Scholars too have been seduced by the romance of a transgressive love story, and the critical nexus between sexuality and textuality has produced remarkable scholarship on the Fields’ lyric poetry: those texts in which the personas have a rough equivalence with Bradley and Cooper themselves. Yopie Prins first noted the complex engagement of multiple voices with lyric structure inLong Ago(74–111), and Ana Parejo Vadillo (Women P...

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A woman of women for" A Sonnet of Sonnets": The ideal translator and female subjectivity in Christina Rossetti's" Monna Innominata

... Access Statistics: 2 Abstract Views - Detailed Statistics. Created: Mon, 21 Feb 2011, 12:34:1... more

Finding love in the archives: Editing the" lost" love letters of" Michael Field

... Access Statistics: 4 Abstract Views - Detailed Statistics. Created: Mon, 21 Feb 2011, 12:23:5... more

Sharon Bickle

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Book by Sharon Bickle

Book Chapters by Sharon Bickle

Refereed Journal Articles by Sharon Bickle

Book Reviews by Sharon Bickle

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