Dr nancy paxton

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2009 Fulbright Senior Scholar

Media profile

“While Great Britain, the United States, New Zealand and Australia shared some legal traditions defining censorship, including definitions of treason, blasphemy, and obscenity, censorship in Australia and New Zealand differed significantly in ways that are theoretically provocative and under-researched.”

Nancy Paxton, currently a Professor of English at Northern Arizona University (NAU), has won a Fulbright Senior Scholarship from the Australian-American Fulbright Commission to undertake 6 months research at James Cook University, Townsville, and at the Australian National University, Canberra.

Nancy will conduct research on censorship practices for her current project Books Travel: Rethinking Modernism and Literary Censorship in a Global Frame. Her book examines how the law has been invoked to constitute and regulate literature and authorship in the first half of the twentieth century in Great Britain, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia.  More specifically, she will document the psychological and literary effects of the trauma of governmental censorship in the life and writing of D. H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, and Jean Devanny. 

While in Australia, she will focus on the correspondence and works of the Australian writer, Jean Devanny, in order to fill in some of the missing gaps in our understanding of this writer.

“By considering the book banning experienced by D.H. Lawrence, Radclyffe Hall, and Jean Devanny, I will explore the hidden links between trials and traumas as well as the cultural differences evident in the censorship practices in these four countries.” 

“The novels that Lawrence, Devanny, and Hall wrote after their books were banned illustrate how sexuality, race, class, and political allegiance, as well as gender, defined subjectivity, citizenship, and new types of censorship in these four locations.”

Nancy will review the collections of personal papers and unpublished manuscripts at the libraries at James Cook University, ANU, the National Library and the National Archives in Canberra as well as offering guest lectures and workshops at both universities.

Nancy received her BA in English from Cornell University, and her MA and PhD in English from Rutgers University. In addition to her academic qualifications, she founded and has directed the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at Northern Arizona University. She won NAU’s Teacher Scholar award, and was awarded a Mellon Fellowship at Harvard.

Nancy is one of 19 American Fulbright Scholars travelling to Australia in 2009/2010.