Michelle Elleray

Associate Professor

College of Arts, School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing

Areas of Specialization: Victorian literature, particularly in relation to: literature of empire, the South Pacific/Oceania, periodicals, ecocriticism. I also have teaching interests in nineteenth-century African American and African Canadian newspapers.

Education

PhD, Cornell University

MA (Hons), University of Auckland - Waipapa Taumata Rau

Postgraduate Diploma of Teaching, Auckland College of Education

BA, Te Herenga Waka - Victoria University of Wellington

Research

I'm currently working on a project titled "Periodicals and Pasifika in Nineteenth-Century Britain: Textual and Indigenous Emissaries," which recovers accounts of Pasifika presence in Britain to ask how this material invites reconsideration of our approach to the periodical archive. Positioning periodicals as significant mediators of British knowledge about the Pacific, the project focuses on material by and about six Pasifika who travelled to Britain between 1843 and 1856, with their presence addressed in evangelical periodicals and local newspapers. My analysis reverses the standard assumption of alphabetic literacy travelling “out” to the Pacific via missionary organisations, instead demonstrating Pasifika involvement in expanding literacies – alphabetic, imperial, and religious – within Britain itself.

Recent Publications

Elleray, Michelle. “Idols on Display: Pacific Object Lessons for the British Child.” Literary Cultures and Nineteenth-Century Childhoods, edited by Kristine Moruzi and Michelle J. Smith, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, pp. 103-117.

Elleray, Michelle. “‘I Address You as Owners’: The Victorian Child, the Missionary Ship, and the Juvenile Missionary Magazine.” The Edinburgh History of Children’s Periodicals, edited by Kristine Moruzi, Beth Rodgers and Michelle J. Smith, Edinburgh UP, 2024, pp. 406-420.

Elleray, Michelle. “Simple Letters?: British and Pacific Literacies in the Victorian Missionary Periodical.” The Edinburgh Companion to British Colonial Periodicals, edited by David Finkelstein, David Johnson and Caroline Davis, Edinburgh UP, 2024, pp. 285-299.

Elleray, Michelle. “Seeking Safe Harbour: W. H. G. Kingston’s Pacific Adventure Novels.” Pacific Gateways: Trans-Oceanic Narratives and Anglophone Literature, 1780-1914, edited by Laurence Williams and Tomoe Kumojima, Palgrave Macmillan, 2024, pp. 183-206.

Elleray, Michelle. “Kiro’s Thoughts About England: An Unexpected Text in an Unexpected Place.” Worlding the South: Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture and the Southern British Colonies, edited by Porscha Fermanis and Sarah Comyn, Manchester UP, 2021, pp. 294-311.

Elleray, Michelle. Victorian Coral Islands of Empire, Mission, and the Boy’s Adventure Novel. Routledge, 2020.