Jennifer Strauss

Background

Jennifer Strauss was born January 30, 1933 in Heywood, Victoria, Australia. The child of Edith (Armstrong) Wallace and Herbert Wallace, she grew up on a dairy farm in Heywood before her family moved to nearby Portland about 1939.

Education

Jennifer Strauss attended Loretto convent in Portland until she was ten, then went to Alexandra College (now the Hamilton and Alexandra College) in Hamilton, Victoria, Australia, as a boarder. In 1951 she was awarded a Commonwealth Scholarship, enabling her to attend university, and in 1954 graduated from the University of Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts honours degree in English. She subsequently undertook postgraduate studies in Glasgow, Scotland, during 1957-1958.

In 1991 Strauss earned her Ph.D. from Monash University.

Career

Jennifer Strauss began a long career as an academic teacher and researcher in 1961. She taught mainly at Monash University since 1964.

From the late 1960s her poetry began appearing regularly in Australian literary magazines such as Meanjin Quarterly, Poetry Australia, and Twentieth Century. Her first collection, Children and Other Strangers, was published in 1975.

Strauss was a visiting scholar at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, in 1974, and Australian National University, Canberra, in 1988. She was also a visiting professor at the Centre for Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto, Ontario, in 1982.

Strauss became Associate Professor in the Department of English, and on her retirement in 1998, an Honorary Research Fellow.

Throughout her academic career she published widely on Australian poetry, particularly Australian women’s poetry and poetics, and was a pioneer in feminist literary criticism in Australia. Her scholarly work includes book-length critical studies of the work of Judith Wright (1995) and Gwen Harwood (1992), and she has edited a number of poetry anthologies including The Oxford Book of Australian Love Poems (1993) and Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family (1998). She also edited a two-volume scholarly edition of The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore (2004-2007) for the Academy Editions of Australian Literature, and, with Bruce Bennett and Chris Wallace-Crabbe, co-edited The Oxford Literary History of Australia (1998).

Besides, she has also published three more collections, including a volume of new and selected work "Tierra del Fuego" (1997).

Achievements

• Strauss won the 1979 Westerly Sesquicentenary prize. In 2007 she was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia, for her work in education, her work as an academic in the fields of literature and poetry and for her work in woman's issues and industrial relations.
  
  Strauss is also a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award and an Honorary Senior Research Fellow in the Department of English at Monash University.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Judith Wright 1995
  • Children and other strangers 1975
  • Winter driving 1981
  • Boundary Conditions: The Poetry of Gwen Harwood 1992
  • Stop laughing! I'm being serious: Three studies in seriousness and wit in contemporary Australian poetry 1990
  • Tierra Del Fuego 1997
  • The Collected Verse of Mary Gilmore: 1887-1929 2005
  • The Oxford Literary History of Australia 1999
  • Family Ties: Australian Poems of the Family 1998

Membership

At various times Jennifer Strauss was President of the Staff Association of Monash University, Chair of the Association of Victorian University Staff Associations, and Vice-President of the national Federation of University Staff Associations. She is a Life Member of the National Tertiary Education Union. She also served three terms on the Monash University Council.

In the last ten years, Strauss has been extremely active in the Australian Federation of University Women (AFUW). She has served three times as president of AFUW Victoria and twice as national president, guiding the association to changing its name to Australian Federation of Graduate Women. AFGW recognised her contribution by electingher as Member Emerita in March 2011. She currently serves on the Board of the International Federation of University Women as one of its four Vice-Presidentsand is the Board liaison to the IFUW Committees for the Status of Women, Resolutions and Fellowships.

Connections

Jennifer married Werner Strauss in 1958. They had three sons. After the death of her husband in 1978, she raised their three sons alone while continuing to write and teach.

Father:

Herbert Wallace

Mother:

Edith (Armstrong) Wallace

Spouse:

Werner Strauss

colleague:

Bruce Bennett

Jennifer Strauss with Bruce Bennett and Chris Wallace-Crabbe co-edited "The Oxford Literary History of Australia" (1998).

colleague:

Chris Wallace-Crabbe

Jennifer Strauss with Bruce Bennett and Chris Wallace-Crabbe co-edited "The Oxford Literary History of Australia" (1998).

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series. Volume 154