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Department of English

Bridget Orr

Professor

My research areas are eighteenth-century British theatre and empire and modern writing from Aotearoa New Zealand.  I have published two books on the former topic, Empire on the English Stage, 1660 – 1714 (2001)and British Enlightenment Theatre: Dramatizing Difference (2019), both with Cambridge University Press.  In addition to my work on eighteenth-century British literature and theatre,I have published many essays on Aotearoa writers including Katherine Mansfield, Witi Ihimaera and Robert Sullivan.  

Representative publications

  • Empire on the English Stage, 1660-1714  Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters 1769-1840 ed. with Alex Calder and Jonathan Lamb  University of Hawaii Press 1999.
  • The Pacific Eighteenth Century Introduction and ed. Special Issue Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 38.3 (1997 Fall) 195-286.
  • ‘Painting Empire and the Seven Years War’  Huntington Library Quarterly: Studies in English and American History and Literature 74. 4 (2011) 617-626.
  • ‘Galland, Georgian Theatre and Popular Orientalism’ in The Arabian Nights in Historical Context: Between East and West eds. Saree Makdisi and Felicity Nussbaum Oxford University Press, 2008: 103-129.
  • ‘”Maui and Orphic Blood”: Cook’s Death in Contemporary Maori Poetry’ Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 49.2 (2008: Summer) 165-179.
  • ‘Poetic Plate-Fleets and Universal Monarchy: The Heroic Plays and Empire in the Restoration’  Huntington Library Quarterly: Studies in English and American History and Literature 63 1-2 (2000) 71-97.  Reprinted in John Dryden:A Tercentenary Miscellany eds. Susan Green and Steven Zwicker Huntington Library 2001, 71-97. 
  • ‘”Stifling Pity in a Parent’s Breast”: Infanticide and Savagery in Late Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing’ in Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit ed. Steve Clark  Zed Books, 1999: 131-146.
  • ‘Birth of a Nation? From Utu to The Piano’ in Piano Lessons: Approaches to The Piano eds. Felicity Coombs and Suzanne Gemmell  Libbey, 1999: 148-160.
  • ‘Margaret Drabble’ in British Writers: Supplement IV eds. George Stade and Carol Howard  Scribbner’s, 1997: 229-254.
  • ‘The Maori House of Fiction’ in Cultural Institutions of the Novel eds. Deirdre Lynch and William B. Warner  Duke University Press, 1996: 73-95.
  • ‘”Southern Passions mix with Northern Art”: Miscegenation and the Endeavour Voyage’ Eighteenth-Century Life 18.3 (1994 Nov.): 212-231.
  • ‘”The only free people in the Empire”: Gender Difference in Colonial Discourse’ in De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textuality eds. Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson  Routledge, 1994: 152-168.
  • ‘”Reading with the taint of the pioneer’: Katherine Mansfield and Settler Criticism’  Landfall: New Zealand Arts and Letters 43. 4 [172] (1989 Dec) 447-461.  Reprinted in Critical Essays on Katherine Mansfield ed. Rhoda B. Nathan  G.K. Hall, 1993: 48-60.
  • ‘”Blushing for her mother”: Jane Austen’s Embarassed Representation of Maternity’ Remembering Representation ed. Howard McNaughton University of Canterbury Occasional Papers in English 1, 1993: 52-64.
  • ‘Whore’s Rhetoric and the Maps of Love: Constructing the Feminine in Restoration Erotica’ in Women, Texts, and Histories, 1575-1760 eds. Clare Brant and Diane Purkiss  Routledge, 1992: 193-214.