About

Deborah Clarke is a Professor of English in the Department of English at Arizona State University, where she has been a faculty member since 2008. Her primary research interests focus on twentieth-century American fiction, with particular emphasis on William Faulkner and women writers. Her scholarly work explores themes such as the tension between body and language in Faulkner's women characters, and the intersection of women and automobile culture in American fiction, examining issues of technology, mobility, domesticity, and agency. Clarke is working on a book about modernist domesticity, analyzing how the domestic sphere functions as a destabilizing force in modern fiction. In addition to her research, Clarke has held various administrative roles, including Senior Associate Dean of Faculty at the John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering and interim Associate Dean of Faculty in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Her academic background includes a Ph.D. from Yale University and a B.A. from the University of Michigan. Her work has been supported by the NEH and the Penn State Institute for the Arts and Humanities, and she has served as a Beatrice Bain Research Fellow at UC Berkeley. Clarke has also contributed to the field through numerous lectures, conference presentations, and editorial and committee roles, and has received teaching and advising awards throughout her career.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Medicine
• Sociology
• Medical education
• Computer Science
• Pedagogy
• Psychology
• Law
• Multimedia
• Geography
• Art
• Advertising
• Aesthetics
• Mathematics education
• Media studies
• Art history
• Social psychology

Selected publications

• Enhancing Pre-service Teachers’ Preparedness for Professional Experience Placement and Employment: Authentic School-University Partnership Opportunities

  ˜The œAustralian journal of teacher education · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  The transition from university learning to classroom application presents a challenge in initial teacher education. This transition results in ‘praxis shock’; a term coined to describe the confronting exposure to the gritty realities of the classroom. This case study investigated a school-university partnership that drew on authentic learning activities using a team-teaching model to address the praxis shock challenge. Data were gathered over five years from pre-service teacher subject experience surveys, journal reflections, and semi-structured interviews. The findings revealed that this authentic approach significantly enhanced pre-service teachers’ understanding of the Australian Professional Standards for teachers, their classroom readiness, confidence, and professional identity: all measures of teacher preparedness for professional experience placement and employability. This research reveals the value of school-university collaborations that use authentic learning experiences to enhance pre-service graduate teachers’ job readiness.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• A Higher Education Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Online Community of Practice

  IGI Global eBooks · 2025-02-06

  book-chapterSenior author

  To improve global rankings, increase student numbers and enhance the quality of teaching and learning, Australian Higher Education institutions have increased emphasis on faculty to engage in the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). However, there is an absence of SoTL capacity-building opportunities to support those with limited knowledge of, and engagement with SoTL. This lack of support has broad implications for scholars' identity, professional confidence and capacity to undertake SoTL. Using collective autoethnography, the chapter showcases the experiences of eight scholars who participated in a two-year SoTL online community of practice, aimed at building SoTL capacity. Results indicated increased confidence, refashioned scholarly identity, institutional recognition of SoTL and leadership skills, and heightened professional self-worth. The chapter yields key messages for those mentoring SoTL scholars, and those adopting a community of practice approach to professional learning. More pointedly, the chapter provides recommendations for institutional policy and practice.

  PublisherDOI

• Wilderness Domesticity: Men without Women?

  Women s Studies · 2024-02-28 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• 11 ‘The most interesting apartment in Scotland’: The History and Presentation of Mary, Queen of Scots’ Chambers at the Palace of Holyroodhouse

  Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2024-04-25

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  11 ‘The most interesting apartment in Scotland’: The History and Presentation of Mary, Queen of Scots’ Chambers at the Palace of Holyroodhouse was published in The Afterlife of Mary, Queen of Scots on page 241.

  PublisherDOI

• Sustainable School-University Partnerships: Motivators for Engagement, Enablers, and Constraints

  2024-01-01 · 3 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Exploring the Benefits and Challenges of an NSW Regional School-University Partnership: The Perspectives of Academic “Insiders”

  2023-01-01 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Supporting Young People's Emotional Wellbeing During The Transition To Secondary School In Regional Australia

  Australian and International Journal of Rural Education · 2022 · 9 citations

  • Political Science
  • Psychology
  • Medical education

  Extensive international literature is available on aspects and impacts associated with students' transition from primary to secondary school. However, in regional and rural Australia, it is challenging for educators and healthcare professionals to ensure that interventions supporting the emotional wellbeing of students transitioning to secondary school are informed by context-specific evidence. This paper presents a narrative review of research published since 2010 investigating students' emotional wellbeing and psychological impacts of the transition to secondary school, with a focus on programs implemented to support young people during this transition. Research specific to students in regional and rural areas of Australia was lacking, with a marked absence of studies in regional and rural settings outside Western Australia and Tasmania. Similarly, research evaluating programs to support the psychological wellbeing of students transitioning to secondary school was lacking. However, this review provides a comprehensive overview of factors influencing the transition to secondary school from the perspectives of young people, their parents and teachers. These Australian data capture particular concerns and features that may inform development and implementation of interventions specific to the needs of young people in regional and rural communities across Australia. In schools where no specific intervention is planned, this review provides general guidance regarding challenges faced by transitioning students and possible ways students can be supported. In particular, this review highlights the need for educators and researchers to work together to develop and evaluate programs to support young people as they transition from primary to secondary school.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How teacher presence engages and supports online female postgraduate students

  ASCILITE Publications · 2022 · 5 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Psychology
  • Mathematics education

  Teacher presence is of particular importance in the online learning environment, as the learning space lacks the inherent physical presence that a teacher in a physical classroom delivers. As a result, those who teach online, need to manufacture and foster teacher presence in the online learning environment. This requires caring online teachers who have refined online interpersonal skills and well-developed instructional design, who are driven to fully engage and support their online students (Martin et al., 2018). Without this strong teacher-student relationship that high quality teacher presence delivers, online students can feel isolated and disconnected from their teacher, resulting in student disengagement and dissatisfaction (Bolliger & Halupa, 2018; Sugden et al., 2021; Weidlich & Bastiaens, 2018). This study interviewed female postgraduate students studying online at an Australian regional university, a cohort with whom online education is highly prevalent (Latchem, 2018). The degrees students were studying, were designed before COVID-19 as full online offerings. Student interviews provided in-depth descriptions of which teacher presence strategies were most important to the participant sample, why these strategies were important and how participants engaged with the strategies. This study used the five elements of engagement from the Online Engagement Framework for Higher Education (Redmond et al., 2018), to inform the data analysis. Most online postgraduate students in the sample preferred synchronous teacher presence strategies that mirrored the on-campus university experience. These synchronous strategies had a lower level of transactional distance and used several of the five elements of engagement to engage and support students. However, some of the asynchronous teacher presence strategies did not produce enough elements of engagement to allow students to feel adequately engaged and supported. Subjects facilitated by purely asynchronous strategies had a higher level of transactional distance, creating a greater potential for students to feel markedly less supported without skilled teacher presence strategies applied in well-designed asynchronous subjects. Implications for policy and practice Online educators need to develop more frequent and well-designed synchronous teacher presence strategies for online subjects, such as regular interactive online meetings. Asynchronous online teachers need to actively, directly and regularly engage their online students using a variety of specialist online teacher presence strategies and skills that target as many of the engagement elements as possible. Online education institutions need to ensure online educators teaching in asynchronous subjects, have a high level of online teacher presence skills and a caring approach towards their online asynchronous students to ensure they are adequately engaged and supported. Keywords: online learning, teacher presence, transactional distance, and student engagement.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Navigating the complexities of course design: A course director’s perspective

  2021-01-01

  articleSenior author
  Publisher

• Gatsby’s Third Car

  The F Scott Fitzgerald Review · 2020 · 11 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Aesthetics

  Abstract This article argues that Gatsby’s “circus wagon” car is not a Rolls-Royce but a custom-built car. Acknowledging the existence of a custom car aligns Gatsby with celebrity culture and modernist instability, and it highlights the role of the automobile in shaping identity. The ostentatious vehicle reflects a desperate attempt to claim uniqueness and authenticity in a world increasingly defined by Hollywood imagery and Fordist assembly line ideology. By placing Gatsby, through his car, within celebrity culture and linking him to such figures as actor Fatty Arbuckle, the article explores the ways that this ostentatious car reflects his precarious role in the world he seeks to emulate. Drawing on previous scholarship on the novel, on modernist and celebrity theory, and on automobile history, we are reminded that cars are not just symbols or machines; they, like Gatsby, are complex and intricate measures of the self; understanding the vehicle itself—its make, potential cost, and place in modern life—brings greater awareness of the complexity of Fitzgerald’s presentation of automobile culture and its interaction with identity.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew Winslade

  Charles Sturt University

  3 shared

• Eric J. Drinkwater

  Deakin University

  2 shared

• Linda Shields

  2 shared

• Zelma Bone

  2 shared

• Maggie Clarke

  2 shared

• Chelsea Litchfield

  Charles Sturt University

  2 shared

• Rachel Rossiter

  Charles Sturt University

  2 shared

• Anne Llewellynn

  Charles Sturt University

  2 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Yale University

• B.A.

  University of Michigan

Awards & honors

• Beatrice Bain Research Fellow at University of California at…
• Dean's Fellow (2010 - Present)
• Society for the Study of American Women Writers, President (…
• The Faulkner Society, Vice President (2009 - 2012)