Jocelyn Harris

Jocelyn Margaret Harris (née Wood; born 1939) is a New Zealand academic known for her studies of Jane Austen's creative process, and for her promotion of the teaching and study of women's literature at the University of Otago.

Harris was a founding member of the Dunedin Collective for Woman, and from 1970 until 2005 taught at the University of Otago, of which she remains professor emerita.

Harris is a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit and a Chevalier de l'ordre de Mérite.

Personal life Harris was born Jocelyn Margaret Wood in 1939 in Dunedin, where her father, Win Wood, was a school-teacher and her mother Margot (née Garrett) was an Otago history graduate and radio presenter. Harris was raised by her mother after her father died as an artillery major in North Africa. In 1950 Margot remarried military historian Angus Ross, who later became Otago's professor of history.

Jocelyn attended Otago Girls' High School, then followed her mother and step-father into study at the University of Otago. As an undergraduate, she was elected "lady vice-president" of the Student Association in 1961.

She studied for her PhD at Birkbeck College, University of London, where her title was 'Sir Charles Grandison and the Little Senate: the relation between Samuel Richardson's correspondence and his last novel'''. In 1970 she returned to Dunedin to take up a faculty role at Otago's Department of English.

Academic career In her teaching and as a senior academic, Harris 'almost single-handedly established a place for the academic study of women's writing and in particular, contemporary New Zealand women's writing within the full spectrum of studies in "English" literature offered at the University of Otago.'

In her own academic writing, it was Harris' ground-breaking analysis of Austen's debt to Richardson in her Jane Austen and the Art of Memory that unequivocably established her standing as a scholar of international reputation.

Harris also served as a representative for academic staff on the Otago University Council, and was the first president of the Otago University Staff Women's Caucus.

The University of Otago awarded Professor Harris a PhD (honoris causa) in August 2026.

Community service Harris was one of the founding members of the Dunedin Collective for Woman. In the 1980s, she was a panelist on the 'agony aunt' television series Beauty and the Beast. Harris served on the board of Television New Zealand in the 1990s.

Works Authored books

Harris, J. (2017) Satire, Celebrity, and Politics in Jane Austen, Bucknell University Press. Harris, J. (2007) A revolution almost beyond expression: Jane Austen's Persuasion. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 280p. Harris, J. M. (2003) Jane Austen's Art of Memory. Cambridge University Press, 271p. Harris, J. M. (1987) Samuel Richardson Cambridge University Press.

Edited books Zunshine, L., & Harris, J. (eds.). (2006). Approaches to teaching the novels of Samuel Richardson. New York: The Modern Language Association of America, 216p. Harris, J. M. (ed.). (2001). Samuel Richardson,The History of Sir Charles Grandison (3 parts). Reprint, Dunedin: Otago University Printery (under licence from Oxford University Press), 681p. Waite, G. G., Harris, J. M., Murray, H. M., & Hale, J. K. (eds.). (1998). World and Stage: Essays for Colin Gibson. Dunedin: Otago Studies in English 6, 280p.