Cecile Parrish Memorial Scholarship for Graduate Research in English
Cécile Parrish (1938-1965) was the only child of Edward Ivor and Renée Parrish and was appointed to a lectureship in English at Monash University in 1964, after teaching for a time at the University of Malaya (1962). She was born in Malacca and educated at the University of St Andrews (1956-60) and at Moray House College of Education, Edinburgh (1960-61). Her teaching and research interests included nineteenth and twentieth-century literary criticism, the contemporary novel, and literature from the early modern period. She passed the qualifying examination in French and Bibliography and completed early research for her MA thesis topic, on the image of Asia in childrens literature since 1815 (a draft of some of this work was published as a commemorative volume by the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies, Monash University, in August, 1977, with a Foreword by David Bradley. She also published a translation from French in South-East Asian Studies (OUP, 1963), won a prize for her short story The Bird with the Glittering Tail, (1963), and had a short story, A Malacca Christmas, broadcast by Radio Malaysia. She was a reporter and reviewer for the Straits Times. At the age of 27, at a time in her life full of personal and professional promise, she died, with her fiancé, in a car accident on her way to Canberra (15 April 1965). Renée Parrish established two separate funds in her daughters memory. For many years, English students at Monash University have been provided with much needed financial assistance for a range of academic activities, including field work, travel, conference attendance, and on some occasions simple subsistence. Applications to this small fund should be made to the Professor of English. The second, The Renee Parrish Trust, was established in May 2006 in an extraordinary act of generosity, providing for scholarships at the higher research degree levels, for the study of English literature at Monash University. This is the Cécile Parrish Scholarship for Graduate Study in English.