Dr Jennifer Mae Hamilton
Senior Lecturer in English Literary Studies - Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education; School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Biography
Jennifer Hamilton has scholarly training in literary and gender studies and professional experience in creative and community arts. She's currently writing a book called 'Weathering the City' that draws on her diverse interdisciplinary training. In this book, she reads live art, urban reslience policy, eco-live art, Australian literature and poetry, popular television series and memoir through queer feminist and anti-colonial lenses to produce new ways of understanding climate adaptation.
She is also involved in several collaborative research projects: The Heteropessimists supported by the Freilich Foundation (with Christina Kenny, Matt Allen, Felicity Joseph and Daz Chandler, 2021-2022); The Weathering Collective (2016-ongoing) which was invited to be part of the 2022 Biennale of Sydney’s Water Lessons series (with Tessa Zettel and Astrida Neimanis, UBC) and its offshoot The Community Weathering Station (CoWS); a series of guided audio-walks called Weathering Waterways (with George Adamson and Ines Camara-Leret, Kings College London); Storying and the Environmental Humanities (Emily Potter, Deakin and Killian Quigley, ACU) and Reading Group as Method (Astrida Neimanis, UBC, Mindy Blaise, ECU, Hayley Singer, Melbourne and Jimmy Gardiner, USYD).
Prior to starting at UNE in early 2018, she held two linked Seed Box Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the MISTRA-FORMAS Environmental Humanities Collaboratory at Linkoping University hosted in Gender and Cultural Studies at University of Sydney (2016-2018) and the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University (2017-2018). In addition, she taught ecocriticism at NYU Sydney (2013-2017).
Before training as an academic, she had a career as an arts worker in Sydney. She worked as a producer of live theatre and performance, as a facilitator of community art programs, as well as a live artist and curator. She worked with the Tamarama Rock Surfers at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, Serial Space Artist Run Initiative, Performance Space, Tiny Stadiums Festival, Verge Gallery and North Sydney Council. She grew up on Dharawal Country in Wollongong.
Qualifications
Bachelor Art Theory, College of Fine Arts
Bachelor Arts (Major: Theatre and Performance Studies, with Class 1 Hons in English), UNSW
PhD (English), UNSW
Awards
Teaching Areas
At an undergraduate level she teaches into the English program: Approaches to Literature and Society (ENGL102), Australia and Oceania in Literature (ENGL372/572), Modern and Contemporary Literature (ENGL381/581), Literature and the Environment (ENGL382/582), Ways of Reading: Literary Theory (ENGL390/590). In addition, she team-teaches the Sociology unit Theories of Gender (SOCY120).
Primary Research Area/s
Environmental literary studies; Gender studiesResearch Interests
Since 2020
- Department of Primary Industries and Environment, ADAPT NSW Community Grants (2020 Round), $25,202
- Freilich Foundation for the Study of Bigotry (2021 Round), $4,958
- Deakin University Seed Funding (2021), $2,951
- Kings College London COP26 Engagement Fund (2021), £5,000
Research Supervision Experience
Jennifer is able to supervise PhD, MPhil, Honours and Arts501/502 Dissertations. She's interested in supporting projects working at the intersection of literature and environment, as well as projects that explore environment through creative practice or community economies research methods. She has a particular interest in projects that draw on queer, feminist and anti-colonial theory.
She supervises and examines PhDs and MPhils in these areas.
Publications
Peer Reviewed Monograph:
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. This Contentious Storm: An Ecocritical and Performance History of King Lear (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
Edited Book:
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae, Sue Reid, Pia van Gelder and Astrida Neimanis. Feminist, Queer and Anticolonial Propositions for Hacking the Anthropocene: ARCHIVE (London: Open Humanities Press, 2021).
Peer Reviewed Articles:
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae and Nicolette Larder “Making Time to Care Differently for Food: The Case for the Armidale Food School” CriSTaL: Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning (Accepted March 13, 2022)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “Affect Theory and Breast Cancer Memoir: Rescripting Fear of Death and Dying in the Anthropocene” Body & Society (2021). https://doi.org/10.1177/1357034X211056064
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae, Tessa Zettel and Astrida Neimanis. “Feminist Infrastructure for Better Weathering” Australian Feminist Studies (2021). https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2021.1969639
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “The Future of Housework: The Similarities and Differences between Making Kin and Making Babies” Australian Feminist Studies (2019). https://doi-org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1702874
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae and Neimanis, Astrida. “Five Desires, Five Demands” Australian Feminist Studies (2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1702875
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae and Neimanis, Astrida. “Composting Feminisms and Environmental Humanities” Environmental Humanities 10.2 (2018): 501-527 https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-7156859
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “Constructing dying and death as an eco-political concern in performances of Shakespeare’s King Lear and Sarah Kane’s Blasted”, Shakespeare Bulletin 36.3(2018): 485-498.
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “Rewriting Redevelopment: The anti-proprietorial tone in Sydney place-writing”, Journal of the Study of Australian Literature 18.1(2018).
*Neimanis, Astrida and Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “weathering” feminist review 118.1 (2018): 80-84.
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae ‘“Labour against Wilderness” and the Trouble with Property beyond The Secret River’, Green Letters 20. 2 (2016): 140-155.
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae “Bad Flowers: The Implications of a Phytocentric Deconstruction of the Western Philosophical Tradition for the Environmental Humanities”, Environmental Humanities 7: 191-202.
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae “Labour” Environmental Humanities 6: 183-186.
Book Chapters:
*Neimanis, Astrida and Jennifer Mae Hamilton “Composting” in Rosi Braidotti, Emily Jones and Goda Klumbyte (eds) More Posthuman Glossary (London: Bloomsbury Academic, forthcoming 2022)
*Zettel, Tessa, Jennifer Mae Hamilton and Astrida Neimanis, “Weathering” in Daphne Dragona, Jussi Parikka (eds) Words of Weather: A Glossary (Onassis Foundation: Athens, 2022)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “Weathers of Body and World: Reading Difference in Literature Before Climate Change” Adeline Johns-Putra and Kelly Sultzbach (eds) Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate (Cambridge UP: 2022)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “Snow Day” in Hamilton et. al. (eds) Feminist, Queer and Anti-Colonial Propositions for Hacking the Anthropocene: ARCHIVE (Open Humanities Press, 2021).
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae Prettypinks and dirty yellows: changing domestic ecologies in the painterly collages of Jahnne Pasco-White in N.A.J. Taylor (ed.), Jahnne Pasco-White: Kin, Art Ink and Unlikely Publishing, Melbourne: Australia, 2020.
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae ‘Gardening after the Anthropocene: Creating different relations between humans and edible plants in Sydney’ P. Gibson and B. Britts (eds), The Covert Plant (New York: Punctum, 2018).
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae ‘Lear in the Storm: Shakespeare’s Emotional Exploration of Sovereign Mortality’, R. White and K. O’Loughlin (eds) Shakespeare and Emotions: Inheritances, Enactments, Legacies (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015).
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae ‘Cold Desire: snow, ice and Hans Christian Andersen’ in A. Uhlmann, H. Groth, P. Sheehan and S. McClaren (eds) Literature and Sensation (Sydney: Cambridge Scholar’s Press, 2009).
Other writings:
*Hamilton, Jennifer and Sujata Allan “Property Prices, Colonisation and Climate Change” Overland Online Magazine (2022) https://overland.org.au/2022/03/on-property-prices-colonisation-and-climate-change/
*Briggs, Gabi, Jennifer Hamilton and Sujata Allan “Climate Justice and Indigenous Knowledge in the New England” Armidale Express (3 December 2021) https://armidaleclimateandhealth.com.au/climate-justice-and-indigenous-knowledge-in-the-new-england/
*Hamilton, Jennifer, Sujata Allan and Michelle Guppy “Tornado a Wake-up Call for Climate Action Armidale Express (October 21, 2021) https://www.armidaleexpress.com.au/story/7472833/tornado-a-wake-up-call-for-climate-action/
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Growing Up Off-Grid’ Sydney Review of Books (2021) https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/review/bilbrough-in-the-time-of-the-manaroans/
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Desk Work: Fiona McGregor’s A Novel Idea’ Sydney Review of Books (2020) https://sydneyreviewofbooks.com/novel-idea-fiona-mcgregor/
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “Washing the Dishes: Reflections on Anne Boyer’s The Undying” for Running Dog (2020) https://rundog.art/washing-the-dishes-anne-boyer-the-undying/
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “On Bucketing Water – and a response to Jonathan Franzen” Overland (2019) https://overland.org.au/2019/09/on-bucketing-water-and-a-response-to-jonathan-franzen/
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. “King Leer” Overland (2018) https://overland.org.au/2018/11/king-leer/
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae and Neimanis, Astrida. ‘A Field Guide for Weathering’ with Astrida Neimanis, The Goose (2018)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Explainer: solarpunk, or how to be an optimistic radical?’, The Conversation (2017)
*Neimanis, Astrida and Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘The weather is now political’ The Conversation (2017)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Climate Change and the Quest for Transformative Fictions’, Sydney Environment Institute Blog (2017)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Composting in the Mud Theory Walkshop (#changethedate)’, The Seed Box Blog (2017)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Reflections on an Interdisciplinary Environmental Humanities Summit’, Sydney Environment Institute Blog (2016)
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae. ‘Property, Weather and the Matter of Emotional Inheritance on Earth Day’,ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions Blog (2016
*Hamilton, Jennifer Mae and Neimanis, Astrida. ‘What was ‘Hacking the Anthropocene’: Or, Why Environmental Humanities Needs More Feminisms’. The Seed Box Blog (2016)
Memberships
President (2020-2022), Association for the Study of Literature, Environment & Culture, Australian & New Zealand (ASLECANZ)
Co-founding Member, Composting Feminisms and Environmental Humanities
National Councillor and Branch Committee Member, National Tertiary Education Union
Honorary Associate, Gender and Cultural Studies Department, University of Sydney
Community and Advocacy Organisation Collaborations
Jennifer was co-facilitator on the Armidale Climate and Health Project supported by an AdaptNSW Increasing Resilience to Climate Change grant (with Dr Sujata Allan, 2020-2022). In that project, they collaborated with Armajun Aboriginal Health Service and Sustainable Living Armidale.
She is also co-convenor of the Armidale Food Group for Sustainable Living Armidale with a collective of other community from inside and outside the University (2021-2022).
