Dr Jennifer McDonell
Senior Lecturer, School of Arts
Qualifications
BA (Hons), MA (Hons) and PhD
Contact
| Email: | jmcdonel@une.edu.au |
| Room: | E11 LG18 |
| Phone: | 02 6773 2517 (or +61 2 6773 2517 overseas) |
| Fax: | 02 6773 2623 |
| Mobile: | 0407 466 405 |
Jennifer completed a BA (Hons Class I), MA (Hons) and PhD at the University of Sydney. Her doctoral thesis examined the poetry of Robert Browning, and her master’s thesis John Ashbery’s poetry and New York School painting. Jennifer has broad teaching experience covering most of the major literary periods, and before coming to the University of New England held full time teaching positions at the University of Sydney, the University of New South Wales (ADFA), and Macquarie University.
Areas of Teaching
- Victorian Literature and Culture
- Contemporary Critical Theory and Practice
- Twentieth-Century Literature.
Jennifer is the recipient of national, state and institutional teaching awards:
- Carrick Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning 2007 (Individual category)
- NSW Minister for Education and Training and the Australian College of Educators Quality Teaching Award (Individual category) 2007.
- University of New England Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (Individual category) 2007.
Research interests
- Perceptions and representations of animals in Victorian Literature and culture
- Life and work of Robert Browning
- Animal studies
- The relationship between visual arts and literature
Jennifer has published on the work of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and topics in Australian literature. Her doctoral thesis examined Browning’s poetic experimentation in The Ring and the Book in the context of developments in fields such as philology, optics and biblical scholarship in the nineteenth century. More recently she has written on the material history of things in Browning’s work; ethics, representation and animals in Victorian England; animals in film; and has edited (with Leigh Dale) a collection of scholarly essays on animals and literature (Australian Literary Studies, 23. 1. (June 2010).
She is currently working on sentimentality and human responses to animal death in Victorian England, with forthcoming essays in the edited book collections Representing Animals in Britain, eds Emilie Dardenne and Sophie Mesplède (Manchester UP), Animal Death, ed. Fiona Rapsey-Probyn (Sydney UP) and the journal, Social Alternatives.
Jennifer is also engaged in a major research project with Professor Leigh Dale on the emergence of critical, creative and pedagogical discourses advocating the study of vernacular literature in universities, in England and its colonies, in the second half of the nineteenth century. McDonell and Dale co-convened a research colloquium based on this project entitled Lessons from the Past: a Seminar on the Emergence of University English in 2012 and are now preparing a collection of essays based on the seminar to be published as a Special Issue of Modern Language Quarterly.
She is a member of the Nineteenth-Century Studies and the Post-Human Literary and Cultural Studies Research groups at the University of New England.
Recent Publications
2010 Guest Editor, "Animals" a special issue of Australian Literary Studies. 23.1 (June 2010).
Articles and Book Chapters
2013 ‘Browning’s Curiosities: The Ring and the Book and the “democracy of things’’’ in Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians: Oddities and Commodities. Eds. Jonathon Shears and Jenn Harrison. The Nineteenth Century Series. Aldershot: Ashgate Press (forthcoming June 2013). Pp. ISBN: 978-1-4094-3990-5.
2012 ‘A la lisière de l’humanité: les chiens, l’affect et la division des espèces dans l’Angleterre du XIXe siècle’ in "Aux frontières de l'animal. Mises en scènes et réflexivités". Eds. Annik Dubied, Juliet Fall and David Gerber. Geneva and Paris: Librarie Droz. ISBN:10- 2-600-01527-2. pp. 119-141.
2011. ‘Critical Introduction’, ‘Chronology’ and ‘Bibliography’. Collected Works of Robert Browning. 2 Vols. Cambridge Scholars Press.
2010 ‘“Ladies’ Pets” and the Politics of Affect: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Jane Welsh Carlyle’, Australian Literary Studies. 23.1 (June 2010). pp. 17-34.
Refereed Conference Proceedings
2010 McDonell, J., Parkes, M and Tynan, B. ‘Virtual tutor support with Smarthinking and key barriers to its successful implementation’. Refereed full paper. 27th annual ASCALITE (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education Conference) in December 2010.
Work in Preparation
‘Trauma, Memory and Non-Violent Resistance: Activist Aesthetics in the Films of Anand Patwardhan’. Documentary Film. (article)
“Natural and Unnatural Histories: Animals in the Films of Mark Lewis”. Studies in Australasian Film.(article)
Selected Papers (past five years)
2012. ‘Mourning the Animal Dead: Sentimentality and the Care Tradition in Animal Ethics’. Danse Macabre: Emotional Responses to Death and Dying from Medieval to Contemporary Times. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, University of Sydney. Australian Museum. 21 September, 2012.
2012. ‘Inordinate Affection: Animal Death and Emotion in Nineteenth-Century Sentimental Culture’, Animal Death, University of Sydney 13 June 2012.
2012. ‘Literary Fame, Henry James and the Problem of Robert Browning’. Literary Fame: Then and Now. University of Wollongong. 9 February 2012.
2011. ‘Browning’s Things’. Composition and Decomposition. British Association for Victorian Studies, University of Birmingham September 1-3 2011.
2011. ‘Crying Over a Dead Dog: Animals and Emotion in Victorian Sentimental Culture’. Representing Animals in Britain, University of Rennes II, Rennes, France. October 20, 2011.
2010. ‘Bulls-Eye: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog’, Dickens Universe, University of California Santa Cruz, 3 August 2010
2009 '”Ladies Pets” and the Politics of Affect in Mid-Victorian England’. Minding Animals – the 2009 International Academic and Community Conference on Animals and Society, Civic Centre, Newcastle, 13-19 July, 2009.
2008 ‘Dog Love and the Subject of the Animal: Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Jane Carlyle and Mary Russell Mitford’. Victorian Feeling: Touch, Bodies, Emotions. 9th Annual BAVS Conference. 2 September 2008, University of Leicester, UK.
2008 ‘Browning’s curiosities: poetic appropriations and transtextual relations’. Bric-à-Brackery: Victorian Culture, Commodities and Curios. U of Aberystwyth, Wales. 28 July 2008.
2008 'Natural and Unnatural Histories: Human and Non Human Animals in the Films of Mark Lewis'. Antipodean Animal. Kings College London. 7 July 2008.
2008 ‘Trauma, Memory and Non-Violent Resistance: Activist Aesthetics in the Films of Anand Patwardhan’. Activating Peace and Human Rights Conference, Byron Bay 1 July 2008.