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 was on the poetry of Robert Browning, and master’s thesis on the relationship between the poetry of John Ashbery and New York School painting. As an undergraduate and postgraduate Jennifer was awarded a number of prizes and scholarships. She 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
- 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 literatureMy research concentration is Victorian literature and cultural history.
I have published on the work of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Browning and a range of topics in Australian literature. My 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 I have written on the material history of things in Browning’s work; ethics, representation and animals in Victorian England; animals in film; and have edited (with Leigh Dale) a collection of scholarly essays on animals and literature (Australian Literary Studies, 23. 1. (June 2010). I was also Literature convenor of Minding Animals-2009 International Conference on Animals (Newcastle, Australia, July 2009).
I have two current research projects:
- Robert Browning and the institutionalisation of difficulty in the rise of English Studies . The core of the project is an analysis of the ways in which assumptions about the intractability of literary texts are built into the development of literary studies as a scholarly activity, in late nineteenth-century England and the colonial context in Australia. (Collaborative project with Professor Leigh Dale)
- In 2011 I will be working at the University of Cambridge on a series of articles towards a book on Victorian women writers and affective relations with companion species (Across Species Lines: Victorian Women’s Writing and the Ethics of Care in Animal Ethics). This work sits within posthumanist theory and the ‘feminist care tradition’ in animal ethics in so far as it sees literary representations of animals as political, and inextricable from questions of personhood, subjectivity and ethics.
Recent and Forthcoming Publications
Guest Editor, "Animals" a special issue of Australian Literary Studies. 23.1 (June 2010).
Articles and Book Chapters
‘A la lisière de l’humanité: les chiens, l’affect et la division des espèces dans l’Angleterre du XIXe siècle’ in Annik Dubied, David Gerber et Juliet Fall. Eds. "Aux frontières de l'animal. Mises en scènes et réflexivités", Geneva, Paris: Droz, 2010.
‘Browning’s Curiosities’ in Bric-à-Brackery: Victorian Culture, Commodities and Curios . Eds. Jonathon Shears and Jenn Sattaur, London: Ashgate Press (forthcoming 2011).
‘”Ladies Pets” and the Politics of Affect: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Jane Welsh Carlyle’, Australian Literary Studies. 23.1 (June 2010).
'Critical Introduction’, ‘Chronology’ and ‘Bibliography’. Collected Works of Robert Browning. 2 Vols. Cambridge Scholars Press, 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
(Lecture and article) ‘Bulls-Eye: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog’, Dickens Universe, University of California Santa Cruz, 3 August 2010.
‘Trauma, Memory and Non-Violent Resistance: Activist Aesthetics in the Films of Anand Patwardhan’. Documentary Film. (article)
“Natural and unnatural Histories: Natural and Unnatural Histories: Animals in the Films of Mark Lewis”. Studies in Australasian Film.(article)
Selected Recent Papers
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.
2009 ’A little Vicious: Documenting the Bad Animal in the Films of Mark Lewis and Immy Humes’. Minding Animals: the 2009 International Conference on Animals and Society. Civic Centre, Newcastle 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.
2006 ‘Woman’s Best Friend: Elizabeth Barrett, ‘Philodoggery’ and the ‘Flush Argument’”. “‘This Is Living Art': Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the Twenty-first Century: A Bi-Centenary Celebration”. Armstrong Browning Library, Baylor University. March 3- 6 2006