
Professor Jennifer Rutherford
Director
School of Humanities
Faculty of Arts
I am an interdisciplinary scholar trained in sociology and literature. My research experiments with writing, representation and performance to provide new ways of communicating academic knowledge in the humanities and the social sciences. I am interested in narrative, memory and place-making; in the slowness and inertia of cultures and subjects in times of great change; in the way individuals and communities dwell in, and through, the traumas that shape them, and in the role that artists and writers play as conduits for change. Psychoanalysis informs much of what I do, as does the troubled history of colonial race–relations.
My most recent work explores melancholia in Australian culture. A novella 'Méren: Me, My Brothers and I' (under review) re-imagines the myth of Saturn unfolding in a dystopic Australian colony; 'Melancholy Migrations: Travelling with the Negative' (forthcoming Giramondo) is a provocative study of the cultural politics of melancholia in Australia, and 'The Encyclopedia of Lost Things' (in progress) uses the affordances of life-writing to explore the trauma of past losses against a horizon of future crisis.
In another recent project I led a creative team to produce a mobile app 'Traverses: J.M. Coetzee in the World', (Itunes) creating a new mode of literary criticism integrating, video, textual and photographic archival material, and critical commentary, in a highly accessible and interactive digital platform.
I welcome inquiries from Masters and Ph.D. candidates interested in: creative research, interdisciplinary scholarship, creative criticism, and trans-disciplinary poetics. I am happy to supervise theses in the fields of psychoanalysis, spatial poetics, trauma studies, colonial and post-colonial studies, race-relations and Australian literature and cultural studies.
My projects include:
- The Encyclopedia of Lost Things
"The Encyclopedia of Lost Things", a writing project, explores the affordances of life-writing to illuminate the inter-relationship between an intimate self (and its crises) and a larger collective condition/crisis. Interlacing theoretical, philosophical and psycho-social reflection with literary and personal narration it explores the interdependence of nature/culture in narrativising the self. Conceived as an "an experiment in attention" (Dillon 2018), it contributes to the “new essaysim” through the crafting of a work of 26 essays, each constructed around a letter of the alphabet and using digression, segue, and glissade to move fluidly between different registers (past present and future; intimate recollection; critical thought, self and nature/society).
Essays from “The Encyclopedia of Lost Things” have been published in Best Australian Essays (2017); long-listed for the Calibre Prize (2016) and recognized by the award of a Vermont Studio Writing Residence (2018); A Dartmouth College Visiting Fellowship, Leslie College of the Humanities( 2018); and an ANU Humanities Research Centre Fellowship, 2019)
- Tjungu Pakani- Together We Rise
This project Tjungu Pakani- Together We Rise was a cross-cultural creative collaboration between the JM Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice, Sound Stream, The National Trust of Australia (Ayers House), the City of Adelaide, Renewal SA, Arts South Australia, The Centre for Aboriginal Studies in Music (University of Adelaide) and the Titjikala Women’s Choir. The project brought the Norther Territory Indigenous choir (Titjikala) to Adelaide for a series of workshops and exchanges with local musicians and artists culminating in an exhibition and concert featuring the choir singing songs from the Lutheran tradition in Pitjantjajara. The project was funded with a City of Adelaide Arts and Cultural – Community Programs & Events Grant 2018/19
- Méren: Me, My Brothers and I
Méren: Me, My Brothers and I, is a fictional exploration of colonial melancholy extending and deepening understanding of the traumatic foundations of colonization. Melancholia has been understood as an affect underpinning dominant cultural fantasy particularly in relation to colonial and post-colonial racial imaginaries. Méren, Me My Brothers and I explores this traumatic/ affective legacy in the context of colonial South Australia imagined through the narrative conceit of Saturn as a colonial "founding father.” This poetic evocation deepens available ways of understanding key colonial tropes of the fantastic, the uncanny and the gothic reinterpreted though the long history of melancholy scholarship and textualisation. Méren: Me, My Brothers and I, is currently under-review with Giramondo Press.
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Appointments
Date Position Institution name 2015 Professor (Sociology and Literature), Director, JMCCCP Adelaide University 2014 - 2015 Director, Hawke EU Centre for Mobilities, Migrations, and Cultural Transformations University of South Australia 2013 - 2015 Deputy Director, Hawke Research Institute University of South Australia 2010 - 2013 Head of Department (Sociology) and Associate Professor (Social Theory) Flinders University 2006 - 2010 Senior Lecturer (English Literary Studies) Melbourne University 2003 - 2005 Senior Lecturer (Cultural Studies) Macquarie University 1998 - 2000 Macquarie University Research Fellow (Cultural Studies) Macquarie University -
Awards and Achievements
Date Type Title Institution Name Country Amount 2019 Fellowship Visiting Fellow Humanities Research Centre Australian National University Australia 12,000 2018 Fellowship Visiting Fellow, Leslie Centre for the Humanities Dartmouth College United States accommodation expenses and honorarium 2018 Fellowship Writer in residence Vermont Studio centre, Johnson United States 1000 2014 Award Lead Researcher/Director University of South Australia — 1,5million 2014 Distinction Public Lecture Trinity College Dublin Ireland — 2014 Invitation Visiting Fellowship Trinity College Dublin Ireland — 2013 Achievement Director, National Asylum Summit University of South Australia Australia — -
Language Competencies
Language Competency French Can read, speak, understand spoken and peer review -
Education
Date Institution name Country Title 1988 - 1997 University of New South Wales Australia PhD 1977 Newcastle University Australia BA — ÉHÉSS France D.E.A — Macquarie Universitity Australia Hons First Class -
Postgraduate Training
Date Title Institution Country 1989 - 1992 Psychoanalytic Training: École de la Cause Freudienne/Institut du Champ freudien, Paris France
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Journals
Year Citation 2021 Rutherford, J. (2021). 100 years of Freud's The Uncanny. Westerly. 2021 Rutherford, J. (2021). 100 years of Freud's The Uncanny. Westerly. 2020 Rutherford, J. (2020). 'Dreaming the Critical University: The Mirror or the Algorithm?". Sydney Review of Books, (February 2020). 2015 Rutherford, J. (2015). Modernism and Melancholia: Writing as Countermourning.. MLN, 130(5), 1250-+.
2015 Rutherford, J. (2015). Sanja Bahun: Modernism and Melancholia: Writing as Counter Mourning. MLN, 130(5). 2015 Rutherford, J. (2015). (Post)apartheid conditions: psychoanalysis and social formation: slip-side of the good: Derek Hook's post-apartheid conditions. African Identities, 13(1), 92-94.
2014 Rutherford, J. (2014). "Uncertain States". 2014 Rutherford, J. (2014). The Inside Outsiders. Sydney Review of Books. 2010 Rutherford, J. (2010). The After Silence of the Son/G. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 33(1), 3-18.
2008 Rutherford, J. (2008). Hansonella: The Morphology of a Modern Folk Tale. Transtext(e)s Transcultures 跨文本跨文化, (4), 114-129.
2008 Rutherford, J. (2008). Flaubert in the Garden: Brian Castro's Melancholy Encryptions. HEAT, 18, 79-96. 2008 Rutherford, J. (2008). Melancholy and the Magpie: Coetzee's Amoro-Dolorous Duo. Kunapipi: journal of postcolonial writing, 2. 2007 Rutherford, J. (2007). Melancholy Secrets: Rosa Praed's Encrypted Father. Double Dialogues, (8). 2006 Rutherford, J. (2006). Clay, Cloth, Corps. Double Dialogues, (6). 2006 Rutherford, J. (2006). It is Forbidden. Australian Universities' Review, 48(2). 2005 Rutherford, J. (2005). The Unusable F Word: Fascism and the Australian Media. Social Alternatives, 24(1), 33-36. 2005 Rutherford, J. (2005). 'The I, the Eye and the Orifice'. HEAT, 9, 105-115. 2003 Rutherford, J. (2003). Cutting Ordinary: An ABC True Story: The 2002 Caroline Chisolm Lecture. Australian Humanities Review, (28). 2001 Rutherford, J. (2001). One love too many: The undoing of Pauline Hanson. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 47(2), 192-208.
Scopus7 WoS31998 Rutherford, J. (1998). 'Being for the Nation: Masculine Sacrifice in My Brother Jack'. Meridian The La Trobe University English Review, 17(1), 109-127. 1997 Rutherford, J. (1997). 'Thursa, Turtle, Myrtle, Tortoise: The Good Self Tells a Story'. Meridian, 16(2), 271-279. 1997 Rutherford, J. (1997). Identifying the Australian Gaze/Identifying an Australian perversion: Rereading The Fortunes of Richard Mahony. Meridian The La TRobe University English Review, 16(2), 281-303. — Rutherford, J. (n.d.). Writing the Square: Paul Carter's Nearamnew and the Art of Federation. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2(2).
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Books
Year Citation 2017 Rutherford, J., & Uhlman, A. (Eds.) (2017). J.M.Coetzee The Childhood of Jesus: the Ethics of Words and Things. New York: Bloomsbury Academic. 2013 Rutherford, J. (2013). Zombies. United Kingdom: Routledge.
Scopus82010 Holloway, B., & Rutherford, J. (Eds.) (2010). Halfway House: The Poetics of Australian Spaces. Perth: University of Western Australia Press. 2006 Rutherford, J. (Ed.) (2006). Shared Space; Brokered Time: The Work of Paul Carter (Vol. 2). 2000 Rutherford, J. (2000). The Gauche Intruder Freud, Lacan and the White Australian Fantasy. Melbourne University. -
Book Chapters
Year Citation 2021 Rutherford, J. (2021). Curating Coetzee from Austin to Adelaide. In M. Farrant, K. Easton, & H. Wittenberg (Eds.), J.M Coetzee and the Archive: Fiction, Theory and Auto/biography. London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic. 2017 Rutherford, J. (2017). 'The House of Flowers'. In A. Goldsworthy (Ed.), The Best Australian Essays 2017 (pp. 204-214). Carlton: Black Inc.. 2017 Rutherford, J., & Uhlmann, A. (2017). Introduction. In J. Rutherford, & A. Uhlmann (Eds.), J.M. Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus: The Ethics of Ideas and Things (Vol. 244, pp. 1-5). London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Scopus12017 Rutherford, J. (2017). Thinking Through Shit in The Childhood of Jesus. In J. Rutherford, & A. Uhlman (Eds.), J.M. Coetzee's The Childhood of Jesus: The Ethics of Ideas and Things (pp. 59-81). New York: Bloomsbury. 2016 Rutherford, J. (2016). "Washed clean": The forgotten journeys of future maritime arrivals in J.M. Coetzee's Estralia. In L. Mannik (Ed.), Migration By Boat: Discourses of Trauma, Exclusion, and Survival (1 ed., pp. 101-115). New York, USA: Berghahn Books. 2014 Crouch, D., & Rutherford, J. (2014). Social and cultural theory and literature. In A. Elliott (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Social and Cultural Theory (pp. 278-298). London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
2014 Crouch, D., & Rutherford, J. (2014). Reading and reception. In A. Elliott (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Social and Cultural Theory (pp. 358-374). London, United Kingdom: Routledge.
2011 Rutherford, J. (2011). The secret of the father in the colonial secret: Rosa Praed's 'weird melancholy'. In M. Middeke, & C. Wald (Eds.), The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern (pp. 160-172). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
2011 Rutherford, J. (2011). The secret of the father in the colonial secret: Rosa Praed’s ‘weird melancholy’. In The Literature of Melancholia: Early Modern to Postmodern (pp. 160-172). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Scopus12010 Rutherford, J. (2010). "Kairos for a Wounded Country". In J. Rutherford, & B. Holloway (Eds.), Halfway House: The Poetics of Australian Spaces (pp. 1-11). Perth: University of Western Australia Press. 2010 Rutherford, J. (2010). "Undwelling; Or reading Bachelard in Australia". In J. Rutherford, & B. Holloway (Eds.), Halfway House: The Poetics of Australian Spaces (pp. 113-125). Perth: University of Western Australia Press. 2010 Rutherford, J. (2010). "Homo Nullius: The Politics of Pessimism in Patrick White's Tree of Man". In E. McMahon, & B. Olubus (Eds.), Remembering Patrick White: Contemporary Critical Essays in the Post/Colonial Literatures in English (Vol. 128). Rudopi. 2001 Rutherford, J. (2001). The Colonising Victim: Tim Winton's Irish Conceit. In A. Luyat (Ed.), Flight from Certainty The Dilemma of Identity and Exile (pp. 153-163). Amsterdam, New York: Rodopi. 2000 Rutherford, J. (2000). 'Staging Ireland: Ireland as Conceit in Contemporary Australian Narratives of Belonging'. In B. Philip, F. Devlin-Glass, & H. Doyle (Eds.), Ireland and Australia, 1798-1998 Studies in Culture, Identity, and Migration (pp. 196-207). Sydney: Crossing Press. 1997 Rutherford, J. (1997). Diana; The Hour of our Death. In I. Ang (Ed.), Planet Diana Cultural Studies and Global Mourning (pp. 57-60). Nepean: Research Centre in Intercommunal Studies. -
Conference Items
Year Citation 2011 Rutherford, J. (2011). Fauchery’s Ruins: A Story in Fragments (Keynote Lecture). Poster session presented at the meeting of Identités, Images, Représentations,. Université de la Rochelle, France. 2010 Rutherford, J. (2010). Future, Stories, Intimate Histories (Keynote Lecture). Poster session presented at the meeting of Australian Critical Race and Whiteness National conference. Adelaide. 2010 Rutherford, J. (2010). Keynote Lecture. Poster session presented at the meeting of Law, Psychoanalysis and the Question of Gender Symposium. Griffith University, Queensland, Australia. -
Live Performance of Creative Works
Year Citation 2017 Rutherford, J. (2017). April in Kumrovec (No. Of Pieces: 30 minutes) [Performance]. New York Opera Centre: Double Dialogues. 2013 Rutherford, J. (2013). The Zombie Century (No. Of Pieces: 30 minute performance) [Performance]. Performed University of South pacific, Suva. -
Original Creative Works
Year Citation 2020 Publication status: Published
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: Hunters and Collectors
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation: B1200303
Editors: Driver D
ISBN-13: 9781922268990
Publisher: Text Publishing Co
Publisher URL: https://www.textpublishing.com.au/https://www.textpublishing.com.au
Place of publication: Melbourne, Victoria; Australia
Publication date: 10 February 2020
Pagination: 165-173
Title of Outlet: A Book of Friends: In Honour of J.M. Coetzee on his 80th Birthday
Extent: 9 pages
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: .
Abstract: Research Statement: “Hunters and Collectors” explores a crisis in childhood when the human division of the world into sentient and non-sentient beings collapses and the child re-enters a world of kindred beings. Philosopher Timothy Morton's conceives of this fissure as occurring in non-linear time: “The severing is a catastrophe: an event that does not take place “at" a certain “point" in linear time, but a wave that ripples out in many dimensions, in whose wake we are caught.". "Hunters and Collectors" narrativises a moment of severing that ripples through a life; a catastrophic event sparked by the death of a single invertebrate.
Research Contribution:Commissioned for a collection of essays marking the 80th birthday of Nobel Laureate J.M Coetzee (with contributions by writers of international distinction e.g. Paul Auster, Siri Hustvedt, Antjie Krog, David Malouf), "Hunters and Collectors" pays homage to the work of J.M. Coetzee through a subtle exploration of "The Lives of Animals" as expounded by Elizabeth Costello and forges connections between J.M. Coetzee's writing and contemporary philosophical thinking in relation to the Anthropocene.
Research Significance: Gives narrative form to key philosophical ideas on the Anthropocene and extends creative criticism; a genre of writing that contributes to critical thought through narrativisation and literary non0fiction.
Source URL: https://books.google.com.au/
Other output evidence: file:///
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 3 February 20202019 Publication status: Published
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: Homeward Flight
Alternative title: Are You In or Out?
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation: A1200303
Editors: Noske C
Publisher: Westerly Inc
Publisher URL: https://westerlymag.com.au/
Place of publication: Crawley, Perth
Publication date: 18 July 2019
Pagination: 109-118
Journal: Westerly
ISSN: 0043-342X
eISSN: 2207-8959
Volume: 64
Issue: 1
Extent: 11 pages
Type of work: Life Writing (creative non-fiction)
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: Research Background:
"Are You In Or Out?", a collaboration between Professor Robyn Ferrell (ANU), Dr Barbara Holloway (ANU) and Professor Jennifer Rutherford, explores writing at the periphery of personal and ecological viability. Resulting in a suite of essays featured in Westerly (July 2019) each essay locates trauma, depression and dispossession in personal, and historical contexts posing the question: Can writing keep sense at the extreme edge of experience? Each essay proceeds by placing materials side-by-side or at an angle rather than in linear sequence, so each part refracts realities which then light a further unexpected pathway towards the periphery as it is evoked in each writer's work.
Research Contribution:
My contribution to the collaboration, "Homeward Flight" explores the extreme edge of bodily experience. A slow recovery from a near fatal accident pushes the narrator on an involuntary journey into the horrors of childhood. Such proves to be the hallmarks of trauma, in the Freudian sense, as 'the story of a wound that cries out, that addresses us in the attempt to tell us of a reality or truth that is not otherwise available"(Caruth 2016). The experience of bodily dislocation evoked in the essay, provides the entry point into a world in dislocation, in which, as Bruno Latour suggests (2017)" existence and signification are synonymous.
Research Significance:
Creative Criticism is pushed into a new hybrid form in response to writing at the chiasmus of ecological crisis.
Description: Part of a collaborative suite of essays published as a feature in Westerly (July 19)
Source URL: https://westerlymag.com.au/issues/64-1/
Other output evidence: file:///
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 14 June 20192019 Publication status: Published
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: April in Kumrovec
Alternative title: In book: Why Do Things Break?
Authors: Rutherford J
Editors: McCulloch A, Goodrich R
ISBN-13: 9781527532816
ISBN-10: 152753281X
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars
Publisher URL: https://www.cambridgescholars.com/download/sample/65349
Place of publication: New Castle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom
Publication date: 2019
Pagination: 31-37
Extent: 7 pages
Type of work: Short story
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: Research Background: "April in Kumrovec" is a short story that explores the ruptures that occur in time of revolution. Using shifts in tense it brings the past and present into continuity exploring how memory continues to tease out the breakages in a life. Its historical context is a little known piece of Australian history involving a delegation of young Australian socialists sent to the Former Republic of Yugoslavia in 1989 in the final days of Tito. Just as Tito's death marked the beginning of the end of the Republic of Yugoslavia, this sojourn in Communist Yugoslavia marked the beginning of the end of the Australian Communist Party. "April in Kumrovec" uses prosody and image to explore the break down of belief as idealism comes adrift and hearts are broken Research Contribution: " "A work of life writing, "April in Kumrovec" contributes to understanding the ways in which experiences of the mind, the heart are intimately entangled in the memory and narrativisation of political lives and social movements.
Abstract: Research Background: "April in Kumrovec" is a short story that explores the ruptures that occur in time of revolution. Using shifts in tense it brings the past and present into continuity exploring how memory continues to tease out the breakages in a life. Its historical context is a little known piece of Australian history involving a delegation of young Australian socialists sent to the Former Republic of Yugoslavia in 1989 in the final days of Tito. Just as Tito's death marked the beginning of the end of the Republic of Yugoslavia, this sojourn in Communist Yugoslavia marked the beginning of the end of the Australian Communist Party. "April in Kumrovec" uses prosody and image to explore the break down of belief as idealism comes adrift and hearts are broken Research Contribution: " "A work of life writing, "April in Kumrovec" contributes to understanding the ways in which experiences of the mind, the heart are intimately entangled in the memory and narrativisation of political lives and social movements.
Source URL: https://books.google.com.au/
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 23 June 20192019 Publication status: Accepted
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: "The Bb Book"
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation:
Editors: Green J
Publisher: Meanjin Co Ltd
Publisher URL: https://meanjin.com.au/essays/the-bb-book/
Place of publication: Parkville
Publication date: 31 March 2019
Pagination: 122-128
Journal: Meanjin Quartlerly
ISSN: 0025-6293
Volume: Volume 78
Issue: 2
Extent: Forms part of a work of life-writing (in progress) comprised of 26 essays to be published under the title: The Encyclopedia of Lost Things
Type of work: Short story
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: Research Background: "The Bb Book", is part of a larger work of life writing entitled The Encyclopedia of Lost Things, comprised of 26 hybrid essays, exploring my own sense-making of the crises of childhood and adolescence within the broader contemporary context of an unravelling nature/culture (Latour). Interlacing theoretical, philosophical and psycho-social reflection with literary and personal narration , the Encyclopaedia explores the interdependence of nature/culture in narrativising the self. The Encyclopaedia of Lost Things, is a creative response to Amitav Ghosh's charge In "The Great Derangement", (2017) that writers are complicit in ignoring climate change. Climate change, he writes, “is perhaps the most important question ever to confront culture in the broadest sense. […] Given what climate change portends for the future of the earth it should surely follow that this would be the principal preoccupation of writers the world over”.
Research Contribution: "The Bb Book", responds to this challenge by using the affordances of life writing to illuminate a moment in childhood when the natural world provides the mechanisms for sense-making. The essay begin In writing about the shift from the material cultures of the book into the world of virtual content. Exploring the losses of material book culture provides a segue into memoir and the way in which my first encounters with books enabled me to make sense of my brother's descent into madness. Insects encountered in books, and in the immediate environment provide the semiotic machinery to understand and resist my brother’s sexual incursions. Books and insects in dialogue create a bio-semiosis providing a bridge to traverse trauma.
Research Significance: "An experiment in attention" (Dillon 2018), this essay contributes to the new "essaysim' through its crafting of digression, segue, and glissade to explore self/nature and society in crisis.
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 16 November 20182018 Publication status: Published
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: The Analyst's Laugh
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation: (1200303) Rutherford, Jennifer
Editors: Heck D
Publisher: Double Dialogues
Publisher URL: http://www.doubledialogues.com/
Place of publication: Melbourne
Publication date: 4 July 2018
Edition: Winter 2018
Journal: Double Dialogues
ISSN: 1447-9591
Volume: 5
Issue: 19
Extent: Forms part of "Why Do Things Break" project. (see events/projects)
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: Research Background: "The Analyst's Laugh" is a short story that explores the dichotomy between the discourse and theory of psychoanalysis and its practice and practitioners. Focusing on the French practice of 'présentation de cas Clinique' (the presentations of (public) patients to audiences of trainee clinicians) it explores the way humour is used in this clinical context to maintain an imaginary boundary between clinician and the "cas". As the narrative unfolds this boundary is progressively dissolved.
Research Contribution: The narrative interrogates the key Lacanian concept that hysterical neurosis can be understood "as a question (of mastery/authority etc). Through narrative juxtapositions of analyst/analysand it recasts 'the question' as core to all human meaning-making.
Research Significance: uses the affordances of fiction to create a reflective/ reflexive exploration of psychoanalytic practice from the analyst- in -training's point of view.
Record created at source: 18 December 20172018 Publication status: Published
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: Greyson (excerpt from Mérencolye)
Alternative title: Mérencolye
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation: B1200303
Editors: Mead A, Cothren A
Publisher: University of Western Australia Press
Publisher URL: https://westerlymag.com.au/issues/westerly-sa/
Place of publication: Perth
Publication date: 19 September 2018
Pagination: 50-56
Journal: Westerly
Title of Outlet: Westerly
ISSN: 0043-342X
Volume: 2
Issue: 6
Extent: 7 pages
Type of work: Excerpt from a larger work currently under review with Giramondo publishing
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: Research Background: "Greyson" is an excerpt from the novel," Mérencolye", a fictional exploration of colonial melancholy. Melancholia has been understood as an affect underpinning dominant cultural fantasy particularly in relation to colonial and post-colonial racial imaginaries. Slavoz Zizek (2000) for example, argues that the melancholic lost object drives the mobilization of social and political fantasy and is the motivating cause for racial and nationalist projections and antipathies. Paul Gilroy(2006) has argued that in post-colonial melancholy, the loss of Empire as object motivates the nostalgic turn towards a white past. Ann Cheng(2000) has argued that white authority is sustained through the melancholy introjection of racial others and Australian art-historian Ian McClean (1999) has argued that in colonial discourse, melancholy performs the essential ideological work of colonial legitimation." Mérencolye explores these ideas in the context of colonial South Australia imagined through the narrative conceit of Saturn as a colonial "founding father".
This excerpt, from the novel's introduction builds the affective and environmental context for reimagining colonial South Australia through a melancholy lens.Research Contribution: A poetic evocation of colonial melancholia deepening available ways of understanding key colonial tropes of the fantastic, the uncanny and the gothic though the long history of melancholy scholarship and its aesthetic textualisation.
Research Significance: Extends and deepens imaginative understanding of colonisation understood as a shared traumatic condition with an affective history and legacy.( Rose: 20014)
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 20 September 20182018 Publication status: Published
NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
Title: House of Flowers
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation: A1200303
Editors: McCulloch A
Publisher URL: http://www.doubledialogues.com/issue/interlude/
Place of publication: Australia
Publication date: 2 July 2018
Journal: Double Dialogues: Interlude: 20 years of Double Dialogue
Title of Outlet: Double Dialogues
ISSN: 1447-9591
Volume: 19-20
Issue: 19-20
Extent: 4267 words
Type of work: Short story
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: .
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 20 September 20182017 Publication status: Published online
NTRO sub category: 4 Other
Title: Traverses: J.M Coetzee in the World Mobile App
Authors: Rutherford J, Harms L, Jenkins A, Horanyi R
Author affiliation:
Publisher: You tube
Publisher URL: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/traverses/id1265691203?mt=8
Place of publication: Itunes App Store
Publication date: 2017
Extent: 448 MB
Type of work: Mobile Application
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: .
Abstract: This app offers an introduction to J.M. Coetzee's writing through the rich insights offered by the conversations, exhibitions, performances and screenings that took place during the 2014 Traverses: J.M. Coetzee in the World conference. It includes: a bank of interviews with some of the world's best Coetzee scholars; rare recordings of Coetzee reading from his novels; a gallery of archival materials, including photographs and manuscripts selected from the J.M. Coetzee Papers held at The Harry Ransom Center, The University of Texas at Austin; photographs taken by J.M. Coetzee in his youth (courtesy of Professor Hermann Wittenberg); and a glimpse into the South African landscapes that inspired Coetzee’s early writing, courtesy of Dr Kai Easton’s photography. Links and references throughout the app provide pathways for further reading, giving users new perspectives on Coetzee’s enigmatic and profoundly challenging oeuvre.
Keywords: J.M. Coetzee, mobile app, Traverses
Addresses: Jennifer Rutherford, University of Adelaide, JMCCCP, Kintore Avenue, Adelaide, SA, 5000, Australia (Correspondence)
Notes: The creative intention of Traverses is to liberate traditional (Coetzee) literary criticism from the de-energizing qualities of scholarly constraint. Twenty interviews of approximately 20 minutes duration were edited into short vignettes of a few minutes duration and arranged in a continuous scroll to form an interconnecting web of ideas. This scrolling device designed by Lisa Harms and engineered by Adan Jenkins, is sign-posted by topic headings which provide immediate shortcuts for the viewer enabling them to find illuminating discussions of key aspects of Coetzee’s oeuvre, its contexts, and its philosophical, political and affective dimensions.Each film vignette is linked in various ways to key critical commentaries, to Coetzee reading
related passages, to related adaptations and photographs, and to archival manuscripts. The app includes archival material, a photographic museum, Kai Easton’s images of Karoo country, and curated examples of Coetzee’s early photography. Interconnected pathways to enable users to make connections between place, autobiography, history, politics, style and
memory. Readers, just starting to engage with J.M Coetzee oeuvre , or perhaps struggling with their first undergraduate essays will find a new and very engaging way to encounter the work from hearing the author read, seeing the work in its nascent form, engaging with the scholarship it has inspired, and hearing some of the world’s great minds talk about the work.The app is designed to be very simple to access, to provide quick interconnecting pathways ways between topics and various contents.
Verification-status: Verified
Record created at source: 9 November 2015 -
Recorded/Rendered Creative Works
Year Citation 2002 NTRO sub category: 1 Audio/Visual Recording
Title: Ordinary People; Documentary Film (Film Australia)
Authors: Rutherford J
Author affiliation: (1200303) Rutherford, Jennifer
Publisher URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9h_IgkCldw
Place of publication: ABC Television
Publication date: 2002
Location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9h_IgkCldw
Extent: 55 minute documenatry
Version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9h_IgkCldw
ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: Research Background: Documentary film based on ethnographic research with One Nation Party 1997- 2000 exploring forms for far-right identification and extreme nationalism
Record created at source: 21 January 2019 -
Curated or Produced Public Exhibition or Events
Year Citation 2018 Rutherford, J., & McCulloch, A. (2018). "Why Do Things Break?" (No. Of Pieces: TBA) [Exhibition]. Adelaide University, New York Opera Centre, Double Dialogues: JMCCCP Double Dialogues. 2014 Rutherford, J. (2014). Traverses: J.M. Coetzee in the World (No. Of Pieces: Catalogue Essay - two pages. 26 day exhibition.) [Exhibition]. South Australia: University of South Australia. 2014 Rutherford, J., & Chafee, D. (2014). The Future of the Book (No. Of Pieces: Catalogue Essay - two pages) [Exhibition]. Adelaide, South Australia: SASA Gallery - University of South Australia. 2014 Rutherford, J. (2014). Traverses:J.M Coetzee in the World (No. Of Pieces: Exhibition of JM Coetzee Papers on loan from the Harry Ranson Center, The University of Austin at Texas with original art works, video and catalogue essay) [exhibition]. Kerry Packer Civic Gallery. 2013 Rutherford, J. (2013). National Asylum Summit (No. Of Pieces: 15) [Exhibition]. Adelaide, Australia: University of South Australia. 2013 Rutherford, J. (2013). National Asylum Summit (No. Of Pieces: 15) [Exhibition]. Adelaide, Australia: University of South Australia. 2010 Rutherford, J. (2010). Halfway House: A Poetics of Australian Space (No. Of Pieces: Two exhibitions and catalogue essay) [Exhibition]. Sydney and Melbourne.
Date | Project Name | Investigators | Funding Body | Amount |
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2018 | Tjungu Pakanai: Together we Rise | Jennifer Rutherford & Rita Horanyi | City of Adelaide | $7,500 |
2017 | H2O: Life & Death | Jennifer Rutherford & Camille Rouliere | EU Centre for Global Affairs | $4,500 |
2017 | Macau Days | Brian Castro, John Young, Luke Harrald and the JMCCCP (Jennifer Rutherford co-ordinator) | EU Centre for Global Affairs | $23,000 |
2017 | Myth and Its Migrations | Jennifer Rutherford & Peter Arnds | EU Centre for Global Affairs | $2,500 |
2015 | EU Centre for Mobilities, Migrations and Cultural Transformations Jean Monnet Erasmus Plus European Union grant |
Jennifer Rutherford |
Jean Monnet Erasmus Plus European Union | $1,500,000 |
2014 | Traverses: J.M. Coetzee in the World Mobile App | Jennifer Rutherford, Rita Horanyi, Lisa Harms &Adam Jenkins | EASS Division grant, UniSA, | $13,200 |
2012 | The Paradox of Melancholia: Paralysis and Agency Symposium | Jennifer Rutherford, Brian Castro & Anthony Elliott | Ian Potter Foundation Grant | $8,600 |
2012 | The Paradox of Melancholia: Paralysis and Agency | Jennifer Rutherford | The Australian Academy of Social Sciences Workshop Program Grant | $2,000 |
2009 | Black Art and Black Bile: Melancholy Genealogies in Colonial Victoria | Jennifer Rutherford | Arts Faculty Research Grant, Melbourne University | $18,500 |
2009 | Provost innovative Teacher’s Award | Jennifer Rutherford | Melbourne University | $15,000 |
2006 |
Love’s Labour’s Lost: The Writing of Melancholia in Australian Literature, Arts Faculty Research Grant, Melbourne University, 2006 |
Jennifer Rutherford | Melbourne University | $3,500 |
2005 | The Poetics of Australian Space Conference, in collaboration with the Art Gallery of New South | Jennifer Rutherford | Sydney University | $10,000 |
2004 | The New Nationalism: a psychosocial analysis of the Australian far right”, Sydney University, Sesqui Centenary Grant | Jennifer Rutherford | Sydney University | $25,000 |
2001 | Ordinary People (with M. Ansara), Film finance for a National Interest Documentary, Film Australia and the ABC, 2001, | Jennifer Rutherford & Martha Ansara | Film Australia and the ABC | $250,000 |
2000 | Ordinary People, Australian Film Commission | Jennifer Rutherford & Martha Ansara | Australian Film Commission | $100,000 |
2000 | Ordinary People, Search Foundation Grant | Jennifer Rutherford & Martha Ansara | Search Foundation | $10,000 |
1999 | Ordinary People, NSW National Film and Television Office Grant | Jennifer Rutherford & Martha Ansara | NSW National Film and Television Office | $20,000 |
1999 | The Rhetoric, Eros and Morality of Extreme Nationalism | Jennifer Rutherford | Macquarie University | $14,500 |
1998 | Seeding Grant to establish a Graduate Program in Australian Studies |
Ian McCalman & Jennifer Rutherford |
National Priority Reserve Fund |
$92,000 |
1994 | Encore or Pas Encore, Lacan’s Purloined Seminar | Jennifer Rutherford | Australian National University | $3,600 |
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Current Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name 2020 Principal Supervisor The Blackness of the Sun: An Exploration of Nihilism and Meaning in the works of Albert Camus and Samuel Beckett Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Gemma Lynn Parker 2020 Principal Supervisor Linking landscapes across time and culture: A novel vision of colonial and contemporary Adelaide through the art and life of ST Gill in a creative non-fiction dramatisation. Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Jennifer Lorraine Molloy 2019 Co-Supervisor “. . . a story in an obscure corner of the front page . . .” American White Women Novelists: New Recognitions (1950s-1965) Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Azadeh Feridoun Pour 2019 Principal Supervisor Deleuzian Difference and Disability Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Benjamin Wayne Kearvell 2019 Co-Supervisor The effects of creativity on neuroplasticity and cognition in adults with post-traumatic stress disorder Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Tanya Jane Duckworth 2018 Principal Supervisor Into the Forest: Historical Imagination in Philippine Fiction Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Glenn Lappay Diaz 2018 Principal Supervisor 'Conversations' - The Impact of The Use of Cross-Disciplinary Art Forms on The Performance Outcome of A New Music Theatre Work Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Cheryl Kaye Pickering 2017 Principal Supervisor Life and poetry of Foragh Farrokhzad Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Hossein Asgari -
Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name 2019 - 2020 Principal Supervisor Lawson, Stow, Prescott and the Mythos of the Outback Town Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Peter Hugh Court 2016 - 2017 Co-Supervisor Confronting the Dark: Representations of Death in Australian Fiction and 'The Art of Dying' Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Karen Maree Rees 2015 - 2018 Principal Supervisor Visions of Water in Lower Murray Country Doctor of Philosophy under a Jointly-awarded Degree Agreement with Doctorate Full Time Dr Camille Marie Eugenie Rouliere 2015 - 2018 Principal Supervisor The Necrophile Self: Contemporary Attitudes Towards Death and Its New Visibility Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Mrs Tamara Tatjana Waraschinski 2009 - 2011 External Supervisor Desire and Its Disastrous Results: Re-Examining Morality and Ambivalence in the Literature of Feminine Masochism Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Maya Linden
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Board Memberships
Date Role Board name Institution name Country 2015 - 2015 Advisory Board Member Samstag University of South Australia Australia -
Committee Memberships
Date Role Committee Institution Country 2015 - 2016 Advisory Board Member Scientific Committee research team IDEA (interdisciplinary english studies) Nancy University France 2015 - ongoing Member French Consortium: France in SA Alliance Francaise Australia 2015 - ongoing Member SAMSTAG Mangement Committee Samstag/ University of South Australia Australia 2015 - ongoing Member JMCCCP Management Committee University of Adelaide Australia 2014 - ongoing Member DIASPO Links Management Committee ERIBIA United Kingdom 2012 - 2015 Representative EASS Research Management Committee University of South Australia Australia 2010 - 2012 Member Pro-VC Research Advisory Group, School of Social Sciences Research Committee Flinders University Australia 2006 - 2008 Chair School of Culture and Communications, Human Ethics Advisory Group Melbourne University Australia 2003 - 2005 Director Media and Cultural Studies program Macquarie University Australia -
Memberships
Date Role Membership Country 2017 - ongoing Member International Sociological Association/ Sociology of Arts Research Group/ Sociology of Emotions Research Group Australia 2015 - ongoing Member Postcolonial Studies Association Australia 2015 - ongoing Member Psychosocial Studies Association United Kingdom 2015 - ongoing Board Member Creative France SA Australia 2010 - ongoing — International visual Sociology Association — -
Editorial Boards
Date Role Editorial Board Name Institution Country 2014 - ongoing Editor Antinomies Routledge United Kingdom 2010 - 2018 Associate Editor Double Dialogues Independent Australia
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