Jennifer Rutherford

Professor Jennifer Rutherford

Director

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts

Eligible to supervise Masters and PhD - email supervisor to discuss availability.

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
    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.
    DOI
    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.
    DOI
    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.
    DOI
    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.
    2005 Rutherford, J. (2005). Writing the Square: Paul Carter's Nearamnew and the Art of Federation. PORTAL Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 2(2).
    DOI
    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.
    DOI
    1998 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.

  • 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.
    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.
    2010 Holloway, B., & Rutherford, J. (Eds.) (2010). Halfway House: The Poetics of Australian Spaces. Perth: University of Western Australia Press.
    2010 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
    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 (pp. 1-5). London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    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 (pp. 1-5). London; New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    2017 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.
    2017 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.
    DOI
    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.
    DOI
    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.
    DOI
    2010 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
    2021 Publication status: Submitted
    NTRO sub category: 1 Visual art work, 3 Written work
    Title: Merencolye
    Authors: Rutherford J
    Place of publication: NA
    Publication date: 1 June 2021
    Extent: 172 pages
    Type of work: Illustrated Novel
    ERA Research Statement - 2000 character limit: MÈRENCOLYE, an illustrated novel, is a fictional exploration of colonial melancholy.
    Research Background: Melancholia has been understood as an affect underpinning dominant cultural fantasy particularly in relation to colonial and post-colonial racial imaginaries. Slavoz Zizek (2000) 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) argues that in post-colonial melancholy, the loss of Empire as object motivates the nostalgic turn towards a white past. Ann Cheng(2000) argues 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." MÈRENCOLYE explores these ideas in the context of colonial South Australia imagined through the narrative conceit of Saturn as a colonial "founding father". 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.
    Photographs are central to the novel and its overall aesthetic intention to create a moebius strip in which the fantastic/phantasmatic loops continuously through representations of the real. Visual devices (referencing surrealism with Meren’s wide staring eyes for example) or subtle shifts in movement of the figures (semblants) attenuate an uncanny effect. The portraits (doppelgangers) evoke the history of portraiture’s arc from realism to abstraction in negative form creating an abstraction of the unreal
    Research Significance: Extends and deepens imaginative understanding of colonisation understood as a shared traumatic condition with an affective history and legacy.( Rose: 20014)
    Record created at source: 17 June 2019
    2019 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 2019
    2019 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: "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 suit of essays. published as a feature in Westerly (July2019) each essay locates trauma, depression and dispossession, in both personal, and historical contexts posing the question:: where is that periphery located? How will a reader know it? 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. "Homeward Flight", Rutherford's contribution to the collaboration, explores the extreme edge of bodily experience . A slow recovery from a near fatal accident pushes her through an involuntary journey to horror, where ever-more dark memories are embedded from childhood. Such prove to be the hallmarks of trauma, in the Freudian sense of '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) . This experience of bodily dislocation provides the entry point into a world in dislocation, in which, as Bruno Latours suggests (2017)" existence and signification are synonymous."
    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 2019
    2019 Publication status: Accepted
    NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
    Title: "The Bb Book"
    Authors: Rutherford J
    Editors: Green J
    Publisher: Meanjin Co Ltd
    Publisher URL: https://meanjin.com.au/
    Place of publication: Parkville
    Publication date: 31 March 2019
    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: In "The Great Derangement", (2017) Amitav Ghosh argues that novelists 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”. This essay is part of a larger work responding to his challenge to create works of literature that narrativise the uncanny and improbable events of the anthroposcene without recourse to the genres of sci-fi and fantasy
    Research Contribution: "The Bb Book", responds to this challenge by using 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. The essay forms part of a larger work, "The Encyclopedia of Lost Things' in which crises in human meaning creation are narrativised within the context of an unravelling natural/social world
    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 2018
    2018 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 2017
    2018 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
    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 2018
    2018 Publication status: Published
    NTRO sub category: 3 Written work
    Title: House of Flowers
    Authors: Rutherford J
    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
    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 2018

  • Recorded/Rendered Creative Works
    Year Citation
    2002 NTRO sub category: 1 Audio/Visual Recording
    Title: Ordinary People; Documentary Film (Film Australia)
    Authors: Rutherford J
    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: 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.
    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.
    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.

  • Software
    Year Citation
    2017 Rutherford, J., Harms, L., Jenkins, A., & Horanyi, R. (2017). Traverses: J.M Coetzee in the World (on the App store0 [Mobile Application]. App Store: You tube.
Date Project Name Investigators Funding Body Amount
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
    2019 Principal Supervisor The Willton Tales, Stories from a Country's Heart Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Peter Hugh Court
    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 Comparative Study of Australian and Canadian Womens Literature Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Ms Jacqueline Sloan Morgan
    2019 Principal Supervisor Deleuzian Difference and Disability Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Benjamin Wayne Kearvell
    2018 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 A Prose Fiction Project on Colonel William Light Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Dr Lyn Dickens
    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
    2017 Principal Supervisor Six Figures of Melancholia Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Banjo William James

  • Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    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 Miss 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
  • Position: Director
  • Phone: 83139165
  • Email: jennifer.rutherford@adelaide.edu.au
  • Campus: North Terrace
  • Building: Schulz
  • Room: 609
  • Org Unit: J. M. Coetzee Centre for Creative Practice
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