Julian Murphet

Professor Julian Murphet

Jury Chair of English Language and Literature

School of Humanities

Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Economics

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

I am a Marxist literary scholar specialising in North American literary history and with interests in film studies, literary theory, and the uses and abuses of 'race'. I have written books on modern character, prison writing, William Faulkner, modernism, the literature of Los Angeles, Bret Ellis, and the filmmaker Todd Solondz; and edited several scholarly collections on various topics.

I am currently working on a book on race, rioting, and poetry in the USA in 1919; and a suite of essays on prison writing in the twentieth century.

I welcome prospective research students in any area covered by my competencies, but particularly on the political and economic dimensions of literary and cinematic practice in the USA.

I have a book project well underway on the terrible year of 1919 in the USA.

My research interests, broadly stated, are:

  • Marxism, communism, and the radical imagination
  • Antifascism
  • Cultural and literary theory
  • American literature and culture
  • Modernism in the arts and literature
  • Film theory and history
  • Riots in writing
  • Race and racialization
  • Logistics and Culture
  • Genetics and literature
  • Character
  • Utopia
  • Contemporary poetics

Specific authors: William Faulkner, Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, James Joyce, Ursula LeGuin, Thomas Pynchon, Keston Sutherland

  • Journals
    Year Citation
    2023 Murphet, J. (2023). The Marcusian moment: sound, film, and the body of a woman. Screen, 64(3), 342-347.
    DOI
    2022 Murphet, J. (2022). John Cage and <i>4'33"</i>. AUSTRALIAN HUMANITIES REVIEW, (70), 112-119.
    2022 Howard, A., & Murphet, J. (2022). Transferring Suspiria: Historicism and Philosophies of Psychoanalytic Transference. Film-Philosophy, 26(1), 63-85.
    DOI Scopus2 WoS1
    2021 Murphet, J. (2021). Allegory, Allegoresis, and Suspiria. Affirmations: of the modern, 7(1), 84-103.
    2020 Murphet, J. (2020). block/supply/chain. Australian Humanities Review, 66(May), 181-187.
    2020 Murphet, J. (2020). Astonied: the mineral poetics of Robinson Jeffers, Hugh MacDiarmid, Francis Ponge and Muriel Rukeyser. Textual Practice, 34(9), 1501-1517.
    DOI
    2019 Murphet, J. (2019). An oasis of horror: Affirming the affect of the portrait of a lady. Henry James Review, 40(3), 194-203.
    DOI Scopus2
    2018 Murphet, J. (2018). Poetical Works 1999-2015. CHICAGO REVIEW, 62(1-3), 346-353.
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). On the mortification of novelistic discourse in Three novels. Journal of Beckett Studies, 26(1), 39-52.
    DOI WoS2
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). A modest proposal for the Inhuman. Modernism - Modernity, 23(3), 651-670.
    DOI Scopus8 WoS13
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Rosa Plus Emma: Political Pleasure and the Enjoyment of Reason. Filozofski Vestnik, 37(2), 201-212.
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Godard's Stereopticon. Screening the Past, 41.
    2015 Murphet, J. (2015). Aesthetic perception and "the flaw": Towards a jamesonian account of Late James. Henry James Review, 36(3), 226-233.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS2
    2014 Murphet, J. (2014). Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital. CAMBRIDGE JOURNAL OF POSTCOLONIAL LITERARY INQUIRY, 1(1), 157-163.
    DOI WoS2
    2014 Murphet, J. (2014). Steven connor from down under. Critical Quarterly, 56(2), 14-16.
    DOI
    2012 Murphet, J. (2012). Events listening to their own tremors: Zukofsky and objective anachrony. Textual Practice, 26(4), 707-727.
    DOI Scopus1 WoS3
    2011 Murphet, J. (2011). Coetzee and late style: Exile within the form. Twentieth Century Literature, 57(1), 86-104.
    DOI Scopus10 WoS10
    2011 Murphet, J. (2011). Coetzee's lateness and the detours of globalization. Twentieth Century Literature, 57(1), 1-8.
    DOI Scopus5
    2011 Murphet, J. (2011). Coetzee's Lateness and the Detours of Globalization Introduction. TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE, 57(1), 1-8.
    WoS5
    2011 Murphet, J. (2011). Enduring Words: Literary Narrative in a Changing Media Ecology. REVIEW OF ENGLISH STUDIES, 62(253), 154-156.
    DOI
    2011 Murphet, J. (2011). The mole and the multiple: A chiasmus of character. New Literary History, 42(2), 255-276.
    DOI Scopus8 WoS5
    2009 Murphet, J. (2009). Cultural studies: An anthology. CONTINUUM-JOURNAL OF MEDIA & CULTURAL STUDIES, 23(3), 416-422.
    2009 Murphet, J. (2009). Beckett's televisual modernism. Critical Quarterly, 51(2), 60-78.
    DOI Scopus3 WoS3
    2008 Murphet, J. (2008). Pitiable or political animals?. Sub-Stance, 37(3), 97-116.
    DOI Scopus4 WoS2
    2007 Murphet, J. (2007). Character and event. Sub-Stance, 36(2), 106-125.
    DOI Scopus4
    1998 Murphet, J. (1998). Film noir and the racial unconscious. Screen, 39(1), 22-34.
    DOI Scopus18
    1998 Murphet, J. (1998). Identity and difference in Anna Deavere Smith's performance art. Wasafiri, 13(27), 29-33.
    DOI Scopus1

  • Books
    Year Citation
    2024 Murphet, J. (2024). Modern Character 1888-1905. Oxford University Press.
    2024 Groth, H., & Murphet, J. (2024). The Edinburgh Companion to Literature and Sound Studies. Edinburgh Companions to Litera.
    2023 Murphet, J. (2023). Prison Writing in the Twentieth Century A Literary Guide. EUP.
    2023 Bayeh, J., Groth, H., & Murphet, J. (Eds.) (2023). Writing the Global Riot: Literature in a Time of Crisis (1st ed.). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
    2019 Wutz, M., & Murphet, J. (Eds.) (2019). E. L. Doctorow A Reconsideration. Edinburgh; United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press.
    2019 Murphet, J. (2019). Todd Solondz. Chicago, Illinois; USA: University of Illinois Press.
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). Faulkner’s media romance. New York, NY; USA: Oxford University Press.
    DOI Scopus7
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). Sounding Modernism Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film. Edinburgh University Press.
    2016 Hellyer, H. G. (2016). Ranciere and Literature. Edinburgh University Press.
    2015 Murphet, J., & Solomon, S. (2015). William Faulkner in the media ecology.
    Scopus4
    2014 Murphet, J., McDonald, R., & Morrell, S. (2014). Flann O'Brien & Modernism. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
    2012 Murphet, J., & Steven, M. (2012). Styles of Extinction: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. A&C Black.
    Scopus9
    2012 Lusty, N., & Murphet, J. (2012). Modernism and masculinity. N. Lusty, & J. Murphet (Eds.), Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus7
    2011 Danta, C., Kossew, S., & Murphet, J. (2011). STRONG OPINIONS: J. M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction.
    Scopus4
    2009 Murphet, J. (2009). Multimedia Modernism Literature and the Anglo-American Avant-garde. Cambridge University Press.
    2005 Fulton, H., Huisman, R., Murphet, J., & Dunn, A. (2005). Narrative and media. Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus57
    2003 Murphet, J., & Rainford, L. (2003). Literature and Visual Technologies Writing After Cinema. Springer.
    2002 Murphet, J. (2002). Bret Easton Ellis's American Psycho A Reader's Guide. A&C Black.
    2001 Murphet, J. (2001). Literature and Race in Los Angeles. Cambridge University Press.

  • Book Chapters
    Year Citation
    2023 Murphet, J. (2023). New Visual Media. In M. Whalan (Ed.), The Cambridge History of American Modernism.
    2022 Murphet, J. (2022). Understanding Quad. In B. Rapcsak, M. Nixon, & P. Schweighauser (Eds.), Beckett and Media. Manchester, United Kingdom: University of Manchester Press.
    2022 Murphet, J. (2022). Violence and Power in Kubrick’s Later Cinema. In K. A. Ritzenhoff, D. Metlić, & J. Szaniawski (Eds.), Gender, Power, and Identity in The Films of Stanley Kubrick. Taylor & Francis.
    2021 Murphet, J. (2021). Globalism’s Pre-History: Technologies of Modernism. In D. Ganguly (Ed.), The Cambridge History of World Literature (pp. 148-162). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2021 Murphet, J. (2021). Marx in the Modernist Novel. In M. Steven (Ed.), Understanding Marx, Understanding Modernism (pp. 115-123). New York, New York, United States of America: Bloomsbury Academic.
    2020 Murphet, J. (2020). "A Rearrangement of Molecules": On Doctorow’s Perpetual Motion Machines. In J. Murphet, & M. Wutz (Eds.), E.L. Doctorow: A Reconsideration (pp. 132-147). Edinburgh, Scotland; Great Britain: Edinburgh University Press.
    2019 Murphet, J. (2019). "Wide as targes let them be," or, How a poem is a barricade. In R. Jennison, & J. Murphet (Eds.), Communism and Poetry: Writing Against Capital (pp. 185-207). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
    DOI
    2019 Murphet, J. (2019). "Wide as targes let them be," or, How a poem is a barricade. In R. Jennison, & J. Murphet (Eds.), Communism and Poetry: Writing Against Capital (pp. 185-207). Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.
    DOI
    2019 Murphet, J. (2019). King Kong Capitalism. In Animal Life and the Moving Image (pp. 153-170).
    Scopus1
    2018 Murphet, J. (2018). Modernism and Technology. In U. Maude, & M. Nixon (Eds.), The Bloomsbury Companion to Modernist Literature (pp. 307-326). London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury Academic.
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). "Character". In P. Rabinowitz (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature. Online: Oxford University Press.
    DOI
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). Projecting the Sixties: mediation and characterology in The Catherine Wheel. In E. McMahon, & B. Olubas (Eds.), Elizabeth Harrower: Critical Essays. Sydney, Australia: Sydney University Press.
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). On Not Listening To Modernism. In J. Murphet, H. Groth, & P. Hone (Eds.), Sounding Modernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    2017 Murphet, J. (2017). On Not Listening To Modernism. In J. Murphet, H. Groth, & P. Hone (Eds.), Sounding Modernism: Rhythm and Sonic Mediation in Modern Literature and Film. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Ineluctable Modality of the Sensible: Poverty and Form in Ulysses. In J. Murphet, & G. Hellyer (Eds.), Rancière and Literature (pp. 207-225). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Ineluctable Modality of the Sensible: Poverty and Form in Ulysses. In J. Murphet, & G. Hellyer (Eds.), Rancière and Literature (pp. 207-225). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). A Desire Named Streetcar. In L. Marcus, D. Bradshaw, & R. Roach (Eds.), Moving Modernisms (pp. 275-288). New York, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    DOI
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Poetry in the Medium of Life: Text, Code, Organism. In S. Pryor, & D. Trotter (Eds.), Writing, Medium, Machine: Modern Technographies (pp. 208-223). Online: Open Humanities Press.
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Short story futures. In D. Head (Ed.), The Cambridge History of the English Short Story (pp. 598-614). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus2
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Lewis and media. In T. Miller (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis (pp. 160-171). New York, NY; USA: Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2016 Murphet, J. (2016). Medium. In S. Bru, B. De Bruyn, & M. Delville (Eds.), Literature Now: Key Terms and Methods for Literary History (Vol. Sascha Bru, Ben De Bruyn and Michel Delville, pp. 46-58). Edinburgh, Scotland; UK: Edinburgh University Press.
    2015 Murphet, J. (2015). Cinematography of the group: Angelopoulos and the collective subject of cinema. In The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos (pp. 263-287).
    2015 Murphet, J. (2015). New media ecology. In The New Cambridge Companion to William Faulkner (pp. 14-28). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus2
    2014 Murphet, J. (2014). Faulkner in the histories of film: “Where memory is the slave”. In Faulkner and Film: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2010 (pp. 197-219).
    Scopus4
    2013 Murphet, J. (2013). Communication and media studies. In A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism (pp. 54-67). Wiley.
    DOI Scopus2
    2013 Murphet, J. (2013). A Loose Democracy in the Skull: Characterology and Neuroscience. In Mindful Aesthetics: Literature and the Science of Mind (pp. 189-205).
    2012 Murphet, J. (2012). The cave and The Road: Styles of forgotten dreams. In Styles of Extinction: Cormac McCarthy’s the Road (pp. 109-130).
    Scopus3
    2012 Steven, M., & Murphet, J. (2012). Introduction: “The charred ruins of a library”. In Styles of Extinction: Cormac McCarthy’s the Road (pp. 1-8).
    Scopus1
    2012 Murphet, J. (2012). Postcolonial writing in Australia and New Zealand. In The Cambridge History of Postcolonial Literature (Vol. 1, pp. 446-483). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2012 Murphet, J. (2012). The novel amid new technology and media. In The Cambridge History of the English Novel (pp. 774-790). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2012 Murphet, J. (2012). Towards a gendered media ecology. In Modernism and Masculinity (pp. 53-68). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI
    2011 Murphet, J. (2011). Diary of a Bad Year: Parrhesia, Opinion and Novelistic Form. In Strong Opinions: J. M. Coetzee and the Authority of Contemporary Fiction (pp. 63-80).
    Scopus5
    2010 Murphet, J. (2010). The literature of urban rebellion. In The Cambridge Companion to the Literature of Los Angeles (pp. 101-110). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus1
    2008 Murphet, J. (2008). Film and (as) modernity. In The SAGE Handbook of Film Studies (pp. 343-360). SAGE Publications Ltd.
    DOI Scopus2
    2005 Murphet, J. (2005). Fiction and postmodernity. In The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature (pp. 716-735). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2005 Murphet, J. (2005). Narrative voice. In Narrative and Media (pp. 73-85). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus1
    2005 Murphet, J. (2005). Point of view. In Narrative and Media (pp. 86-95). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus2
    2005 Murphet, J. (2005). Stories and plots. In Narrative and Media (pp. 47-59). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus4
    2005 Murphet, J. (2005). Narrative time. In Narrative and Media (pp. 60-72).
    DOI Scopus5
    2004 Murphet, J. (2004). Postmodernism and space. In The Cambridge Companion to Postmodernism (pp. 116-135). Cambridge University Press.
    DOI Scopus17
    2003 Murphet, J. (2003). Gertrude Stein's machinery of perception. In Literature and Visual Technologies: Writing After Cinema (pp. 67-81).
    DOI Scopus7

  • Original Creative Works
    Year Citation
    2020 Authors: Murphet J. Title: Named and Nameless Others. Description: N/A. Extent: webpage.

ARC Discovery Grant, ‘Rioting and the Literary Archive’, 2019-21 ($199,000)

ARC Discovery Grant, ‘William Faulkner Between Cinema and Literature’, 2009-2011 ($165,000)

Research-only Professorship, UNSW, 2007-2010 

ARC Discovery Grant, ‘Cinematic Imaginations’, 2004-2005 ($75,000)

Junior Research Fellow, St John’s College, Oxford, 1998-2002

Senior Rouse Ball Scholar, Trinity College, Cambridge, 1997-98

I teach broadly in Anglophone literary history, especially modern and contemporary, as well as on film and literary cultural theory.

In 2024 I will be teaching ENGL 3106 Writing Southern Worlds and FILM 1006 Hollywood Film.

  • Current Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2024 Co-Supervisor A short fiction sequence and accompanying exegesis exploring varying concepts of place and space Master of Philosophy Master Full Time Mr Morgan Wesley Nunan
    2024 Principal Supervisor Literary Modernism and Conservative Politics Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Ms Charlotte Grace Minney
    2024 Principal Supervisor A Rising Class-Consciousness: The Evolution of the 'Eat the Rich' Phenomenon in Contemporary Cinema Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Eva Nicolaou
    2023 Principal Supervisor The Philosophical ‘Subject’ and Literary ‘Character’: Negotiating Identity in Modernist Texts by Women Authors Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Sophie Elinor Zadow
    2023 Principal Supervisor Consider “anti-Tom” novels as proslavery propaganda in comparison to slave narratives. How did these texts represent female sexuality and motherhood within the plantation system? Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Miss Jacqueline Victoria Cook
    2023 Principal Supervisor A Cinematic Reading of Faulkner's Novel Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Xinru Ma
    2021 Principal Supervisor Crafting a multitude of impressions: a study of textual histories and changes made to the revised republished works of Willa cather Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Miss Clare Lesley Charlesworth
    2021 Principal Supervisor Violence, Boredom, Extinction: Artistic Depictions of Symbolic Death and Masculine Delinquency Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Mr Taylor Earl Westmacott
    2021 Co-Supervisor No Promises: Literary Language and Late Capitalism Master of Philosophy Master Part Time Mr Alex William Sutcliffe
    2021 Co-Supervisor A Literary Study of Classical Influences on Milton's Theodicy in Paradise Lost Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Darryl Do
    2020 Principal Supervisor Fishing in Moby-Dick, Omeros, and Carpentaria Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Part Time Matthew Hunter Couper

  • Past Higher Degree by Research Supervision (University of Adelaide)
    Date Role Research Topic Program Degree Type Student Load Student Name
    2020 - 2022 Principal Supervisor Deleuze, Simondon, and Disability: A Transcendental-Empirical Approach to Disability and Disability Studies Doctor of Philosophy Doctorate Full Time Mr Benjamin Wayne Kearvell

  • Memberships
    Date Role Membership Country
    2020 - ongoing Member ARC College of Experts Australia
    2013 - ongoing Member Academy of the Humanties in Australia Australia
  • Position: Jury Chair of English Language and Literature
  • Phone: 83134561
  • Email: julian.murphet@adelaide.edu.au
  • Campus: North Terrace
  • Building: Napier, floor 6
  • Org Unit: English, Creative Writing
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