Associate Professor Jennifer McDonell
Associate Professor , Victorian Literature and Culture, Twentieth Century Literature, Shakespeare - Academic Board; Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education; School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
![Jennifer McDonell](https://www.une.edu.au/__data/assets/image/0011/469757/Jennifer-pic-across-teh-Board-1.jpeg)
Biography
Professional Experience and Background
Jennifer studied Arts/Law at the University of Sydney graduating with a BA (Hons I), MA (Hons I) and PhD and during this time was the recipient of a number of prizes and scholarships (see below under Honours and Awards). She has broad teaching experience covering most of the major literary periods, and before coming to the University of New England held full time teaching positions at the University of Sydney (9 years), University of New South Wales (Canberra 3 years) and Macquarie University (1 year). She is the recipient of three independently assessed Teaching and Learning Awards (at university, state and national levels) and has held a range of university leadership positions, including Deputy Head of School, (School of Arts, 2014-2018), Head of Department, Literature, Languages and Cultures (2020-21) and Executive Reviews Advisor, Education Quality Directorate at University of New England (2021-22). She is Associate Editor, Global Nineteenth-Century Studies, published by Liverpool UP. Jennifer also has an interest in academic governance, is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), and is currently Chair of the UNE Academic Board, Teaching and Learning Committee.
Jennifer's primary research concentration is Victorian literature and cultural history. Recent published work in the area of ethics, animals and literary representation includes essays on Elizabeth Barrett Browning, women and pet-keeping in Victorian England; mourning for pets and sentimentality; literary human and animal studies and the academy, and animals in the work of Charles Dickens . Jennifer’s article ‘The Animal Turn, Literary Studies, and the Academy’ (Social Alternatives, 2014) was reprinted in Literary Theory: An Anthology, 3rd edition, eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (Blackwell 2017). Jennifer has edited with Leigh Dale a collection of scholarly essays on animals and literature (Australian Literary Studies, 23. 1. (June 2010) and a special issue of Modern Language Quarterly 75:2 (June 2014): Lessons from the Past: The History of Academic English. She has also published on the poetry of Robert Browning, and on Browning, Henry James and literary fame. (For other publications in these areas see Full CV)
Jennifer is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge (elected in 2011).
Qualifications
BA (Hons Class I; First Place Australian Literature), MA (Hons Class I), PhD (U Sydney)
Awards
HASSE Research Leadership (Nov 2022) (Issued by Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Education · Nov 2022)
Life Member, Clare Hall University of Cambridge, December 2011 ongoing; (Issued by Clare Hall, University of Cambridge)
Visiting Fellowship, Clare Hall, University of Cambridge 2011 (10 months) (Issued by Clare Hall, University of Cambridge)
Vice-Chancellor’s Awards for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (Individual category) 2007. (Issued by University of New England)
Carrick Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning 2007 (Individual category) (Issued by Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Educatio)n.
NSW Minister for Education and Training and the Australian College of Educators Quality Teaching Award (Individual category) 2007. (Issued by the NSW Minister of Education and Training, and the Australian College of Educators).
Rector's Award, University of New South Wales (Canberra) 1992 (Issued by UNSW Canberra for research at U of Cambridge on Victorian periodical literature and Florence, Italy for work on Robert Browning).
Commonwealth Postgraduate Research (Issued by Government of Australia 1985)
Eleanor Sophia Wood Travelling Scholarship 1988 (Issued by University of Sydney for research at Yale University, and the Huntington Library, San Marino, CA).
A.A.E.F. Fulbright Postgraduate Scholarship 1989.
H.M. Butterly - F. Earle Hooper Award (Issued by Southerly, University of Sydney for r published article on Christina Stead)
NSW Institute of Journalists Award (for first place in Honours, Australian Literature, University of Sydney) (Issued by NSW Institute of Journalists).
Teaching Areas
Victorian Literature and Culture
Gothic Literature
Contemporary Critical Theory and Practice
Twentieth-Century Literature.
Australian Literature
Primary Research Area/s
Victorian Literature and Culture; Human and Animal Studies; Material Culture in the Nineteenth-Century
Research Interests
Situated at the intersection of Victorian studies and Human and Animal studies my current research focuses primarily on the question and condition of the animal ‘Other’. I am also interested in questions of relationship between things and the persons who value them, to intersubjective subject and object relations in specific temporal and spatial contexts, specifically in Robert Browning’s life and work. The ‘NonHuman turn’ in the Humanities, which emerged in the final decades of the twentieth century, addresses some the most urgent and difficult conceptual issues in Humanities scholarship: the politics and material practices of species difference, the functions of animals in nature/cultures, and the fragile status of the ‘human’ in an era of accelerated environmental crisis. Supported by both textual analysis and archival work, my research in this area aims to identify and analyse intersections between species and discourses of gender, class, race, ethnicity in Victorian literature and culture. I have published articles and chapters on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and her dog, Flush; mourning, sentimentality and pets in Victorian England, Dickens and animals, and literary human and animal studies and the academy. I have also written on topics as varied as bric-à-brac and cabinets of curiosity, difficulty and celebrity in Robert Browning’s poetry, and on Browning studies and the history of university English studies in Australia. I currently have book contracts for a number of projects including a study of things which examines the greatly amplified mid- and late-Victorian interest in Browning’s biography via access to objects which were intimately related to the poet’s private life and which were much sought-after by biography-hunters: memorabilia, souvenirs, tangible relics of all sorts. It will also consider the twentieth-century afterlives of select objects.
Research Supervision Experience
I have extensive experience in supervising higher degree research theses in nineteenth and twentieth century literature, including interdisciplinary topics. I welcome students wishing to undertake research topics in the areas of Victorian literature and culture; in Human-Animal studies; and Literature and the environment.
Current supervisions include:
1. Anna Blanch, PhD. The Spiritual Imagination of E. Nesbit (1858-1924)
2. Francesca Brady, PhD (Creative Practice). ““How can memoir about human-equine relationships in the Australian and New Zealand horseracing industries contribute to ethical understandings of equine welfare and “invisible” worker identity?”
3. Samuel Commerford, MPhil. ‘Sudden Revelations and Inconclusive Experiences: Apocalyptic Resonances in Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim, Nostromo and Under Western Eyes”
4. Luke Dunne, MPhil. “Human Psychological Entanglement with Nonhuman Environments in 1960s and 1970s Science Fiction”
5. Helen O’Neill. PhD (Creative Practice) “The Beast of Gevaudan”
Publications
Articles and Book Chapters (2010 - )
2022. Friday Essay: “Joanna Bourke, the NSW Arts Minister, and the Unruly Contradictions of Cancel Culture” The Conversation. September 2, 2022. https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-joanna-bourke-the-nsw-arts-minister-and-the-unruly-contradictions-of-cancel-culture-189377
2022 "If Animals Could Speak, Would We Understand Them?" The Conversation. March 30, 2022. https://theconversation.com/if-animals-could-speak-would-we-understand-them-178883
2021 100% McDonell, Jennifer ‘Afterword: Lost and Found’Victorian Pets and Poetry, p. 188–203, isbn: 9781003168782; doi: 10.4324/9781003168782-9; https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/31183
2021 100% McDonell, Jennifer. ‘Cry of the Children (Elizabeth Barrett Browning)’. The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women’s Writing, isbn: 9783030027216 doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-02721-6_124-1 https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/31195
2019. 100% ‘“Filth and Fat and Blood and Foam”: Animal Capital, Commodified Meat and the “human” in Reading Literary Animals: Medieval to Modern. Eds. Jane Spencer, Karen Edwards and Derek Ryan. London: Routledge, 2019, pp. 194-211. (7,140 words) https://www.google.com/search?q=reading+literary+animals&oq=Reading+literary+animals&aqs=chrome.0.0l2.4897j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
9. 2019 100% McDonell, Jennifer. ‘Animal fables after Darwin: Literature, speciesism, and metaphor’ Social Alternatives, 38(2), p. 70–71, issn: 1836-6600; https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/31190
10. 2018 100% McDonell, Jennifer. ‘Thomas Hardy and Animals by Anna West, and Victorian Dogs, Victorian Men: Affect and Animals in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture by Keridiana W. Chez’. Victorian Studies, 60(4), p. 679–682, issn: 1527-2052 doi: 10.2979/victorianstudies.60.4.25; https://hdl.handle.net/1959.11/31196
2018. 100% ‘Dickens and Animal Studies.’ Oxford Handbook of Charles Dickens. Robert L. Patten, John O. Jordan and Catherine Waters. Oxford: Oxford UP, ch 37, pp. 550-65. ISBN: 9780198743415 (8500 words)
2018. 100% ‘Representing Animals in the Literature of Victorian Britain.’Routledge Handbook to Animal-Human History.
Eds Hilda Kean and Philip Howell, London: Routledge, 2018. Chapter 13, pp. 337- 427. ISBN: 9781138193260 https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Animal-Human-History/Kean-Howell/p/book/9781138193260 (14,668 words))
2017. 100% ‘Bull’s-eye, Agency and the Species Divide in Oliver Twist : a Cur’s-Eye View.’ Animals in Victorian Literature and Culture. Eds. Laurence Mazzeno and Ronald Morrison. London: Palgrave Macmillan 2017, pp. 109-128. (8000 words) https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057%2F978-1-137-60219-0_6#citeas
2017. 100% ‘The Animal Turn, Literary Studies, and the Academy.’ Blackwell’s Literary Theory: An Anthology, eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan. 3rd Edition (2017) pp. 1471-86. http://au.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1118707850.html
2016. 100% .'The London Zoo and The Victorians' . Victorian Review. 41.2 (Fall 2015):, 195-199. 10.1353/vcr.2015.0018
2015. ‘Literary Fame, Henry James and the Problem of Robert Browning.’ Critical Survey. Special Issue: Celebrity Encounters: Famous Americans in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Eds. Paraic Finnerty and Mark Frost. 27.3 (2015): 43-63. (7000 words).
2015. ‘Animals.’ The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature
. Felluga, Dino Franco, Pamela K. Gilbert and Linda K. Hughes. Eds) Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2015. BlackwellReferenceOnline.http://www.literatureencyclopedia.com/subscriber/tocnode.html?id=g9781118405383_chunk_g97811184053833_ss1-13> (5000 words).
2014. '"The Fascination of What's Difficult": Browning and MacCallum's Classroom.’ Modern Language Quarterly. Special Issue: Lessons from the Past: the History of Academic English. 75.2 (2014): 193-214 (7000 words).
2014. Leigh Dale and Jennifer McDonell. ‘Lessons From the Past?’ Modern Language Quarterly. Special Issue: Lessons from the Past: the History of Academic English. 75.2 (2014): 119–27. (4500 words)
2013. 'Browning's Curiosities: The Ring and the Book
and the "democracy of things''' in Literary Bric-à-Brac and the Victorians: From Commodities to Oddities. Eds. Jonathon Shears and Jenn Harrison. The Nineteenth Century Series. Aldershot: Ashgate Press 2013. Pp. 67-83. ISBN: 978-1-4094-3990-5.
2013. '"This you'll call sentimental, perhaps": Animal Death and the Propriety of Mourning.' Victorian Vocabularies. Ed. Jessical Gildersleeve. Macquarie University, Sydney: Macquarie Lighthouse Publishing, 2013. pp 111-32.
2013. 'English Studies at the University of New England: a Report from the Field'. Australian Literary Studies. The English Issue.
Eds. Leigh Dale and Tania Dalziel. pp 149-162.
2013. 'Literary Studies, the Animal Turn, and the Academy', Social Alternatives. 32 (4) 2013. pp 4-16.
Examines the field of literary human-animal studies; analyses some of the major theoretical challenges posed by a philosophically rigorous HAS to traditional notions of disciplinarity. Discusses race/species intersectionality by way of reference to the Bandit and Michael Vick cases in the US; and discourses of reason and animality in relation to J.M. Coetzee's Disgrace.
2012. 'A la lisière de l'humanité: les chiens, l'affect et la division des espèces dans l'Angleterre du XIXe siècle' in "Aux frontières de l'animal. Mises en scènes et réflexivités". Eds. Annik Dubied, Juliet Fall and David Gerber. Geneva and Paris: Librarie Droz. 2012. pp. 119-141. ISBN:10- 2-600-01527-2.
Examines through historically situated nineteenth-century case studies how human/canine interspecies affect foregrounds instabilities inherent in the way of culture hierarchically arranges its species significations and values.
2012. 'Critical Introduction' in Robert Browning: The Complete Poetical Works. 2 Vols. Newcastle Upon Tyne. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. v-xviii. ISBN: 13:978-1-4438-1902-2; ISMN: 1-4438-1902-6.
2010. '"Ladies' Pets" and the Politics of Affect: Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Jane Welsh Carlyle', Australian Literary Studies. 23.1 (June 2010). pp. 17-34.
Singled out by leading Elizabeth Barrett Browning scholar, Marjorie Stone, in Victorian Poetry
49.3 (2011) as 'the most sophisticated, extended, and original treatment of this subject to date'.
2010. McDonell, J., Parkes, M and Tynan, B. 'Virtual tutor support with Smarthinking and key barriers to its successful implementation'. Refereed full paper. 27th annual ASCALITE (Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education Conference) in December 2010.
Other: As Editor
2020 ongoing. Associate Editor, Global Nineteenth Century Studies, Liverpool UP.
2014. Co-Editor. Modern Language Quarterly.
Special Issue: 'Lessons from the Past: the History of Academic English'. . 75.2 (June 2014). With Leigh Dale.
2010. Co-Editor, With Leigh Dale. Australian Literary Studies . Special Issue: Animals and Literature. 23.1 (June 2010). With Leigh Dale.
Selected Conference Proceedings 2009-2023
2022. Convenor.
2017. “What porridge had John Keats?”: Robert Browning and Victorian Literary Fame, NAVSA/AVSA, New York University, La Pietra, Florence: May 17-20 2017. 2017.
‘Browning’s Curiosities’. Victorian Materialities. Deakin University, Melbourne, 14-16 June. 2017.
Form and Reform. Dickens Project. University of California, Santa Cruz. July 27-29. Synthesiser. (Invited and funded)
2015. ‘Location. Location, Location: London’s Smithfield Markets and the Politics of Site/Sight’. Animal Publics: Emotions, Empathy, Activism, University of Melbourne, July 12-15, 2015.
2014. ‘Dangerous Dogs and the New Poor Law: Reading Dickens’s Bull’s eye’. Reading Animals,
University of Sheffield, 18 July 2014.
2014. 'Literary Fame, Henry James and the Problem of Robert Browning'. Celebrity Encounters: Transatlantic Fame in Nineteenth-Century Britain and America , University of Portsmouth, 4-5 July 2014.
2013. 'Browning and the Global Circulation of Literary Value'. The Global and Local. Supernumerary conference of NAVSA (North American Victorian Studies Association), BAVS (British Association for Victorian Studies) and AVSA (Australasian Victorian Studies Association). June 3. 2013, Venice, Italy.
2012. Invited Paper. 'Mourning the Animal Dead: Sentimentality and the Care Tradition in Animal Ethics'. Danse Macabre: Emotional Responses to Death and Dying from Medieval to Contemporary Times. The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, University of Sydney. Australian Museum. 21 September, 2012.
2012. 'Inordinate Affection: Animal Death and Emotion in Nineteenth-Century Sentimental Culture', Animal Death., University of Sydney 13 June 2012.
2012. 'Sentiment and Sympathy in Victorian Pet Narratives'. Victorian Vocabularies. Australasian Victorian Studies Association, Griffith University, Brisbane, 11-14 April, 2012.
2011. 'Browning's Things'.Composition and Decomposition.
British Association for Victorian Studies, University of Birmingham September 1-3 2011.
2011. 'Crying Over a Dead Dog: Animals and Emotion in Victorian Sentimental Culture'. Representing Animals in Britain, University of Rennes II, Rennes, France. October 20, 2011.
2010. 'Bulls-Eye: Dossier of a Dangerous Dog', Dickens Universe, University of California Santa Cruz, 3 August 2010.
2009. '"Ladies Pets" and the Politics of Affect in Mid-Victorian England'. Minding Animals – the 2009 International Academic and Community Conference on Animals and Society, Civic Centre, Newcastle, 13-19 July, 2009.
2009. 'Natural and Unnatural Histories: Human and Non Human Animals in the Films of Mark Lewis'. Minding Animals - the 2009 International Academic and Community Conference on Animals and Society, Civic Centre, Newcastle, 13-19 July, 2009
Memberships
Modern Language Association (MLA)
Australasian Animal Studies Association
Australasian Victorian Studies Association
UNE Nineteenth-Century Studies Network
External Profiles
Further Information
The Dickens Project, University of California, Santa Cruz
Australasian Animal Studies Association
Australasian Victorian Studies Association
The Nineteenth-Century Studies Network, UNE
Minding Animals International