Dr Monique Rooney
Areas of expertise
- North American Literature 200506
- Screen And Media Culture 200212
- Literary Theory 200525
- Australian Literature (Excl. Aboriginal And Torres Strait Islander Literature) 470502
Research interests
Melodrama; new media, film and television; taste and computer networking; US literature, Australian Literature, Ruth Park.
Researcher's projects
My academic career began with a doctoral thesis on the act and theme of passing-for-white in US literature and film for which I engaged with the intersections of race, sex and gender in US cultural production. My research has since branched into a number of cognate areas concerned again with race, sex, gender and class but now in the context of the longue durée of melodrama as an aesthetic form persisting from the Enlightenment age to the present. My book Living Screens: Melodrama and Plasticity in Contemporary Film and Television (Rowman and Littlefield International 2015) is the culmination of research which draws on thinkers ranging from Jean Jacques Rousseau to Marshall McLuhan and Catherine Malabou to explore melodrama as a highly adaptable and durable mode that mutates as it crosses modalities and media. Rousseau's ur-melodrama, Pygmalion: scene lyrique, is a touchstone for my argument that melodrama is a plastic medium and mode, recreating itself through the melding of old with new technologies. This book includes chapters on the television series Mad Men (2007 - present), Todd Haynes's mini-series Mildred Pierce (2011) and Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011).
I am currently working on two major research projects.
The first is a book titled ‘Brow Network: Programs and Promises’ that explores the language, culture and aesthetics of brow (as in highbrow, lowbrow, middlebrow) in relation to the programs and promises of our computer networked environment Drawing on Catherine Malabou's work on plasticity, this book argues that brow is a morphing intelligence that has continually adapted and metamorphosed since its first emergence in the late nineteenth century when the term derived from phrenological discourse through to its role in tastemaking and computer networking cultures.
The second is a biography of twentieth-century New Zealand-Australian writer Ruth Park whose oeuvre extends across all of the major print-forms of the twentieth-century (novel, short story, essay, biography, autobiography & non-fiction, children’s fiction, stage, radio, film and television script-writing, poetry, ballads and advertising jingles). In 2023, when I am Nancy Keesing fellow at the State Library of NSW, I am researching the Ruth Paper papers in preparation for writing her biography.
Current student projects
Around the World, Adrift and In Place: Geographic, Virtual, and Affective Boundary-Crossings and the Search for Experience Across Modern Global Space in the Essay Films of Chris Marker, Jonas Mekas, and Trinh T. Minh-ha (David Fenderson)
Past student projects
One Another: Women's Friendship and the Matrix of Becoming in Twentieth-Century American Novels (Louisa Kirk, 2023)
'Watching Television with David Foster Wallace': A Novel and Dissertation (Kevin McMorrow, 2012)
Publications
- Rooney, M 2021, 'Trigger Archive: What Is a True, Impossible Teaching Archive?', Australian Humanities Review, no. 68, pp. 77-87.
- Rooney, M 2020, 'Morphing Crypt: Introduction to 'Cryptocurrency and the Intelligence of the Humanities'', Australian Humanities Review, no. 66, pp. 137-143.
- Rooney, M 2020, 'Carolyn Williams, ed., The Cambridge Companion to English Melodrama Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams, eds., Melodrama Unbound: Across History, Media, and National Cultures', Modern Drama, vol. 63, no. 3, pp. 387-392.
- Rooney, M 2020, 'Kenneth Lonergan’s Networked Bildungsromane: Howards End (2017) and Margaret (2011)', Textual Practice.
- Davidson, G & Rooney, M 2019, 'Introduction to Queer Objects: What does queer have to do with objects', in Guy Davidson and Monique Rooney (ed.), Queer Objects, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, United Kingdom, pp. 3-4.
- Davidson, G, Davidson, G, Rooney, M et al, eds, 2019, Queer Objects, Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, United Kingdom.
- Rooney, M 2019, 'Melodrama: The Role of Imitation, Melody, Speech and Gesture in a Post-Enlightenment Mixed Form', in Paula Rabinowitz et al. (ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature, Oxford University Press, online.
- Rooney, M 2018, 'Queer Objects and Intermedial Timepieces: reading s-town (2017)', Angelaki, vol. 23, no. 1, pp. 156-173.
- Davidson, G & Rooney, M, eds, 2018, Queer Objects: Editorial introduction.
- Rooney, M 2018, “Air-object: on air media and David Lynch’s 'Gotta Light?' (Twin Peaks: The Return, 2017)”, New Review of Film and Television Studies, vol. 16, no. 2, pp. 123-143.
- Rooney, M 2017, 'Love’s Intermediary: The Aesthetics of Rousseau’s Amour de Soi', in Cindy Zeiher and Todd McGowan (ed.), Can Philosophy Love?: Reflections and Encounters, Rowman and Littlefield, United Kingdom, pp. 221-239.
- Rooney, M 2016, 'Obscure Openings: Intellectual Freedoms of Rousseau, Agamben and Malabou', Continental Thought and Theory: A Journal of Intellectual Freedom, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 207-219.
- Rooney, M 2015, Living Screens: Melodrama and Plasticity in Contemporary Film and Television, Rowman and Littlefield, London.
- Rooney, M 2015, 'Mute Eloquence: Elizabeth Jolley’s The Well as Encrypted Melodrama', JASA: Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature Journal, vol. 15, no. 1, p. 16.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2014, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 57, November 2014.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2014, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 56, May 2014.
- Rooney, M 2014, 'ESSAY - Playing Beatie Bow'.
- Rooney, M 2013, 'Voir Venir: The Future of Melodrama?', Australian Humanities Review, no. 54, pp. 81-102pp.
- Curthoys, N, Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2013, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 55, November 2013.
- Rooney, M, Smith, R & Curthoys, N 2013, 'Editor's introduction to Australian Humanities Review, Issue 54, May 2013', Australian Humanities Review, no. 54, pp. 5pp.
- Rooney. M 2013. 'Voir Venir: The Future of Melodrama?' Australian Humanities Review. 54.
- Rooney, M 2012, 'Turned Back Mad Men as Intermedial Melodrama', Cultural Studies Review, vol. 18, no. 2, pp. 169-187.
- Rooney, M, ed., 2016, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 60, November 2016.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R 2011, 'Editor's introduction to Australian Humanities Review, Issue 51, November 2011', Australian Humanities Review, no. 51, pp. 1-2.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R 2012, 'Editor's introduction to Australian Humanities Review, Issue 53, November 2012', Australian Humanities Review, no. 53, pp. online.
- Rooney, M 2011, ''A heart that could be strong and true': Kenneth Cook's Wake in Fright as queer interior', Association for the Study of Australian Literature Journal, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 1-15 (published on-line).
- Rooney, M 2010, 'An interview with Anna Broinowski, director of Forbidden Lie$ (2007)', Humanities Research, vol. XVI, no. 1, pp. 129-143.
- Rooney, M 2010, 'What passes in Imitation of Life (1959)?', Humanities Research, vol. XVI, p. 1.
- Smith, R & Rooney, M, eds, 2010, JASAL Special Issue: Common Readers and Cultural Critics.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R 2010, 'Introduction: Common Readers and Cultural Critics', Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (JASAL) Special Issue, pp.1-6.
- Rooney, M 2010, 'Introduction: passing, imitations, crossings', Humanities Research, vol. XVI, no. 1, pp. 1-9.
- Rooney, M & Strange, C, eds, 2010, Humanities Research.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, 2008, 'Editors' Introduction', Australian Humanities Review 44 (March 2008)
- Rooney, M 2007, 'Cosmopolitan Bohemians and Bachelors: Chinese Enclaves in Late 19th-Century Australia and the United States', Antipodes: A Global Journal of Australian/New Zealand Literature, vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 141-146.
- Rooney, M 2006, 'Networking in Fortress Los Angeles: sexuality, race and the postmodern metropolis in 'The L Word'', Australian Humanities Review, vol. 38, pp. 1-17.
- Rooney, M 2006, 'Making Poverty Visible Barbara Ehrenreich and Elisabeth Wynhausen', Overland, vol. 184, pp. 41-47.
- Rooney, M 2005, 'Stages of Development: Remembering Old Sydney in Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow and A Companion Guide to Sydney', Southerly, vol. 64, no. 3, pp. 95-105.
- Rooney, M 2003, 'My you: Fannie Hurst, Zora Neale Hurston and literary patronage', Working Papers on the Web, vol. 5, pp. 1-10.
- Rooney, M 2003, 'Introduction: "Racial Discplines"', Working Papers on the Web, vol. 5, no. 2003.
- Rooney, M 2002, '"Echoes Across the Flats": Storytelling and Phillip Noyce's "Rabbit Proof Fence" (2002)', Southerly, vol. 62, no. 3, pp. 107-117.
- Rooney, M 2001, 'Grave endings: the representation of passing', Australian Humanities Review, vol. 2001.
- Rooney, M 2001, '"Recoil" or "Seize"?: Passing, Ekphrasis and "Exact Expression" in Nella Larsen's "Passing"', Enculturation, vol. 3, no. 2.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2011, Australian Humanities Review 51 (Nov 2011)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, 2010, 'Editors' Introduction', Australian Humanities Review 48 (May 2010), pp. 5-8.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2010, Australian Humanities Review 49 (Nov 2010)
Projects and Grants
Grants information is drawn from ARIES. To add or update Projects or Grants information please contact your College Research Office.
- "A Window of Life": A Biography of Ruth Park (Primary Investigator)