Dr Russell Smith
Areas of expertise
- British And Irish Literature 200503
- Literary Theory 200525
Research interests
Modernist literature, especially Irish modernist writers Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, James Joyce. Literary theory.
Biography
I completed a PhD on Samuel Beckett at the University of Adelaide in 2001, and
taught at the University of Adelaide and University of South Australia before moving
to Canberra in 2003. I took leave without pay as a primary carer in 2010-2012.
I currently teach modernist literature and literary theory in the following courses:
- ENGL3008: Theories and Methodologies for Literary Studies
- ENGL3022: Literature and Modernity
- ENGL2087: Reality Effects: Truth, Representation and Narrative Form
- ENGL4020: Researching and Writing the Thesis: A Workshop
- ENGL4021: Creative Reading: Topics in Theory, Methodology and Interpretation.
Researcher's projects
I am currently working on a study of the impact of the experience of 1930s radio listening on James Joyce’s writing methods in Finnegans Wake and his conception of the media ecology of the literary text. I am also working on a history of literary depictions of the relations between human workers and intelligent machines.
Available student projects
I am available to supervise PhD, Masters and Honours students in topics on 20th century literature, especially of the period 1910-1940, and on literary theory, especially gender and queer theory, psychoanalysis and marxist literary theory.
Current student projects
Irish Orientalism and the place of Persian/Iranian culture in James Joyce's global cosmopolitanism (PhD)
Interpretation and ideology critique in the writings of Susan Sontag, Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Zizek (Honours)
Emotion, agency and metafiction in the stories of Katherine Mansfield (Honours)
Past student projects
PhD
2021. “Nothing Can Happen Nowhere”: Place and Trauma in Elizabeth Bowen’s Writing
2020. Superpowered Security: The Cruel Optimism of National Security in Marvel’s Iron Man Films
2020. Essays on the Production and Reception of Anita Heiss’s Writing
2016. Cognitive Poetics and the Modern Novel
2011. Futures Far and Near: The Science Fiction Legacy of Olaf Stapledon
2008. Richard Tipping and Multimedia Texts
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Masters
2008. ‘The Postcolonial Identity: A Comparative Study of Australian and Caribbean Literature’
2007. ‘The Limits of Infinity: Irony and Emotion in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest’
2004. ‘Nauseous Heroes: Choosing Selves in Hamlet and Spider-Man’
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Honours
2022. ‘“This is the land I have been looking for all my life!”: Polysemic Narratives and Utopian Potential in C. S. Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia’.
2022. ‘Survivor Testimony After #MeToo: The Discursive Effects of Eggshell Skull and Know My Name as Rape Trial Memoirs’
2022. ‘The Changing Critical Reception of James Baldwin’s Novels and Essays’
2021. ‘Realism, Nationhood, and Temporality in the Modernist Bildungsroman’
2020. ‘The Repetition of Trauma Relating to World War One in the Novels of F. Scott Fitzgerald’
2018. ‘Here and Queer: Moving Past the Heterocentrist Trap’
2016. ‘The First Feminist Murder Mystery? The Gender Politics of Higher Education in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Gaudy Night (1935)’
2016. ‘Surface Enjoyment and Critical Distance: Readerly Pleasures in Akhenaten and The Monkey’s Mask’
2015. ‘The Eloquent Listener: Language, Sound and the Act of Listening through Modernist Texts’
2015. ‘The Girl in the Panther Skin: A Short Story’, and ‘The melancholy allure of the Soviet Union: Stalinist nostalgia and the spectacle of violence in recent children’s literature’ (English/Creative Writing)
2014. ‘A Proper Story: An Argument for Games as a Narrative Medium’
2014. ‘The New Weird: A Semiotic Definition of a Fantasy Genre’
2014. ‘Cataclysmic Prophecies: Religion, Science and Political Power in Apocalyptic Fiction’
2009. ‘The Limits of the Author-Function and the ‘Australian’ Novels of J.M. Coetzee’
2009. ‘Unstitching Utopia: Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and The Lathe of Heaven’
2009. ‘Reading Alienation: Reader Complicity in Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Gilman’s The Yellow Wallpaper’
2008. ‘The Long Anguish of Vagrancy and Freedom: Lost Objects and Desire in Samuel Beckett’s Molloy’
2007. ‘A New Motherland: Symbolic Nationalism in Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies’
2007. ‘A Descriptive Investigation of Player Interaction in Computer Games’
2007. ‘The Rhythm of Thought: Spontaneous Expression in Theory and Practice’ (English/Philosophy)
2007. ‘The Hannibal Trilogy and Literary and Filmic Theories of Horror’
2006. ‘Approaching Adaptation Studies from an Intertextual Perspective: Intertextuality, Popular Film, and Chocolat’
2006. ‘Reflections and The Second Self’ (English/Creative Writing)
2006. ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Identity in a World of Monsters.’
2004. ‘Rethinking Reading Practices: Oprah’s Book Club and Cultural Authority’
Publications
- Smith, R 2023, Gabrielle Carey was best known for Puberty Blues � but I knew her as a formidable intellectual who mastered the art of living well.
- Smith, R 2021, 'Dead Enough to Bury: Life, Death, Burial and Afterlife in Beckett's Trilogy', Samuel Beckett Today-Aujourd'hui, vol. 33, no. 1, pp. 30-44.
- Ruston, S & Smith, R 2019, 'Introduction', Nineteenth-Century Contexts: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 47, no. 3, pp. 237-242.
- Smith, R 2019, 'Frankenstein in the automatic factory', Nineteenth-Century Contexts, vol. 41, no. 3, pp. 303-319.
- Smith, R 2017, 'Radical Sensibility in 'The End'', Journal of Beckett Studies, vol. 26, no. 1, pp. 69-86pp.
- Smith, R 2017, '"It was Things Made Me Weep": Involuntary Memory in First Love', Samuel Beckett Today-Aujourd'hui, vol. 29, pp. 104-116pp.
- Smith, R 2017, 'Walking ... Stumbling ... Falling ... Lying Down: Beckettian Operations in the Art of John Barbour and Ugo Rondinone', in Robert Reginio, David Houston Jones and Katherine Weiss (ed.), Samuel Beckett and Contemporary Art, Columbia University Press, United States, pp. 183-212.
- Smith, R 2016, 'Book Review: David Tucker, Samuel Beckett and Arnold Geulincx: Tracing a Literary Fantasia. London: Continuum, 2012', The Beckett Circle, no. Autumn 2016, pp. 1-6pp.
- Smith, R 2016, 'Global Modernity, Anthropogenic Extinction, and the Future of Sexual Difference: From Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to Julia Leigh's The Hunter', Affirmations: of the modern, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 106-126.
- Smith, R 2016, '"Uproar, bulk, rage, suffocation, effort unceasing, frenzied and vain": Beckett's Transports of Rage', Journal of Medical Humanities, vol. 37, no. 2, pp. 137-147.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2015, Australian Humanities Review, Issue 58, May 2015.
- 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.
- Smith, R 2013, 'Childhood and Portora', in Anthony Uhlmann (ed.), Samuel Beckett in Context, Cambridge University Press, New York, USA, pp. 7-18.
- Smith, R 2013, 'Event, Contingency, Repetition: Donnie Darko vs Eternal Sunshine', Double Dialogues, vol. 16, no. Spring, p. 8.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2013, Australian Humanities Review 55 (Nov 2013)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2013, Australian Humanities Review 54 (May 2013)
- Smith, R 2012, 'Review: Beckett and Phenomenology, edited by Ulrika Maude and Matthew Feldman (London: Continuum, 2009', Journal of Beckett Studies, vol. 21, no. 1, pp. 125-130.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2012, Australian Humanities Review 53 (Nov 2012)
- Mishra, S & Smith, R, eds, 2012, Australian Humanities Review 52: Minor Histories of the Pacific (May 2012)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2011, Australian Humanities Review 51 (Nov 2011)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2011, Australian Humanities Review 50 (May 2011)
- Smith, R 2010, 'Authenticity, Dante and True Love in Samuel Beckett's How It Is', in Jan Lloyd Jones and Julian Lamb (ed.), Art & Authenticity, Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, Melbourne, Australia, pp. 147-155.
- Smith, R 2010, 'It's nothing: Beckett and Anxiety', in Daniela Caselli (ed.), Beckett and Nothing: Trying to understand Beckett, Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, pp. 192-212.
- Smith, R 2010, 'The Spatial Poetics of Computer Games and the Mapping of Australian Space', in Jennifer Rutherford & Barbara Holloway (ed.), Halfway House: The Poetics of Australian Spaces, University of Western Australia Publishing, Crawley, Western Australia, pp. 345-365.
- 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.
- Smith, R & Rooney, M, eds, 2010, JASAL Special Issue: Common Readers and Cultural Critics.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2010, Australian Humanities Review 49 (Nov 2010)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2010, Australian Humanities Review 48 (May 2010)
- Smith, R & Ackerley, C 2009, 'Samuel Beckett's Reception in Australia and New Zealand', in Mark Nixon and Matthew Feldman (ed.), The International Reception of Samuel Beckett, Continuum Publishing Company, London, United Kingdom, pp. 108-128.
- Smith, R 2009, 'The Literary Destruction of Canberra: Utopia, Apocalypse and the National Capital', Australian Literary Studies (ALS), vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 78-94.
- Smith, R 2009, 'Review: Daniela Caselli, Beckett's Dantes: Intertexuality in the Fiction and Criticism, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006', Journal of Beckett Studies, vol. 17, no. 1-2, pp. 221-225.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2009, Australian Humanities Review 47 (November 2009)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2009, Australian Humanities Review 46 (May 2009)
- Smith, R, ed., 2008, Beckett and Ethics, Continuum Publishing Company, London, United Kingdom.
- Smith, R 2008, 'Introduction: Beckett's Ethical Undoing', in Russell Smith (ed.), Beckett and Ethics, Continuum Publishing Company, London, United Kingdom, pp. 1-20.
- Smith, R 2008, 'Bearing Witness in How It Is', in M Okamuro,, N mori, B Clement, S Houppermans, A Moorjani, A Uhlmann (ed.), Borderless Beckett / Beckett sans frontiers, Samuel Beckett Today/Aujourd'hui, Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, pp. 351-360.
- Smith, R 2008, 'Book Review: Anthony Uhlmann, Sjef Houppermans and Bruno clement eds', Samuel Beckett Today-Aujourd'hui, vol. 14, no. After Beckett/D'apres Beckett, pp. 259-260.
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2008, Australian Humanities Review 45 (Nov 2008)
- Rooney, M & Smith, R, eds, 2008, Australian Humanities Review 44 (March 2008)
- Smith, R 2007, ''The acute and increasing anxiety of the relation itself': Beckett, the Author-Function, and the Ethics of Enunciation', in Dirk Van Hulle and Mark Nixon (ed.), Samuel Beckett "All Sturm and no Drang" Beckett and Romanticism Beckett at Reading 2006, Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, New York, pp. 341-354.
- Smith, R 2007, 'Web publishing: A Critical Evaluation', in Lucy Neave, James Connor & Amanda Crawford (ed.), Arts of Publication: Scholarly Publishing in Australia and Beyond, Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd, Australia, pp. 68-90.
- Smith, R 2007, 'Endgame's Remainders', in Mark S. Byron (ed.), Samuel Beckett's Endgame, Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, pp. 99-120.
- Smith, R 2006, 'The Art of Antony Hamilton and Nicholas Folland as Spatial History', Southerly, vol. 66, no. 2, pp. 40-55.
- Smith, R 2004, Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Insight Publications, Victoria, Australia.
- Smith, R 2004, 'Beckett's Endlessness: Rewriting Modernity and the Postmodern Sublime', in Anthony Uhlmann, Sjef Houppermans, Bruno Clement (ed.), After Beckett, Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY, pp. 405-420.
- Smith, R 2004, 'This is tomorrow Experimenta in Melbourne and Primavera in Sydney', Art Monthly Australia (AMA), vol. 168, pp. 37-41.
- Smith, R & Tutton, S 2004, Introduction: New Media Art in Australia and Asia, MESH#17: New Media Art in Australia and Asia, pp. 28-29.
- Smith, R & Tutton, S, eds, 2004, MESH 17 New Media Art in Australia and Asia, 17.
- Smith, R 2001, '"Someone" (The Other Beckett)', Journal of Beckett Studies, vol. 10, no. 1 and 2, pp. 1-16.
