Associate Professor Jenny Lawn MA, PhD

Contact details

• Ph: +649 213 6337
  Location: AT 2.54, Atrium Building
  Campus: Auckland

Qualifications

• Master of Arts - University of British Columbia (1991)
• Doctor of Philosophy - University of British Columbia (1997)

Certifications and Registrations

• Licence, Mentor Supervisor, Massey University

Research Interests

• Postcolonial literature
• Narrative theory
• Kiwi Gothic
• Gothic studies
• Gender theory
• Representations of trauma in literature and film
• Contemporary New Zealand literary and cultural studies
• New Zealand writers’ response to the era of neoliberalism as a cultural and economic phenomenon

Thematics

21st Century Citizenship

Area of Expertise

Field of research codes
Cultural Studies (200200): Languages, Communication And Culture (200000): Literary Studies (200500): Maori Literature (200504): New Zealand Literature (excl. Maori Literature) (200505): Postcolonial Studies (200211)

Teaching Statement

I'm an accredited mentor supervisor with Massey University and Senior Fellow of Advance HE (SFHEA).

My teaching equips students with the conceptual and practical skills to become astute readers and sophisticated writers across a range of genres and contexts. Versatility and constant striving for the highest quality of engagement with students are hallmarks of my approach. Using a flexible and responsive repertoire of teaching practices, I have developed, and successfully delivered, papers that contribute to programmes in English, Expressive Arts, Media Studies, and Communication. Putting ideas into action through working (and playing) with texts is a key teaching ideal that I carry across these programmes, and a way of making the most of fertile areas of overlap in teaching methods and learning materials between these disciplines.

In recent years I have focused my pedagogical practice on: (i) applying the tools available in a blended learning environment with careful regard to students’ learning needs; (ii) giving particular thought to the flow of ideas and activities as students transition from one level of progress to the next; (iii) opening channels of feedback in multiple ways during the course; and (iv) helping to foster a community of practice with my tutoring team, and, more recently, across staff in my academic unit.

Graduate Supervision Statement

Postgraduate supervision is a great pleaure and a privilege. I aim to be flexible, open-minded, and attentive to student needs in a holistic way. I welcome any expressions of interest in the following areas of interest:

• Gothic studies / settler Gothic
• gender studies
• New Zealand fiction
• materialist approaches to literature and culture
• crime fiction
• contemporary fiction and narrative genres

Current Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

• Cynthia Hiu Ying Lam - Doctor of Philosophy
  Resistance, Healing and Empowerment through Autobiographical Therapeutic Performance–– 愛，媽媽 (Love, Mum): A Solo Matrilineal Memoir on Chinese Womanhood
• Hannah Hansen - Doctor of Philosophy
  Empowering the Paranormal: Monstrosity, Power, and Postfeminism in the Paranormal Romance

Completed Doctoral Supervision

Main Supervisor of:

• 2022 - Perina Chapelle - Doctor of Philosophy
  Framing the Financially Literate Subject: An Analysis of Financial Literacy Discourse in New Zealand
• 2021 - Gaja Kolodziej - Doctor of Philosophy
  Unforgettably in Love: Uses of the Amnesia Trope in Contemporary Romance
• 2007 - Bronwyn Beatty - Doctor of Philosophy
  The currency of heroic fantasy : The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter from Ideology to Industry.

Co-supervisor of:

• 2014 - Robert Redmond - Doctor of Philosophy
  The Femme Fatale in Postfeminist Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction: Redundant or Re-Inventing Herself?
• 2013 - Ann Lochead - Doctor of Philosophy
  Moral Uncertainty and Contemporary Children's Fantasy Fiction
• 2012 - Wendy Bolitho - Doctor of Philosophy
  Silent Invocations: Music, Sublimation and Social Transformation
• 2009 - Leonard Sanders - Doctor of Philosophy
  Postmodern Orientalism: William Gibson, Cyberpunk and Japan

Media

• 13 Apr 2013 - Radio
  Research-related radion interview
  Interview with Lynn Freeman on NZ crime fiction, Standing Room Only, Radio NZ National (16’25”).