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Rosemary Overell_186BA(Hons) PhD (The University of Melbourne) Senior Lecturer

Contact

Email rosemary.overell@otago.ac.nz
Office: Burns 3N10

Rosemary is also currently convening the Master of Arts (Coursework) for the Division of Humanities.

@muzaken / researchgate.net / Google scholar profile / Academia.edu

Research interests & supervision areas

  • Lacanian media studies
  • Lacanian feminist theory
  • Subcultural studies, particularly extreme metal and punk subcultures

Background

Rosemary completed a doctorate at the University of Melbourne in 2012. Before joining the department at Otago in 2013, Rosemary taught at the University of Melbourne in Cultural Studies. Between 2021 and 2023, she worked in The Department of Communication and New Media at the National University of Singapore.

Research & Public Engagement

Rosemary Overell's most recent work considers how gendered subjectivities are co-constituted by and through mediation. She draws particularly on Lacanian psychoanalysis to explore a variety of mediated sites, such as #MeToo and trans* bodies. In particular, she considers the intersections between affect and signification and how these produce gender. Rosemary has looked at media as varied as anime, extreme metal, reality television and documentary film. A full list of publications is below.

In addition to her academic scholarship, Rosemary writes regularly for The Conversation and un projects has contributed to public debates on how gender and the media work in the contemporary moment. She has also written for ArtNZ and collaborated with the New Models collective in 2021 on NM CODEX Y2K20

She ran a highly successful radio programme between 2013 and 2016 on 91FM Radio One called 'culture jamming'. This programme included interviews with academics, music practitioners and media workers on the intersections between music, culture and politics. Some archived podcasts are available here.

Rosemary is also on the editorial board of Continental Thought & Theory: A Journal of Intellectual Freedom, Metal Music Studies and Puratoke: Journal of Undergraduate Research in the Creative Arts and Industries. She has also been a fellow in Nagoya University's Gender Studies programme, under the mentorship of Professor Chika Tanimoto.

Rosemary Overell welcomes PhD proposals in the following areas: Lacanian media studies; Lacanian feminist theory; subcultural studies focused on extreme metal or punk.

Teaching

Rosemary Overell has taught papers on digital media and identity, contemporary media studies, critical journalism studies and music cultures.

In 2024, Rosemary will co-ordinate:

  • MFCO 103 Introduction to Communication Studies
  • MFCO 213 Media Genres: Crime
  • MFCO 401 Advanced Media, Film & Communication Theory

Conferences organised

Completed supervisions

Honours

  • Ayodya Rathnayaka: Anime fans under lockdown in Singapore: a communicative theory of identity ethnography. (At NUS).
  • Taylor Adams: Navigating the 'In-Between': The Posthuman, Metamorphosis & Hopeful Becomings.
  • Oliver Dearnley-Smith: Madoka: Japanese anime from a Lacanian perspective
  • Julia Stewart: Bigger, Fatter, Gypsier: Biopower and My Big, Fat, Gypsy Wedding
  • Brianna Kirkham: The Business of Blogging
  • Sarah Rayner: Twitter and Television: New Interactions between Fans, Critics and Creators
  • Shelley Harding: Flourishing Under a Rose-Tine: Nostalgic Depictions of Misogyny in Mad Men

MA

  • Stanley Arvan WIjaya: Uncovering Visual Novels: Exploring the history and transformation of a cross cultural game genre. (At NUS)
  • Huang Yimin: Feminist Bloggers and Online Feminist Activism on Chinese Social Media. (At NUS).
  • Taylor Adams: From flayed bodies to frozen eggs: A cultural history of the body, somatechnics and the 're'-turn of the flesh.
  • Alison Blair:Children of the Revolution: Bolan, Bowie and the Carnivalesque.

PhD

  • Massimiliana Urbano:Becoming-common: Affective Technologies and Grassroots Activism in Contemporary Italy.
  • Bethany Geckle: Queer World-Making: Destabilising Heteronormativity through Skateboarding.
  • Hannah Herchenbach: On Becoming a Dunedin Rock Musician: The Cultural Politics of the Dunedin Sound.
  • Tha-era Yousef: Narrative Analysis of Online News Coverage of Controversial Case Studies of Women and Islam in Malaysia: 2014 to 2018.

Current supervisions

PhD

  • Eleanor Crabill: Myths and realities of impact and legacy in the post-FIFA Women's World Cup era.
  • Oliver Dearnley-Smith: Self-Alienated spirit: the subject and the social in Hegel and Critical Theory.
  • Frankie Fei: Feels like queer spirit: (re)imagining history and futurity in retro-queer narratives.
  • Deniz Karahan Alp: Between Emancipation and Domination: Herbert Marcuse and Social Media.
  • Peter Stapleton:The Punkumentary: Embodying a punk sensibility within the music documentary?

MA

  • LingLing Yana Hu: Jia Ling and fan discourse online

Publications

Overell, R. (2024). Don't worry darling: The anxious question of what women want after #MeToo. Psychoanalysis, Culture & Society. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1057/s41282-024-00461-5 Journal - Research Article

Overell, R. (2024). Me! Too! … or worse? Proceedings of the International Association of Media and Communication Research (IAMCR) Conference. (pp. 28). Retrieved from https://iamcr.org Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

Overell, R. (2024). #MeToo backlash in Barbie and Tàr. Proceedings of the Joint Conference of the Association for Psychosocial Studies and the Association for Psychoanalysis Culture and Society (APS/APCS): Learning or not learning from experience. Retrieved from https://www.psychosocial-studies-association.org/ Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract

Millar, I., Nicholls, B., Overell, R., & Tutt, D. (2024). Power and politics in Adam Curtis' Can't get you out of my head: An emotional history of the modern world. In C. Owens & S. Meehan O'Callaghan (Eds.), Psychoanalysis and the small screen: The year the cinemas closed. (pp. 163-189). Abingdon, UK: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781003272069-11 Chapter in Book - Research

Overell, R. (2023). Simon Denny: Seeing things. In Documents 2021-2023. (pp. 120-133). Auckland, New Zealand: Michael Lett. Chapter in Book - Research

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