Dr. Monique Rooney

Biography

Monique Rooney's academic career began with her doctoral thesis focusing on themes of passing-for-white in literature and film, engaging with intersections of race, sex, gender, and cultural production. Her research has branched into several cognate areas concerned with race, sex, gender, and class within the context of the long durée of melodrama as a form, persisting from the Enlightenment to the present. Her book, 'Living Screens: Melodrama Plasticity Contemporary Film Television' (Rowman Littlefield International, 2015), is the culmination of her research, drawing from thinkers such as Jean Jacques Rousseau, Marshall McLuhan, and Catherine Malabou to explore melodrama as a highly adaptable and durable mode that mutates across media modalities. Currently, Rooney is working on several major research projects, including a book titled 'Brow Network: Programs Promises Taste-making Contemporary American Literature Art', which examines the language and aesthetics of 'brow' in the context of computer-networked environments, influenced by Malabou's work on plasticity. Additionally, she is researching the life and work of New Zealand-Australian writer Ruth Park. In 2023, she was named a Nancy Keesing Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, where she is preparing a biography of Park.

Research Interests