Associate Professor Kate Rigby
Associate Professor of German Studies,
Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Director
of Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
Kate Rigby is an Associate Professor of German Studies and Comparative Literature and Critical Theory. Her main fields of interest are Ecocriticism, Ecophilosophy, German Critical Theory, phenomenology, Romanticism, and ecology and religion. Kate is a Humboldt Fellow, a Fellow of the Australian Humanities Academy and President of the Australia-New Zealand Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.
Academic career
I completed my PhD at Monash University in 1991. In my thesis, which has since been published as a monograph, I explored the phenomenon of the 'dialectic of enlightenment' in German drama in the late 18th and early 19th century. I was offered a Lectureship in German Studies at Monash that year, and in 1997 I was promoted to Senior Lecturer. Since 1996, I have also been on the Board of the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies, and from 1999 to 2004, I held a dual appointment in German and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. I am now located solely within the Centre, of which I was the Director from 2004-2007.
On the strength of my doctoral research, I was asked by Melbourne University Press to write a book on contemporary German feminist theory. In order to undertake further research for this book, which I subsequently wrote in collaboration with my colleague at Monash, Silke Beinssen-Hesse, I applied for a Humboldt Fellowship, which took me to Paderborn for most of 1994 to work under the mentorship of the eminent German feminist scholar, Gisela Ecker.
In addition to my research in the area of German Studies, I have a strong interest in ecological thought. In 1999 I co-edited a collection of essays on "Ecology, Gender and the Sacred" with my colleague in Historical Studies, Constant Mews, and I have published several articles and book chapters in the areas of ecospirituality, ecophilosophy and ecocriticism. I am President of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (Australia-New Zealand). I am also a co-editor, with Sharron Pfueller and Freya Mathews, of a journal called PAN (Philosophy Activism Nature). In 2004, my new book,Topographies of the Sacred: The Poetics of Place in European Romanticism was published by the University of Virginia Press in their Ecocriticism series, Under the Sign of Nature: New Directions in Ecocriticism .
Research interests
My primary research interest in German Studies is in the literature and philosophy of the Age of Goethe, and in German thought in the twentieth century (especially, German Critical Theory and phenomenology). In recent years, my research has been concentrated in the area of the ecological humanities, with a particular emphasis on ecofeminism, ecocriticism and ecology and religion. My new book Topographies of the Sacred undertakes an ecocritical reconsideration of literary, philosophical and religious discourses on nature, place and poiesis in German and English Romanticism. I am currently examining the eco-cultural history of the Canberra area, and as a member of an ARC-funded collaborative research team, I am looking at eco-utopian thinking and practice in relation to the creation of Canberra as Australia's federal capital. My newest research project is concerned with the cultural mediation of environmental catastrophe.
Listing of Associate Professor Rigby's selected publications.
Teaching interests
In CCLCS, I teach introductory comparative literary and cultural studies and ecocritical studies. I also teach into the second year German Studies culture core, and lecturing in first year European Studies. At Honours/Masters level I teach on ecology and the sacred in Religious Studies, and at postgraduate level, I have the pleasure of supervising a large number of students researching a wide range of topics across a number of disciplines.
I am particularly interested in supervising new graduate student projects relating to culture and ecology in Australia; culture and environmental catastrophe; and ecocriticism and European thought.
Contact
Menzies Building, Room W807
Telephone: +61 3 9905 2246
Fax: +61 3 9905 5593
E-mail: Kate.Rigby@arts.monash.edu.au