Watkins Collecting her

1

University of the Sunshine Coast

Ross Watkins

Collecting her

Biographical Note:

Dr Ross Watkins is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia. His doctoral novel was shortlisted for the 2011 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award for Emerging Author, and his award-winning short fiction and non-fiction has been published in Australian and international anthologies. Ross’ scholarly interests are diverse but primarily concerned with visual narrative and writing for the illustrated book, as well as narrative representations of trauma and melancholy. He is an Executive Committee member of the Australasian Association of Writing Programs (AAWP), short story editor for the scholarly journal Social Alternatives, and is a regular presenter at the Brisbane Writers’ Festival and a literary judge. His first major publication as an illustrator is The Boy Who Grew Into A Tree (Penguin, 2012), a graphic novel written by Gary Crew.

Keywords:

creative writing – collecting – melancholy – objects

Watkins Collecting her

2

Endnote

1. Shakespeare, William (nd) The complete works of William Shakespeare, London: Odhams Press, 1154.

Research statement

Research background

Gibson states that melancholy objects are ‘objects that have been central to grieving, and particularly, the memory of grieving’ and as such come to ‘memorialize mourning’ (2004: 286). This memorialising or ‘trophying’ (Haverkamp 1990: 703), signifies the incompletion of the mourning process, and thus the melancholy object becomes ‘the affective remainder or residual trace of sadness and longing in non-forgetting’ (Gibson 2004: 289). Such ‘non-forgetting’ is central to psychoanalytical constructions of melancholy as an epistemological reaction to object loss (Kristeva 1989) and the thematic exploration of Collecting her.

Research contribution

Collecting her is a co-authored epistolary graphic novel in which a father and son collect melancholy objects once belonging to their deceased wife/mother, an actress of past renown. Demonstrating the connection between mourning, memory and the collecting process, Collecting her embodies research into the cultural and psychoanalytical theories of collecting – the form and function of material objects and subjective investment in the process of meaning-making (Baudrillard 1994).

Research significance

Collecting her contributes to the specified theoretical dialogues by extending the significance of my doctoral thesis/exegesis and its resultant and forthcoming scholarly publications. Collecting her is the second Crew and Watkins collaboration and demonstrates the potential for success when an established author-academic assists the career of an emergent author-academic.

Works cited Baudrillard, Jean 1994 ‘The system of collecting’, in J Elsner and R Cardinal (eds) The cultures of collecting, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 7-24

Gibson, Margaret 2004 ‘Melancholy objects’ Mortality 9(4): 285-99

Haverkamp, Anselm 1990 ‘Mourning becomes melancholia. A muse deconstructed: Keats’s Ode on Melancholy’ New literary history 21(3): 693-706

Kristeva, Julia 1989 Black sun: depression and melancholia, New York: Columbia University Press