BA (Hons) PhD (Otago)
Gender Studies Programme
Contact details
Room 5C15, Richardson Building
Tel +64 3 479 8939
Email annabel.cooper@otago.ac.nz
Most of my research centres on cultural history and cultural politics – of gender, place and racial conflict. I have written about autobiographical narratives, about poverty, about how memory and conceptions of nation shape our experience of place, and about how media of various kinds constitute the stories that give meaning to experience.
My earlier work included an edition of Mary Isabella Lee’s autobiography, The Not So Poor; the collection Sites of Gender: Women, Men and Modernity in Southern Dunedin 1890-1939, edited with Barbara Brookes and Robin Law; and articles on the work of Jane Campion. More recently I edited The Lives of Colonial Objects with Angela Wanhalla and Lachy Paterson.
Currently I am exploring the ways in which the New Zealand Wars have been established in cultural memory. Much of this study has looked at screen narratives, culminating in Filming the Colonial Past: The New Zealand Wars on Screen (2018), but it also encompasses work on the journalist-historian James Cowan, including a special issue, James Cowan and the Legacies of Late Colonial Culture, co-edited with Ariana Tikao. At present, I am working on the final phase of this study, which considers memory and landscapes of the New Zealand Wars.
Teaching
I co-ordinate and teach:
GEND 101 Gender in Everyday Life
GEND 205/ 305 Gender and the Media
GEND 401 Debates in Gender and Sexuality
GEND 490 Dissertation seminars
I teach sections of:
GEND 102 Bodies, Sexualities and Selves
GEND 207/ 307 Masculinities
Current and recent students
Helen Bollinger MA
Film families, generation and gender in a NZ project-based industry
Mei Qing Joanna Chin PhD
Framing poverty in Singapore
Radhika Raghav PhD (Art History and Theory)
Portrayal of a Memsaab; representation of modern woman across Indian cinema and print media (1930s - 1960s)
Gurleen Khandpur MA (Philosophy)
Gender as a concept
Fred LeBlanc PhD
Queer Terrorism, Nationalism and Marvel Comics
Anna Paris PhD
Female Subjectivity and Embodiment
Gabrielle Hine PhD
Pregnant Embodiment in NZ Media
Ellen Pullar PhD
French and Hollywood Stardom in the 1930s
Bronwyn Polaschek PhD
The Postfeminist Biopic
Diana Brown MA
The Unconventional Career of Muriel Bell
Megan Cook MA
The Equal Pay Campaigns 1965-72
Publications
Cooper, A., Paterson, L., & Wanhalla, A. (Eds.). (2015). The lives of colonial objects. Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press, 368p.
Cooper, A. (2015). Nō Ōrākau: Past and people in James Cowan's places. Journal of New Zealand Studies, 19, 63-78.
Cooper, A. (2016). Childhood haunts. In I. Horrocks & C. Lacey (Eds.), Extraordinary anywhere: Essays on place from Aotearoa New Zealand. (pp. 107-120). Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press.
Cooper, A. (2015). A road into Te Urewera. In A. Cooper, L. Paterson & A. Wanhalla (Eds.), The lives of colonial objects. (pp. 134-140). Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press.
Cooper, A. (2013). 'Our old friends and recent foes': James Cowan, Rudall Hayward and memories of natural affections in the New Zealand wars. Journal of New Zealand Studies, 14, 152-170.
Edited Book - Research
Cooper, A., Paterson, L., & Wanhalla, A. (Eds.). (2015). The lives of colonial objects. Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press, 368p.
Chapter in Book - Research
Cooper, A. (2016). Childhood haunts. In I. Horrocks & C. Lacey (Eds.), Extraordinary anywhere: Essays on place from Aotearoa New Zealand. (pp. 107-120). Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press.
Cooper, A. (2015). A road into Te Urewera. In A. Cooper, L. Paterson & A. Wanhalla (Eds.), The lives of colonial objects. (pp. 134-140). Dunedin, New Zealand: Otago University Press.
Cooper, A. (2012). Ngā Pakanga Nunui ō Aotearoa: The New Zealand Wars. In J. E. Bennett & R. Beirne (Eds.), Making film and television histories: Australia and New Zealand. (pp. 79-84). London: I. B. Tauris.
Cooper, A. (2012). The New Zealand Wars: Introduction. In J. E. Bennett & R. Beirne (Eds.), Making film and television histories: Australia and New Zealand. (pp. 65-66). London: I. B. Tauris.
Cooper, A. (2011). Tracking Tītokowaru over text and screen: Pākehā narrate the warrior, 1906-2005. In A. Fox, B. K. Grant & H. Radner (Eds.), New Zealand cinema: Interpreting the past. (pp. 135-152). Bristol, UK: Intellect.
Cooper, A. (2009). On viewing Jane Campion as an antipodean. In H. Radner, A. Fox & I. Bessière (Eds.), Jane Campion: Cinema, nation, identity. (pp. 279-304). Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press.
Journal - Research Article
Cooper, A. (2015). Nō Ōrākau: Past and people in James Cowan's places. Journal of New Zealand Studies, 19, 63-78.
Cooper, A. (2013). 'Our old friends and recent foes': James Cowan, Rudall Hayward and memories of natural affections in the New Zealand wars. Journal of New Zealand Studies, 14, 152-170.
Cooper, A. (2011). Televisual memory and the New Zealand Wars: Bicultural identities, masculinity and landscape. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 14(4), 446-465. doi: 10.1177/1367549411405551
Cooper, A. (2009). Point Chev boys and the landscapes of suburban memory: Autobiographies of Auckland childhoods. Gender, Place & Culture, 16(2), 121-138. doi: 10.1080/09663690902795720
Cooper, A. (2008). ″I am Isabel, you know?″: The antipodean framing of Jane Campion's Portrait of a lady. M/C Journal, 11(5). Retrieved from http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/99
Cooper, A. (2008). Poor men in the land of promises: Settler masculinity and the male breadwinner economy in late nineteenth-century New Zealand. Australian Historical Studies, 39(2), 245-261. doi: 10.1080/10314610802033205
Journal - Research Other
Cooper, A., & Tikao, A. (2015). James Cowan and the legacies of late colonial culture in Aotearoa New Zealand [Introduction]. Journal of New Zealand Studies, 19, 1-4.
Cooper, A. (2010). [Review of the book Anzac legacies: Australians and the aftermath of war]. Labour History, (99), 233-235.
Conference Contribution - Published proceedings: Abstract
Cooper, A. (2008). From Utu to River queen: Remaking war stories. In C. Fowler & R. Simmons (Eds.), Proceedings of the XIVth Biennial Conference of the Film and History Association of Australia and New Zealand (Vol. 1: Refereed Abstracts). (pp. 18). Dunedin, New Zealand: Department of Film, Media and Communication, University of Otago. [Abstract]
Conference Contribution - Verbal presentation and other Conference outputs
Alfaro, A., Cooper, A., MacDonald, C., & Marshall, J. W. (2013, April). Reconsidering gender and identities. Panel discussion at the At a Crossroads: Reconsidering Gender and Identity Research Colloquium, Dunedin, New Zealand.
Cooper, A. (2011, February). James Cowan's New Zealand Wars. Verbal presentation at the Tutū te Puehu: New Zealand's Wars of the Nineteenth Century Conference, Wellington, New Zealand.
Cooper, A. (2011, December). Love trumps conflict: Subplotting the New Zealand Wars. Verbal presentation at the Sociological Association of Aotearoa, New Zealand (SAANZ) Annual Conference: Looking Forward: Trends, Horizons and Utopias, Wellington, New Zealand.
