Doctor James Gourley
Senior Lecturer,
Humanities (Arts)
Biography
I am a Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and the Writing and Society Research Centre, Western Sydney University.
My research looks at literature in the context of crises from the personal to the planetary, reading texts from around the globe written most often in the 20th and 21st centuries. My scholarship reflects on literature’s capacity to imagine crisis as well as its capacity to imagine and realise positive change in natural and human worlds. I ask how stories facilitate social understandings in difficult times, and how authors represent these events in their texts. My writing has recently been published in Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, Sydney Review of Books, English Studies, College Literature, and in edited collections published by Cambridge University Press, Salem Press, Sydney University Press, Wiley-Blackwell and Routledge, among others. My monograph on Thomas Pynchon’s and Don DeLillo’s aesthetic and conceptual responses to terrorism was published by Bloomsbury Academic.
Given the proliferation of crises in the present, I am committed to showing how literature and stories bring significant and particular insight to the contemporary moment. This underpins my inter- and trans-disciplinary work across teaching and research. I realise this commitment by fostering environmental humanities research communities in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and beyond, and establishing and maintaining ethical and horizontal student-staff-activist partnerships at Western Sydney University. As part of the ‘Future Thinkers’ transdisciplinary curriculum challenge I designed and implemented WSU’s Climate Justice minor, which was commended for its partnership pedagogy. I am a member of the Festival of Action collective; we foster transdisciplinary curriculum conversations, taking learning content out of the classroom and onto the streets. Festival of Action supports the Student-Staff Coalition for Climate Justice at Western Sydney University, which you can sign up to here.
I am an experienced and ethical School-level academic leader, having convened the School’s Master of Research program (2019) and overseen its doctoral program and graduate research environment as Associate Dean, Graduate Studies (2020-22). I am currently co-Convenor of the English major.
I welcome students interested in discussing MRes or doctoral supervision in literary studies or literature-inflected environmental humanities.
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5357-7688
https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=NQ8OzVYAAAAJ&hl=en
This information has been contributed by Doctor Gourley.
Qualifications
- PhD University of Western Sydney
Organisational Unit (School / Division)
- Humanities (Arts)
Contact
Email: | J.Gourley@westernsydney.edu.au |
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Phone: | (02) 9772 6583 |
Mobile: | |
Location: | 1.1.63 Bankstown |
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Teaching
Previous Teaching Areas
- 100714 Humanities Research - Theories and Practices, 2014
- 100714 Humanities Research - Theories and Practices, 2015
- 100893 The Novel, 2015
- 100893 The Novel, 2017
- 100893 The Novel, 2019
- 100961 Humanities Internship, 2018
- 101907 Introduction to Literary Studies, 2013
- 101907 Introduction to Literary Studies, 2017
- 101907 Introduction to Literary Studies, 2018
- 101909 Methods of Reading, 2013
- 101976 English Literature After 1830, 2013
- 101976 English Literature After 1830, 2014
- 101976 English Literature After 1830, 2016
- 102099 20th Century American Literature, 2014
- 102099 20th Century American Literature, 2016
- 102099 20th Century American Literature, 2018
- 102581 Literary Theory, 2018
- 102581 Literary Theory, 2019
- 102581 Literary Theory, 2020
- 102581 Literary Theory, 2021
- 102737 Thinking Critically About Texts and Society, 2020
- 102737 Thinking Critically About Texts and Society, 2023
- LANG1030 Thinking Critically About Texts and Society, 2021
- LANG1030 Thinking Critically About Texts and Society, 2022
- LANG3002 20th Century American Literature, 2023
Publications
Books
- Gourley, J. (2013), 'Terrorism and Temporality in the Works of Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo', : Bloomsbury Academic 9781441166890.
Chapters in Books
- Fairless, H. and Gourley, J. (2023), 'Albert Camus's augury of post-truth necropolitics : reading The Plague in the twenty-first century', Critical Insights: The Plague, Salem Press 9781637004326.
- Gourley, J. (2022), 'Gail Jones' novel modernism : Sixty Lights and literary tradition', Inner and Outer Worlds: Gail Jones' Fiction, Sydney University Press 9781743327791.
- Gourley, J. (2022), 'Donald Antrim', Encyclopedia of Contemporary American Fiction 1980-2020. Volume 1: A-K, Wiley-Blackwell 9781119431718.
- Gourley, J. (2019), 'Terror and anarchy', Thomas Pynchon in Context, Cambridge University Press 9781108497022.
- Gourley, J. (2016), 'Twisted time : Pynchon's 9/11 in Bleeding Edge', Reflecting 9/11: New Narratives in Literature, Television, Film and Theatre, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 9781443890328.
- Gourley, J. (2016), 'The postmodern truths of J. M. Coetzee', Post-Conflict Literature: Human Rights, Peace, Justice, Routledge 9781138916302.
- Conti, C. and Gourley, J. (2014), 'Introduction', Literature as Translation/Translation as Literature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 9781443854948.
- Gourley, J. (2014), 'Translating unintelligibility in Samuel Beckett's 'Play'', Literature as Translation/Translation as Literature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 9781443854948.
- Gourley, J. (2013), 'Initial reception', Samuel Beckett in Context, Cambridge University Press 9781107017030.
- Gourley, J. (2012), ''The 9/11 novel' : eternal return in Pynchon and DeLillo', Literature and Politics: Pushing the World in Certain Directions, Cambridge Scholars Publishing 9781443835749.
- Gourley, J. (2009), '"Whenever said said said missaid" : Beckett's Worstward Ho and DeLillo's The Body Artist', Literature and Sensation, Cambridge Scholars 9781443801164.
Journal Articles
- Gourley, J. (2023), '[In Press] The temporality of community sentiment on the Australian continent : mineral extraction, waste storage and Indigenous protest writing', Continuum, .
- Gourley, J. (2021), 'Not unprecedented : Australia's COVID-19 archives', Global Media Journal: Australian Edition, vol 15, no 1 .
- Gourley, J. (2020), 'Australia's plague archive', Sydney Review of Books, vol November 17, 2020 .
- Gourley, J. (2020), '"Trapped by the climate" : reading Albert Camus's The Plague in light of anthropogenic climate change', Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment, vol 27, no 4 , pp 732 - 752.
- Gourley, J. (2018), '"The same anew" : James Joyce's modernism and its influence on Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar', College Literature, vol 45, no 4 , pp 695 - 723.
- Gourley, J. (2018), 'Kafkaesque laughter in the face of bureaucracy : David Foster Wallace's the Pale King', English Studies, vol 99, no 8 , pp 944 - 959.
- Gourley, J. (2017), 'Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon at Cornell University', ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, vol 30, no 3 , pp 170 - 173.
- Gourley, J. (2017), 'The dialectic of panic and anxiety in Beckett's 'First Love'', Samuel Beckett Today - Aujourd'hui, vol 29, no 1 , pp 150 - 161.
Previous Projects
Title: | 'Vladimir Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon: Temporal Affinities' |
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Funder: |
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Western Researchers: | James Gourley and Anthony Uhlmann |
Years: | 2013-09-09 - 2014-11-09 |
ID: | P00021740 |
Title: | James Joyce's Influence on Sylvia Plath's Prose |
Funder: |
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Western Researchers: | James Gourley |
Years: | 2014-11-01 - 2015-10-31 |
ID: | P00022193 |
Supervision
Current Supervision
Thesis Title: | Coming Out after Coming Out: The Changing Trajectory of the Coming-Out Narrative in Twenty-First Century Young Adult and New Adult Texts |
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Field of Research: | Studies In Human Society |
Thesis Title: | Impossible Words Theory: Bending and Blending Horizons in Genre-Shifting Novels. |
Field of Research: | |
Thesis Title: | Out of Water, out of depth, out of time: maternal displacement in Australian Fiction' novel and exegesis |
Field of Research: |
Previous Supervision
Thesis Title: | Ambivalent Affects as Narrative Methodologies in Contemporary North American (Auto) Fictions: Studies on the Novels of Ben Lerner, Teju Cole and Sheila Heti. |
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Field of Research: | Literature |
Thesis Title: | Reading Books in Buenos Aires |
Field of Research: | Written Communication; Literature |
Thesis Title: | Coming Out after Coming Out: The Changing Trajectory of the Coming-Out Narrative in Twenty-First Century Young Adult and New Adult Texts |
Field of Research: | Studies In Human Society |
Thesis Title: | Vladimir Nabokov's <i>Pale Fire</i>: A Literary Arabesque |
Field of Research: | Language And Literature, N.e.c. |
Thesis Title: | "Wanderers like the Stars at Which They Gaze": Suttree's Ever-moving Figures after <i>Ulysses</i> |
Field of Research: | History; Literature |
Thesis Title: | Being and Becoming: The Flux Worlds of Philip K. Dick |
Field of Research: | Literature |
Thesis Title: | Listurbia: Lists as Narrative |
Field of Research: | Language And Literature |
Thesis Title: | Kaleidoscope: Fictional Genres and Probable Worlds |
Field of Research: | |
Thesis Title: | Reading Books in Buenos Aires |
Field of Research: | Written Communication; Literature; Language And Literature |
Thesis Title: | "Wanderers like the Stars at Which They Gaze": Suttree's Ever-moving Figures after Ulysses |
Field of Research: | History; Literature; Other Society And Culture |
Thesis Title: | Ambivalent Affects as Narrative Methodologies in Contemporary North American (Auto) fictions: Studies on the novels of Ben Lerner, Teju Cole and Sheila Heti |
Field of Research: | Literature; Language And Literature |
Thesis Title: | Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire: A Literary Arabesque |
Field of Research: | Language And Literature, N.e.c. |
Thesis Title: | Listurbia: Lists as Narrative |
Field of Research: | Language And Literature |