Dr Anna Szorenyi

• Biography/ Background

  Anna has a PhD from the Centre for Women's Studies and Gender Research at Monash University and attended the 2001 School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University. Before coming to Adelaide she taught Gender Studies at Monash and Deakin Universities.

  She researches in feminist ethics and global migration, with particular interests in refugee issues and trafficking.

• Qualifications

  BA (Hons); Grad Dip (Movement & Dance); PhD

• Teaching Interests

  Gender theory; transnational/postcolonial/global feminisms and gender issues; race and gender in popular culture; social theory and policy more generally.

  Courses:

  • Gender and Race in a Postcolonial World
  • Encountering Human Rights: Global Citizenship
    
  • Life on Screen: Social issues through film
  • Gender, Work and Society
  • Critique and Construct in Gender Studies (Honours course)
    

   

• Research Interests

  I am a feminist scholar interested in cultural responses to global migration, particularly refugees and trafficking.  This leads to interests in:

  • Feminist theory, particularly postcolonial and intersectional approaches but also corporeality and new materialism and various queer cultural theorists
    
  • Contemporary feminist ethics, particularly Judith Butler's recent work
    
  • Visual culture, particularly documentary photograph and film
    
  • Testimony and autobiography, particularly human rights testimonies
  • Postcolonial theory
    
  • Critical Race and Whiteness studies and other critiques of privilege
    

   

  I am currently investigating the co-construction of gender, race and suffering in contemporary global policy issues such as refugees and border control, sex trafficking, and global humanitarian campaigns, seeking more ethically productive ways to understand and challenge global distributions of vulnerabilty. 

  I am also reading and writing on second-generation relations to historical atrocity - the Holocaust and colonialism in Australia.

  I can supervise Honours or Postgraduate projects in topics related to refugees, trafficking, race/ethnicity/migration, feminist theory, cultural studies, whiteness studies, life writing, visual culture or gender and work.

• Publications

  Szörényi Anna & Penelope Eate 2014. 'Saving virgins, saving the USA: heteronormative masculinities and the securitisation of trafficking discourse in mainstream narrative film', Social Semiotics 24.5, pp. 608-622.  

  Szörényi, Anna, 2014.  'Rethinking the boundaries: Towards a Butlerian ethics of vulnerability in sex trafficking debates'. Feminist Review 107, pp. 20-36. 

  Szorenyi Anna 2013. ‘Poster'. In Things that liberate: An Australian Feminist Wunderkammer, edited by Alison Bartlett and Margaret Henderson, Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

  Szörényi, Anna 2012 '"Two Dreams in One Bedroom": Narrating victimhood and perpetration in Australian refugee history.' Australian Feminist Studies 27.73, pp. 297-306. 

  Szorenyi, Anna 2011 'Un/settled accounts: Telling Holocaust Stories in Colonised Australia' Critical Race and Whiteness Studies 7.2 available at http://www.acrawsa.org.au/files/ejournalfiles/176V7.2_5.pdf 

  Szörényi, Anna 2010 ‘Giving an Account of Myself: Trans-generational Holocaust guilt in the company of Bernhard Schlink and Judith Butler' Australian Feminist Law Journal 33 (Dec) pp. 37-56.

  Szorenyi 2010 ‘Immanent Critiques'. Review of Connell, RW Southern Theory and Eisenstein, Hester Feminism Seduced. Australian Feminist Studies 25 (66). 

  Szorenyi, A 2009 'Distanced Suffering:  Photographed suffering and the construction of white in/vulnerability.’  Social Semiotics 19.2 pp. 93-109

  Szorenyi, A 2009 '"Till Human Voices Wake Us": Reading refugee testmony' Life Writing 6.2 pp. 173-91.

  Szorenyi, A 2009 'Distanced Suffering:  Photographed suffering and the construction of white in/vulnerability.’  In The Racial Politics of Bodies, Nations and Knowledges, edited by  Barbara Baird and Damien W. Riggs, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press.

  Szorenyi, A & J. Rogers 2006 'Congealed by law: Terror, torture and the possibilities of critique.' Terror, Torture and Critique: Special Issues of the Australian Feminist Law Journal Vol 24 June 2006 pp 1-22.

  Szörényi, A, 2006 'The images speak for themselves? Reading Refugee Coffee Table books'. Visual Studies 21.1 (April). pp 24-42.

  Szörényi, A, 2004 'The face of suffering in Afghanistan: Identity, authenticity and technology in the search for the representative refugee.' Australian Feminist Law Journal Vol 21 (Dec) pp 1-22. *Received Honourable Mention for the Monash University School of Political & Social Inquiry Postgraduate Publications Award.

  Szorenyi, A 2002 'People without borders: Imagining refugees' Speaking Out! (The Newsletter of the NSW Women's Speakout Association) 11 (Winter) pp 6-8.

  Szorenyi, A 2001 'Economies of speech and silence' Overland 164 , (Spring) pp 41-43.

  Edited Journal Issues

  Rogers, J and A Szorenyi 2006 Terror, Torture and Critique: Special Issues of the Australian Feminist Law Journal Vol 24 June 2006.

  Reviews

  Szorenyi, A. 2008. Review of Briskman, Linda, Susie Latham and Chris Goddard Human Rights Overboard: Seeking Asylum in Australia (Scribe 2008).  Alternative Law Journal 33.4.   

  Szorenyi, A. 2005 'Urgent Interventions', Review of Butler, Judith, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (Verso 2004). Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association Journal 1.1. http://www.acrawsa.org.au/journal/issue1.htm .

  Szorenyi, A, 2004 'Conversations with the waiting', Review of Leach, Michael and Mansouri, Fethi, Lives in Limbo: Voices of refugees under Temporary Protection (UNSW Press 2004). Australian Women's Book Review Vol 16 No 2. http://emsah.uq.edu.au/awsr/awbr/issues/138/index.html .

• Professional Associations

  Anna currently serves on the Advisory Committee of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender, and has served on the Editorial Board of the Australian Feminist Law Journal, been a Council representative at the Institute of Postcolonial Studies in Melbourne, and served as Treasurer of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association from 2007 to 2011. She is also a member of the Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association and the Cultural Studies Association of Australia. 

Entry last updated: Tuesday, 29 Mar 2022

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