Rachele Dini
University Of Roehampton, English and Creative Writing, Former Senior Lecturer in English and American Literature (2017-2022)
PhD University College London
MA King's College London
BA Hons University of Cambridge
I am a literary and cultural studies scholar specialising in waste studies, gender studies, nostalgia studies, domestic space studies, and the history of advertising.
I am chair of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Publications and Knowledge Exchange Sub-Committee and the founder of the International Literary Waste Studies Network (https://literarywaste.com/), and from August 2017 to August 2022 I was Senior Lecturer in English and American literature at the University of Roehampton (London).
My first monograph, “Consumerism, Waste and Re-use in Twentieth-century Fiction: Legacies of the Avant-Garde” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), explored the influence of Surrealism and Dada’s aesthetic re-purposing of waste objects on later literary critiques of capitalist commodity culture (https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137590619).
My second monograph, "'All-Electric' Narratives: Time-saving Appliances and Domesticity in American Literature, 1945-2020" (Bloomsbury, 2021) examined US writers' engagements with the gendered, racial, classed, and nationalist meanings that manufacturers, advertisers, and politicians have attributed to time-saving appliances since their popularisation in the early post-war era. The book includes chapters on Beat culture; suburban fiction; second-wave (white) feminist fiction; Black American fiction; sci-fi; postmodernist fiction by Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo; and end-of-millennium and postmillennial fiction spanning 1991 to 2020. You can find out more about it here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/all-electric-narratives-9781501367359/.
I am currently working on a British Academy and Leverhulme-funded project titled "Cleaning Through Crisis: Political Upheaval and the Advertising of Domestic Hygiene, 1963-2023)" and am editing "Queer Trash and Feminist Excretions: New Directions in Literary and Cultural Waste Studies," an essay collection under contract with SUNY Press due for publication in 2023.
My longer term project, a book provisionally titled "Postmillennial Nostalgia: Midcentury Modern and the Politics of Longing," examines the centrality of mid-century modern design in US and European popular culture since 1990.
As the above might suggest, I am fascinated by discussions of value, worthlessness, and decay; the relationship between literature and advertising; the history of environmentalism; the social construction of home; and the relationship between home and longing.
I approach these subjects as a scholar of literature and as an ex-market researcher and consumer trends analyst. I spent the better part of my twenties writing about companies' marketing strategies, new product developments, and forays into new markets. As an academic, I am interested in historicising both these phenomena themselves and writers' and visual artists' engagements with them. Having grown up between the US and Italy and lived over half of my life in the UK, I am especially interested in the connections between my chosen subjects' manifestations across different cultures.
Personal website: https://www.racheledini.com
Twitter: @racheledini1
email: [email protected]
MA King's College London
BA Hons University of Cambridge
I am a literary and cultural studies scholar specialising in waste studies, gender studies, nostalgia studies, domestic space studies, and the history of advertising.
I am chair of the British Association for American Studies (BAAS) Publications and Knowledge Exchange Sub-Committee and the founder of the International Literary Waste Studies Network (https://literarywaste.com/), and from August 2017 to August 2022 I was Senior Lecturer in English and American literature at the University of Roehampton (London).
My first monograph, “Consumerism, Waste and Re-use in Twentieth-century Fiction: Legacies of the Avant-Garde” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), explored the influence of Surrealism and Dada’s aesthetic re-purposing of waste objects on later literary critiques of capitalist commodity culture (https://www.palgrave.com/gb/book/9781137590619).
My second monograph, "'All-Electric' Narratives: Time-saving Appliances and Domesticity in American Literature, 1945-2020" (Bloomsbury, 2021) examined US writers' engagements with the gendered, racial, classed, and nationalist meanings that manufacturers, advertisers, and politicians have attributed to time-saving appliances since their popularisation in the early post-war era. The book includes chapters on Beat culture; suburban fiction; second-wave (white) feminist fiction; Black American fiction; sci-fi; postmodernist fiction by Kurt Vonnegut and Don DeLillo; and end-of-millennium and postmillennial fiction spanning 1991 to 2020. You can find out more about it here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/all-electric-narratives-9781501367359/.
I am currently working on a British Academy and Leverhulme-funded project titled "Cleaning Through Crisis: Political Upheaval and the Advertising of Domestic Hygiene, 1963-2023)" and am editing "Queer Trash and Feminist Excretions: New Directions in Literary and Cultural Waste Studies," an essay collection under contract with SUNY Press due for publication in 2023.
My longer term project, a book provisionally titled "Postmillennial Nostalgia: Midcentury Modern and the Politics of Longing," examines the centrality of mid-century modern design in US and European popular culture since 1990.
As the above might suggest, I am fascinated by discussions of value, worthlessness, and decay; the relationship between literature and advertising; the history of environmentalism; the social construction of home; and the relationship between home and longing.
I approach these subjects as a scholar of literature and as an ex-market researcher and consumer trends analyst. I spent the better part of my twenties writing about companies' marketing strategies, new product developments, and forays into new markets. As an academic, I am interested in historicising both these phenomena themselves and writers' and visual artists' engagements with them. Having grown up between the US and Italy and lived over half of my life in the UK, I am especially interested in the connections between my chosen subjects' manifestations across different cultures.
Personal website: https://www.racheledini.com
Twitter: @racheledini1
email: [email protected]
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Books by Rachele Dini
The essays in this collection explore the question of the human, both as a contested concept and as it relates to, and functions within, the wider global conjuncture. The authors explore the theoretical underpinnings of the term “human,” inviting the reader to reflect upon the contemporary human condition, to identify opportunities and threats in the changes ahead, and to determine what aspects of our species we should abandon or strive to maintain. The volume approaches these ideas from a myriad of perspectives, but the authors are united in their abstention from rejecting humanism outright or, indeed, fully endorsing posthumanism‘s teleological narrative of accelerated progress and perfectability. Instead, the authors argue that the term “human” itself is better understood as a concept perpetually undergoing revision, and is necessarily subject to scrutiny. The contributors here are thus concerned with investigating the following questions: What does it mean to be human, or to have a self? What is the current place or status of the human in the contemporary world? As technology is increasingly used to modify our bodies and minds, to what extent should we alter – and how can we improve – our very understanding of human nature?
The authors contend that literature is the art form best placed to answer these questions. In its dynamism and discursiveness, literature has the capacity to both reflect dominant discourses and ideologies, as well as to generate and even anticipate social change; to critique and refine conventional ideas and existing cultural modes, and to envision new possibilities for the future. The human and its literary representation, in other words, are inherently intertwined.
Theodora Tsimpouki is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is the author and editor of several books and articles in the field of American literature and culture.
Konstantinos Blatanis is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He is the author of the book Popular Culture Icons in Contemporary American Drama (2003).
Papers by Rachele Dini
https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2021/06/21/things-of-beauty-the-politics-of-postmillennial-nostalgia-for-mid-century-design/
This article explores Ballard’s treatment of waste and material devastation in The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Crystal World, focussing specifically on their desistance from critiquing industrial modernity, and their exploitation, instead, of the narrative potential of its deleterious effects. I am especially interested in examining the relationship between the three novels, whose strikingly similar storylines approach ecological catastrophe from multiple angles. To this end, I refrain from discussing Ballard’s two other climate novels, The Wind from Nowhere (1962), which he himself dismissed outright as a “piece of hackwork” he wrote in the space of a day, and Hello America (1981), which departs from the 1960s texts in its thematic structure. More broadly, I am interested in examining the ways in which the articulations of waste in these texts anticipate contemporary discussions in discard studies of waste’s “liveliness.”
Rhystranter.com comprises reviews, interviews, and a personal journal offering commentary and analysis across literature, film, music, and the arts. Intended for a general audience, the site aims to bring new ideas into focus in an entertaining and accessible way. In 2016, RhysTranter.com was selected to become part of the British Library’s permanent UK Web Archive.
Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley’s 2015 cinematic adaptation of High-Rise elegantly brings out the central themes of Ballard’s dystopian nightmare. Like Ballard’s text, the film explores the extent to which the built environment can elicit particular behaviors and states of mind, and shows how hierarchical structures can emerge even among people of the same class—what the building’s architect, Anthony Royal, calls the “new proletariat” of accountants, market researchers and advertising executives.
The responses to the film to date have been limited to discussions of its relevance to our contemporary, neoliberal context and, specifically, to London’s transformation at the hands of property developers; how it compares to other adaptations of Ballard novels; and how it relates to
other dystopian films released in the same period as the novel (most notably Cronenberg’s Shivers). I am instead interested in the ways in which the adaptation expands Ballard’s central conceit and, in so doing, both complicates and heightens the concerns of the original novel. This essay is thus an initial effort to understand the extent to which factors such as the film’s additional dialogues, plot lines and character developments as well as use of montage enable the film to engage with a whole gamut of tropes we associate with Ballard’s work as a whole (tropes that are, in some cases, absent from this particular Ballard text). Relatedly, I explore how the adaptation self-consciously plays with the very idea of representation, and how the frequent shots of people filming themselves and each other aptly extends Ballard’s own fascination with visual culture, mass media and celebrity.
Macat's Analyses are definitive studies of the most important books and papers in the humanities and social sciences.
Each analysis is written by an academic specialist in the field. Each one harnesses the latest research to investigate the influences that led to the work being written, the ideas that make it important, and the impact that it has had in the world.
A powerful resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners everywhere, our analyses are proven by the University of Cambridge to improve critical thinking skills.
Read the whole of this analysis and explore our library at www.macat.com.
Macat's Analyses are definitive studies of the most important books and papers in the humanities and social sciences.
Each analysis is written by an academic specialist in the field. Each one harnesses the latest research to investigate the influences that led to the work being written, the ideas that make it important, and the impact that it has had in the world.
A powerful resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners everywhere, our analyses are proven by the University of Cambridge to improve critical thinking skills.
Read the whole of this analysis and explore our library at www.macat.com.
Macat's Analyses are definitive studies of the most important books and papers in the humanities and social sciences.
Each analysis is written by an academic specialist in the field. Each one harnesses the latest research to investigate the influences that led to the work being written, the ideas that make it important, and the impact that it has had in the world.
A powerful resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners everywhere, our analyses are proven by the University of Cambridge to improve critical thinking skills.
Read the whole of this analysis and explore our library at www.macat.com.
Conference Presentations by Rachele Dini
Set in junkyards, abandoned waysides and disaster zones, J.G. Ballard’s fiction assumes waste to be integral to the (material and symbolic) post-war landscape, and to reveal discomfiting truths about the ecological and social effects of mass production and consumption. Nowhere perhaps is this more evident than in his so-called climate novels, The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1965), originally published as The Burning World, and The Crystal World (1966) —texts which Ballard himself described as “form[ing] a trilogy.” This paper examines the representation of material wreckage in these three texts, focussing specifically on the role of waste in “making new” the worlds the characters inhabit. What renders these texts fascinating, and sets them apart from much of climate fiction, is their desistance from critiquing industrial modernity, and their exploitation, instead, of the narrative potential of industrial modernity’s deleterious effects. I am especially interested in examining the relationship between the three novels, whose strikingly similar storylines approach ecological catastrophe from multiple angles. More broadly, I am interested in examining the ways in which the articulations of waste in these texts anticipate contemporary discussions in discard studies of waste’s “liveliness.” The paper examines: the interplay of basic pragmatism and the Surrealist ethos of re-use in the characters’ recuperative practices; the centrality of interpreting remains and forging new things from discards to the very plot; the extent to which the characters’ constructions of the future involves a radical re-thinking of the categories of value/valueless; and the extent to which the re-use of waste (objects and landscapes) is explicitly framed as a physical embodiment of self-transformation.
Book Reviews by Rachele Dini
In The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction in the New
Millennium, Wolfgang Funkreads the literary landscape after
postmodernism through the interrelated concepts of authenticity, metareference and reconstruction. These terms, he argues, can help make
sense of how fiction post-1990 has “renegotiate[d] the relationship
between experience and its representation in an attempt to truthfully reenact experience through representation” (1, emphasis added). Funk is
thus concerned to both articulate the difference between past and
present modes of representing the authentic, and to shed light, through
these readings, on changes in the cultural conceptualization and
experience of selfhood, truth, and reality. Moving beyond such terms as
“metamodernism,” and “digimodernism,” whose shared semantic root
with modernism implies less of a break than an ill-defined continuation,
and whose emphasis on specific constitutive elements risks obscuring the
complexity of their interdependence, Funk instead argues the fruitfulness
of attending to the interrelation in contemporary writing between selfreferentiality, a search for the real, and the reconstruction of meaning
through these.
The essays in this collection explore the question of the human, both as a contested concept and as it relates to, and functions within, the wider global conjuncture. The authors explore the theoretical underpinnings of the term “human,” inviting the reader to reflect upon the contemporary human condition, to identify opportunities and threats in the changes ahead, and to determine what aspects of our species we should abandon or strive to maintain. The volume approaches these ideas from a myriad of perspectives, but the authors are united in their abstention from rejecting humanism outright or, indeed, fully endorsing posthumanism‘s teleological narrative of accelerated progress and perfectability. Instead, the authors argue that the term “human” itself is better understood as a concept perpetually undergoing revision, and is necessarily subject to scrutiny. The contributors here are thus concerned with investigating the following questions: What does it mean to be human, or to have a self? What is the current place or status of the human in the contemporary world? As technology is increasingly used to modify our bodies and minds, to what extent should we alter – and how can we improve – our very understanding of human nature?
The authors contend that literature is the art form best placed to answer these questions. In its dynamism and discursiveness, literature has the capacity to both reflect dominant discourses and ideologies, as well as to generate and even anticipate social change; to critique and refine conventional ideas and existing cultural modes, and to envision new possibilities for the future. The human and its literary representation, in other words, are inherently intertwined.
Theodora Tsimpouki is Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. She is the author and editor of several books and articles in the field of American literature and culture.
Konstantinos Blatanis is Assistant Professor of American Literature and Culture at the Faculty of English Language and Literature of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. He is the author of the book Popular Culture Icons in Contemporary American Drama (2003).
https://ancillaryreviewofbooks.org/2021/06/21/things-of-beauty-the-politics-of-postmillennial-nostalgia-for-mid-century-design/
This article explores Ballard’s treatment of waste and material devastation in The Drowned World, The Drought, and The Crystal World, focussing specifically on their desistance from critiquing industrial modernity, and their exploitation, instead, of the narrative potential of its deleterious effects. I am especially interested in examining the relationship between the three novels, whose strikingly similar storylines approach ecological catastrophe from multiple angles. To this end, I refrain from discussing Ballard’s two other climate novels, The Wind from Nowhere (1962), which he himself dismissed outright as a “piece of hackwork” he wrote in the space of a day, and Hello America (1981), which departs from the 1960s texts in its thematic structure. More broadly, I am interested in examining the ways in which the articulations of waste in these texts anticipate contemporary discussions in discard studies of waste’s “liveliness.”
Rhystranter.com comprises reviews, interviews, and a personal journal offering commentary and analysis across literature, film, music, and the arts. Intended for a general audience, the site aims to bring new ideas into focus in an entertaining and accessible way. In 2016, RhysTranter.com was selected to become part of the British Library’s permanent UK Web Archive.
Amy Jump and Ben Wheatley’s 2015 cinematic adaptation of High-Rise elegantly brings out the central themes of Ballard’s dystopian nightmare. Like Ballard’s text, the film explores the extent to which the built environment can elicit particular behaviors and states of mind, and shows how hierarchical structures can emerge even among people of the same class—what the building’s architect, Anthony Royal, calls the “new proletariat” of accountants, market researchers and advertising executives.
The responses to the film to date have been limited to discussions of its relevance to our contemporary, neoliberal context and, specifically, to London’s transformation at the hands of property developers; how it compares to other adaptations of Ballard novels; and how it relates to
other dystopian films released in the same period as the novel (most notably Cronenberg’s Shivers). I am instead interested in the ways in which the adaptation expands Ballard’s central conceit and, in so doing, both complicates and heightens the concerns of the original novel. This essay is thus an initial effort to understand the extent to which factors such as the film’s additional dialogues, plot lines and character developments as well as use of montage enable the film to engage with a whole gamut of tropes we associate with Ballard’s work as a whole (tropes that are, in some cases, absent from this particular Ballard text). Relatedly, I explore how the adaptation self-consciously plays with the very idea of representation, and how the frequent shots of people filming themselves and each other aptly extends Ballard’s own fascination with visual culture, mass media and celebrity.
Macat's Analyses are definitive studies of the most important books and papers in the humanities and social sciences.
Each analysis is written by an academic specialist in the field. Each one harnesses the latest research to investigate the influences that led to the work being written, the ideas that make it important, and the impact that it has had in the world.
A powerful resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners everywhere, our analyses are proven by the University of Cambridge to improve critical thinking skills.
Read the whole of this analysis and explore our library at www.macat.com.
Macat's Analyses are definitive studies of the most important books and papers in the humanities and social sciences.
Each analysis is written by an academic specialist in the field. Each one harnesses the latest research to investigate the influences that led to the work being written, the ideas that make it important, and the impact that it has had in the world.
A powerful resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners everywhere, our analyses are proven by the University of Cambridge to improve critical thinking skills.
Read the whole of this analysis and explore our library at www.macat.com.
Macat's Analyses are definitive studies of the most important books and papers in the humanities and social sciences.
Each analysis is written by an academic specialist in the field. Each one harnesses the latest research to investigate the influences that led to the work being written, the ideas that make it important, and the impact that it has had in the world.
A powerful resource for students, teachers and lifelong learners everywhere, our analyses are proven by the University of Cambridge to improve critical thinking skills.
Read the whole of this analysis and explore our library at www.macat.com.
Set in junkyards, abandoned waysides and disaster zones, J.G. Ballard’s fiction assumes waste to be integral to the (material and symbolic) post-war landscape, and to reveal discomfiting truths about the ecological and social effects of mass production and consumption. Nowhere perhaps is this more evident than in his so-called climate novels, The Drowned World (1962), The Drought (1965), originally published as The Burning World, and The Crystal World (1966) —texts which Ballard himself described as “form[ing] a trilogy.” This paper examines the representation of material wreckage in these three texts, focussing specifically on the role of waste in “making new” the worlds the characters inhabit. What renders these texts fascinating, and sets them apart from much of climate fiction, is their desistance from critiquing industrial modernity, and their exploitation, instead, of the narrative potential of industrial modernity’s deleterious effects. I am especially interested in examining the relationship between the three novels, whose strikingly similar storylines approach ecological catastrophe from multiple angles. More broadly, I am interested in examining the ways in which the articulations of waste in these texts anticipate contemporary discussions in discard studies of waste’s “liveliness.” The paper examines: the interplay of basic pragmatism and the Surrealist ethos of re-use in the characters’ recuperative practices; the centrality of interpreting remains and forging new things from discards to the very plot; the extent to which the characters’ constructions of the future involves a radical re-thinking of the categories of value/valueless; and the extent to which the re-use of waste (objects and landscapes) is explicitly framed as a physical embodiment of self-transformation.
In The Literature of Reconstruction: Authentic Fiction in the New
Millennium, Wolfgang Funkreads the literary landscape after
postmodernism through the interrelated concepts of authenticity, metareference and reconstruction. These terms, he argues, can help make
sense of how fiction post-1990 has “renegotiate[d] the relationship
between experience and its representation in an attempt to truthfully reenact experience through representation” (1, emphasis added). Funk is
thus concerned to both articulate the difference between past and
present modes of representing the authentic, and to shed light, through
these readings, on changes in the cultural conceptualization and
experience of selfhood, truth, and reality. Moving beyond such terms as
“metamodernism,” and “digimodernism,” whose shared semantic root
with modernism implies less of a break than an ill-defined continuation,
and whose emphasis on specific constitutive elements risks obscuring the
complexity of their interdependence, Funk instead argues the fruitfulness
of attending to the interrelation in contemporary writing between selfreferentiality, a search for the real, and the reconstruction of meaning
through these.
Can death be eradicated? What language might our deathless selves speak? What purpose would their lives serve? In The Value of the Novel (2015), Peter Boxall argues that the novel form is best equipped to answer such questions: “under an emerging global regime that is almost unreadable to us,” the novel in the twenty-first century “allows us to imagine and to make new worlds, to fashion new forms of accommodation between art and matter, or even to live in a condition of worldlessness.” The turn from historiography to futurography in Don DeLillo’s postmillennial writing can be seen to take up this speculative task, and nowhere more so than in his new book, Zero K.