Victoria Kuttainen

About

Victoria Kuttainen is an Associate Professor in the College of Arts, Society and Education at James Cook University in the field of English and Writing. She holds a BA Honours and Masters of Arts from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, completed first year doctoral course work at the University of Alberta, and subsequently earned a PhD in postcolonial literature from the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. In 2018, as part of her exploration of the nexus between secondary and tertiary education, she completed a Graduate Diploma of Education (Secondary) at James Cook University.

Her books include Unsettling Stories: Settler Postcolonialism and the Short Story Composite (Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010) and The Transported Imagination: Australian Interwar Magazines and the Geographical Imaginaries of Colonial Modernity (co-authored with Susann Liebich and Sarah Galletly, Cambria, 2018). She is also the author of over forty journal articles, has delivered two international keynotes and one Australian keynote, and is currently completing a full-length creative manuscript for publication.

Dr Kuttainen is an active researcher in three key areas: the literary and cultural history of colonial modernity and the Pacific; scholarship of teaching and learning, with a focus on regional students, regional higher education, and the Bachelor of Arts; and creative writing.

The Literary and Cultural History of Colonial Modernity and the Pacific

Trained as a scholar of postcolonial cultures and literatures, Victoria's background in literary scholarship involves the intersections between geography, history, and cultural identity. Her first book Unsettling Stories (Cambridge Scholars, 2010) investigaged the complex aftermath of settler colonialism in the literatures of Canada, Australia, and the USA. Her second scholarly book, for which she was research-lead of a team including two postdoctoral scholars (Susann Liebich of the Karl Jaspers Centre for Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg and Sarah Galletly of University College Dublin), culminated in The Transported Imagination (Cambria, 2018). This research made a significant contribution to the underresearched entanglements of colonialism and modernity from a trans-Pacific perspective.

Kuttainen's trans-Pacific research continues to inform her ongoing research, in her supervision of a PhD thesis on the history and role of narratives of gender violence in Pasifika and Oceanic Women's Literature, and in her work with Bianka Vidonja Balanzategui on narratives of the colonial sugar trade in tropical Australia with links to blackbirding from the South Pacific. Victoria continues to expand studies of the interwar Pacific and its interlinkages and networks. She brings print culture, popular magazines, and books that were well read in their day but now forgotten to the foreground of her scholarly approach to literary and cultural history.

Extending her interest in colonial modernity and regional cultures, Dr Kuttainen with her former PhD student Dr Jilly Lippmann recently published "Searching for the Modern Girl" a special issue of the international Journal The Space Between recovering the iconic figure of the flapper in gloab print cultures worldwide, and inquiring into her visibility and invisibily in different national archives. This research has resulted in new understandings of the literary histories of Germany, Australia, and Canada during the interwar era.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

A faculty teaching citation winner, Victoria is a passionate teacher and a self-reflexive scholar of teaching and learning. Originally trained as a teacher of English as a Second Language, Victoria has long been an advocate for the transformative potential of education for communities and individuals in local and global settings, and a champion for community engagement and social justice.

The topics she has investigated and continues to focus on include decolonising praxes; transition pedagogies; secondary-tertiary collaborations; humanities in the regions; as well as engaging and supporting diverse learners.

Victoria leads the multi-university ACHRC Community of Practice Humanities in the Regions, and has been the author of a number of public-facing as well as scholarly articles exploring and advocating for the transformative value of the SHAPE education (Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts for People and Economy) alongside STEM education for regional communities and regional students.

As well as serving as the coordinator of James Cook University's Bachelor of Arts degree, she serves as the external member of the Charles Darwin University Bachelor of Arts Advisory Committee.

Creative Writing as Engagement

For Victoria, the natural and practical output of literary studies is the practice of creative writing, which she regards as a way of finding language for—and engaging public audiences with—complex issues.

As well as writing and pubishing poetry, Victoria is currently writing a long-form creative manuscript, for which she has been awarded two residencies (The Historic Joy Kogawa House, Vancouver 2019; Varuna: The National Writers' House, Katoomba NSW, 2021). As a mental health storyteller, her creative work explores themes of mental health and grief, place, and displacement.

With Robert Clarke, Victoria Kuttainen is the General Editor of JASAL The Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature, and has introduced three new streams to the journal that reflect her own areas of research and engagement: literary studies, scholarship of teaching and learning, and creative writing.

Victoria loves being in nature, bush-walking, kayaking, and enjoying wood-fired pizzas and good conversation in the company of family and friends.