PhD students 2nd cohort

Dr. Ruth Barratt-Peacock (born 1988) studied musicology, German as a foreign language and English literature at the University of Tasmania from 2006 to 2010. Between 2012 and 2015 she completed her Master’s of Literature, Art, and Culture, majoring in English literature and musicology studies at FSU Jena and the Franz Liszt University of Music in Weimar. During her studies she worked as a research assistant at the Institute for British and American Studies, a translator and as a freelance tutor, as well as an assistant language teacher with the DAAD. She completed her PhD in 2018 and graduated with magna cum lauda in June 2019. She is currently employed as a postdoc at the research group and teaches a seminar on the American and Australian Gothics for the English department.

Concrete Horizons: Romantic Irony in the Poetry of David Malouf and Samuel Wagan Watson

The project examines Romanticism in urban contemporary Australian poetry using the poetic oeuvre of David Malouf and indigenous poet Samuel Wagan Watson. The poetry of these writers expresses the tensions and contradictions inherent to an urban society characterised by a Romantic world view while being haunted by the ghosts of its colonial past. Two questions stand at the centre of the work: How does the development of Romanticism in Australia fit into ‘Romanticism as a Model’ as analysed by the research training group? Can this model be considered a deep underlying structure of contemporary Australian poetry? A particular focus of the work is the ironically constructed image of the city.

 Professional classical music-making and training is an international practice based on a set of shared norms and aesthetics. Yet the foundational narratives of ‘Western’ classical music assert a universality that renders the structures of power behind these norms invisible. The Romantic legacy of the universal genius narrative collides with aspirational cosmopolitanism in ways which assure the continued supremacy of European cultural capital and the resulting stereotypes facing East Asian musicians and which influences cultural flows between Britain and her colonies. This research project poses the question: what role does space play in the practice of professional classical music and its representation in literatures and televisual popular culture?
The project starts from the hypothesis that classical music is not simply practised in space, or in specific places. It explores the possibilities which arise when it is approached as a network of spatial practices. The project examines the textual representation of key sites in classical music culture and how place is practised in, through, and in-between these sites. The focus thereby lies on how classical music culture functions as an intercultural contact zone. Understanding place as practice(s) sheds light on their interconnectedness to adjacent practices, spatial narratives, lived experiences, and individual subjective enactments. The project will initially focus on how existent spatial narratives form the rules of engagement with classical music culture in an international context, questioning how the use of space in contemporary texts might address, cement, and challenge existent spatial concepts.

Monograph/Collected Editions

• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth. Concrete Horizons: Romantic Irony in the Poetry of David Malouf and Samuel Wagan Watson. Berlin: Peter Lang, 2020
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth and Ross Hagen (eds.). Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet. Bingley: Emerald Books, 2019.

Journal articles (peer reviewed)

• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth. ‘Aspirational Cosmopolitanism in Japanese Classical Music Anime: Adapting Romantic Legacies in Forest of Piano’, in The East Asian Journal of Popular Culture 8:1, 2022. [In print]
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth and Sophia State. ‘Nostalgic Transmediation: A Not-So-Final Fantasy? Ichigo’s Online Sheet Music Platform as a Network of Creative Practice’, in Australasian Journal of Popular Culture. Special issue Nostalgia and Popular Culture. Intellect 2020/2021

Chapters

• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth. ‘The End of Words at the World’s End: an Anthropocene view on Australian poetry’, in Anglophone Literature and Culture in the Anthropocene. Caroline Rosenthal and Gina Cosmos (eds.). New Castle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth and Ross Hagen (eds.). Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet. Bingley: Emerald Books, 2019.
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth. ‘The Villon That Never Was’, in Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet. Ruth Barratt-Peacock and Ross Hagen (eds.). Bingley: Emerald Books, 2019.
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth, Ross Hagen and Brenda Walter. ‘Finding the Past in the Present and the Present in the Past’, in Medievalism and Metal Music Studies: Throwing Down the Gauntlet. Ruth Barratt-Peacock and Ross Hagen (eds.). Bingley: Emerald Books, 2019.

Conference papers and lectures

• 05/06/2021 – 06/06/2021 ‘Ecologies: Annual Mechademia conference’ (Kyoto, Japan) [online due to coronavirus], paper: Forest of Piano: Navigating Japanese Musicianship on the World Stage.
• 02/05/2019 – 05/05/2019 ‘Romantik und Moderne’ [the annual meeting of the International Novalis Society]” (Oberwiederstedt, Germany), paper: Review for network ‘Gestern Romantik Heute: Forum für Wissenschaft und Kultur’.
• 21/11/2018 – 24/11/2018 Conference: ‘The Middle Ages in the Modern World’Organisation of panel: Heavy Metal Medievalisms: A Matter of Identity? (Rome, Italy), paper: Local Signifiers and the Early Middle Ages in Global Communities: The Case of Wardruna
• 05/04/2018 – 07/04/2018 Conference: ‘Australian Literature as World Literature: Annual AAALS Conference’ (New York, USA), paper: David Malouf’s Poetry and Romantic Irony in the German Tradition.
• 18/05/2016 – 22/05/2016 Conference: ‘Historical Re-Enactment, Contemporary Paganism and Fantasy-Based Movements’ (Kaunas, Lithuania), paper: Temporal Dislocation and the Construction of Alternative Cultural Identities in the Contemporary German Re-enactment Scene.
• 22/11/2017 “Romantic Poetics: A Book Symposium on a Book in Progress with Charles Taylor” (Jena, Germany), Paper: Panel member
• 08/06/2017 Lecture series “Narratives of Crisis. The Anthropocene in Anglophone Literature and Culture”, Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Paper: David Malouf and the Anthropocene
• 03/11/2016 Topics in the Aesthetics of Music and Sound: (More) Extreme Music, University of Southern Denmark, Paper: Subversive Medievalism in Subway to Sally’s Anti-War, Anti-Christian Repertoire

Varia

• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth. ‘Heavy Metal Medievalisms: A Case of Identity?’, in Publications de l’Ecole francoise de Rome, The Middle Ages without Borders: an international conversation. Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri, Pierre Savy and Lila Yawn (eds.) books.openedition.org/efr/19230, 2021
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth [Review]. Bron Taylor, Dunkelgrüne Religion: Naturspiritualität und die Zukunft des Planeten, translated by Kocku von Stuckrad, Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2020, in Gestern Romantik Heute, 2019.
• Barratt-Peacock, Ruth [Review]. ‘Robert McParland, Myth and Magic in Heavy Metal Music’, in Metal Music Studies, 5/2, 2019