Biography
Emma completed her BA (First Class Honours) at Deakin in 2013 and her PhD at Deakin in 2019.
Her PhD research focused on representations of femininity and girlhood in contemporary fairy-tale adaptations for young people. Emma examined the way postfeminism is a common ideological strand in different popular texts (novels, comics, film, and apps) available for young women in the twenty-first century. Emma passed her examination with no amendments and won the prestigious Alfred Deakin Medal for her doctoral thesis. A book based on her doctoral work is under contract with Wayne State University Press.
Emma presents her research regularly at conferences in Australia and internationally and completed a research fellowship at the University of Winnipeg (Canada) in 2015.
She has taught a number of undergraduate and masters units at Deakin in the disciplines of Children's Literature, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Digital Media, Communications and International Studies. Emma has also taught at Charles Sturt University (CSU), The University of Winnipeg (Canada), Monash University and the University of Melbourne.
She is an interdisciplinary research assistant and has worked on a number of different research projects, including with CRADLE, one in the Faculty of Health at Deakin, and one in the College of Arts and Social Sciences at ANU in conjunction with ADI at Deakin.
Emma has published a chapter in the book, The evolution and social impact of video game economics (2017) and has three book chapters in the book The Routledge Companion to Media and Fairy-Tale Cultures (2018). She has co-edited a special issue of Hecate with Associate Professor Ann Vickery and Associate Professor Daniel Marshall, and is currently co-editing a special issue of Marvels and Tales on the fairy tale in an Australian context with Dr Michelle Smith from Monash University.
Read more on Emma's profileBiography summary
Dr Emma Whatman is an associate lecturer in the School of Communication and Creative Arts where she teaches children's literature, and gender and sexuality studies. Emma completed her BA (First Class Honours) at Deakin in 2013 and her PhD at Deakin in 2019. Emma's research focuses on postfeminism in contemporary texts for young people.
Research interests
Contemporary children's literature and culture
Postfeminism
Feminist and gender studies
Fairy-tale studies
Digital media and social media
Adaptation studies
Affiliations
Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA)
Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research (ACLAR)
Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL)
Teaching interests
Children's literature
Digital media and social media
Feminism and gender studies
Literature
Units taught
ALL153: Literature for Children and Young Adults
ALL154: Power Politics and Texts for Young People
ALL701: Retelling Myths and Tales: Classic to Contemporary
AGS101: Sex and Gender: Ideas that Changed the World
AGS102: Histories of Sex and Gender
AGS200: Cultural Studies of Sex and Gender
ACC100: Communication in Everyday Life
ALM101: Making Social Media
ALC203: Exploring Digital Media: Contexts of Online Participation
ALC205: Digital Media and the Surveillance Society
ALC701: Social Media Principles and Practices
ALC708 - Blogging and Online Communication Techniques
AIS204: Gender, Globalisation and Development
Knowledge areas
Contemporary children's literature
Feminist and gender studies
Fairy-tale studies
Digital media and social media
Adaptation studies
Conferences
Selected conferences presentations:
2019 ‘Breaking the silence: Fairy-tale webcomics as sites for subversion’. International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) biennial conference: Silence and Silencing in Children’s Literature, The Swedish Institute for Children's Books, Sweden, August.
2018 ‘Understanding postfeminist girlhood through Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles’. Gender and identities in literature for young people, La Trobe University, Melbourne, December.
2018 ‘Postfeminism in contemporary fairy-tale adaptations for young women’. Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research biennial conference: Houses of Learning: Education in Children’s Literature and Children’s Literature as Education, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, June.
2017 ‘“Complexity, Ambiguity and Endurance”: Australian Fairy-Take Adaptation in Shaun Tan’s The Singing Bones’. Association for the Study of Australian Literature annual conference: Looking in, Looking Out: China and Australia, La Trobe University, The University of Melbourne, Deakin University, Melbourne, July.
2017 ‘“A Girl. A Machine. A Freak”: Feminism, cyborg subjectivity and fairy-tale adaptation in Marissa Meyer’s The Lunar Chronicles’. Re-Orienting the Fairy Tale: Contemporary Fairy-Tale Adaptations across Cultures, Kanagawa University, Yokohama, Japan, March.
2016 ‘“I had wings once, they were stolen from me”: An ecofeminist reading of Disney’s Maleficent’. Australian Women’s & Gender Studies Association (AWGSA) conference: De-Story the Joint, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, July.
2015 ‘Playing Pretty: Fairy Tales, Beauty Ideals, and Interactive Media’. International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) biennial conference: Creating Childhoods, University of Worcester, Worcester, United Kingdom, August.
2014 “One Sick Love Story:’ Shame, Cancer and Death in The Fault In Our Stars’. Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research biennial conference: Emotional Control: Affect, Ideology and Texts for Young People, Deakin University, Geelong, July.
2014 ‘Rethinking Rapunzel: Female Embodiment and Narrative across Media’. International Conference of the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past: Telling Tales: Children, Narrative and Image, La Trobe University, Melbourne, March.
2013 ‘Divas or Dudes?: Multiple Masculinities in Glee’. International Research Society for Children’s Literature (IRSCL) biennial conference: Children’s literature and media cultures, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands, August.
2012 ‘Transgressing Boundaries: Liminality and the mother-daughter relationship within Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mirrormask’. Australasian Children’s Literature Association for Research biennial conference: If We’re Being Honest: The Facts and Fictions of Children’s Literature, National Library of Australia, Canberra ACT, June.
Professional activities
Executive Committee Member, Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA)
Executive Committee Member, Australasian Children's Literature Association for Research (ACLAR)
Awards
2020: Alfred Deakin Medal for Doctoral Thesis
2020: Deakin University Excellence in Teaching
2019: Deakin University Excellence in Teaching
2018: Deakin University Excellence in Teaching
2018: Monash University Excellent in Teaching
2017: Association for the Study of Australian Literature postgraduate travel bursary ($500)
2017: Japan Foundation of the Arts postgraduate travel bursary ($1700)