Getting to know Anna Poletti
Dr Anna Poletti
Name: Dr Anna Poletti
Faculty/Division: Arts
Department: Literary Studies
Campus: Clayton
How long have you worked at Monash?
In total, I have worked at Monash for six years. I had my first job in the Communications and Writing program at the Gippsland campus. I worked there for two years from 2007 to 2009. I re-joined Monash in 2011 in my current position as a Lecturer in Literary Studies.
Where did you work prior to starting at the University?
Before joining Monash in 2011, I worked at Charles Sturt University in Wagga Wagga, in the English department.
What do you like best about your role?
What’s not to like? I enjoy working with people, and in my role as a researcher and teacher I get to work closely with my colleagues, undergraduate students and postgraduate researchers. I also get to spend a lot of time talking about literature and ideas. This is my dream job.
Why did you choose your current career path?
I was attracted to an academic career because I am a nerd.
First job?
My first job was a casual job in the supermarket in the small country town where I grew up. I had the job while I was in high school. I was a ‘checkout chick’ (working on the registers). I am still an expert packer of groceries, and get frustrated when the checkout operator in my local supermarket overloads a bag with heavy items.
Worst job?
I did a short stint as a kitchen hand in a resturarnt while working my way through my undergraduate degree. I had to prepare the squid one night - skinning them, pulling out their spines and chopping off their heads. I went home to my sharehouse smelling like squid. Working with food destroyed my appetite, and I barely lasted a month in the job.
What research/projects are you currently working on and what does it involve?
I have two research projects on the go at the moment. One is a co-authored monograph on life writing and youth cultures. It looks at how young people have been prodigious and often innovative authors of memoirs, diaries and other forms of life writing. We are theorising how autobiography – as a genre and a discourse – has been an important means for young people to make knowledge about their experience. My contribution to the project looks at the use of letters in subcultural spaces like Riot Grrrl (a 1990s feminist subculture) and life writing in underground publications known as ‘zines’.
The second project is a single authored book on life writing ‘beyond the book’. In that project, I examine a range of autobiographical texts such as artworks, documentary films, and online projects. The focus is on how the medium used to talk about a person’s lived experience (film, visual art, postcards) influences the kind of stories that they can tell. The research for that book took me to The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh last year, where I had the opportunity to view his largest and most complext art work, the Time Capsules. The work consists of over 600 hundred boxes of ‘stuff’ from Warhol’s life including original artworks, books, letters, albums, postcards, diary fragments, clothes, chocolate… you name it! It is a fascinating work and it was an amazing privilege to spend five days riffling through it.
What is your favourite place in the world and why?
I have a soft spot for my partner’s hometown: Utrecht, the Netherlands. The old city is magical.
What is your favourite place to eat and why?
Anywhere that serves a perfect poached egg (no vinegar in the water please) on sourdough toast. Why? Because a perfectly poached egg is a beautiful thing.
What is the best piece of advice you have received?
I have benefitted greatly from advice from senior feminist scholars in Australia and in North America. It’s impossible to identify the best piece of advice that they have given me. Perhaps the first and most important piece of advice was “find good mentors and listen to them”. I am sure someone told me to do that, but I have no idea who it was.
Tell us something about yourself that your colleagues wouldn’t know?
I used to make theatre. In my mid-twenties it was a coin toss between doing a PhD in Literary Studies and undertaking professional training in theatre direction.