Dr Rinni Marliyana Binti Haji Amran
rinni.amran@ubd.edu.bn
Dr. Rinni Haji Amran is a Lecturer in English Literature at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS), Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD). She completed her PhD in English at the University of Exeter in 2015 where her doctoral research focused on the impact of aviation on modernist fiction. Her current research explores representations of the environment and natural energy sources in contemporary Bruneian literature.
Rinni also contributes to undergraduate teaching in various modules including 'Introduction to English Literature', 'From Romantic to Decadent', 'Critical Contemporary Theory', 'Literary Appreciation and Criticism', and 'Contemporary Fiction'. She has taught Writing and Listening Skills to exchange students participating in UBD's Global Discovery Programme: Intensive English Course. Additionally, she is supervising a PhD student working on contemporary Malaysian noir fiction as well as a Masters by Research student studying romance in postcolonial literature.
Rinni is currently a guest researcher at the University of Oslo, Norway, working with the Critical Petroaesthetics research group based in the Oslo School of Environmental Humanities.
EDUCATION
PhD English, University of Exeter
MA Literatures of Modernity, Royal Holloway, University of London
BA English Language and Literature, King's College London
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Literature and ecocriticism; petrofiction and petrocultures; climate and literature; contemporary Bruneian fiction; literary modernism; history of technology (aviation)
FUTURE PROJECTS
Oil and the Bruneian Imagination
Oil’s integral role in the shaping of modern Brunei demands that contemporary local literature and other cultural forms be examined under a petrocritical lens. This project seeks to examine how the extraction, production and consumption of fossil fuels mediates perceptions and experiences of the natural environment and national identity within an increasingly climate-conscious world. In contrast to narratives of other petrocultures characterised by political violence, economic instability and environmental degradation, fiction and other cultural forms from Brunei appear to be more ambivalent in their portrayals of energy, environment and national identity. On the one hand, the burgeoning of nationalistic novels post-independence, for example, can be seen as one of the products of a booming oil economy that helped pave the way for the nation’s independence in the first place. On the other, there is also growing realization of the downsides to being fossil fuel-dependent, such as environmental degradation, climate change and economic volatility that threaten national prosperity, identity and even human existence. How does such tension appear in Bruneian narratives? For one, the postmodernist short stories written by Mussidi illustrate the submersion of the human underneath the abstraction, delocalizing and globalising of various incomprehensible infrastructures, systems and networks shaped by petrocapitalism. In recent years, this challenge has also resulted in the imagining of alternate visions of the nation, which can be seen in Amir Falique’s The Forlorn Adventure set in a distant future, and Aamton Alias’s The Bunian Conspiracy series set partially in another dimension. The former imagines a booming, futuristic Brunei, thus showing a techno-utopian vision of the local petroculture. In the latter novel, a battle over the land ensues between humans and spirits that highlights issues of multispecies justice. These stories of alternate Bruneis reveal the challenges posed in writing from within a fossil-fuelled nation.
Applications Invited
Google Scholar Citations
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RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Rinni Haji Amran, ‘Technologizing Islam, Islamifying Technology: The Use of Modern Technologies in Brunei’s First Film, Gema Dari Menara (1968)’, Southeast Asia: A Multidisciplinary Journal, Vol. 20, Issue 2 (2021), 30-40.
Rinni Haji Amran, ‘Examining the Imagined Environments in Contemporary Bruneian Fiction: Developing Southeast Asian Ecocriticism’. In: Ho H.M.Y., Deterding D. (eds) Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature, and Culture (2021). Springer.
(Co-authored with H.M.Y Ho) ‘Constructs of the Modern Home: Negotiating Identity in Anglophone Bruneian Literature’. In Ho H.M.Y., Deterding D. (eds) Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature, and Culture (2021). Springer.
Amran R.H. (2020) ‘The Fundamental Magic of Flying’: Changing Perspectives in Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s North to the Orient and Virginia Woolf’s The Years and Between the Acts. In: McCluskey M., Seaber L. (eds) Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Rinni Haji Amran, 'Anne Morrow Lindbergh's North to the Orient: An Account of an Aviator's Emerging Environmental Consciousness', Ikhtilaf: Journal of Critical Humanities and Social Studies, 1 (2017), 20-29.
TOP PUBLICATIONS
Rinni Haji Amran, ‘Examining the Imagined Environments in Contemporary Bruneian Fiction: Developing Southeast Asian Ecocriticism’. In: Ho H.M.Y., Deterding D. (eds) Engaging Modern Brunei: Research on Language, Literature, and Culture (2020). Springer.
Amran R.H. (2020) ‘The Fundamental Magic of Flying’: Changing Perspectives in Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s North to the Orient and Virginia Woolf’s The Years and Between the Acts. In: McCluskey M., Seaber L. (eds) Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain. Studies in Mobilities, Literature, and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
'"Moving Without Comprehensible Purpose Toward No Discernible Destination": The Sensation and Spectacle of Flight in William Faulkner's Pylon', Interactions: Ege Journal of British and American Studies, 26 (2017), 29-40.
‘â€World State, Therefore, it Must Beâ€: H.G. Wells’s Responses to Aeronautical Developments, 1898-1936’, The Wellsian, No. 38 (2015), 24-40.
‘Aviation and Alienation in John Dos Passos’s Airways, Inc. and The Big Money’, Assembling Identities, ed. by Sam Wiseman (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014), pp.208-219.
GRANT DETAILS
2017: Travel grant of AU$1,000 to attend as guest speaker at the American Cultures Workshop series, The United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney, Australia
CONSULTANCY
Yes, provides consultancy.
Aug - Sep 2018: Lecturer for UBD Global Discovery Program: Intensive English Proficiency Course (Ibaraki University, Japan)
Jan - Mar 2017: Lecturer for UBD Global Discovery Program: Intensive English Course (Fatoni University, Thailand)
Mar 2015 - Jun 2016: Education Officer (Daily-rated) at Sekolah Menengah Perdana Wazir, Kuala Belait
SOCIAL, ECONOMIC, or ACADEMIC BENEFITS
Nov 2016: Accompanying Staff for ASEAN University Network (AUN) Education Forum & Young Speakers Contest at Mahidol University, Thailand