Areas of Specialisation
History and theories of sexuality; history and politics of sexual 'perversion'; modern critical theory (particularly psychoanalysis, queer theory and ethics); nineteenth-century French writing and culture; Decadence and the fin de siècle; cinema and media studies, esp. the intersection of film and philosophy; death studies.
Professor Lisa Downing welcomes enquiries about postgraduate supervision (MRes, MPhil, PhD) in any of the above areas.
Current Research Projects
Prof. Downing is currently on a protracted period of research leave, funded by the institution from July 2009-January 2010, and by a Philip Leverhulme Prize from January 2010-January 2012. News stories about this award can be found here and here.
Description of research being undertaken:
In the field of the history of
discourses, I am completing a monograph on discourses of the figure of the murderer,
provisionally entitled The Subject of Murder. The study considers representations of this figure from European nineteenth-century texts of art, literature and medicine through to present day UK and US examples of cultural fascination with the serial killer. My genealogy traces two apparently contradictory narratives about the figure of the murderer that originate in the nineteenth century - the killer as a
regressive atavistic beast (in sexology and alienism) and as a
solipsistic transcendental subject, capable of the acte gratuit
(in the philosophies of Romanticism and Decadence). Both of these continue to inflect twentieth and twenty-first-century understandings in often subtle ways. Particular attention is paid throughout my study to the ways in which ideas about gender
intersect with these discourses of criminality, exception, and
monstrosity.
In the field of the history of sexuality, I am currently working on a project on the history of the 'perversion'/ 'paraphilia' diagnosis from the European nineteenth century to the present day, with a particular focus on the work of late US sexologist, John Money. Last year, funded by the British Academy, I presented a paper on John Money's concept of 'normophilia' (the opposite condition to 'paraphilia') at a Symposium I co-organised with Prof. Peter Cryle (University of Queensland, Australia) in Prato, Italy. This paper is currently being written up as an article for a Special Issue of Psychology and Sexuality on 'Nature and Normality in the History of Sexuality' that I am co-editing with Peter Cryle.
In the field of film and media studies, I am working on representations of childlessness, loss of a child, and infanticide in a range of film and media texts alongside discourses of psychoanalysis and queer theory, particularly in light of the 'antisocial turn' in queer associated with the work of, among others, Lee Edelman. I have been invited to speak about my initial findings at a conference on 'Mourning and the Moving Image' at the University of Cambridge in February 2010. Also in this field, I am in the early stages of a project on representations of gender, feminism and sexual subculture community-building in webblogs and other new-media-based interfaces produced by women.
In the field of queer studies, I am working on two publications on the theme of 'Queer in Europe' - a book in Ashgate's 'Queer Interventions' series and a Special Issue of the journal Sexualities - in collaboration with Dr Robert Gillett
(Queen Mary, University of London). The publications follow from a
series of international events including a major three-day
international conference held at Exeter in September 2008 and a session of the Critical Sexology Series held in London in September 2009.
Other Research Activities
Member of the AHRC's Peer Review College for the following subjects: Gender and Sexuality; Film History, Theory, Criticism; Media and Communication; French Studies.
Founder and Director of the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe (CISSGE) at the University of Exeter.
Affiliate of the Centre for the History of European Discourses (CHED) at the University of Queensland, Australia.
Research Associate of the Centre for Somatechnics, Macquarie University, Australia.
Critical Sexology: Lisa Downing co-organises (with Dr Meg Barker, Open University and Dr Robert Gillett, Queen Mary, University of London) this London-based, interdisciplinary seminar series for psychologists, psychoanalysts, medical doctors, literary and cultural studies scholars, philosophers, artists, lawyers and historians with a critical interest in the construction and management of gender and sexuality in the medical, discursive and cultural spheres. She also co-moderates the Critical Sexology mailing list and manages the website.
Currently in print:
Authored books
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Patrice Leconte, French Film Directors Series (Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 2004), pp. 166, ISBN: paperback: 0719064252; hardback:
0719064244
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Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters, co-authored with Libby Saxton (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 175, ISBN: 9780415409278
Special Issues of journals (as guest editor)
Articles in refereed journals
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'Feminist Fictions of the Flesh (?): Alina Reyes's Le Boucher and Rachilde's La Marquise de Sade', Journal of Romance Studies, 2, 1, Spring, 2002, 51-64, ISSN: 14733536
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'Between Men and Women; Beyond Heterosexuality: Limits and Possibilities of the Erotic in Lynne Stopkewich's Kissed and Patrice Leconte's La Fille sur le pont', Romance Studies, 20, 1, June, 2002, 29-40, ISSN: 02639904
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'Death and the Maidens: A Century of Necrophilia in Female-Authored Textual Production', French Cultural Studies, 14, 2, June, 2003, 157-168, ISSN: 01427237
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'On the Limits of Sexual Ethics: The Phenomenology of Autassassinophilia' , Sexuality and Culture, 8, 1, Winter, 2004, 3-17, ISSN: 10955143
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'Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Aesthetic Violence and Motiveless Murder in French Decadent Fiction', French Studies, 58, 2, April, 2004, 189-204, ISSN: 00161128
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'French Cinema's New Sexual Revolution: Postmodern Porn and Troubled Genre', French Cultural Studies , Special Issue on 'New Directions in French Cinema' ed. Sue Harris, 15, 3, October, 2004, 265-80, ISSN: 01427237
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(co-authored with Dany Nobus ), 'The Iconography of Asphyxiophilia: From Fantasmatic Fetish to Forensic Fact', Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory, November, 2004, 1-15, ISSN: 02648334
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'The Birth of the Beast: Death-Driven Masculinity in Monneret, Zola and Freud', Dix-Neuf, fully refereed online journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, no. 5, September 2005, 28-46, ISSN: 14787318
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‘Baise-moi or the Ethics of the Desiring Gaze’ in Nottingham French Studies,
Special Issue on ‘Focalizing the Body: Contemporary Women Writers and
Filmmakers in France’, ed. Gill Rye and Carrie Tarr, 45, 3, 2006,
52-65, ISSN: 00294586
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‘Re-viewing the Sexual Relation: Levinas and Film', Film-Philosophy,
fully refereed electronic journal, Special Issue on ‘The Occluded Relation: Levinas and Cinema’,
ed. Sarah Cooper, 11, 2, 2007, 49-65, ISSN: 14664615
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‘Murder in the Feminine: Madame Lafarge and the Sexualization of the Nineteenth-Century Criminal Woman’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, Special Issue on ‘Feminine Sexual Pathologies’, ed. Peter Cryle and
Lisa Downing, 18, 1, January 2009, 121-37 ISSN: 10434070
Chapters in books
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'Ecstasies and Agonies: The “Oceanic Feeling”, God and Sexuality in Baudelaire and Villiers de l’Isle-Adam’ in (Un)Faithful Texts: Religion in French and Francophone Literature from the 1780s to the 1980s, ed. Paul Cooke and Jane Lee (New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2000), pp. 53-66, ISBN: 1889431524
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'Sexuality’ in Encyclopedia of Modern French Thought, ed. Christopher John Murray (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004), pp. 582-7, ISBN: 1579583849
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‘Perversion, Historicity, Ethics’ in Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, ed. Dany Nobus and Lisa Downing (London: Karnac Books, 2006), pp. 149-63, ISBN: 1855759179
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'Polanski’s Deneuve: Frigidity and Feminism’ in From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve, ed. Lisa Downing and Sue Harris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), pp. 14-28, ISBN: 071907338
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In Press and Forthcoming
Books (edited)
Special Issues of journals (as guest editor)
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'Nature and Normality in the History of Sexuality', Special Issue of Psychology and Sexuality co-edited with Peter Cryle (in preparation)
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'European Culture/ European Queer', Special Issue of Sexualities co-edited with Robert Gillett (in preparation)
Articles in refereed journals
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'Diagnosing Sexual Normality in Late-Twentieth-Century American Sexology: John Money and "Normophilia"', 'Nature and Normality in the History of Sexuality', Special Issue of Psychology and Sexuality ed. Peter Cryle and Lisa Downing (in preparation)
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'Perversion and the avant-garde: Bataille, Trangression and Queer Theory', 'The avant-garde', Special Issue of Nottingham French Studies, ed. Stephen Forcer and Emma Wagstaff (in preparation)
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(co-authored with Robert Gillett) 'Viewing Critical Psychology through the Lens of Queer', 'Queer(y)ing Psychology', Special Issue of Psychology and Sexuality ed. Peter Hegarty (in preparation)
Chapters in books
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'Eros and Thanatos in European and American Sexology' in Sexual Histories: Bodies and Desires Uncovered, ed. Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, in press, 2009/10)
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'Sexual Variations' in 'Sexuality in the Age of Empire (1820-1920)', ed. Ivan Crozier and Chaira Beccalossi, vol. of The Cultural History of Sexuality, general ed. Julie Peakman (Oxford: Berg, forthcoming: 2010)
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'Perversion and the Problem of Fluidity and Fixity' in Clinical Encounters: Psychoanalytic Practice and Queer Theory, ed. Noreen Giffney and Eve Watson (in preparation)
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'Conclusion: Historical Periodisations and Sexual Revolutions' in The Routledge History of Sex and the Body in the West, 1500 to the Present, ed. Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan (London and New York: Routledge, in preparation)
Conferences organised
Prof. Downing was a founding Executive Committee member of the Society of
Dix-Neuviémistes, the only UK-based organisation for
international researchers in nineteenth-century French Studies. From
2002-2006 she held the role of the Society’s Conference Officer and
organised or co-organised 4 international annual conferences and one
postgraduate conference:
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2002, First Annual Conference of the Society of
Dix-Neuviémistes, 'New Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century French
Studies', Queen Mary, University of London
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2003, Second Annual Conference of SDN, 'Currencies', University of Leeds
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2004, SDN Postgraduate Conference, IGRS, University of London
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2005, Third Annual Conference of SDN, 'Birth and Death', Queen's University Belfast
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2006, Fourth Annual Conference of SDN, 'Pleasure and Pain', University of Edinburgh
Prof. Downing co-organised with Dr Robert Gillett (Queen Mary, University of London) an International 3-Day Symposium on 'Queer in Europe' at the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexuality and Gender in Europe, University of Exeter, 13-15 September 2008.
Conference papers given since 2001
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‘Between Men and Women; Beyond Heterosexuality: Limits and Possibilities of the Erotic in Lynne Stopkewich’s Kissed and Patrice Leconte’s La Fille sur le Pont’,
paper presented at the Romance Studies conference on ‘New
Sexual/Textual Perceptions: The Portrayal of Gender at the Dawn of the
New Millennium’, September 2001
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‘Death and the
Maidens: A Century of Necrophilia in Female-Authored Literature and
Film’, paper presented at the Manchester University French
Department conference on ‘Sex and the Sacred’, May 2002
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‘"Vrai
meurtrier et faux poète”: From Murder, Through Text, To
Heroism. The Cases of Lacenaire and Pierre Rivière’, paper
presented at Society of French Studies Conference, Bristol, July 2002
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‘Corpus
Delecti of the Other’, Plenary paper given at the ‘Foreign
Bodies’ conference, at the Institute of Romance Studies, London,
September 2002
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‘Perversion, Frigidity and Feminism:
Polanski’s Deneuve’, paper presented in the panel on
Catherine Deneuve at the Popular European Cinema Conference on
‘Methods and Stars’, at the University of Stockholm,
Sweden, July 2003
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‘Baise-moi or the
Pluralization of the Desiring Gaze’, paper presented at the
Institute of Romance Studies conference on ‘Focalizing the Body:
Contemporary Women’s Filmmaking and Writing in France’,
London, October, 2003
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'The Birth of the Beast: Death-Driven
Masculinity in Monneret, Zola and Freud’, plenary lecture given
at ‘Birth and Death’, the Society of
Dix-Neuviémistes’ Third Annual Conference, Queen’s
University Belfast, April 2005
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‘Murderous Female
Sexuality in the Contemporary Queer Road Movie’, paper presented
at ‘Designs for Living: Space and Place in the Cinema’, a
conference organized by the Centre for Film Studies, Queen Mary,
University of London, June, 2005
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‘Perversion - Which
Version?: History, Ideology, Ethics’, invited paper presented at
'Reviewing Perversion: Clinical Enquiry 5', Confer, Royal College of
GPs, London, February 2006
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‘Re-viewing the Sexual
Relation: Levinas and Film’, invited paper presented at
‘Levinas and Cinema’, Institute of Germanic and Romance
Studies, University of London, May 2006
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‘Murder in the
Feminine’, paper presented at ‘Femininity and the
Construction of Sexual Pathologies’, a conference of the
collaborative research project organized by Prof. Peter Cryle, Director
of the Centre for the History of European Discourses, University of
Queensland Australia, held at the Monash Centre, Prato, Italy,
September-October 2006
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'Doing and Undoing Gender at the French fin de siècle: Sexology, Decadent Authorship and Rachilde’, keynote paper given at: ‘The European fin de siècle: Gender, Nation, Race’, two-day conference held at IGRS, University of London, December 2006
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‘Queering
Perversion: Erotic Asphyxiation and the Bodily Politics of the Death
Drive’, invited paper presented at 'Subverting What? Perversion,
Transgression and Normalisation in Queer Studies', University College
Dublin, March 2007
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‘Institutionalizing Unreason: The
Nightmare, Alienism, and Masculinity’, paper presented at
‘Institutions and Power’, the Fifth Annual Conference of
the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, University of Cambridge,
March-April 2007
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'Madame Lafarge and the Problem of Guilt in
the Feminine’, keynote paper given at the Cambridge French
Graduate Conference on ‘Shame and Guilt’, April 2007
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‘Acts
without a Future: Erasing the Subject of Edelman’, paper given at
‘No Future Together: A Symposium on the Work of Lee
Edelman’, Kings College London, June 2007
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‘Michel
Foucault and the Queer Self/Other’, invited paper presented in a
panel on ‘Queer Theory’ at Society of French Studies
Conference, Birmingham, July 2007
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'Eros and Thanatos in
European and American Sexology’, keynote paper given at
‘Sexual Histories: Bodies and Desires Uncovered’, an
international conference organized by the Department of History,
University of Exeter, July 2007
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‘Between Radical Ethics and Horror: Visualising Sexual Otherness in Claire Denis’s Trouble Every Day’,
invited paper presented at a Conference on ‘Alienation and
Alterity’, University of Exeter, September 2007
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'Criminalty, Sexuality, Abnormality: Nineteenth-Century Scientific Constructions', keynote paper given at the Oxford University French Graduate Conference on ‘Crime’, September 2007
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'Between Psychoanalysis and the Screen: Some thoughts on Lacan, Cinema and Ethics', invited paper presented at The Queen Mary Malcolm Bowie Conference: Across the Arts, December 2007
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'"Normophilia": Diagnosing Sexual Normality in Late-Twentieth-Century Anglo-American Sexology', paper presented at 'The Natural and the Normal in the History of Sexuality', Conference co-organised by CHED, University of Queensland, and CISSGE, University of Exeter, held at the Monash Centre, Prato, Italy, September 2008
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'Mal du siècle/ maladie du siècle: Gendered Constructions of Sexual Sickness in/of the Nineteenth Century', keynote lecture given at the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes Postgraduate Conference, IGRS, London, September 2008
In addition, she has presented 11 papers in seminar series since 2001, at
the Universities of Cambridge (twice); Oxford; Durham; Middlesex;
London (four times); Exeter and Edinburgh. In 2009-10 she will present seminar papers at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, the IGRS, London, and give conference papers at Cambridge; Ghent, Belgium; and Prato, Italy.
Prof. Downing is on Research Leave from July 2009-January 2012 and is not carrying out undergraduate teaching during this time.
Prof. Downing usually convenes the MA and MRes in Sexuality and Gender Studies. During 2009-10, the convenor of these programmes is Dr Helen Vassallo.
She also usually convenes the MRes in European Languages and Cultures. During 2009-10, the convenor of this programme is Dr Helen Bridge.
Current and Recent Research Supervision:
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Lara Cox (50%, co-supervision with Dr David Houston Jones), AHRC-funded PhD thesis in French: "Transference in the Theatre of Ionesco, Arrabal and Adamov: The Schismatic Scene of Misrecognition" (from 2008) (Supervised MRes thesis: "Adamov's Theatre and Theories of the Unconscious", 2007-08)
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Caroline Walters (as first supervisor), AHRC-funded PhD thesis in Sexuality and Gender Studies: "A Non-Pathologising Approach to Contemporary Literary and Cinematic
Representations of Heterosexual Female Masochism and Submission" (from 2008)
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Gerri Kimber, PhD thesis in French: "Katherine Mansfield: The View from France" (2003-2007)
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Prof. Downing also supervised numerous Masters and PhD students in her previous post at Queen Mary, University of London (September 1999-September 2006)
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Last Updated ( Friday, 22 January 2010 )
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