Research interests:
History and theories of sexuality; modern critical theory (psychoanalysis; queer theory; ethics); death studies; nineteenth-century French writing, thought and culture; Decadence and the fin de siècle; cinema theory.
Publications:
AUTHORED BOOKS:
Downing, Lisa Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth- Century French Literature Legenda (Oxford: EHRC, 2003)
Downing, Lisa Patrice Leconte, French Film Directors Series (MUP, 2004)
Downing, Lisa Michel Foucault (CUP, 2008)[Forthcoming]
Downing, Lisa and Libby Saxton (co-authored) Cinema and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (New York and London: Routledge, 2008-09)[Forthcoming]
EDITED BOOKS:
Capitanio, Sarah, Lisa Downing, Paul Rowe and Nick White (eds), Currencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century France (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2005)
Nobus, Dany and Lisa Downing (eds), Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis (London: Karnac Books, 2006)
Downing, Lisa and Sue Harris (eds), From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007)
Harkness, Nigel, Lisa Downing, Sonya Stephens and Tim Unwin (eds), Birth and Death : Essays in Nineteenth-Century French Culture, 'Faux titres' ( Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007)
GUEST EDITED SPECIAL ISSUES OF JOURNALS
Cryle, Peter and Lisa Downing (eds), Special Double Issue of Journal of the History of Sexuality, on ‘Feminine Sexual Pathologies’ (forthcoming, January and May 2009), 18,1&2, ISSN:10434070
ARTICLES IN REFEREED JOURNALS
Downing, Lisa, '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
Downing, Lisa, '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, University of Swansea, 20, 1, June, 2002, 29-40
Downing, Lisa, 'Death and the Maidens: A Century of Necrophilia in Female-Authored Textual Production' in French Cultural Studies, 14, 2, June, 2003, 157-168
Downing, Lisa, 'On the Limits of Sexual Ethics: The Phenomenology of Autassassinophilia' in Sexuality and Culture, 8, 1, Winter, 2004, 3-17
Downing, Lisa, 'Beyond Reasonable Doubt: Aesthetic Violence and Motiveless Murder in French Decadent Fiction' in French Studies, 58, 2, April, 2004, 189-204
Downing, Lisa, 'The Measure of Sexual Dysfunction: A Plea for Theoretical Limitlessness' in Transformations: Region, Culture, Society, special issue on 'Regions of Sexuality', ed. Iain Morland and Wendy O'Brien no. 8, July, 2004
Downing, Lisa, 'French Cinema's New Sexual Revolution: Postmodern Porn and Troubled Genre' in French Cultural Studies , Special Issue on 'New Directions in French Cinema' ed. Sue Harris, 15, 3, October, 2004, 265-80
Downing, Lisa and Dany Nobus (co-authored ), 'The Iconography of Asphyxiophilia: From Fantasmatic Fetish to Forensic Fact' in Paragraph: A Journal of Modern Critical Theory, November, 2004, 1-15
Downing, Lisa, 'The Birth of the Beast: Death-Driven Masculinity in Monneret, Zola and Freud' in Dix-Neuf, fully refereed online journal of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, no. 5, September 2005, 28-46
Downing, Lisa, 'Baise-moi or the Ethics of the Desiring Gaze' in Nottingham French Studies, special issue on 'Focalizing the Body: Recent Women's Writing and Filmmaking in France' ed. Gill Rye and Carrie Tarr, 45, 3, Autumn, 2006, 52-65
Downing, Lisa, 'Reviewing the Sexual Relation: Levinas and Fim' in Film-Philosophy, Special Issue on 'The Occluded Relation: Levinas and Cinema’, ed. Sarah Cooper, 11, 2, 2007, 49-65
Downing, Lisa, '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, 2 (forthcoming May 2009)
BOOK CHAPTERS
Downing, Lisa, ''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) 53-66
Downing, Lisa, 'Sexuality' in Companion to Modern French Thought, ed. Christopher John Murray (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2004), 582-7
Downing, Lisa, 'Perversion, Historicity, Ethics ' in Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis, edited Dany Nobus and Lisa Downing ( London: Karnac Books, 2006), 149-163
Downing, Lisa,'Thanatos' , 'Necrophilia', 'Erotic Asphyxiation', 'Charles Baudelaire', 'Pétrus Borel', in Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature , ed. Gaëtan Brulotte and John Phillips (London and New York: Taylor and Francis, 2006)
Downing, Lisa,‘Beyond Safety: Erotic Asphyxiation and the Limits of S/M Discourse' in Safe, Sane and Consensual: Contemporary Perspectives on Sadomasochism ed. Darren Langridge and Meg Barker (Palgrave, 2007), 119-32
Downing, Lisa,'Polanski's Deneuve: Frigidity and Feminism' in From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve, edited Lisa Downing and Sue Harris (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 14-28
Downing, Lisa, ‘Necrophilia' in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Love, Sex and Culture: Volume 5, The Nineteenth Century and the Victorian Age, ed. Susan Mumm (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood, 2008)[in press ]
Downing, Lisa ,
'Sexual Variation' in 'The Nineteenth Century', ed. Ivan Crozier, vol. of The Cultural History of Sexuality, general ed. Julie Peakman (Oxford: Berg, 2009) [forthcoming]
REVIEW ARTICLES (OVER 1500 WORDS)
Downing, Lisa, Review of Tim Dean, Beyond Sexuality (Chicago University Press, 2000) in Archives of Sexual Behaviour, 34, 2, April, 2005, 255-57
Downing, Lisa, Review of Rothenberg, Foster and Zizek (eds), P erversion and the Social Relation (Duke University Press, 2003) in Archives of Sexual Behaviour 36,1, February 2007,127-28
Current Research Projects:
In the field of nineteenth-century studies and the history of sexuality, I am writing a monograph on discourses of the murderer, provisionally entitled The Subject of Murder: Criminality, Identity, Gender. The study focuses on two apparently contradictory ways in which the figure of the murderer was understood in the nineteenth century: 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).
Also in this field, I am involved in a collaborative project on Nature and Normality in the History of Sexuality; jointly run by the Centre for the Interdisciplinary Study of Sexaulity and Gender in Europe (Exeter) and the Centre for the History of European Discourses (University of Queensland, Australia).
In the field of sexuality studies, I am engaged in an ongoing collaborative project on The Cultural Practices of Eros and Thanatos with Prof. Dany Nobus, Brunel University. This is an interdisciplinary study of the ways in which sexuality and death are conceptually linked in a range of European and American discourses (sexology, psychoanalysis, continental philosophy, literature, cinema, communication media).
In the field of queer studies, I have in the early planning stages a project on Queer in Europe in collaboration with Dr Robert Gillett (Queen Mary, University of London), Dr Matt Cook (Birkbeck, University of London), Dr Bart Eeckhout (University of Antwerp, Belgium) and Dr Joanna Mizielinska (University of Warsaw, Poland). The project has several strands, each of which will be managed by one of the steering group members. My strand seeks to investigate how queer theory, a theoretical and political discourse that borrows heavily from German philosophy and French thought was developed by Anglo-American academics. As well as assessing the deployment of continental philosophy in US queer theory (Judith Butler and Eve Sedgwick), I will investigate the extent to which queer has ‘returned’ to Europe and what forms this return takes.
In the field of film theory, I am building on the work on ethics and representation undertaken in chapter 5 of my monograph on film director Patrice Leconte (Patrice Leconte, Manchester University Press, 2004), which explores for the first time the application of ethical theory (Levinas, Zizek, Bauman) to popular narrative cinema. A contracted book with Dr Libby Saxton, QMUL, entitled Cinema and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (Routledge, 2008-09) will explore some of the unsung resonances between the recent turn to ethical criticism and the phenomenology of cinema.
Other Research Activities:
Research Affiliations
I am an Affiliate of the Centre for the History of European Discourses (CHED) at the University of Queensland, Australia.
I am a Research Associate of the Centre for Somatechnics, Macquarie University, Australia.
Critical Sexology
I co-organise (with Dr Meg Barker, LSBU) 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. I also co-moderate the Critical Sexology mailing list and manage the website.
(For details of our activities, see: http://www.criticalsexology.org.uk )
Queer(y)ing Psychology
I have recently been invited to participate in this project run by a group of pychologists, which attempts to ascertain the potential uses of radical queer theory for reconceptualising sexuality in the psychological disciplines.
http://www.queeryingpsychology.org.uk/
Society of Dix-Neuviémistes
I was a founding member of the Executive Committee of the Society of Dix-Neuviémistes, a UK-based organisation for international researchers in nineteenth-century French Studies. I held the position of Conference Officer from 2001-2006. Details of the Society can be found at: http://www.sdn.ac.uk
Fabula–Littérature Histoire Théorie ( Fabula-LHT )
I am part of the the Advisory Board of this online French journal of literary and cultural studies. http://www.fabula.org/lht/
Supervision of PhD Students:
PhD projects currently and formerly supervised include:
Sylvia Farley, "Beyond Boundaries: A Theoretical and Empirical Study of Heterosexual BDSM Culture in the UK" (supervised at the University of Exeter, from 2007).
Gerri Kimber, "Katherine Mansfield: The View from France", (formerly supervised at QMUL and the University of Exeter, 2003-07).
Lucy Bolton"Theories of Onscreen Female Consciousness", [funded by the AHRC] (formerly supervised at Queen Mary, University of London, 2004-06).
Conference Papers Given:
‘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.
‘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.
‘"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
‘Corpus Delecti of the Other’, Plenary paper given at the ‘Foreign Bodies’ conference, at the Institute of Romance Studies, London, September 2002.
‘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.
‘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.
‘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.
‘Perversion - Which Version?: History, Ideology, Ethics’, invited paper presented at 'Reviewing Perversion: Clinical Enquiry 5', Confer, Royal College of GPs, London, February 2006.
‘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.
‘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.
'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.
‘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.
‘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.
'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.
‘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.
‘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.
'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.
‘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.
'Criminalty, Sexuality, Abnormality: Nineteenth-Century Scientific Constructions', keynote paper given at the Oxford University French Graduate Conference on ‘Crime’, September 2007.
'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.
In addition, I have presented 8 papers in seminar series since 2001, at the Universities of Cambridge (twice); Oxford; Durham; Middlesex; London (three times). In 2007-08 I will present papers in seminar series at Cambridge and Edinburgh.
