Lisa Downing
Lisa Downing (/ˈdaʊnɪŋ/; born 1974) is an author and academic. She is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham.[1]
Downing's work is innovative in its dialogue between the critical humanities and the sciences, especially psychiatry. Her published work has focused on theories of sexual perversion and queer theory; the work of Michel Foucault; ethical philosophy and film; the cultural meanings of criminality; gendered selfishness; and, most recently, a critique of the culture of emotion or the "affective turn".
Background and career
[edit]Downing trained in Modern European Languages, Literatures, and Thought at the Universities of London and Oxford. She took up a Lectureship at Queen Mary, University of London in 1999, where she was promoted to Reader in 2005. She was appointed to a chair at the University of Exeter in 2006, at the age of 31.[2] In 2012, Downing moved to an established chair at the University of Birmingham.
She was one of co-organisers of the interdisciplinary seminar series "Critical Sexology" from 2006-2018.
Awards
[edit]Downing received a 2009 Philip Leverhulme Prize, a prize "awarded to outstanding scholars under the age of 36 who have made a substantial contribution to their field of study, are recognised at an international level, and whose future contributions are held to be of correspondingly high promise."[3]
Works
[edit]- Books as author
- Desiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature (Oxford, EHRC, 2003)
- Patrice Leconte (French Film Directors Series; Manchester University Press, 2004)
- The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault (Cambridge University Press, 2008)
- Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters (co-authored with Libby Saxton; Routledge, 2009)
- The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer (Chicago University Press, 2013)
- Fuckology (Chicago University Press, 2014) co-authored with Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan, a critical analysis of the legacy of psychologist and sexologist John Money. New Scientist described the book as "ably capturing" Money's story[4] while Susan Stryker described the book as a "careful, critical and nuanced" analysis of Money's career.
- Selfish Women (Routledge, 2019). Emma Wilson described the book as "startling, trenchant and original" and stated that "Downing's critical brilliance, command of the material, and uncompromsing approach are dazzling".
- Against Affect (University of Nebraska Press, forthcoming 2026)
- Books as editor
- Currencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century France (with Sarah Capitanio, Paul Rowe and Nick White; Peter Lang, 2005)
- Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis (with Dany Nobus; Karnac Books, 2006)
- Birth and Death in Nineteenth-Century French Culture (with Nigel Harkness, Sonya Stephens and Tim Unwin; Rodopi, 2007)
- From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve (with Sue Harris; Manchester University Press, 2007)
- Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies (with Robert Gillett; Ashgate, 2011)
- Queering the Second Wave (with Lara Cox; Edinburgh University Press, 2018)
- After Foucault: Culture, Criticism and Theory in the 21st Century (Cambridge University Press, 2018)
- Critical Freedoms (Edinburgh University Press, 2023)
References
[edit]- ^ "Professor Lisa Downing". University of Birmingham. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
- ^ "Lisa Downing". Retrieved 25 September 2011.
- ^ "Leverhulme Prize for work on French Sexuality". 3 November 2009. Retrieved 25 December 2012.
- ^ "Is sexology just too human to study?". New Scientist. 16 December 2014. Retrieved 26 December 2014.
