Lisa Downing
Lisa Downing is an author and academic. She is Professor of French Discourses of Sexuality at the University of Birmingham.
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
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. In 2012, Downing moved to an established chair at the University of Birmingham.She was one of co-organisers of the interdisciplinary seminar series from 2006-2018.
Awards
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."Works
;Books as authorDesiring the Dead: Necrophilia and Nineteenth-Century French Literature Patrice Leconte The Cambridge Introduction to Michel Foucault Film and Ethics: Foreclosed Encounters The Subject of Murder: Gender, Exceptionality, and the Modern Killer Fuckology co-authored with Iain Morland and Nikki Sullivan, a critical analysis of the legacy of psychologist and sexologist John Money. New Scientist described as "ably capturing" Money's story while Susan Stryker described as a "careful, critical and nuanced" analysis of Money's career.Selfish Women. described as "startling, trenchant and original" and stated that "Downing's critical brilliance, command of the material, and uncompromsing approach are dazzling".Against Affect;Books as editorCurrencies: Fiscal Fortunes and Cultural Capital in Nineteenth-Century France Perversion: Psychoanalytic Perspectives/ Perspectives on Psychoanalysis Birth and Death in Nineteenth-Century French Culture From Perversion to Purity: The Stardom of Catherine Deneuve Queer in Europe: Contemporary Case Studies Queering the Second Wave After Foucault: Culture, Criticism and Theory in the 21st Century
- ''Critical Freedoms''