Gender studies

April 5th, 9:30-11:00

Open lecture with Jackie Stacey: Culture as the New Bad Object: the New Materialities of Feminist Theory
Location: Room Temcas, Tema Building, Linköping University
Language: English

Bio:
Jackie Stacey is Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Manchester. Her background is an interdisciplinary one, combining European Studies (Sussex 1978), Women’s Studies (Kent 1986) and Cultural Studies (Birmingham 1992). She has been a co-editor of Screen since 1994 and of Feminist Theory since 2005. Her publications include: Star Gazing: Female Spectators and Hollywood Cinema (1994), Teratologies: A Cultural Study of Cancer (1997) and with Sarah Franklin and Celia Lury, Global Nature, Global Culture (2000). She has also co-edited a number of books, including: Romance Revisited with Lynne Pearce (1995), Screen Histories: A Screen Reader with Annette Kuhn (1998), Thinking Through the Skin with Sara Ahmed (2001) and Queer Screen with Sarah Street (2007). Her most recent monograph, The Cinematic Life of the Gene, was published in 2010 by Duke University Press.

She is currently Director of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts (CIDRA) and Co-Director of the Research Institute for Cosmopolitan Cultures (RICC). She has also co-organised the postgraduate Manchester Sexuality Summer School with colleagues in the Centre for the Study of Sexuality and Culture (CSSC) for the last three years in collaboration with the International Arts Festival, Queer Up North.

Abstract:
This lecture will discuss how the concept of 'culture' has come to function as the new bad object of feminist theory, focussing in particular on the ways in which it is often positioned in opposition to new conceptions of materiality. Engaging with the work of Elizabeth Grosz, Rosi Braidotti, Karen Barad, Vicky Kirby and others, this paper investigates whether or not 'culture' should still be of central concern to feminism. In dialogue with my recent work in The Cinematic Life of the Gene (Duke, 2010), this talk will offer a discussion of the shifting relationship between nature, biology and affect in order to think through the implications for feminist theory of abandoning the concept of culture altogether.