Goldsmiths - University of London

Dr Jane Desmarais

Academic qualifications

BA (Hons.) in English, University of Reading University, MA in Literature and the Visual Arts, 1840-1940, University of Reading, PhD in Art History, Birkbeck College, University of London
Appointed to Goldsmiths in 1996

Teaching

Convenor of The Short Story, Introduction to the Short Story, and Decadence.  Teach on The Short Story, Introduction to Comparative Literature, Studies in Comparative Literature, Victorians, Post-Victorian Literature and Decadence.

Areas of supervision

• Idol of Complexity: Challenging the Stereotype of the 'Femme Fatale' in Art and Literature, 1850-1910
• The Breaking of Silence: First-wave Anglophone African-Caribbean Women Novelists
• Sexuality and Cruelty in 19th-century English Decadent Literature
• Palace of Symbols: Representations of the Hot-house in Literary Decadence
• The Spy Who: How absence. lack and loss define the spy-hero

 I welcome research proposals on any aspect of literary and visual Decadence.

Professional activities

• Editorial Consultant psychoanalytical/medical works (Karnac and Routledge)
• Editor of English edition of Wilde Online
• Member of London 19th Century Studies Seminar
• Member of British Comparative Literature Association
• Member of Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies
• Peer reviewer for various presses and journals (Oxford, Routledge, Pickering and Chatto)

Research interests

My interests are principally in 19th-century literature and the visual arts, history and psychoanalysis, and specifically in literary and visual Decadence, Anglo-French cultural relations between 1880-1910, and psychoanalytic theory.  I have published books and articles on a range of English, Irish and French writers, artists and philosophers, and I’m currently writing a book on the metaphor of the hot-house flower for Reaktion Press, entitled Flowers of Evil: Hot-house Flowers and Tropical Plants.

Selected publications

• Decadence: an annotated anthology, ed. with Chris Baldick (2012)
• Model and Supermodel: The Artist's Model in British Art and Culture, ed. with Martin Postle, and William Vaughan (2006)
• An Essay on Irish Bulls by Maria Edgeworth, ed. (2006)
• Psychotherapy and the Treatment of Cancer Patients: Bearing Cancer in Mind, with Lawrence Goldie (2005)
• The Generosity of Acceptance, 2 vols., ed. with Gianna Williams, Paul Williams, and Kent Ravenscroft (2003)
• 'The Paradox of Passive Resistance in Herman Melville's "Bartleby"', Journal of the Short Story in English, no. 36 (Spring 2001), 25-39
• The ‘Beardsley Industry’: the Critical Reception in England and France from 1893 to 1914 (1998)

Forthcoming

• A Cultural History of Decadence (Polity)
• Presence of Mind: The Complementary Approach, with Lawrence Goldie (Karnac)