Dr Lynn Turner

Academic qualifications

PhD Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) 2002
MA Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) 1995
BA (Hons) Fine Art (Newcastle Polytechnic - now the University of Northumbria) 1990

Teaching

I teach an MA Special Subject called 'Sex, Gender, Species' and a level 3 BA option on ‘Sexual Poetics,’ as well as contributing to the MA Core Course.

Areas of supervision

I currently supervise projects on autoimmunity and science fiction; film and the politics of the name; skin and species in South African art; taxidermy in contemporary art; pleasure and/in feminist art; women, food and art. I welcome proposals for research on animal and sexual differences; contemporary visual culture, aural culture particularly the voice/speech relation, science fiction; deconstruction; feminism, queer theory.

Grants & awards

British Academy Overseas Conference Grant 2010
AHRC Research Leave Scheme 2007-2008
British Academy studentship (3 years + fees) 1997-2000

Professional activities

Referee for book manuscripts for Edinburgh University Press, Columbia University Press

External Examiner for the MA in Reception, University of Bristol

Arts Editor of parallax

Referee for journals; Derrida Today, Somatechnics, Theory, Culture & Society, Sexualities; Body & Society; Women: A Cultural Review; parallax

Keynote lectures

2011

'Tape Plays Teletribunals' at Legal Media: A Colloquium in memory of Cornelia Vismann, Goldsmiths/Birkbeck/The Showroom

2002

'The Kinshipping Forecast' at The Future Past of Visual Culture, Tate Britain, London

Papers presented

2012

'Secrets & Lies: eating in the darkness in China Mieville's Embassytown' at Weird Council: an international conference on the writing of China Mieville Birkbeck, University of London

'Secrets & Lies: eating in the darkness in China Mieville's Embassytown' at Cosmopolitan Animals, University of Kent

2011

'Two Genetically Modified Films' at Life Itself, Goldsmiths

2010

'Animal Transference' at Freud After Derrida, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg

'Homing Pigeon: the Postal Principle in Lynn Hershmann's Conceiving Ada' at Derrida Today, London

'Animal Transference' at Zoontotechnics: Animality/Technicity, Cardiff University

'The Edges of a Limit that Grows: When Species Kiss' at Creaturely Lives, Goldsmiths

2009

'Telecommunications: the Undoing of DNA' at the 7th European Feminist Research Conference, Utrecht, Netherlands

'The Edges of a Limit that Grows: When Species Kiss' at Creative Practice, York St John University, UK

2008

'Seeks-zoos: some recent correspondence between animals' at Writing in a Post-Derridean Era, Vaxjo University, Sweden

2003

'Wind up: the performative speech acts of Tape' at Warp Woof: Aurality, Musicality, Textuality, University of Leeds

'Des Jeunes Nees: for a confusion of the tongue, the lip and the rim' at Writing Aesthetics, IAPL, University of Leeds

'A Reservation with Feminism, Film & Theory' at 10th Anniversary Feminale Frauen Film Festival, Cologne, Germany

Research interests

My research brings together longstanding interest in feminist theory (Butler, Haraway, Irigaray)  with its material exploration in visual culture - and aural culture. This has been enriched over the last few years through connecting with the contemporary urgency of the  'animal question'.  I understand the complexity of the term ‘performativity’ as it unfolds across Derrida’s work from his early use of the trace to the recent autobiographical question of whether anyone may decide to erase their tracks and link this with Haraway’s work on the contingent unfolding of kinship, as expressed in the question ‘who am I (following)?’ In this light, my book, Machine-Events: autobiographies of the performative in visual culture makes the argument that the performative not only implicates the organic with the synthetic, but also ruins the categorical division of species.  I pursue this argument in relation to works by Carolee Schneemann, Richard Linklater, Hussein Chalayan, Lynn Hershmann and others.

I continue to be involved with the journal parallax, currently as the Arts Editor having previously served a three-year term as joint Commissioning Editor. With Lindsay Kelley, I am editing a forthcoming issue of parallax under the title of 'bon appetit.'  I am also editing a volume of essays called Hedgehogs & Silkworms: Following Animals in Deconstruction. Future research will be directed to what Evelyn Fox Keller calls a ‘radically transformed bestiary’ informed by both science and science fiction.

Selected publications

Books:

Machine-Events: autobiographies of the performative in visual culture (a monograph, forthcoming)

Hedgehogs & Silkworms: following animals in deconstruction (edited collection)

Edited journals:

'Bon Appetit' parallax 19:1, 2013 (co-edited with Lindsay Kelley)

‘Random Figures’ parallax 8:1 2002 (co-edited with Marcel Swiboda & Cylena Simonds)

‘Immanent Trajectories’, parallax 7:4 2001 (co-edited with Marcel Swiboda & Cylena Simonds)

‘Hot Property’, parallax 7:2 2001 (co-edited with Marcel Swiboda & Cylena Simonds)

Chapters in Books:

'Tympan Alley: posthuman performatives in Dancer in the Dark' in Venturing Derrida, eds. Sarah Jackson & Sarah Dillon, Edinburgh University Press, 2013

‘Animal Melancholia: on the scent of Dean Spanley’ in Animality & the Moving Image, Laura McMahon & Michael Lawrence, eds. Oxford University Press, 2013.

‘The course of a general displacement, or, The course of the choreographer’ pp.50-66 in The Origins of Deconstruction, Martin McQuillan & Ika Willis, eds. Palgrave, 2009.

Journal articles:

Animal & Sexual Differences: Kelly Oliver's Continental Bestiary' in Body & Society, forthcoming, 2012.

'UnHoming Pigeons: the Postal Principle in Lynn Hershmann Leeson & Hussein Chalayan' pp.92-110 in Derrida Today, 5.1. 2012. 

'Animal Transference: a "mole-like progression" in C. J. Cherryh' pp. 163-175 in Mosaic: a journal for the interdisciplinary study of literature, 44.3, 2011.

'When Species Kiss: some recent correspondence between animots' pp.60-85 in Humanimalia, 2:1, 2010, online @ http://www.depauw.edu/humanimalia/

'Seeks-Zoos: some recent correspondence with animals' pp.10-21 in The Issues in Contemporary Culture & Aesthetics, No. 2-3, 2009.

‘stop looking for some single defining difference’: the ongoing Arkhe of Donna Haraway’ pp.142-145 in parallax, 14:3, 2008.

‘Wind up: the Machine-Event of Tape’ pp.112-135 in Camera Obscura, 64, 2007.

‘Differential Vibrations: on things that go buzz in the night’ pp.437-439 in The Journal of Visual Culture, 6:3, 2007.

‘Des Jeunes Nées: for a confusion of the tongue, the lip, & the rim’ pp.171-178, in The Issues in Contemporary Culture & Aesthetics, No.1, 2005.

‘Sexual Difference’ pp.317-32 in The Year’s Work in Cultural & Critical Theory, Vol.11, 2003.

‘Braiding polyphony: Je tu il elle (& lui)’ pp.94-100, in Performance Research, 8:1, 2003.

‘Translation Reading Sex’ pp.57-70 in parallax, 8: 4, 2002.

‘Lift off: il n’y a pas de deux hors texte’ pp.372-374 in The Journal of Visual Culture, 1:3, 2002.

‘Translating John Malkovich’ pp.132-137 in Performance Research, 7:2, 2002.

‘Documentary Friction: Visual & Vocal Strategies in Surname Viet: Given Name Nam’ pp.81-93 in parallax 1:3, 1997.