Dr Alice Condé

Staff details

Position Lecturer (Fractional)
Email a.conde (@gold.ac.uk)
Dr Alice Condé

Alice Condé is Lecturer (Fractional) in the Department of English and Creative Writing. Her research is primarily focused on decadence as a critical concept at the fin de siècle and today. She is interested in masochistic men and cruel women in nineteenth-century decadent fictions, and in our understanding of decadence in contemporary subculture with reference to queerness, drag, and social decline. She is co-editor of Decadence and the Senses (with Jane Desmarais, 2017) and In Cynara’s Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson (with Jessica Gossling, 2019). Her essay on ‘Decadence and Popular Culture’ can be found in Jane Desmarais and David Weir’s Decadence and Literature (2019).

Academic qualifications

  • PhD, ‘Writing Masochism and the Cruel Woman in English Decadence, 1860-1900’, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2014
  • MA, English Literature 1850 – the Present, King’s College London, 2009
  • BA (Hons), English, Goldsmiths, University of London, 2008

Teaching and Supervision

  • The English Decadence
  • European Decadence and the Visual Arts
  • Studies in Comparative Literature
  • Introduction to Comparative Literature

Publications and research outputs

Edited Book

Condé, Alice and Gossling, Jessica, eds. 2019. In Cynara's Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson. Oxford: Peter Lang. ISBN 9781787076266

Desmarais, Jane H. and Condé, Alice, eds. 2017. Decadence and the Senses. Oxford: Legenda. ISBN 978-1-78188-481-2

Edited Journal

Gossling, Jessica and Condé, Alice, eds. 2018. Decadence, Magic(k), and the Occult, Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 1(2).

Book Section

Condé, Alice. 2022. Neo-Victorian Decadence in the 1920s: The case of Ben Hecht. In: Kostas Boyiopoulos and Joseph Thorne, eds. Neo-Victorian Decadence. Amsterdam: Rodopi.

Condé, Alice. 2022. A “shadow of a white rose in a mirror of silver”: The disembodied femme fatale in Oscar Wilde’s Salome. In: Laura Giovannelli and Pierpaolo Martino, eds. Wilde World. Una tavola rotonda su Oscar Wilde. Pisa: Edizioni ETS, pp. 69-96. ISBN 9788846763853

Condé, Alice. 2021. Contemporary Contexts: Decadence Today and Tomorrow. In: Jane H. Desmarais and David Weir, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Decadence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 96-114. ISBN 9780190066956

Gossling, Jessica. 2019. From the Drawer to the Cloister: Ernest Dowson’s ‘Poésie Schublade’. In: Alice Condé and Jessica Gossling, eds. In Cynara's Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 93-116. ISBN 9781787076266

Condé, Alice. 2019. ‘The pale roses expire’: Dowson’s Decadent diminuendo. In: Alice Condé and Jessica Gossling, eds. In Cynara’s Shadow: Collected Essays on Ernest Dowson. Oxford: Peter Lang, pp. 217-243. ISBN 9781787076259

Condé, Alice. 2019. Decadence and Popular Culture. In: Jane H. Desmarais and David Weir, eds. Decadence and Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 379-399. ISBN 9781108426244

Gossling, Jessica. 2017. 'Things worldly and things spiritual': Joris-Karl Huysmans’s A rebours and the house at Fontenay. In: Alice Condé and Jane H. Desmarais, eds. Decadence and the Senses. Oxford: Legenda, pp. 66-82. ISBN 978-1-781884-81-2

Condé, Alice. 2017. Sensory Nullification in the Poetry of Ernest Dowson. In: Jane H. Desmarais and Alice Condé, eds. Decadence and the Senses. Cambridge: Legenda, pp. 200-218. ISBN 9781781884812

Article

Condé, Alice. 2022. Review of Decadence: A Literary History. Ed. Alex Murray. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 415 pp. £84.99. Studies in Walter Pater and Aestheticism, 6, pp. 148-151. ISSN 2445-5962

Condé, Alice and Gossling, Jessica. 2021. Beyond the Supernatural: Decadent Pedagogy and The Picture of Dorian Gray. International Council of Teachers of English Newsletter(4), pp. 22-24.

Condé, Alice and Gossling, Jessica. 2018. The Devil in the Detail: An Introduction to Decadent Occultism from the Editors. Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, 1(2), i-ix.

Condé, Alice. 2016. Review of Kostas Boyiopoulos, The Decadent Image: The Poetry of Wilde, Symons and Dowson, Edinburgh Critical Studies in Victorian Culture (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015), pp. xii + 219. ISBN 9780748690923. The Oscholars,

Conference or Workshop Item

Condé, Alice. 2017. 'The afterlife of the Decadent femme fatale: Phantasmal delusion in Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare (1922)'. In: Neo-Victorian Decadences. Durham University, United Kingdom 8-9 September 2017.

Condé, Alice. 2016. '"The pale roses expire": Dowson’s Decadent diminuendo'. In: Ernest Dowson (1867-1900): Poet, translator, novelist. Goldsmiths, United Kingdom 15 April 2016.

Condé, Alice. 2013. 'Mirrors, shadows, dancing girls: the Decadent woman in Arthur Symons’s London Nights'. In: Goldsmiths Literature Seminar (GLITS). Goldsmiths, United Kingdom 21 February 2013.

Condé, Alice. 2013. 'A. C. Swinburne and the masochistic fantasy of the cruel woman'. In: London Nineteenth-Century Seminar. Senate House, United Kingdom 2 February 2013.

Condé, Alice. 2012. 'The masochistic game in nineteenth-century Decadence, and why Oscar Wilde’s Salomé cannot play along'. In: LUDUS: The Narrative of Games and the Art of Play. Goldsmiths, United Kingdom 22 June 2012.

Condé, Alice. 2012. 'The Decadent cruel woman, masochism, and the dynamics of control'. In: Goldsmiths Literature Seminar (GLITS). Goldsmiths, United Kingdom 15 March 2012.

Condé, Alice. 2011. 'Writing masochism in nineteenth-century Decadence'. In: Goldsmiths Postgraduate Symposium. Goldsmiths, United Kingdom 20 May 2011.

Condé, Alice. 2010. 'Writing the cruelty of female sexuality in Wilde’s Salomé'. In: Transgression and its Limits. University of Stirling, United Kingdom 30 May 2010.

Digital

Condé, Alice. 2020. Contemporary Decadence: Subversion and Social Consciousness.

Gossling, Jessica and Condé, Alice. 2018. Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies.

Performance

Alston, Adam; Condé, Alice and Prashar-Savoie, Anjali. 2022. Decadence @ Iklectik. In: "Decadence @ Iklectik", Iklectik Arts Lab, London, United Kingdom, 29 July 2022.

Thesis

Condé, Alice. 2015. Incorporeal Punishment : Writing Masochism and the Cruel Woman in English Decadence, 1860-1900. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London

Further profile content

Professional projects

Alice is a member of the Decadence Research Centre at Goldsmiths, Deputy Editor of Volupté: Interdisciplinary Journal of Decadence Studies, and Secretary of the British Association of Decadence Studies (BADS). She is organiser (with Jane Desmarais and Jessica Gossling) of an annual series of international conferences and events on decadence, including Aesthetic Time, Decadent Archives in July 2019 and Decadence, Magic(k), and the Occult in July 2018. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.

Goldsmiths Research Centres/Groups