Dr Sam McAuliffe

Staff details

Position Senior Lecturer
Department Visual Cultures
Email s.mcauliffe (@gold.ac.uk)
Dr Sam McAuliffe

Sam McAuliffe’s research is based in modern European philosophy and critical theory, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary art and aesthetics, addressing questions such as the politics of the image, the experiments in language and form characteristic of twentieth-century literature, the theory and practice of utopia, and the fate of nature in the post-Enlightenment period. He also has a particular interest in the models of experience produced as a function of administered society.

Academic Qualifications

  • 2012, PhD, Visual Cultures Department, Goldsmiths
  • 2004, MA, Philosophy and Literature, University of Warwick
  • 2003, BA Hons. English Literature (School of English and American Studies), University of Sussex

Teaching

Currently teaches the following modules: ‘Space and Time’ (BA Year 1), ‘Philosophies of Nature’ (BA Year 3) and ‘Utopias’ (BA Year 3); has previously taught several other courses including ‘Introduction to Art History’ (BA Year 1) and ‘Philosophy and…’ (BA Year 3), as well as modules on the MA in Contemporary Art Theory: ‘Objects and Affects,’ and ‘Judgment and Creation’.

Research Interests

Modern European Philosophy and Critique (Nietzsche, Adorno, Benjamin, Blanchot, Deleuze, Derrida, Canguilhem, Foucault), Aesthetics, Modern and Contemporary Art, Twentieth-Century Literatures and Literary Theory, Political Cinema, Utopia and the Imaginary, Critical Ecology, Modern History of Sensible/Inner Experience

Publications and research outputs

Book Section

McAuliffe, Sam. 2023. Part and Whole: On Some Uses of Landscape in the Films of Huillet and Straub. In: Martin Brady and Helen Hughes, eds. The Cinema of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Cambridge: Legenda, pp. 45-59. ISBN 9781839540585

McAuliffe, Sam. 2022. Utopian Realism. In: Peter Marks; Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor and Fátima Vieira, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 219-230. ISBN 9783030886547

McAuliffe, Sam. 2022. The Changeability of the World: Utopia and Critique. In: Kathrin Thiele; Birgit M. Kaiser and Timothy O’Leary, eds. The Ends of Critique: Methods, Institutions, Politics. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 57-75. ISBN 9781786616470

McAuliffe, Sam. 2019. A Professional Conscience: On an Episode of Self-Accusation in Raymond Queneau's The Last Days. In: Garry L. Hagberg, ed. Narrative and Self-Understanding. London: Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 141-158. ISBN 978-3-030-28288-2

McAuliffe, Sam. 2017. Inner Voice. In: Mercedes Bunz; Birgit Mara Kaiser and Kathrin Thiele, eds. Symptoms of the Planetary Condition: A Critical Vocabulary. Lüneburg: Meson Press, pp. 73-77. ISBN 978-3-95796-085-6

Article

McAuliffe, Sam. 2019. Precarious Ascent: Trace and Terrain in René Daumal's Mount Analogue. Modern Language Notes, 134(4), pp. 783-805. ISSN 0026-7910

McAuliffe, Sam. 2019. Black Dust: Raymond Queneau and The Encyclopedia of the Inexact Sciences. Paragraph, 42(2), pp. 154-169. ISSN 0264-8334

Conference or Workshop Item

McAuliffe, Sam. 2023. 'The Frame of World-as-Resource'. In: Terra Critica x Rural Imaginations. Veenhuizen, Netherlands 13-17 June 2023.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2022. 'Aesthetic Education: Visual Cultures Public Programme Autumn Term 2022'. In: Aesthetic Education. Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom 13 October - 15 December 2022.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2022. 'Rising, Falling'. In: Critical Transformations: Terra Critica 2.0. Utrecht University, Netherlands 8 - 10 June 2022.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2019. 'Autosociobiography: Annie Ernaux and the Collective Sensorium'. In: Terra Critica VII: Critique and Society. Whose Society?. Kings College London, United Kingdom 4-6 July 2019.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2019. 'Painting, Writing and the Time of an Encounter (Félix Fénéon, by way of André du Bouchet)'. In: Modernist Art Writing/Writing Modernist Art. University of Nottingham, United Kingdom 24-25 June 2019.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2018. 'Marguerite Duras and the Master Image'. In: Film-Philosophy 2018. University of Gothenberg, Sweden.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2018. 'The Radio Question'. In: London Conference in Critical Thought. Westminster 30 June - 1 July, 2017.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2016. 'On This Side of Life: Monstrosity and Mechanicity in Canguilhem and Derrida'. In: Derrida Today. Goldsmiths, United Kingdom.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2015. 'Utopia and Critique'. In: Critical Transactions: Engaging the Humanities East and West. School of Humanities, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2015. 'A Margin of Error: Bildersprache and its Critique in Otto Neurath, Adorno, K.P. Brehmer'. In: London Conference in Critical Thought. UCL, United Kingdom.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2014. 'A Trace of What Has Not Occurred'. In: Archives for the Future. Westminster University, United Kingdom.

McAuliffe, Sam. 2014. 'Whoever Sees God Dies'. In: Knowledge Exchange. Goldsmiths, United Kingdom.