Birkbeck tel no: 0207 631 6152
My research is focussed primarily on the history of nineteenth-century British visual culture. I have published on a number of different aspects of this subject including: representations of Victorian femininity; the visual culture of the metropolis; and obscenity and the Victorian regulation of visual culture. Beyond the nineteenth century, my work on the history and significance of the female nude examined debates from antiquity to recent feminist interventions and I have also published on contemporary women artists. I have an ongoing interest in the interface between art history and other disciplines and have collaborated with colleagues on books relating to art and law; art and cultural history; and art and cultural geography. The history of art is a profoundly interdisciplinary field of research and some of the most exciting work comes from pushing at the boundaries of conventional disciplines.
Current research interests
I am currently working on aspects of late Victorian and Edwardian visual culture and have just started research for a book titled 'The Art of Boxing: A Book in Twelve Rounds' that examines the philosophical and aesthetic aspects of the sport.
Areas of supervision
19th-century British visual culture; gender and visual representation; the city and visual culture.
Selected publications
Books
The Haunted Gallery: Painting, Photography and Film c. 1900 (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).
Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth Century London (London and New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000).
Between Two Cultures: The Work of Chila Kumari Burman (London: Arts Council and Kala Press, 1995).
The Female Nude: Art, Obscenity and Sexuality (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).
Myths of Sexuality: Representations of Women in Victorian Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988).
Edited books and journals
Law and the Image: The Authority of Art and the Aesthetics of Law, contributor, and co-editor with C. Douzinas (Chicago and London: Chicago University Press, 1999).
Sexual Geographies, contributor, and co-editor with F. Mort, (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1999).
The Actuality of Walter Benjamin, co-editor with L. Marcus (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998).
Journal articles
'Strip! Moving Bodies in the 1890s', Living Pictures, no. 6 (forthcoming, 2005)
'Velocities of the Image c. 1900', Art History, 27, no. 5 (December 2004), 746-770.
'Animating the Everyday: London on Camera c.1900', Journal of British Studies, 43, no. 1 (January 2004), 65-90.
'Visual Cultures of the Courtroom: Reflections on History, Law and the Image', Visual Culture in Britain, 3, no. 2 (2002), 119-141.
'Paintings, Films and Fast Cars: A Case Study of Hubert von Herkomer', Art History, 25, no. 2 (April 2002), 240-255.
Media reviews and broadcasting
I am a regular contributor to Front Row (BBC R4), Saturday Review (BBC R4), Woman's Hour (BBC R4) and Nightwaves (BBC R3). Also writer and presenter of The Secret Museum (BBC R4), October 2002.
Selected conference papers and presentations
Keynote lecture at 6th British Association of Victorian Studies Conference, University of Gloucestershire (forthcoming September 2005).
Keynote lecture at Culture and Politics conference, Berkeley, University of California, San Francisco, USA (January 2005).
'Living Pictures on Dead Pages', at Research Society for Victorian Periodicals Annual Conference, University of Ghent, Belgium (July 2004).
'Animating Icons: London's Modernity on Film', at Urban Icons conference, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA (February 2004).
'The Body and the Nineteenth-Century Gaze', at 72nd Anglo-American Conference of Historians, Institute of Historical Research, London (July 2003).
'Animating the Everyday: Representing London's Modernity', keynote lecture at Association of Art Historians Annual Conference, London (April 2003).
'The Art of the Courtroom Sketch', at Cultures of the Law, Institute of English Studies, University of London (October 2002).
'Representing the Everyday, London c. 1900', at Transforming London, ESRC Seminar Series, London (July 2002).
Hubert von Herkomer: Art and Early Cinema', at the College Art Association Annual Conference, Philadelphia, USA (February 2002).
Curatorial and research consultancies
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