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Dr Amber Jacobs

Positions held:
  • Reader in Psychosocial Studies, School of Social Sciences
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  • Overview

    Overview

    Biography

    Amber Jacobs' research background is in literature, feminism, psychoanalysis, Ancient Greek myth and tragedy.

    Her monograph, On Matricide: Myth, Psychoanalysis and the Law of the Mother is an intervention into classical psychoanalysis via structural anthropology and feminist philosophy that posits a new post-patriarchal theory of the symbolic order. She has published articles on psychoanalytic feminism and the mother-daughter relation in cinema, literature and feminist thought.

    Her current work involves re-readings and expansions of psychoanalytic theories to accommodate new forms of subjectivities in the context of social, cultural and technological change. Her recent research is in visual culture, digital technologies, film theories, the relation between new media technologies and unconscious fantasy and theories of feminist and Queer spectatorship that challenge dominant psychoanalytic models of the gaze and sexual difference. She is also interested in the analysis of formal techniques in filmmaking that rework the relation between the image and power, and in making her own films.

  • Research

    Research

    Research interests

    • Psychoanalysis - Post-Freudian tradition ( Freud, Klein, Lacan, Bion, Winnicott, Andre Green, Laplanche).
    • Psychoanalytic feminist theory and feminist philosophy - my research is concerned with theorising beyond the classical Oedipal paradigm. I am especially interested in the work of Luce Irigaray, Judith Butler, Juliet Mitchell, Jessica Benjamin Jean Laplanche (among others) as post Lacanian theorists who are attempting to think through a post-patriarchal symbolic order.
    • Ancient Greek myth and tragedy (feminist interpretations and political uses of) and contemporary recycling of myth in literature, culture and theory.
    • Writing and sexual difference, particularly contemporary literature by women.
    • Theories and constructions of the maternal both in psychoanalytic feminism and contemporary culture.
    • Representations and constructions of misogyny in cinema, literature and visual arts.
    • Visual culture, theories of gender and spectatorship, film theory, feminist cinema and practice as research (audiovisual practices).
  • Supervision and teaching

    Supervision and teaching

    Supervision

    Supervisions within Birkbeck:
    9

    Current doctoral researchers

    • BILL BENNETT
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      The ontology of the imaginary in early Benedictine monastic culture
    • REBECCA GREENSLADE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, onwards
      Title of thesis:
      Resistance, Freedom and Critique: feminist psychotherapy and post-capitalist desire

    Doctoral alumni since 2013-14

    • SASHA BERGSTROM-KATZ
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor, to
      Title of thesis:
      On Intelligence Tests: Psychological Objects and their Subjects
      Awarded:
      2023
    • SASHA BERGSTROM-KATZ
      Nature of supervision:
      Joint Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      On Intelligence Tests: Psychological Objects and their Subjects
      Awarded:
      2023
    • SHARON TUGWELL
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      My Mother, My Self: A Psychosocial Exploration of Breastfeeding Selfies in relation to the Female Imaginary, the Mycelium and the Matrixial
      Awarded:
      2022
    • MATTHEW OAKES
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Ontological Insecurity and Psychic Suffering: A Contrapuntal Reading of R.D. Laing's Theory [1960-1970] in the Neoliberal Landscape
      Awarded:
      2021
    • VALERIE SANDERS
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor,
      Title of thesis:
      Losing and finding oneself in a book: The mysterious immersive experience of reading literary fiction
      Awarded:
      2021
    • MIKE STACK
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      Queer Who: Doctor Who fandom, gay male subculture, and transitional space
      Awarded:
      2020
    • JOSHUA CUNLIFFE
      Nature of supervision:
      Principal Supervisor
      Title of thesis:
      Dream Construction, Deconstruction: What a re-reading of Freud on dreams can tell us about the structure of the unconscious and its relationship to deconstruction
      Awarded:
      2019

    Teaching

    Teaching modules

    • Creative Archives (fieldwork) (SSPA075S5)
    • Psychoanalysis and Culture (SSPA078S7)
    • Independent Research Module (SSPA085D7)
    • Psychoanalysis and Social Theory (SSPA092S5)
    • Concepts in Psychoanalysis (SSPA103S7)
    • Psychoanalysis (SSPA158S5)
  • Publications

    Publications

    Article

    Book

    Book Section

    Video