Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens
Associate Professor
School of Communication and Arts
+61 7 336 52135
Researcher biography
Elizabeth Stephens is an Associate Professor of Cultural Studies in the School of Communication and Arts. She was previously an Australian Research Council Future Fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (UQ, 2017-2021), Associate Dean Research at Southern Cross University (2014-2017), and an ARC Australian Research Fellow in the Centre for the History of European Discourses (UQ, 2010-2014). Her background is in gender and sexuality studies, and her current research focuses on three interconnected themes:
- popular histories and representations of science, medicine and technology
- collaborations between the arts and sciences
- the critical medical humanities
Elizabeth is author of over 100 publications, including three monographs: A Critical Genealogy of Normality (University of Chicago Press, 2017), co-authored with Peter Cryle; Anatomy as Spectacle: Public Exhibitions of the Body from 1700 to the Present (Liverpool University Press, 2011), and Queer Writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet's Fiction (Palgrave 2009). She has published over 75 research articles and chapters, as well as non-traditional outputs including catalogue essays and curated exhibitions.
She welcomes inquiries from potential PhD students, and can offer supervision in the following areas:
- cultural studies of science, medicine and/or technology
- art/science collaboration
- medical humanities
- digital cultures
- gender and sexuality studies
Publications
Books
Stephens, Elizabeth and Cryle, Peter (2017). Normality: a critical genealogy. Chicago, IL, United States: University of Chicago Press. doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226484198.001.0001
Stephens, Elizabeth (2011). Anatomy as spectacle: Public exhibitions of the body from 1700 to the present. Liverpool, United Kingdom: Liverpool University Press.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). Queer writing: Homoeroticism in jean genet's fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230271739
Stephens, Elizabeth A. (2009). Queer writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet's fiction. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Book Chapters
Stephens, Elizabeth (2021). Re-Imagining the “birthing machine:” art and anatomy in obstetric and anatomical models made by women. Anatomy of the medical image: knowledge production and transfiguration from the Renaissance to today. (pp. 74-94) edited by Axel Fliethmann and Christiane Weller. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. doi: 10.1163/9789004445017_005
Stephens, Elizabeth (2019). Affect and automation: a critical geneology of the emotions. Emotions in late modernity. (pp. 176-189) edited by Roger Patulny, Alberto Bellocchi, Rebecca E. Olson, Sukhmani Khorana, Jordan McKenzie and Michelle Peterie. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781351133319-16
Stephens, Elizabeth (2019). Automation and affect: a critical genealogy of the emotions. Emotions in late modernity. (pp. 176-189) edited by Roger Patulny, Alberto Bellocchi, Rebecca E. Olson, Sukhmani Khorana, Jordan McKenzie and Michelle Peterie. London, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781351133319-13
Stephens, Elizabeth (2018). 'Unhallowed arts': or, the science of making monsters. Unhallowed arts. (pp. 119-127) edited by Laetitia Wilson, Oron Catts and Eugenio Viola. Perth, Australia: UWA Publishing.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2018). Normality. Gender: Time. (pp. na-na) edited by Karin Sellberg. Farmington Hills, United States: Macmillan.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2018). The normal body on display: public exhibitions of the Norma and Normman statues. The Routledge companion to media, sex and sexuality. (pp. 7-18) edited by Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood and Brian McNair. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge. doi: 10.4324/9781315168302-2
Stephens, Elizabeth and Heffernan, Tara (2016). We have always been robots: a brief history of robots and art. Robots and art: an unlikely symbiosis. (pp. 29-45) edited by Damith Herath, Christian Kroos and Stelarc. Singapore: Springer. doi: 10.1007/978-981-10-0321-9_3
Stephens, Elizabeth (2015). Making monsters: bio-engineering and visual arts practice. Corporeality and culture: bodies in movement. (pp. 53-66) edited by Karin Sellberg and Lena Wånggren. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Réception Australienne. Dictionnaire Jean Genet. (pp. 551-551) edited by Marie-Claude Hubert. Paris, France: Honore Champion.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Homosexualité. Dictionnaire Jean Genet. (pp. 322-323) edited by Marie-Claude Hubert. Paris, France: Honore Champion.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Sex as a normalising technology: early-twentieth-century public sex education campaigns. Asexuality and sexual normativity: an anthology. (pp. 82-94) edited by Mark Carrigan, Kristina Gupta and Todd G. Morrison. Abingdon, Oxon, United Kingdom: Routledge.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). Geeks and Gaffs: the queer legacy of the 1950s American Freak Show. Queer 1950s : rethinking sexuality in the postwar years. (pp. 183-195) edited by Heike Bauer and Matthew Cook. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9781137264718_12
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). The queer space of the freak show. Queer and subjugated knowledges: generating subversive imaginaries. (pp. 48-55) edited by Kerry H. Robinson and Cristyn Davies. Oak Park, IL, United States: Bentham Science Publishers.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). Geeks and gaffs. Queer 1950s: rethinking sexuality in the postwar years. (pp. 183-195) edited by Heike Bauer and Matt Cook. London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2011). Inventing the healthy body: the use of popular medical discourses in public anatomical exhibitions. The body divided: human beings and human ‘material’ in modern medical history. (pp. 223-238) edited by Sarah Ferber and Sally Wilde. Farnham, Surrey, U.K.: Ashgate.
Stephens, Elizabeth and Parkhill, Chad (2011). Heterosexuality: An unfettered capacity for degeneracy. A Cultural History of Sexuality in the Age of Empire. (pp. 27-42) edited by Ivan Crozier and Chiara Beccalossi. Oxford, England: Berg Publishers.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2011). Touching bodies: Tact/ility in nineteenth-century medical photographs and models. Bodies, sex and desire from the renaissance to the present. (pp. 87-101) edited by Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan. Basingstoke, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230354128_5
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). Seminal Economies: the Homoerotics of Phallic Masculinity. Seminal Economies: the Homoerotics of Phallic Masculinity. (pp. 96-+) BASINGSTOKE: PALGRAVE. doi: 10.1057/9780230271739_4
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). Towards an Ecriture Homosexuelle. Towards an Ecriture Homosexuelle. (pp. 138-+) BASINGSTOKE: PALGRAVE. doi: 10.1057/9780230271739_5
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). Un Chant d'amour: Homoeroticism and the Closet of Language. Un Chant d'amour: Homoeroticism and the Closet of Language. (pp. 62-+) BASINGSTOKE: PALGRAVE. doi: 10.1057/9780230271739_3
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). What Remains of the Author: The Subject in/of Writing. What Remains of the Author: The Subject in/of Writing. (pp. 24-+) BASINGSTOKE: PALGRAVE. doi: 10.1057/9780230271739_2
Stephens, Elizabeth A. (2009). Queer monsters: Technologies of self-transformation in Bulwer's Anthropometamorphosis and Braidotti's Metamorphoses. Somatechnics: Queering the technologisation of bodies. (pp. 171-186) edited by Nikki Sullivan and Samantha Murray. Farnham, Surrey, UK: Ashgate. doi: 10.4324/9781315609867-13
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). Introduction. Queer Writing. (pp. 1-23) London, United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan . doi: 10.1057/9780230271739_1
Stephens, E. A. (2008). Redefining Sexual Excess as a Medical Disorder: Fin-de-Siecle Representations of Hysteria and Spermatorrhoea. Pleasure and Pain in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture. (pp. 201-212) edited by Evans, D. and Griffiths, K.. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Stephens, E. A. (2008). Anatomies of Desire: Photographic Exhibitions of Female Bodies in Fin-de-Siecle Anatomical Museums. Sexuality at the Fin de Siècle: The Makings of a "Central Problem". (pp. 25-41) edited by P. M. Cryle and C. E. Forth. Newark, Delaware, USA: University of Delaware Press.
Stephens, E. A. (2008). Flesh machines: self-making and the postmodern body. Cultural Theory in Everyday Practice. (pp. 114-121) edited by Anderson, N. and Schlunke, K.. Melbourne: Oxford Journals, Oxford University Press.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2007). Queer writing: homoeroticism in Jean Genet's fiction. Queer sexualities in French and Francophone literature and film. (pp. 129-144) edited by James Day. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Editions Rodopi. doi: 10.1163/9789401204903_011
Stephens, E. A. (2006). Corporeographies: The dancing body in 'adame Miroir and Un chant d'amour. Genet: Politics and Performance. (pp. 159-168) edited by C. Finburgh, C. Lavery and M. Shevtsova. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230595439
Stephens, E. A. (2005). Un mur qui ne serait jamais abattu: Le bagne du desir dans Un chant d'amour. Aimez-vous le queer?. (pp. 131-139) edited by Lawrence R Schehr. New York, U.S.A.: Rodopi. doi: 10.1163/9789004333024_010
Stephens, E. A. (2005). Je suis un mensonge qui dit toujours la verite: Genet's Queer Subjectivities. Soi-disant: Life-Writing in French. (pp. 41-52) edited by de Nooy, Juliana, Hardwick, Joe and Hanna, Barbara E.. Newark, USA: University of Delaware Press.
Stephens, Elizabeth (1999). Watchdogs of desire: Homophobia in the novels of Jean Genet. Playing the man: New approaches to masculinity. (pp. 63-74) edited by Katherine Biber, Tom Sear and Dave Trudinger. Annandale, Australia: Pluto Press.
Journal Articles
Stephens, Elizabeth (2023). Celebrating 30 Years of the CSAA: Reflections of a Departing President. CSAA: News and Notes, 1-2.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2022). Review of IVF and Assisted Reproduction: a Global History, by Sarah Ferber, Nicola J. Marks and Vera Mackie. Historical Records of Australian Science.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2022). The mechanical Turk: a short history of ‘artificial artificial intelligence’. Cultural Studies, 37 (1), 1-23. doi: 10.1080/09502386.2022.2042580
Stephens, Elizabeth (2021). Postnormal. Die Krise und das Ende des Alltäglichen. Wespennest, 180, 61-65.
Cryle, Peter and Stephens, Elizabeth (2021). Normality: A collection of essays. History of the Human Sciences, 34 (2), 3-8. doi: 10.1177/0952695120984074
Stephens, Elizabeth (2021). After the normal. History of the Human Sciences, 34 (2), 138-147. doi: 10.1177/0952695120984075
Stephens, Elizabeth (2020). Speculative biology: precarious life in art and science resurrection projects. Continuum, 34 (6), 870-886. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842128
Sellberg, Karin, Stephens, Elizabeth, Efstathiadou, Anna, Pillai, Suja, Yamada, Kazuki and Wise, Beck (2020). Medical humanities research showcase: the emergence of a new trans-disciplinary field in a time of precarity. Continuum, 34 (6), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842121
Stephens, Elizabeth, Sellberg, Karin and Donaghy, Paige (2020). Precarious futures: cultural studies in pandemic times. Continuum, 34 (6), 807-815. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842120
Stephens, Elizabeth (2020). Post-normal: crisis and the end of the ordinary. Media International Australia, 177 (1), 92-102. doi: 10.1177/1329878x20958151
Stephens, Elizabeth (2019). #notnormal. Cultural Studies Review, 25 (2), 278-280. doi: 10.5130/csr.v25i2.6924
Stephens, Elizabeth and Sellberg, Karin (2019). The somatechnics of breath: trans* life at this moment in history: an interview with Susan Stryker. Australian Feminist Studies, 34 (99), 107-119. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605490
Cryle, Peter, Donaghy, Paige, Stephens, Elizabeth and Clement, Jennifer (2019). Disciplinary perspectives on ‘Thinking with’ sex. Australian Feminist Studies, 34 (99), 120-127. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605493
Stephens, Elizabeth and Sellberg, Karin (2019). The somatechnics of life and death: recent trends in gender studies. Australian Feminist Studies, 34 (99), 1-9. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605492
Stephens, Elizabeth (2018). Feminist philosophies of life: new perspectives and directions. Australian Feminist Studies, 33 (97), 417-422. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2018.1556087
Stephens, Elizabeth and Cryle, Peter (2017). Eugenics and the normal body: the role of visual images and intelligence testing in framing the treatment of people with disabilities in the early twentieth century. Continuum, 31 (3), 1-12. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2016.1275126
Aghtan, Kamillea, Ford, Akkadia, Kerruish, Erika, Olive, Rebecca, Sellberg, Karin and Stephens, Elizabeth (2016). Technicity, temporality, embodiment: guest editors’ introduction. Australian Feminist Studies, Virtual Special Issue
Stephens, Elizabeth (2016). Review of Gut Feminism, by Elizabeth Wilson. Australian Humanities Review (59), 271-275.
Stephens, Elizabeth, Gustavson, Malena and Simon, Jane (2016). Geocorpographies of Commemoration, Repression and Resistance. Somatechnics, 6 (1), V-V. doi: 10.3366/soma.2016.0169
Stephens, Elizabeth (2016). Review of Gut Feminism by Elizabeth Wilson Duke University Press, 240pp, 2015 ISBN 9780822359708. Australian Humanities Review, 59, 271-275.
Gustavson, Malena and Stephens, Elizabeth (2015). Editorial. Somatechnics, 5 (2), V-V. doi: 10.3366/soma.2015.0155
Stephens, Elizabeth (2015). "Dead eyes open": the role of experiments in galvanic reanimation in nineteenth-century popular culture. Leonardo and Leonardo Music Journal, 48 (3), 276-278. doi: 10.1162/LEON_a_01031
Stephens, Elizabeth (2015). Bad feelings: an affective genealogy of feminism. Australian Feminist Studies, 30 (85), 273-282. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2015.1113907
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Review of The Anatomy Murders: Being the True and Spectacular History of Edinburgh's Notorious Burke and Hare and the Man of Science Who Abetted Them in the Commission of Their Most Heinous Crimes. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 69 (4), 672-673. doi: 10.1093/jhmas/jrt050
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Anatomical dissection in enlightenment England and beyond: autopsy, pathology, and display. Isis, 105 (2), 419-420. doi: 10.1086/677987
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Feminism and new materialism: the matter of fluidity. Inter/alia: A Journal of Queer Studies, 9, 186-202.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2014). Normal, Normalisation, Normativity. Transgender Studies Quarterly, 1 (1-2), 203-206.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). Anatomical imag(inari)es: the cultural impact of medical imaging technologies. Somatechnics, 2 (2), 159-170. doi: 10.3366/soma.2012.0055
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). Sensation machine: film, phenomenology and the training of the senses. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 26 (4), 529-539. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2012.698033
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). The bad homosexual: Genet's perverse homo-politics. Sexualities, 15 (1), 28-41. doi: 10.1177/1363460711432095
Pratt, Murray, Stephens, Elizabeth, Rolls, Alistair, Hardwick, Joe and Hainge, Greg (2011). Larry Schehr. Australian Journal of French Studies, 48 (3), 348-352. doi: 10.3828/ajfs.48.3.348
Stephens, Elizabeth (2011). Chaotic Cabaret: The rise of Neo-Burlesque and Neo-Vaudeville. Australian Literary Review
Stephens, Elizabeth (2011). Health and Medicine on Display: International Expositions in the United States, 1876-1904. Social History of Medicine, 24 (1), 207-208. doi: 10.1093/shm/hkr037
Stephens, Elizabeth (2010). The pharmacopornographic subject: Beatriz Preciado’s Testo Junkie: Sexe, Drogue et Biopolitique. Polari Journal (2)
Stephens, Elizabeth (2010). Sex as a normalising technology: Early twentieth-century public sex education campaigns. Psychology and Sexuality, 1 (3), 262-274. doi: 10.1080/19419899.2010.494903
Stephens, Elizabeth (2010). Venus in the archive: Anatomical waxworks of the pregnant body. Australian Feminist Studies, 25 (64), 133-145. doi: 10.1080/08164641003762453
Stephens, Elizabeth (2010). Queer memoir: Public confession and/as sexual practice in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s A Dialogue on Love. Australian Humanities Review (48), 31-40.
Stephens, Elizabeth A. (2009). Coining spermatorrhoea: Medicine and male body fluids, 1836-1866. Sexualities, 12 (4), 467-485. doi: 10.1177/1363460709105713
Stephens, E. A. (2008). Pathologizing Leaky Male Bodies: Spermatorrhea in Nineteenth-Century British Medicine and Popular Anatomical Museums. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 17 (3), 421-438. doi: 10.1353/sex.0.0023
Stephens, Elizabeth A. (2007). Inventing the bodily interior: Écorché figures in early modern anatomy and von Hagens' Body Worlds. Social Semiotics, 17 (3), 313-326. doi: 10.1080/10350330701448611
Stephens, E. and Lorentzen, J. (2007). Male bodies: An introduction. Men and Masculinities, 10 (1), 5-8. doi: 10.1177/1097184X07299325
Stephens, Elizabeth (2007). The spectacularized penis - Contemporary representations of the phallic male body. Men and Masculinities, 10 (1), 85-98. doi: 10.1177/1097184X07299332
Stephens, Elizabeth (2006). Cultural fixions of the freak body: Coney Island and the postmodern sideshow. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, 20 (4), 485-498. doi: 10.1080/10304310600988286
Stephens, E. A. (2006). Bodies in translation: French feminist influences on anglophone feminist theory: Review article. Australian Feminist Studies, 21 (49), 107-111. doi: 10.1080/08164640500470727
Stephens, Elizabeth (2005). Twenty First Century freak show: Recent transformations in the exhibition of non-normative bodies. Disability Studies Quarterly, 25 (3 (Summer)), 1-8. doi: 10.18061/dsq.v25i3.580
Stephens, E. (2004). Disseminating phallic masculinity: Seminal fluidity in Genet's fiction. Paragraph, 27 (2), 85-97. doi: 10.3366/para.2004.27.2.85
Stephens, E. (2003). Corporeal generosity: On giving with Nietzsche, Merleau-Ponty, and Levinas (Book review). Australian Feminist Studies, 18 (41), 218-219. doi: 10.1080/08164640301724
Stephens, E. A. (2003). Hadow/Stuart Short Story Award: Judge's report. Martinata, 3, 8-8.
Stephens, Elizabeth (1999). Masculinity as Masquerade: ‘Gay’ Macho in the Novels of Jean Genet. Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies, 4 (2), 52-63.
Stephens, Elizabeth (1998). Satyrical men: Genet’s theatre of masculinity. Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, 5 (1), 30-33.
Stephens, Elizabeth (1997). The technologies of recuperation: The failures of Dada poetry. Southerly, 57 (1), 79-90.
Conference Papers
Catts, Oron, Collins, Sarah, Zurr, Ionat and Stephens, Elizabeth (2021). Neutralizing nature: Automation, agricultural technologies, and the morality of improvement. 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS), Waterloo, ON, Canada, 28-31 October 2021. Piscataway, NJ, United States: IEEE. doi: 10.1109/istas52410.2021.9629187
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). How our brains became who we are: popular neuroscience and the biometrics of affect. Cultural Studies Association of Australasia Annual Conference (CSAA 2012), Sydney, Australia, 4-6 December 2012.
Stephens, Elizabeth (2003). A language of one's own: The possibilities of writing in French feminism and deconstruction.. 2001 AWSA Biennial Conference, Sydney, 31 January - 2 February, 2001. Sydney: Macquarie University.
Stephens, Elizabeth (1999). Phallic Worship in the Novels of Jean Genet. Literature and Psychoanalysis Conference, Sydney , Australia, 1998.
Newspaper Articles
Stephens, Elizabeth, Dickson, Melissa and Sellberg, Karin (2022, 08 15). Australasian Health and Medical Humanities: Work-in-Progress Series The polyphony: conversations across the medical humanities