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Dr Lynn Turner

Staff details

Dr Lynn Turner

Position

Reader in Visual Cultures/co-Head of Department

Department

Visual Cultures

Email

l.j.turner (@gold.ac.uk)

Lynn explores how animal and sexual differences matter in visual and aural culture

Lynn Turner’s research explores how animal and sexual differences matter in visual and aural culture through drawing on continental philosophy, literature and psychoanalysis.

She is the co-Head of Department of Visual Cultures 2022-2025.

Academic qualifications

  • PhD Cultural Studies (University of Leeds) 2002
  • MA Cultural Studies (University of Leeds 1995
  • BA (Hons.) Fine Art (Newcastle Polytechnic - now the University of Northumbria) 1990

Teaching and supervision

As co-HoD, Lynn's teaching is restricted to teaching on the core course for the MA in Contemporary Art Theory. She has taught modules on sexual poetics and the animal question in visual culture as well as contributing to core delivery on the history of art and visual culture.

Being part of the department’s research clusters on ‘Environmental Humanities and Ecologies,’ ‘Sexes, Genders, Genres,’ and ‘Philosophy, Critical and Visual Theory,’ Dr Lynn Turner currently supervises doctoral theses on: lubrication, surrogacy, breath, hysteria and yoga. She welcomes proposals for research on deconstruction; animal studies; plant studies; feminist philosophy; contemporary visual culture; aural culture particularly the voice/speech relation, and science fiction.

She has examined PhD theses at Goldsmiths, Westminster, the Courtauld, UCL, Cardiff, Kingston and Linköping (Sweden).

Research interests

She is the author of Poetics of Deconstruction: on the threshold of differences (Bloomsbury, 2020), co-editor, with Undine Sellbach and Ron Broglio, of The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), editor of The Animal Question in Deconstruction (EUP, 2013), co-author, with Astrid Schmetterling, of Visual Cultures As... Recollection (Sternberg, 2013) and co-editor, with Lindsay Kelley, of a special issue of parallax called 'bon appetit,' (2013).

Her new edited collection Erotics of Deconstruction: autoaffection after Derrida will be published later this year (2024). Here she writes on the future of blood in the context of rape as a military weapon in the work of Jenny Holzer. She is developing a further monograph with the working title of Consanguineous: essays on art, literature and the living and would love to have the research time for another book between botany, art history, theology and philosophy on fig leaves.

She is one of the assistant editors of Derrida Today and sits on the board of several book series as well as Goldsmiths Press.

Featured publications

Grants and awards

2007: AHRC Research Leave Scheme

2010: BA Overseas Travel Grant

Publications and research outputs

Book

Turner, Lynn. 2020. Poetics of Deconstruction: On the Threshold of Differences. London: Bloomsbury Academic. ISBN 9781350128590

Schmetterling, Astrid and Turner, Lynn. 2013. Visual Cultures As Recollection. Berlin: Sternberg Press. ISBN 978-3-943365-40-5

Edited Book

Turner, Lynn, ed. 2024. Erotics of Deconstruction: Auto-Affection After Derrida. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781399539739

Turner, Lynn; Sellbach, Undine and Broglio, Ron, eds. 2018. The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781474418416

Turner, Lynn, ed. 2013. The Animal Question in Deconstruction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748683123

Edited Journal

Turner, Lynn and Kelley, Lindsay, eds. 2013. Bon Appetit, Parallax, 19(1). 1353-4645

Turner, Lynn; Swiboda, Marcel and Simonds, Cylena, eds. 2002. Random Figures, Parallax, 8(1). 1353-4645

Turner, Lynn; Swiboda, Marcel and Simonds, Cylena, eds. 2001. ‘Immanent Trajectories’, Parallax, 7(4). 1353-4645

Book Section

Turner, Lynn. 2025. 'The becoming literary of the clitoral: the inclination of sexual différance after Artemisia Gentileschi'. In: , ed. Repenser la différance sexuelle. Paris: Editions Hermann.

Turner, Lynn. 2024. Sanguine Resistance: dreaming of a future for blood. In: Lynn Turner, ed. Erotics of Deconstruction: Auto-Affection After Derrida. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781399539739

Turner, Lynn. 2024. Lapping it up: an introduction for these erotics of deconstruction. In: Lynn Turner, ed. Erotics of Deconstruction: Auto-Affection After Derrida. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9781399539739

Article

Turner, Lynn. 2023. Ray of Light. Textual Practice, ISSN 0950-236X

Turner, Lynn. 2023. Secrets and Lies: Embassytown, Ethics and Eating in the Darkness. Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 52(2), pp. 47-63. ISSN 0306-4964

Turner, Lynn. 2021. How like a (Fig) Leaf: supplanting shame, growing differences. Tahiti: The Society for Art History in Finland, 10(4), pp. 18-27.

Conference or Workshop Item

Turner, Lynn. 2023. 'The becoming literary of the clitoral: sexual differance after Artemisia Gentileschi'. In: Rethinking Sexual Differance. Université Bordeaux Montaigne, France 22-24 November 2023.

Turner, Lynn. 2023. 'Ray of Light'. In: Nicholas Royle: A Symposium. University of Sussex, United Kingdom 23 June 2023.

Turner, Lynn. 2022. 'Sanguine Resistance: dreaming of a future for blood'. In: 7th Derrida Today Conference. Arizona State University (ASU) Barbara Barrett and Sandra Day O’Connor Washington Center, Washington, D.C., United States 12-15 June 2022.

Audio

Turner, Lynn. 2014. PAPERWEIGHT RADIO: ANIMALS (S2, EP2).

Guerrilla Gardening

While my blog is quite outdated - http://guerillere.blogspot.com/ - there is a lot there documenting South London guerrilla planting, about which I have been interviewed by students from various disciplines. My greening practices today are mostly linked with the St John's Society's greening group and the Friendly St Gardens in Deptford.