Overview
Background
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
Availability
- Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens is:
- Available for supervision
- Media expert
Fields of research
Research interests
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Collaboration between the arts and sciences
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History of science, technology and medicine
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Gender and sexuality studies
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Science and technology studies
Works
Search Professor Elizabeth Stephens’s works on UQ eSpace
2012
Book Chapter
Geeks and Gaffs: the queer legacy of the 1950s American Freak Show
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
2012
Book Chapter
Geeks and gaffs
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.
2012
Journal Article
The bad homosexual: Genet's perverse homo-politics
Stephens, Elizabeth (2012). The bad homosexual: Genet's perverse homo-politics. Sexualities, 15 (1), 28-41. doi: 10.1177/1363460711432095
2012
Conference Publication
How our brains became who we are: popular neuroscience and the biometrics of affect
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.
2012
Book Chapter
The queer space of the freak show
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.
2012
Journal Article
Sensation machine: film, phenomenology and the training of the senses
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
2011
Journal Article
Larry Schehr
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
2011
Journal Article
Chaotic Cabaret: The rise of Neo-Burlesque and Neo-Vaudeville
Stephens, Elizabeth (2011). Chaotic Cabaret: The rise of Neo-Burlesque and Neo-Vaudeville. Australian Literary Review
2011
Journal Article
Health and Medicine on Display: International Expositions in the United States, 1876-1904
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
2011
Book Chapter
Inventing the healthy body: the use of popular medical discourses in public anatomical exhibitions
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.
2011
Book Chapter
Heterosexuality: An unfettered capacity for degeneracy
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.
2011
Book Chapter
Touching bodies: Tact/ility in nineteenth-century medical photographs and models
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
2010
Journal Article
The pharmacopornographic subject: Beatriz Preciado’s Testo Junkie: Sexe, Drogue et Biopolitique
Stephens, Elizabeth (2010). The pharmacopornographic subject: Beatriz Preciado’s Testo Junkie: Sexe, Drogue et Biopolitique. Polari Journal (2)
2010
Journal Article
Sex as a normalising technology: Early twentieth-century public sex education campaigns
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
2010
Journal Article
Venus in the archive: Anatomical waxworks of the pregnant body
Stephens, Elizabeth (2010). Venus in the archive: Anatomical waxworks of the pregnant body. Australian Feminist Studies, 25 (64), 133-145. doi: 10.1080/08164641003762453
2010
Journal Article
Queer memoir: Public confession and/as sexual practice in Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s A Dialogue on Love
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.
2009
Journal Article
Coining spermatorrhoea: Medicine and male body fluids, 1836-1866
Stephens, Elizabeth A. (2009). Coining spermatorrhoea: Medicine and male body fluids, 1836-1866. Sexualities, 12 (4), 467-485. doi: 10.1177/1363460709105713
2009
Book
Queer writing: Homoeroticism in jean genet's fiction
Stephens, Elizabeth (2009). Queer writing: Homoeroticism in jean genet's fiction. London: Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1057/9780230271739
2009
Book Chapter
What Remains of the Author: The Subject in/of Writing
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
2009
Book
Queer writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet's fiction
Stephens, Elizabeth A. (2009). Queer writing: Homoeroticism in Jean Genet's fiction. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Funding
Current funding
Past funding
Supervision
Availability
- Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens is:
- Available for supervision
Before you email them, read our advice on how to contact a supervisor.
Supervision history
Current supervision
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Doctor Philosophy
Detrans geographies: an exploration or borders and belonging
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Karin Sellberg
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Doctor Philosophy
There Is No Outside: Art-Science Collaborations with Nonhumans
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Amelia Barikin
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Master Philosophy
With Colleagues Like These: AI in the Workplace, On and Off Screen
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Professor Jason Jacobs
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Master Philosophy
"The Problem of Living"; and "Sense and Insensibility: Pain, Trauma and the Limits of First-Person Narrative in Creative Non-Fiction"
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Tom Doig
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Doctor Philosophy
Representations of Sexual Trauma in American Women's Life Writing
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Karin Sellberg
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Doctor Philosophy
Sexual Science, Medicine, and Healthy Ageing in Historical Perspective (c. 1880-1970)
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Emeritus Professor Peter Cryle
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Doctor Philosophy
Affective digital labour and FemTech
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Associate Professor Nicholas Carah
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Doctor Philosophy
Vibes, Flows, Feelings: Investigating the algorithmic techniques of affective capitalism
Associate Advisor
Other advisors: Associate Professor Nicholas Carah
Completed supervision
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2023
Doctor Philosophy
Uncertain Knowledge: False Conception and Molas in European Medicine, 1500-1800
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Karin Sellberg, Professor Lisa Featherstone
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2015
Doctor Philosophy
Casanova's Celebrity: a Case Study of Well-knownness in 18th-century Europe
Principal Advisor
Other advisors: Dr Joe Hardwick, Emeritus Professor Peter Cryle
Media
Enquiries
Contact Associate Professor Elizabeth Stephens directly for media enquiries about:
- Gender and digital culture
- Health and medical humanities
- Histories of science medicine and technology
- Popular cultures of science and medicine
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