School of English, University of Leeds | staff pages
Dr
Nicholas Ray
Lecturer in Critical/Cultural Theory
email: n.j.ray@leeds.ac.uk
tel: +44 113 343 4775
fax: +44 113 343 4774
room: 5.2.03
Dr Nicholas Ray BA, Warwick; MA, Sussex; PhD, Warwick
For a list of publications since 2001 please click here
Research Interests
My main areas of interest are psychoanalysis, in particular the thought of Jean Laplanche and the intersections between literature, deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory; trauma theory; conceptualisations of tragedy and the tragic; the question of the animal in psychoanalytic thought; Renaissance literature, especially Shakespearean drama and its place in contemporary critical theory; Greek tragedy; critical television studies; the theory and practice of translation.
My book Tragedy and Otherness (2009) examines the close historical and theoretical connections between Freud’s interpretative appeal to the tragic drama of Sophocles and Shakespeare, and his professed abandonment of the ‘seduction’ hypothesis in 1897. I demonstrate how certain modes of alterity have been simplified out of both psychoanalytic theory and the dramatic texts it repeatedly endeavours to comprehend. Drawing on recent critical re-formulations of Freud’s early trauma theory, the book offers a reading of tragic drama which attempts to take account of the constitutive priority of the other in the itinerary of the tragic subject.
I am currently working on a number of new projects. I am editing two collections of essays. The first, a book for Syracuse University Press, is titled Interrogating The Shield. It collects new papers on Shawn Ryan’s award winning television drama, addressing questions of genre, race, masculinity and exceptionalism. The second book – a joint project with John Fletcher – is a volume of critical essays on art, literature and culture which put to work Jean Laplanche’s ‘general theory of seduction’. I am part of an international team working on the English translation of Laplanche’s Collected Works. I am also beginning a new research project examining the human-animal relation in psychoanalytic thought.
I would be keen to supervise doctoral work related to any of the topics outlined above.
Recent Activities
Co-organiser, with Dr Ian Fairley, of the “Unconscious” reading group at the School of English (ongoing).
December 2008, invited paper on the Elektra myth in literature, opera and psychoanalysis at “Elektra: Vengeance and Desire”, study day organised by Opera North and CentreCATH
April 2008, invited lecture on Psychoanalysis and Hollywood Cinema, Institute of Communication Studies, University of Leeds.
Co-organiser, with Dr Anna Johnson and Prof. Griselda Pollock, of the 2007/8 CentreCATH Research Salon on Psychoanalysis & Aesthetics. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/cath/events/2007/1008/index.html
January 2006, research paper on ‘Reading Freud’ at the Twentieth Century Research Group, University of Leeds.
March 2006, research paper on ‘Tragedy and Otherness’ at the Psychoanalysis & Literature conference, UC Berkeley.
Teaching
Undergraduate
Core Modules:
Renaissance
Literature (Level 2)
Shakespeare (Level 3)
Option Module:
Introduction
to Psychoanalysis (Level 3)
The Vampire in Literature (Level 3)
Postgraduate
Option Module:
Psychoanalysis in Cultural Theory
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