School of Social, Historical and Literary Studies

Profile

Ben Davies is Lecturer in English at the University of Portsmouth. He received his MA and PhD in English from the University of St Andrews and his MSt in English Language and Literature (1900-Present) from the University of Oxford. Prior to coming to Portsmouth, Ben taught Literary Theory, Sexualities Studies, and Comparative Literature at the University of St Andrews.

Ben’s research and teaching interests include modern and contemporary British and American literature, philosophy, literary theory and narratology. To date, his work has focused specifically on theories and representations of sex, time and space. He is the co-editor of Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), a collected volume that developed out of the AHRC-funded international conference ‘Sexualities In and Out of Time’ (Edinburgh, November 2008).

Ben is currently working on a monograph entitled Exceptional Intercourse: Sex, Time and Space. This book examines the relationship between time, space and sex in contemporary literature, with a particular focus on the theoretical work of Giorgio Agamben. The project also engages with the work of Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault and Jean-Luc Nancy, among others.

Ben’s future research plans include a book project on the temporality of literary prequels. This will be an interdisciplinary project incorporating work on the philosophy of time, recent investigations in physics, and analyses of modern prequels in both literature and film.

Books:

• with Jana Funke, Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). See: http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=417319
• Davies, Ben, Exceptional Intercourse: Sex, Time and Space (Completed Manuscript. Planned Publication Date: 2014).

Book Chapters:

• ‘Hymenal Exceptionality’, in Ben Davies and Jana Funke (eds), Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Basingstoke and New York, 2011), pp. 89-109.
• with Jana Funke, ‘Sexual Temporalities’, in Ben Davies and Jana Funke (eds), Sex, Gender and Time in Fiction and Culture (Basingstoke and New York, 2011), pp. 1-16.

Journal Contributions:

• ‘Slow, Bound and Unbound Reading’, A Response to Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds’, ‘Periscope’, online dossier of Social Text (forthcoming November 2012). See: http://www.socialtextjournal.org/periscope/

Reviews:

• Halley, Janet E. and Andrew Parker (eds), After Sex?: On Writing Since Queer Theory (Duke University Press, 2011), Forum for Modern Language Studies 48:3, 336.
• Friedhelm Rathjen, Irish Company: Joyce & Beckett and More (Edition ReJoycE, 2010), The Edward Thomas Fellowship Newsletter (2011, pp. 33-4).
• Parker, Andrew, The Theorist’s Mother (Duke University Press, 2012), Forum for Modern Language Studies (Forthcoming).

Selected Conference Papers and Invited Talks:

• ‘The Erotics of Exceptionality: Agamben, Time and Sex’, Critical Sexology Seminar Series, London, March 2012. Invited by Dr Jana Funke (Centre for Medical History, University of Exeter).
• Respondent. Queer Temporalities: Reading Elizabeth Freeman’s Time Binds Seminar, University College Dublin, November 2011. Invited by Michael O’Rourke (Independent Colleges, Dublin).
• ‘Aural Sex: Auricular Erotics in Sabbath’s Theater’, Writings of Intimacy in the 20^th & 21^st Centuries, Loughborough University, September 2010.
• ‘The Heterotopic Hymen’, Edinburgh-St Andrews Sexualities Conference, ‘Sex/ualities In and Out of Time’, University of Edinburgh, November 2008.
• ‘Theoretic and Aesthetic Sexualities: An Analysis of D.H. Lawrence’s Non-Fictional Prose as Part of a Modern Sex Discourse’, Sex and Sexuality, Fourth Global Conference, Salzburg, Austria, November 2007.

Research Funding:

• Arts and Humanities Research Council. Collaborative Research Training Scheme (Student-Led Initiatives) for the Edinburgh-St Andrews Sexualities Conference, ‘Sexualities In and Out of Time’, November 2008.
• University of St Andrews PhD Scholarship, 2007-10.