School of Culture and Communication

Qualifications

BA, MA, PhD (Leeds), MSc (Open)

Biography

Nicholas Chare gained a joint-honours BA in English and History of Art at the University of Leeds in 1997. He remained at Leeds to study for a Masters in the Social History of Art which he completed in 1998 and then for a PhD in Cultural Studies which he was awarded in 2005. His PhD thesis provided a critical reassessment of Julia Kristeva's work on abjection, focusing on how writing and its visual correlatives manage or fail to manage the abject, examining how traumatic experiences create psychic states that different media, including painting, photography and poetry, can bear witness to in distinct and effective ways. In 2010 he was awarded a Masters in Forensic Psychology and Criminology by the Open University.

Nicholas joined the School of Culture and Communication in 2011. He is also Visiting Research Fellow at the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History at the University of Leeds. He has previously taught at the Universities of Goldsmiths, Leeds, Reading, and York. Nicholas was a commissioning editor for the international journal of critical theory parallax from 2002-2005. He has received grants from the British Academy (2009-2011) and the Leverhulme Trust (2007-2009).

Current Research

Nicholas's research interests include critical and cultural theory (particularly semiotics and psychoanalysis), gender and sport, gender and technology, memory and testimony, and noise and sound.

He is currently researching a book called Unsporting Cinema which analyses the rise in representations of women athletes in film, and the problems and possibilities cinematic depictions of sportswomen present for feminism. The book provides an overview of existing films about women in sport and a critical analysis of their role in shaping perceptions of female athletic ability.

Nicholas is also co-authoring (with Dr. Dominic Williams) a book titled Matters of Testimony which examines the testimonial significance of the varied writings known as the Scrolls of Auschwitz. These manuscripts were discovered between 1945 and 1980 buried in the grounds of the crematoria at Birkenau. The book examines the unique insights the Scrolls provide for the study of Holocaust testimony in particular and for theories of witnessing more broadly.

Additionally he is co-editing (with Professor Griselda Pollock) The Sounds of Subjectivity which explores psychoanalysis and the acoustic.

Publications

Books

• After Francis Bacon: Synaesthesia and Sex in Paint, London: Ashgate, 2012, in press.
• Auschwitz and Afterimages: Abjection, Witnessing and Representation, London: I.B. Tauris, 2011. 224pp.

Recent Book Chapters

• 'Getting Hard: Female Bodybuilders and Muscle Worship' in Niall Richardson &Adam Locks (eds.), Critical Readings in Bodybuilding, London: Routledge, 2011, pp. 199-214.
• 'Sexing the Canvas' in Dana Arnold (ed.), Art History: Contemporary Perspectives on Method, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 8-33.
• 'Illuminating the Past: Reflections on Teaching The Name of the Rose' in Alison Ganze (ed.), Postscript to the Middle Ages: Teaching Medieval Studies through "The Name of the Rose", Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2009, pp. 84-96.
• 'Sports Unillustrated: The Female Athlete as Representational Absence' in Catherine Kevin (ed.), Feminism and the Body: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009, pp. 178-193.
• 'Puncture / Punctum: Representations of Women with AIDS' in Griselda Pollock (ed.), Conceptual Odysseys, London: I.B. Tauris, 2007, pp. 90-102.

Recent Journal Articles

• 'Writing Perceptions: The Matter of Words and the Rollright Stones' Art History, 34:2 (2011), pp. 244-267.
• 'Policing Technology: Listening to Cop Culture in The Wire' Journal for Cultural Research 15:1 (2011), pp. 15-33.
• 'Upon the Scents of Paint: Bacon and Synaesthesia' Visual Culture in Britain, 10:3 (2009), pp. 255-272.
• 'Sexing the Canvas: Calling on the Medium' Art History, 32:4 (2009), pp. 664-689.
• 'Warring Pixels: Cultural Memory, Digital Testimony, and the Conflict in Iraq' Convergence, 15:3 (2009), pp. 333-345.
  
• 'Testimony on Trial: Reviewing Rape in The Accused' Southern Review: Communication, Politics and Culture, 40:3 (2008), pp. 68-83.
  
• 'Introducing Diamanda Galás: The Grain of the Interview' parallax 42 (January-March 2007), pp. 56-64.
  
• 'The Gap in Context: Giorgio Agamben's Remnants of Auschwitz' Cultural Critique 64 (Fall 2006), pp. 40-68.
  
• 'Passages to Paint: Francis Bacon's Studio Practice' parallax 41 (October-December 2006), pp. 83-98.
  
• 'Regarding the Pain: Noise in the Art of Francis Bacon' Angelaki, 10:3 (December 2005), pp. 133-43.