| Post: | Professor of Cultural Studies |
| Other posts: | Professor of Cultural Studies (Gender Studies) |
| Location: | Silverstone SB 318 |
| Email: | S.R.Munt@sussex.ac.uk |
| Telephone numbers | |
| Internal: | 8834 |
| UK: | (01273) 678834 |
| International: | +44 1273 678834 |
Biography
BA (Soton), MA, DPhil (Sussex)
Role
Professor Sally Munt is Director of the Sussex Centre for Cultural Studies [SCCS].
Community & Business
Sally is a member of the Resilient Therapy Community of Practice, University of Brighton. In 2009 she designed and delivered a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy course on resilience to women refugees, "Journeys of Resilience", which formed part of the university's knowledge transfer strategy, as a member of the South Coastal Communities Scheme. SECC is a university partnership with local communities. Sally continues to practice as a Cognitive Psychotherapist.
Research
Sally's main disciplinary focus lies in Cultural Studies; she has a primary research interest in cultural formations, particularly in how social forms, structures and identities are practised. She has strong interests in sexuality, gender, and class, narrative, space, spiritualities and resilience.
In 2008-9 Sally was the Principal Investigator for a significant AHRC/ESRC funded project in the Religion and Society Programme, called 'Queer Spiritual Space(s): An investigation into the practices of non-hegemonic queer spiritual communities using case studies, (Quakers, Buddhists, Findhorn Community (New Age), Muslims, Michigan Womyns Festival (Wiccan and others), and the 'non-aligned spiritually curious' online)'. The book is published in 2010 by Ashgate, co-authored with Kath Browne and Andrew Yip, as 'Queer Spiritual Spaces: Sexuality and Sacred Places'. The outcomes also included designing a community based resource, a conference, and an interactive web page, to stimulate inter-faith dialogue queerspiritualspaces.com
Current projects include research on spiritualism, occulture and the paranormal, and resilience, especially within marginalized groups.
Sally's work on the cultural politics of emotion, particularly shame, and how shame comes to mark out certain groups such as queers, the Irish Catholics in Britain, and the underclass within a paradigm of 'the sodomitical'. Her book for Ashgate "Queer Attachments: The Cultural Politics of Shame" was published in 2007/8; it is concerned with popular and public cultures, with diverse case studies of television series such as Six Feet Under, Queer As Folk, Shameless, The Office, artist Tracey Emin, St Patrick's Day Parades in New York and Boston, Philip Pullman's novels, and the historical sodomitical scandals of Lord Castlehaven and Edmund Burke. Sally is interested in how shame can be reworked into transformational narratives according to perspectives informed by Foucault, Cavarero, and Irigaray.
Sally also continues to write about popular narratives and identities following an early interest in crime fiction and feminist narratives. She welcomes doctoral research projects in all these areas, plus proposals on Anglo-American popular culture, emotional cultural formations, Lesbian & Gay histories/lives, and pedagogies /disciplinary boundaries.
Sally is also currently completing a 4 year MSc in Cognitive Psychotherapy at the University of Brighton, and she welcomes collaborative research projects in Psychosocial Studies, and the politics and culture of emotion, - particularly around issues of social exclusion.
Teaching
Sally has taught over 30 courses in Media and Cultural Studies, currently she teaches on the BAs in Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, and Media Studies. Her courses include Class, Spectacle and Popular Culture; Culture and the Everyday; Debating Gender: Representation (Feminist Approaches to Representation); and the MA courses Gender and Representation; Emotion, Representation and Culture.
She also has wider interests in teaching and quality: she was the External Examiner for the new BA Media, Culture and Society, University of Manchester, 2003-6. She is a qualified QAA Subject Reviewer, and Subject Specialist for university Internal Audit (Media, Cultural and Communication Studies, Film Studies). Sally was for many years a member of the national Subject Reference Group for the UK Learning and Teaching Support Network Subject Centre for Art, Design & Communication (LTSN-ADC), now the Higher Education Academy.
Related work
Sally was the UK AHRC Panel 2 Visual Arts and Media panel member for the subject area of Cultural Studies from 2007-9. (Postgraduate Awards)
Sally was a member of the National Executive Committee of MeCCSA UK (Media, Communications & Cultural Studies Association) from 1999-2006.
For 2005-6 Sally was the Helen Waddell Visiting Professor in Womens Studies at Queen's University Belfast.
She was Conference Director of MeCCSA UK's annual international conference, University of Sussex, December 19th-21st 2003.
She has been a member of several editorial boards for international refereed journals including Textual Practice , Routledge, (New York & London). Queeries: A Journal of Queer Studies, Sage Publications, and Lesbian Histories and Cultures Routledge/ Taylor & Francis, New York. She is also series editor for Continuum USA (New York & London): "Critical Research in Material Culture".
Selected publications
Authored books
2010 Queer Spiritual Spaces: Sexuality and Sacred Places (with Andrew Kam-Tuck Yip and Kath A. Browne) Ashgate Publishing, 280 pp. ISBN 978-0-7546-7527-3
2007 Queer Attachments: The Cultural Politics of Shame London & Burlington VT USA: Ashgate Publishing, 176 pp. ISBN 0-754-64921-0, Awaiting Publication
1998 Heroic Desire: Lesbian Identity and Cultural Space New York University Press: New York University Press ISBN 814756077
Edited books
2001 Technospaces: Inside the New Media London and New York: Continuum, 258 pp. ISBN 0826450032
Chapters in books
2001 Le Corps Butch (Trans.) Les Editions Gaies et Lesbiennes, ed., in Attirances. Lesbiennes Fems, Lesbiennes Butchs Paris, France: Les Editions Gaies et Lesbiennes Volume pp. 339-363
2001 The Butch Body Ruth Holliday & John Hassard, ed., in Contested Bodies London and New York: Routledge pp. 95-106 ISBN 0-415-19636-1
2001 The Lesbian Flaneur I Borden, J Kerr, A Pivaro, J Rendell, ed., in The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space Cambridge MA USA: MIT Press
2001 The Well of Shame Laura Doan & Jay Prosser, ed., in Palatable Poison: Critical Perspectives on The Well of Loneliness New York USA: Columbia University Press
Journal articles
2007 A Seat at the Table - Some Unpalatable Thoughts on Shame, Envy and Hate in Institutional Cultures Noreen Giffney, Ursula Barry, Katherine O'Donnell, ed., in Journal of Lesbian Studies USA [double issue] Volume 11, Awaiting Publication
2007 Edmund Burke and the Punishment of Sodomitical Practices (with Dr Katherine O'Donnell, UCD) in The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation Volume 48, Awaiting Publication
2007 Pride and Prejudice: Legalising Irish-American Hetero-normativity in Boston and New York’s Annual St Patrick Day Parades (with Katherine O'Donnell, UCD Irela) Rob Shields, ed., in Space and Culture Volume 10, Awaiting Publication
2006 A Queer Undertaking: Anxiety and Reparation in The HBO Television Drama Series Six Feet Under in Feminist Media Studies Volume 6 pp. 263-279
2002 Virtually Belonging: Risk, Connectivity and Coming-Out Online (with Kate O'Riordan and Bassett, Elizabeth) in International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies Volume 7 pp. 125-137
Internet publications
2002 Framing Intelligibility, identity and selfhood: a reconsideration of spatio-temporal models in Reconstruction (special issue) Auto/bio/geography: Considering Space and Identity Bowling Green, Ohio USA: Bowling Green State University Press Volume 2