Professor Rachel Bowlby FBA

Literary realism; history and theory of consumer culture; Freud, especially in relation to Greek tragedy and feminist reappraisals; Virginia Woolf; contemporary French philosophy.

Elected 2007

Rachel Bowlby's work is focussed on two main areas: literary realism, and the history and theory of shopping; these interests have been linked since her first book, Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola (1985). Other books include Shopping with Freud (1993), Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping (2000) and Everyday Stories (2016). She has also written on changing forms of parenthood (A Child of One's Own, 2013) and on Virginia Woolf (Feminist Destinations, 1998 and 1997). All her work is informed by psychoanalytic and deconstructive thinking (e.g. Still Crazy After All These Years: Women, Writing and Psychoanalysis, 1992). Also, she has translated several books by contemporary French philosophers, including Derrida.

Current post

University College London Professor of Comparative Literature

2014 -

Past appointments

Princeton University Professor of Comparative Literature

2013 - 2016

University College London Lord Northcliffe Professor of English

2004 - 2014

University of York Professor of English

1999 - 2004

University of Oxford Fellow and Professor of English

1997 - 1999

University of Sussex English: Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader

1984 - 1994

Publications

A Child of One's Own: Parental Stories 2013

Just Looking: Consumer Culture in Dreiser, Gissing and Zola 1985, 2009

Shopping with Freud 1993

Still Crazy After All These Years: Women, Writing and Psychoanalysis 1992, 2009

Everyday Stories 2016

Feminist Destinations and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf 1997

Carried Away: The Invention of Modern Shopping 2000

Freudian Mythologies: Greek Tragedy and Modern Identities 2007

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