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Rebecca Coleman

Sociology: Lecturer

Degree: BSocSc (Birmingham), MA (London), PhD (London)

Associated research centres and groups: Centre for Gender and Women's Studies, Feminist Media Studies Research Group

Current Teaching

At Undergraduate level, I teach and convene the following courses:

Imaging the Body (SOCL 317); Gender, Sexuality and Society (SOCL 208) with Gail Crowther and; Critical Cultural Theory (CULT 201) with Debra Ferreday.

I also contribute to the Part 1 courses, Media, Film and Cultural Studies (CULT 101) and Gender and Women's Studies (GWS 101).

At Postgraduate level, I contribute to different courses on Sociology, Media and Cultural Studies and Gender and Women's Studies.

Potential Doctoral Students:

I currently co-supervise two MPhil/PhD students working on issues of affect and first person film and girlhood, identity and new media. I welcome PhD applications in any of the areas of my research - please feel free to contact me to discuss applications further.

Research Interests

My research interests are in bodies and embodiment; visual culture and the image; social, cultural and feminist theory; inventive methodologies; affect; temporality and the future.

My research is focused on empirical and theoretical explorations of the relations between bodies and images. I am currently writing a book on the affectivity and materialisation of contemporary media and cultural images with a focus on a socio-cultural and bodily imperative for transformation. I'm especially interested in how the future functions within this imperative as seeming to offer a temporality that is materially different. The book, Transforming Images: Screens, Affect, Futures, explores the role that images play in organising what futures are considered appealing, and to whom. It draws on recent theory that suggests social and cultural life should be understood in terms of vitality, mobilty and liveness, and on the recent 'turn' to affect, to develop a framework for understanding images not so much as 'texts' to be 'read' but as felt and lived out. Analysing the screens of shopping, makeover television programmes, online dieting plans and government health campaigns, it seeks to trace how images of self-transformation bring the future into the present and affectively 'draw in' some bodies more than others. Some of these ideas have also been explored in recent publications (see below).

I have also studied the relations between bodies and images through empirical research with teenage girls. This project developed a feminist Deleuzian approach and, taking up concepts of affect, intensity and immanence, it argued that bodies and images should be understood as entwined processes of becoming rather than as separate entities. The research involved different kinds of interviews, including an image-making session - the image above is an example of the material produced. A monograph, The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Images, Experience, and a number of journal articles based on this research have been published (see below).

Running through my research is a concern with temporality and affect. With this interest in mind, I have co-edited a collection of essays with Debra Ferreday on Hope and Feminist Theory. The collection explores, among other issues, the 'affective turn', for example in the paper I have co-written with Monica Moreno Figueroa (Sociology, Newcastle University), on beauty and temporality.

I also have a strong interest in inventive and visual methodologies. With Jessica Ringrose (Institute of Education), I am editing a book on Deleuze and Research Methodologies, and I am currently developing projects to explore how visual methods might be a means of researching images. With Fiona Summers I recently co-organised a seminar on Photography: Medium and Method (15th June 2010) - http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/sociology/event/3289/.

I am part of an ESRC funded seminar series based at Goldsmiths College on Young Women in Movement and have also recently been part of another seminar series, based at Cardiff University, on Researching Affect and Affective Communication.

Publications

Books

(forthcoming 2012) Transforming Images: Screens, Affect, Futures, under contract with Routledge.

(forthcoming 2012) edited with Jessica Ringrose, Deleuze and Research Methodologies, under contract with Edinburgh University Press.

(2011) co-edited and introduced with Debra Ferreday, Hope and Feminist Theory, London: Routledge, previously published as a special issue of Journal for Cultural Research Vol. 14, No. 4 (October 2010).

(2009) The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, Images, Experience Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Journal articles

(2010) with Monica Moreno Figueroa, 'Past and future perfect? Beauty, hope and affect' in Journal for Cultural Research Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 357-373.

(2010) with Debra Ferreday, 'Introduction: Hope and feminist theory' in Journal for Cultural Research Vol. 14, No. 4, pp. 313-321.

(2010) 'Dieting temporalities: Interaction, agency and the measure of online weight watching' in Time and Society, Special section on Gendered Time, Vol. 19, No.2, pp. 265-285.

(2008) 'A method of intuition: becoming, relationality, ethics' in History of the Human Sciences Special issue on Intimacy in Research, Vol. 21, No.4, pp. 102-121.

(2008) 'The becoming of bodies: Girls, media effects and body image' in Feminist Media Studies Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 163-179.

(2008) 'Things that stay: Feminist theory, duration and the future' in Time and Society Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 85-102.

(2008) 'Bodies, ethics and immanent research' in Feminist Media Studies Vol. 8, No. 1, pp. 89-94, Comment and Criticism section with Debra Ferreday and Imogen Tyler.

Book chapters

(2011) '"Be(come) yourself only better": Self-transformation and the materialisation of images' in Laura Guillaume and Joe Hughes (eds) Deleuze and the Body Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

(2007) 'Assembling a body: Girls, images and Bodies without Organs' in Eisele, P and Gaugele, E (eds) TechnoNaturen. Design, Produktion, Alltag Vienna: Schleebrügge.

Associated Keywords: Bodies, Body image, Contemporary popular culture, Cultural Studies, Cultural theory, Culture, Feminist research methodologies, Feminist theory, Futures, Gilles Deleuze, Media, New media, Visual culture

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