Joanna Zylinska

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RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

Joanna Zylinska (BA, MA, MA, PhD)

RESEARCH INTERESTS

new technologies and new media
the philosophy of technology
changing notions of 'the human' and 'the body' in the digital age
new media art
photography and digital imaging (theory and practice)
the ethical implications of new technologies
non-foundational ethics and bioethics
the relationship between culture, ethics and politics
Polish-Jewish relations

PUBLICATIONS

Books

(2009) Bioethics in the Age of New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press)
(2007) Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust (collection co-edited with Dorota Glowacka) (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press). Paperback edition 2010.
(2005) The Ethics of Cultural Studies (London and New York: Continuum)
(2002) The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age (edited collection) (London and New York: Continuum)
(2001) On Spiders, Cyborgs and Being Scared: the Feminine and the Sublime (Manchester: Manchester University Press)

Articles

(2009) ‘A Body that Looks for Other Bodies to Exist: Orlan’s Prosthetic Gifts’ and (co-authored with Sarah Kember)’ ‘Creative Media: Performance, Invention, Critique’, in Maria Chatzichristodoulou [aka Maria X], Janis Jefferies and Rachel Zerihan (eds) Interfaces of Performance (Aldergate: Ashgate), forthcoming.
(2009) 'Is There Life in Cybernetics? Designing a Posthumanist Bioethics', in Rosi Braidotti, Claire Colebrook and Patrick Hanafin (eds) Law after Deleuze (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan) (forthcoming).
(2007) 'Of Swans and Ugly Ducklings: Bioethics between Humans, Animals and Machines', Reality Made Over, part II, special issue of the journal Configurations edited by Bernadette Wegenstein, Vol. 14 No 2 (Spring), pp. 125-150.
(2007) 'Introduction: Imaginary Neighbors: Toward an Ethical Community' (co-written with Dorota Glowacka), in Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust, eds Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)
(2007) '"Who Is My Neighbor?": Ethics under Duress', in Imaginary Neighbors: Mediating Polish-Jewish Relations after the Holocaust, eds Dorota Glowacka and Joanna Zylinska (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press)
(2007) 'The Secret of Life: Bioethics between Corporeal and Corporate Obligations', Cultural Studies, Vol. 21, No 1 (January). A German translation of this article was published in the special issue of the journal Paragrana: Internationale Zeitschrift für Historische Anthropologie, Medien – Kőrper – Imagination, edited by Mark Poster and Christoph Wulf, 17.1 (2008)
(2007) '"Nourished … on the Irremediable Differend of Gender": Lyotard's Sublime', in Lyotard and Gender, ed. Margret Grebowicz (Albany: SUNY Press)
(2006) 'Cultural Studies and Ethics', in New Cultural Studies: Adventures in Theory, eds Clare Birchall and Gary Hall (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)
(2004) 'Mediating Murder: Ethics, Trauma and the Price of Death', Journal for Cultural Research, 8:3.
(2004) 'The Universal Acts: Judith Butler and the Biopolitics of Immigration', Cultural Studies, 18: 4. (July). A shorter version of this article has been published on The Signs of the Times website on 12.04.2005, under the title 'The Bio-politics of Immigration'.
(2004) 'Guns N'Rappers: "Moral Panics" and the Ethics of Cultural Studies', Culture Machine, vol. 6.
(2002) 'Extending McLuhan into the New Media Age: an Introduction', in The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, ed. Joanna Zylinska (London and New York: Continuum).
(2002) '"The Future… Is Monstrous": Prosthetics as Ethics', in The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, ed. Joanna Zylinska (London and New York: Continuum).
(2002) '"They Are All Anti-Semitic There": Aporias of Responsibility and Forgiveness', Culture Machine, vol. 4.
(2001) 'An Ethical Manifesto for Cultural Studies… Perhaps', Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics, Vol. 14, No 2, November.
(2001) 'Sublime Speculations: the Economy of the Gift in Feminist Ethics', j_spot: Journal of Social and Political Thought, vol. 3.
(2000) 'Culture and Nationhood: First Stages in the Development of Comparative Cultural Studies' (with Dorota Kolodziejczyk and James Lynn, in British Studies: Intercultural Perspectives, eds Alan Mountford and Nick Wadham-Smith (Longman).
(1998) 'Between Aesthetics and Ethics: the Feminine Sublime', Women: a Cultural Review, Vol. 9 No. 1.
(1998) 'Signs of Aphrodite', Anglica Wratislaviensia, No. XXXIII.
(1998) 'Of Subjectology' (with Dorota Kolodziejczyk), Anglica Wratislaviensia, No. XXXIII.
(1997) 'Kobieta cialo jezyk' ('Body woman language'; in Polish), FA-art; No.1.

Edited journal issues

(2004) 'Cultural Studies is/in Deconstruction' (co-edited with Dave Boothroyd and Gary Hall), Culture Machine. Vol. 6.
(2002) 'The Ethico-Political Issue', Culture Machine, Vol. 4. Contributors include: Alain Badiou, Simon Critchley, Ernesto Laclau, Peter Hallward and Mark Poster.
(2001) 'Cultural Studies: Between Politics and Ethics' (co-edited with Mark Devenney), Strategies: Journal of Theory, Culture and Politics, Vol. 14, No 2, November.

Interviews

(2003) 'Talking Heads: an Interview with Stelarc' (with Gary Hall), specially commissioned by the Live Art Letters to coincide with Stelarc's latest robotic performance, Anatomical Exoskeleton, June.
(2002) 'Probings: an Interview with Stelarc' (with Gary Hall), in The Cyborg Experiments: the Extensions of the Body in the Media Age, ed. Joanna Zylinska (London and New York: Continuum).
(2000) 'Nature, Science and Witchcraft: An Interview with Fay Weldon'; Critical Survey, vol. 12.
(1999) 'There Is Always One More Technology of Otherness: An Interview with Sue Golding', with an introduction by Joanna Zylinska, Culture Machine, vol. 1, 1999. Republished as 'A Bit(e) of the Other: An Interview with Sue Golding', parallax, 13, 2000.

Other publications

(2009) ‘Experiments of the Stelarc Machine’ (with Gary Hall), essay and interview in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition, The Obsolete Body (April), Centre des Arts, Enghien-les-Bains, France.
(2009) 'We are cyborgs', feature for This Is the Order magazine, issue 2. Online version is available here.
(2008) ‘The Cut of the Artist: Sellars’ Anatomy Lesson’, essay in the catalogue accompanying the exhibition of Nina Sellars’ photographs, Oblique (31.07-28.09), Guildford Lane Gallery, Melbourne.
(2007) 'The Extra Ear of the Other: On Being-in-Difference', essay for a catalogue accompanying the exhibition of Stelarc at the Experimental Art Foundation in Adelaide, South Australia, 1-30 June.
(2006) 'Dogs R Us?', review of D. Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), parallax, vol. 12 no 1.
(2001) 'On the Impossibility of Finding One's Way to Ethics', review of M. Garber, B. Hanssen, R. L. Walkowitz (eds) (2000) The Turn to Ethics (New York and London: Routledge), Culture Machine, June.
(1999) Contributor to The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English (entries on H. Cixous, A. Bradstreet, T. Morrison, C. Ozick, E. Hoffman, M. Hong Kingston), ed. Lorna Sage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
(1997) 'The Sources of Freedom: Wroclaw - Berlin - Lvov', May 1997 (translation from Polish to English of the catalogue for the major international exhibition of contemporary art, featuring artists from Germany, Poland and Ukraine, and held in Wroclaw, Poland in May-June 1997).

GUEST LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS

Keynote and plenary addresses

Plenary speaker at The Visual Culture Studies Conference I, organised by New York University; University of the Arts, London; and University of Westminster, London and held at the University of Westminster, 27-29.05.2010 (forthcoming).
Keynote speaker at the conference on 'Zoontotechnics (Animality/Technicity)’, Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, 12-14 May 2010 (forthcoming).
Keynote speaker at the international symposium, 'Solid States / Liquid Objects: Discourses of Mediation', School of Art and Design, Monash University, Australia, 19.08.2009.
Keynote speaker at the symposium, ‘Photography, Archive and Memory’, Centre for Research in Film and Audio-Visual Cultures, Roehampton University, London, 5.06.2009.
Keynote speaker at the international conference, ‘Thinking and Making Connections: Cybernetic Heritage in the Social and Human Sciences and Beyond’, organised by Södertörn University College in cooperation with The Nobel Museum, 10-11.11.2008.
Keynote speaker at the 2nd Slavonic Symposium, ‘Myths and Mythologies of Slavonic Nations: How to Deal with Them Today?’, University of East London, 28.04.2008. (paper ‘Democracy, mythology and mourning: on Polish-Jewish relations’)
Keynote speaker at ASCA’s 2008 International Workshop, ‘Engaging Objects’, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis, University of Amsterdam, 26-28.03.2008.
Keynote speaker at the international conference, ‘Transmediality and Transculturality’, Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, 6-9.12.2007 (paper ‘The transmediality of life: a bioethical response to contemporary media culture’).
Plenary speaker the Roundtable on the Future of Cultural Studies and invited speaker at the two-part panel ‘Cultural Studies after the Left’ (paper ‘There is Nothing Outside the System? Cultural Studies, Politics, Cybernetics’), at the international conference Cultural Studies Now, University of East London, 19-22.07.2007.
Keynote speaker at the international conference, Re-Mediating Literature, Utrecht University, the Netherlands, 4-6.07.2007 (paper ‘Logos bioethikos: What if Foucault Had Had a Blog?’)
Keynote speaker at the 2nd Annual Media Subject Group Research Symposium, Thames Valley University, 23.05.2007.
Invited plenary speaker at the ‘Mediation/Ethics’ Pembroke Center Roundtable, Brown University, 15-16.03.2007.
Keynote speaker at the graduate conference, ‘Contexts, Fields, Positions: Situating Cultural Research’ (paper ‘Beyond Moralism: Cultural Studies, Politics, Ethics'), University of East London, 25-26.05.2006.
Invited plenary speaker at ‘Body-Media-Imagination’ – two papers (one on plastic surgery, the other on DNA mapping) presented at a two-leg conference organised by Prof. Mark Poster and Prof. Christoph Wulf and held at the University of California Irvine, 27-29.03.2006 and Free University Berlin, 14-16.09.2006.
Invited plenary speaker at the ‘Panic and Paranoia: Imaging, the Law and the Public Domain’ conference at the School of Art, Australian National University, Canberra, 23-24.08.2006.
Plenary speaker at the roundtable 'The Body - Virtual or Material?' at the 28th Annual Conference of the International Association of Philosophy and Literature (IAPL), Virtual Materialities, Syracuse University, USA, 19-25.05.2004.

Invited lectures, seminars and research visits

Invited speaker at the Research Institute for Law, Politics and Justice, Keele University, 2.12.2009 (paper, ‘Playing God, Playing Adam: The Politics and Ethics of Enhancement’) (forthcoming)
Invited speaker at a research seminar based around my work on posthumanism and bioethics hosted by the Gender, Culture and Society programme at the University of Limerick, Ireland, 19.11.2009, (forthcoming).
Invited speaker at Art Forum, Tasmanian School of Art – Hobart, University of Tasmania, 14.08.2009.
Invited speaker at UTAS Animals & Society Study Group, Hobart, University of Tasmania, 13.08.2009 (paper 'Bioethics Otherwise, or, How to Live with Machines, Humans and Other Animals’).
Invited speaker at the School of Visual and Performing Arts special event, Academy of the Arts – Launceston, University of Tasmania, 11.09.2009.
Invited speaker at the workshop ‘Biogidital Lives’, hosted by the Centre for the Economic and Social Aspects of Genomics (CESAGen), the Centre for Material Digital Culture and the Centre for Life History and Life Writing Research, University of Sussex, 14.07.2009 (paper: ‘The politics and ethics of biodigital enhancement’).
Invited speaker at a postgraduate lecture series on ‘Ethics and Aesthetics’, Royal College of Art, London, 9.02.2009 (paper ‘The Cut of the Artist: Aesthetics, Ethics, Prosthetics’).
Invited speaker at a research seminar at the Centre for Film and Media Studies, School of African and Oriental Studies, London, 14.01.2009 (paper on life, mediation and bioart).
Invited speaker at a symposium on photographic theory and practice, ‘Photographic Mediations’, at Coventry School of Art and Design, Coventry University, 6.11.2008 (paper, ‘Digital futures, or who’s afraid of the amateur photographer?’).
Invited speaker at the international symposium, ‘Media Ethics and the Global’, The American University of Paris, 25-26.06.2008. (paper ‘Blogging at the Crossroads of Narcissism and Ethics’)
Invited lecture on ‘New directions in cultural studies’, University of Heidelberg, 6.05.2008.
Invited speaker at the international conference ‘The Ethics of Media: Philosophical Foundations and Practical Imperatives’, Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), University of Cambridge, 4-5.04.2008 (paper ‘The Ethos of Good Life in Online Media, or, what if Foucault had had a Blog?’)
Invited speaker at a postgraduate lecture series on ‘New Nature’, Royal College of Art, London, 1.02.2008.
Invited speaker at the research seminar in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Reading, 24.10.2007 (paper 'Green bunnies and speaking ears: the ethics of bioart').
Invited speaker at the Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University, 3.05.2007.
Invited speaker at a research seminar hosted by the Cultural Studies Programme and the School of Architecture at the University of Edinburgh (paper on new architectures of the body),13.10.2006.
Invited speaker to give a series of lectures on ‘The Politics and Ethics of New Media’ at (1) School of Art History, Cinema, Classics & Archaeology, University of Melbourne, (2) Artist in the World lecture series at the Centre of Ideas, the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, (3) Centre for Cultural Research and the Writing and Society programme at the University of Western Sydney, August 2006.
Invited talk at ‘Borderlines’, organised by the Forum for European Philosophy and held at Borders Bookstore on Charing Cross Road, London, 11.05.2006 (presentation on bioethics and makeover culture).
Invited speaker at ‘Giving Space, Taking Time: A Workshop on Hospitality and Generosity’, hosted by the Geography Department of the Open University, 22-23.03.2006.
Invited speaker at a research seminar in the John Cass School of Art at London Metropolitan University (paper on ethics and cultural studies), 8.03.2006.
Invited talk, 'On ethics, Levinas and cultural studies (with a little help from Stelarc)', PhD programme, Central St Martins, University of the Arts London, 1.03.2006.
Invited speaker (alongside the international artist Stelarc) on the panel 'The Posthuman Body: Stelarc and Bodily Modification’, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 11.01.2006.
Invited guest lecture, ‘The Politicians of Good and Evil: Culture, Politics, Ethics’, Institute of English Philology, University of Wroclaw, Poland, 21.12.2005.
Invited speaker at ‘Open Futures: Mobile Identities’ (paper ‘Future Perfect: Mobile Identities in the Makeover Culture’), co-organised by the Institute for Advanced Studies and the Centre for the Study of Media, Technology and Culture, Lancaster University, 10-11.11.2005.
Invited speaker at the MeCCSA Women's Media Studies Network Seminar at Goldsmiths College, 19.04.2005.
Invited speaker on a panel on ‘Philosophical Investigations’ in the School of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London (paper on Levinas and cultural studies), 1.12.2004.
Invited speaker at a research seminar in Media and Cultural Studies at Kingston University, London (paper on feminism and bioethics), 25.11.2004.
Invited speaker at the University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada (1 plenary lecture: ‘Of (Wo)Men, Mice and Cyborgs: New Questions for Feminism and Bioethics’ + 2 seminars), 19-23.10.2004.
Invited speaker at a special panel 'Close Encounters with Judith Butler' held at the 27th IAPL Annual Conference, Writing Aesthetics, University of Leeds, UK, 26-31.05.2003.
Invited speaker at a Culture Machine-hosted seminar on deconstruction and cultural studies held at the ACLA 2003: Crossing Over conference, San Marcos University, San Diego, USA, 4-6.04.2003.
Invited speaker on the panel 'Prosthetics: Technology and the Human', Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, 9.03.2003.

Other conference papers

‘Blogging at the Crossroads of Narcissism and Ethics’, paper presented at the international conference organised by the Association of Cultural Studies, Crossroads 2008, University of the West Indies, Jamaica, 3-7.07.2008.
Presentation on bioethics at the 4th Biannual Meeting of the Society for Science, Literature, and the Arts, University of Amsterdam, 13-16.06.2006.
'The Secret of Life: Bio-ethics between Corporeal and Corporate Obligations', presented at the international conference 'Rhetoric, Politics, Ethics', at Ghent University, Belgium, 21-23.04.2005.
'CLASS-ifying Anti-Semitism: Aporias of Responsibility and Forgiveness', presented at Congress CATH 2002: Translating Class, Altering Hospitality, organised by the AHRB Centre in Cultural Analysis, Theory and History, University of Leeds, UK, 21-21.06.2002.
'Getting Even: Ethics and the Price of Death', presented at the 26th Annual IAPL Conference, Intermedialities, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, 3-8.06.2002.
"'Arous[ing] the intensity of existence': the ethics of seizure and interruption", invited speaker at the international conference 'Ethics and Politics: The Work of Alain Badiou', Centre for Critical and Cultural Theory, Cardiff University, UK, 25-26.05. 2002.
'Making Promises: Cultural Studies and Responsibility', presented at the International Interdisciplinary Conference: 'Cultural Studies: Between Politics and Ethics', Bath Spa University College, UK, 6-8.07.2001.
'Unweaving the Deadly Enigma or, What's Sublime About Spiders?', presented at the conference 'Inventions of Death: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis', University of Warwick, UK, 8-9.06.2001.
'The Cyborg Experiments: Performing Selves in Online Spaces', presented at a plenary session at The Chesapeake Chapter of the American Studies Association conference on Constructing Cyberculture(s): Performance, Pedagogy, and Politics in Online Spaces, University of Maryland, USA, 6-7.04.2001.
'The Future … Is Monstrous: Politics, Ethics, Prosthetics', presented at the Conference of the Post-Structuralist Group of the Political Studies Association, Goldsmiths College, University of London, UK, 25.01.2001.
'The Ethics of Blindness: Feminism Beyond the Gaze', an international interdisciplinary conference 'Gendering Ethics/The Ethics of Gender', University of Leeds, UK, 23-25.06.2000.
'The Sublime and the Cybercity: the Ethics of Hospitality in Cyberspace', IXth Annual Conference on Cross-Currents in Literature, Film and the Visual Arts 'The Sublime and the City', University College Cork, 28-30.04.2000.

OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES (a selection)

Founder member of the Network for Editors of Interdisciplinary Journals (established 2008). The NEIJ held its first conference, entitled ‘Interdisciplinary in the Arts and Humanities: Research, Publishing, Policy’ conference, at the Swedenborg Society, London, 20 March, 2009.
Member of the advisory board/ a UEL affiliate of the University of East London Centre for Cultural Studies Research
Member of the advisory board for the research project on the Russian Internet, Russian-cyberspace.org, based at Cambridge University.
Member of the Editorial Board for the journal Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, published by the National Communication Association and Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
Member of the International Editorial Advisory Board for the journal Policy Studies in Ethics, Law and Technology published by the Berkeley Electronic Press.
Member of the Editorial Board for the Critical Posthumanisms book series published by Rodopi and edited by Ivan Callus and Stefan Herbrechter.
Member of the Editorial Board and Reviews Editor for Culture Machine, an international electronic peer-reviewed journal of cultural studies and media theory.
Commissioning Editor for the Culture Machine book series published by Berg.
Reviewer for a number of academic journals, including Body and Society, Cultural Studies, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Signs, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, parallax, Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, Contemporary Women's Writing, j_spot: Journal of Social and Political Thought and Culture Machine.
Reviewer of book proposals and manuscripts in the area of media and cultural studies for Routledge, the MIT Press, Berg, Continuum, Rodopi and Manchester University Press.
Referee for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
Reviewer for the Philosophy of Communication section of the International Communication Association
Co-organiser of the international interdisciplinary conference: 'Cultural Studies: Between Politics and Ethics', Bath Spa University College, 6-8.07.2001.
Member of the Somatechnics Research Centre at Macquarie University, Australia.
Member of IAPL (International Association for Philosophy and Literature), ACS (Association for Cultural Studies), MeCCSA (Media, Communications & Cultural Studies Association).

LANGUAGES

Bilingual in English and Polish
Fluent in Spanish
Reading knowledge of French