Clare Hemmings is Professor of Feminist Theory, and has been working full-time at LSE's Gender Institute since 1999. Her main research contributions are in the field of transnational gender and sexuality studies, and she welcomes MSc, MPhil/PhD and postdoctoral applications to study with her at the Gender Institute in her primary areas of expertise.
Experience keywords: interdisciplinarity; feminist epistemology and methodology; transnational sexuality studies; feminist theory; anarchism; Emma Goldman.
Professor Hemmings' LSE Experts entry is available here.
Research Interests
I have two main areas of research focus – feminist theory and sexuality studies – and am particularly interested in thinking through the relationship between these, as well as the ways in which both fields have been institutionalized at national and international levels. This interest has led me to think about how participants in these fields tell stories about their history as well as current form, and to explore how such stories resonate with (rather than against) the broader take-up of feminism and gender equality. I am particularly concerned with the ways in which ideas travel (or do not) across geographical and temporal borders, and am increasingly interested in experimenting with different forms as well as theories of intervention.
Why Stories Matter: The Political Grammar of Feminist Theory was published by Duke University Press in 2011. It explores how feminists tell stories about feminist theory's recent past, why these stories matter and what we can do to transform them. Challenging the frequent assumption that take-up of feminist narratives for conservative agendas is a lamentable co-optation, I suggest that the form of feminist stories produces such amenability. The part of this work that I like the most, though, is where I seek to intervene in these stories, to realign their political grammar to allow a different vision of a feminist past, present and future. This pleasure is partly because it best reflects my interdisciplinary background in literary criticism as well as sociology. Why Stories Matter won the FWSA (Feminist and Women’s Studies Association UK and Ireland) Book Award in 2012, and I continue to lecture on its main themes.
I have just completed a monograph 'Considering Emma Goldman: Feminist Politics of Ambivalence and the Historical Imagination', which will also be published by Duke University Press. The book considers the significance of the work and life of the anarchist activist Emma Goldman (1869-1940) for contemporary feminist theory and politics. An archive-based project, I initially wanted to continue the work in Why Stories Matter to explore a new way of telling a different set of stories about feminism’s present: ones that do not rely on identity, do not separate sexuality and economics, and have long been internationalist. But in the course of my research I realized that I am at least as interested in the strands we would prefer to leave behind in Goldman’s thinking: her essentialism, her viciousness to women (and men), and her vexed relationship to race politics. Attention to these aspects of her thought interrupt contemporary feminist thought in rather different ways, and suggest a feminist politics that addresses directly some of the difficulties – of femininity, race and the human – that I believe need urgent attention. The project returns me to my literary theory roots in a different way to the 2011 project, insofar as it includes a creative letter-writing project that seeks to animate and intervene in the sexual archive.
My next project is tentatively entitled 'Feminist Politics Beyond Science'; it explores historical and contemporary engagements with 'non-science' as an essential part of political movements. At present, I am keen to read and think more about the ways in which 19th Century spiritualism offered a productive site for abolitionist and feminist politics, because of (rather than despite) its location outside of the 'rational'. And I want to explore radical lesbian experimentation from the 1960s and early 1970s with the possibility of parthenogenesis; pre-dating the emergence of NRTs that have expanded reproduction, this vision of a world sustainable without men was an important part of separatist politics. Both projects - very different though they are - highlight the importance of creativity outside of mainstream (or even verifiable) knowledge production for the imagination of new worlds that political movements rely on. They may indeed have great 'impact' on the political sphere than scientific or empirically verifiable knowledge projects can do, and suggest the centrality (rather than marginality) of discredited knowledge in producing change.
While I am currently more directly engaged in feminist theory, my interest in sexuality (both in relation to feminism, but also in its own right, or in relation to other issues) endures. While initially very US-UK focused my approach to sexuality has shifted over the years to be concerned with how different theoretical paradigms within sexuality studies travel (or do not) across intellectual, political and national borders. I have published a range of pieces on the relationship between sexuality and ‘culture’, development practices and ‘Western meanings’, and political economy and sexuality. I am particularly keen to think in interdisciplinary ways in this regard since work on sexuality remains more disciplinarily divided that feminist studies. Thus in relation to work on political economy and sexuality, I explore the (usually ignored) importance of psychic attachments in mediating transformations in kinship. Along with colleagues at the Gender Institute, I recently edited the ‘Sexuality’ section of the Handbook on Feminist Theory that brings together colleagues from different national locations concerned with the transnational valence of sexuality studies.
Recent Fellowships and Awards
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FWSA Book Award (2012)
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EU Lifelong Learning Programme 2008-2010
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National Teaching Fellowship Award 2007
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LSE Teaching Excellence Award 2007
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Leverhulme Visiting Professorship Host 2007 & 2008
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CLAGS Martin Duberman Fellowship 2006-2007.
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NL/UK British Council Research Fellowship 2004
Visiting Fellowship
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Visiting Professorship with the Centre D'Etudes Feminines, Paris VIII, France – Mar-Aug 2012
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Docentship in Women's Studies, University of Tampere, Finland - 2009 and ongoing
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Visiting Professorship in Women's Studies, Duke University, USA, Spring 2006 & 2003
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Visiting Fellowship, Women's Studies, Utrecht University, The Netherlands, 2002 & 2004
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Eminent Visiting Scholar, University of Southern Queensland, Australia, July 2016