Papers by Dominique Gracia
Deleted Journal, Mar 4, 2018
Serious crime is often aestheticized on television through the female (or feminized) body of the ... more Serious crime is often aestheticized on television through the female (or feminized) body of the victim. Forced to reveal themselves as objects for interrogation, dissection, and examination, these bodies are presented for our consumption. Here, I ask whether such consumed objects can be classed as beautiful in a Kantian sense by turning to a particular case of what I call psychopath aesthetics: those of the notorious fictional cannibal, Hannibal Lecter, in Hannibal on NBC (2013-15). Hannibal's central anthropophagy compounds the synaesthetic association between beautiful murders and delicious deaths, aesthetics and taste. Whilst the horrific and taboo nature of Hannibal's crimes might seem to preclude any Kantian approach to beauty, I explore how his acting out of his psychopath morality in accordance with a psychopath aesthetics is grounded in Kantian hope and judgments of taste.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, May 11, 2023
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, May 11, 2023
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, May 11, 2023
Serious crime is often aestheticized on television through the female (or feminized) body of the ... more Serious crime is often aestheticized on television through the female (or feminized) body of the victim. Forced to reveal themselves as objects for interrogation, dissection, and examination, these bodies are presented for our consumption. Here, I ask whether such consumed objects can be classed as beautiful in a Kantian sense by turning to a particular case of what I call psychopath aesthetics: those of the notorious fictional cannibal, Hannibal Lecter, in Hannibal on NBC (2013-15). Hannibal's central anthropophagy compounds the synaesthetic association between beautiful murders and delicious deaths, aesthetics and taste. Whilst the horrific and taboo nature of Hannibal's crimes might seem to preclude any Kantian approach to beauty, I explore how his acting out of his psychopath morality in accordance with a psychopath aesthetics is grounded in Kantian hope and judgments of taste.
Victorian Poetry, 2019
RNA interference (RNAi) is a key regulatory pathway of gene expression in almost all eukaryotes. ... more RNA interference (RNAi) is a key regulatory pathway of gene expression in almost all eukaryotes. This mechanism relies on short non-coding RNA molecules (sRNAs) to recognize in a sequence-specific manner DNA or RNA targets leading to transcriptional or post-transcriptional gene silencing. To date, the fundamental role of sRNAs in the regulation of development, stress responses, defense against viruses and mobile elements, and cross-kingdom interactions has been extensively studied in a number of biological systems. However, the knowledge of the "RNAi world" in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) is still limited. AMF are obligate mutualistic endosymbionts of plants, able to provide several benefits to their partners, from improved mineral nutrition to stress tolerance. Here we described the RNAi-related genes of the AMF Gigaspora margarita and characterized, through sRNA sequencing, its complex small RNAome, considering the possible genetic sources and targets of the sRNAs. G. margarita indeed is a mosaic of different genomes since it hosts endobacteria, RNA viruses, and nonintegrated DNA fragments corresponding to mitovirus sequences. Our findings show that G. margarita is equipped with a complete set of RNAi-related genes characterized by the expansion of the Argonaute-like (AGO-like) gene family that seems a common trait of AMF. With regards to sRNAs, we detected populations of sRNA reads mapping to nuclear, mitochondrial, and viral genomes that share similar features (25-nt long and 5-end uracil read enrichments), and that clearly differ from sRNAs of endobacterial origin. Furthermore, the annotation of nuclear loci producing sRNAs suggests the occurrence of different sRNA-generating processes. In silico analyses indicate that the most abundant G. margarita sRNAs, including those of viral origin, could target transcripts in the host plant, through a hypothetical cross-kingdom RNAi.
The work of the ratiocinative, masculine mind often appears to be the organising principle of det... more The work of the ratiocinative, masculine mind often appears to be the organising principle of detective fiction. However, the notion of detective work as predominantly about minds is a bluff, and we should not take detective stories’ word for it. Here, I interrogate this cultural heuristic and feminist critiques of the detective fiction genre that have often wrestled with, but largely embraced, a gendered, dualistic interpretation of detective work as the purview of a masculine mind investigating a feminine body. By setting to one side “iconic” figures like Sherlock Holmes, I look to rebaseline our generalisations about detective fiction using the nineteenth-century professional female detective as my exemplar, including characters such as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene, Mrs. Paschal, G, and Miss Cusack, and historical instances of the female detective figure. By analysing the tools and tells of the incarnated body that is the predicate of the perceiving mind, I illustrate how detectiv...
The Detective's Companion in Crime Fiction, 2021
The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Victorian Women's Writing
Word & Image
Friedrich Kittler’s media history is rarely employed by humanities scholars, who are often aliena... more Friedrich Kittler’s media history is rarely employed by humanities scholars, who are often alienated by his disregard for literary content or humanistic concerns. This article makes the case for engaging with Kittler’s theories as a natural extension of the materialist turn common to a number of humanities disciplines. Here, I assemble a toolkit from Kittler’s ideas of recursion and transposition, and the study of cultural techniques that has flowed from his works, in order to propose a new way to conceive of ekphrasis and approach ekphrastic verse. I position ekphrasis as an informative example of recursion in action. I compare Kittler’s media history—and the insights yielded by the tools it offers us—to some of the most influential studies of ekphrasis and ekphrases, showing how a Kittlerian approach can shine new light on the genre. I also offer a short illustrative example of applying these tools to ekphrastic work by analysing Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘A Sea Spell’, by which I also hope to demonstrate how Kittler’s ideas can assist twenty-first-century scholars in bridging the gap between our own medial situation and those in which our objects of study were produced.
Journal of Literature and Science
She is currently a co-chair of the ASECS Science Studies Caucus and is completing a book project ... more She is currently a co-chair of the ASECS Science Studies Caucus and is completing a book project on medicine, domesticity, and empire in the early British novel. Clare Stainthorp has recently submitted an AHRC-funded doctoral thesis at the University of Birmingham on Constance Naden as scientist, philosopher, and poet. She is interested in interdisciplinarity in the nineteenth century, and also has a forthcoming article in Victorian Literature and Culture about the class and gender implications of artificial hands in the Victorian period.
Journal of Literature and Science
Victorian Poetry, 2019
As poets, dramatists, and life writers, Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper) have a... more As poets, dramatists, and life writers, Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper) have already been much rehabilitated into the late-nineteenth-century canon, with conferences, critical essays, collected editions, and monographs dedicated to their work. Sight and Song (1892) has attracted particular attention. Twenty-first-century critics have highlighted the revolutionary aspirations of that volume but tend not to dwell on the fact that the volume consolidates the downturn in Michael Field’s literary career begun by their preceding verse drama, The Tragic Mary (1890). Through three comparative analyses of poems from Sight and Song with poems from Algernon Charles Swinburne’s First Series, I examine the possible aesthetic reasons for the (arguably justifiably) lukewarm response from those contemporary aesthetes and art critics whom Michael Field had most wished to impress with their efforts to challenge existing aesthetic practice and produce an original poetics. In doing so, I highlight how the volume reflects the aesthetic and creative hurdles that Michael Field faced operating in that strongly male homosocial milieu.
The Literary Encyclopedia, 2019
A brief précis of the themes and key topics in Vernon Lee's set of aesthetic essays, Belcaro.
Word & Image, 2019
Friedrich Kittler’s media history is rarely employed by humanities scholars, who are often aliena... more Friedrich Kittler’s media history is rarely employed by humanities scholars, who are often alienated by his disregard for literary content or humanistic concerns. This article makes the case for engaging with Kittler’s theories as a natural extension of the materialist turn common to a number of humanities disciplines. Here, I assemble a toolkit from Kittler’s ideas of recursion and transposition, and the study of cultural techniques that has flowed from his works, in order to propose a new way to conceive of ekphrasis and approach ekphrastic verse. I position ekphrasis as an informative example of recursion in action. I compare Kittler’s media history—and the insights yielded by the tools it offers us—to some of the most influential studies of ekphrasis and ekphrases, showing how a Kittlerian approach can shine new light on the genre. I also offer a short illustrative example of applying these tools to ekphrastic work by analysing Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s ‘A Sea Spell’, by which I also hope to demonstrate how Kittler’s ideas can assist twenty-first-century scholars in bridging the gap between our own medial situation and those in which our objects of study were produced.
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Papers by Dominique Gracia