Anna Watz

Anna Watz is Associate Professor (Docent) of English Literature. She is the author of Angela Carter and Surrealism: 'A Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic' (Routledge, 2016) and editor of A History of the Surrealist Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2023) and Surrealist Women's Writing: A Critical Exploration (Manchester University Press, 2020). Her second monograph, Surrealism and Feminine Difference, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

I hold a PhD from Uppsala University (2012) and an MA from the University of East Anglia (2000). Between 2014 and 2023 I was employed as Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor of English at Linköping University. I joined the English Department at Uppsala University in August 2023.

My research investigates surrealist art and literature, gender and feminist theory, contemporary women’s writing, and representations of female desire. I have published extensively on the work of Angela Carter, Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Leonor Fini, and Xavière Gauthier. My current research project (funded by the Swedish Research Council, 2019-2022, and Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, 2023) examines the intersection between surrealist women’s art and writing and the emergence of French poststructuralist/psychoanalytic feminist theories in the 1970s.

I am a board member of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS), an advisory board member of the Angela Carter Society (UWE, Bristol), and an editorial board member of The International Journal of Surrealism (Minnesota University Press) and the research network and journal Intersec+ions (Cardiff University). Between 2018-2020 I served a three-year term as author of the section ‘Feminisms’ for the annual journal The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory (Oxford University Press).

Monographs

Surrealism and Feminine Difference, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Angela Carter and Surrealism: ‘A Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic’, Routledge, 2016. Reviewed in The Year's Work in English Studies, Gothic Studies, Irish Gothic Journal, and ASAP/Online.

Edited books

(with Kristoffer Noheden) Leonora Carrington and the Art of Transformation, Manchester University Press, forthcoming.

(with Jonathan P. Eburne) A History of Surrealist Poetry, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.

(with Sarah Gamble) Angela Carter’s Past: Allegories and Intertextualities, Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

(with Sarah Gamble) Angela Carter’s Futures: Representations, Adaptations and Legacies, Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

A History of the Surrealist Novel, Cambridge University Press, 2023.

Surrealist Women’s Writing: A Critical Exploration, Manchester University Press, 2020. Reviewed in Modern Language Review, French Studies, and Choice Reviews.

Articles and book chapters (all peer reviewed)

(with Sarah Gamble) 'Introduction', Angela Carter’s Futures: Representations, Adaptations and Legacies, edited by Sarah Gamble and Anna Watz, Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

(with Sarah Gamble) 'Introduction', Angela Carter’s Past: Allegories and Intertextualities, edited by Sarah Gamble and Anna Watz, Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

'"Manifesto for Year One": Revolution as Metaphysical Principle', in Angela Carter’s Past: Allegories and Intertextualities, edited by Sarah Gamble and Anna Watz, Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

‘The Mother Figure in the Surrealist Novel’, in A History of the Surrealist Novel, edited by Anna Watz, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 152–167

‘Introduction’, in A History of the Surrealist Novel, edited by Anna Watz, Cambridge University Press, 2023, pp. 1–22.

‘Feminist Encounters with Surrealism: Revisiting the Formative Critiques’, in The Routledge Companion to Surrealism, edited by Kirsten Strom, Routledge, 2022, pp. 339–348.

‘Maternities: Dorothea Tanning’s Aesthetics of Touch’, Art History 45:1, 2022, pp. 12–34.

‘Surrealism and écriture féminine’, in Cambridge Critical Concepts: Surrealism, edited by Natalya Lusty, Cambridge University Press, 2021, pp. 363–379.

‘Leonora Carrington’s Poetics of Listening’, in Modernist Intimacies, edited by Elsa Högberg, Edinburgh University Press, 2021, pp. 164–180.

“‘Scattered and Recomposed”: Poststructuralist Play in The Passion of New Eve’, in Ludics and Laughter as Feminist Aesthetic: Angela Carter at Play, edited by Sarah Gamble, Jennifer Gustar, and Caleb Sivyer, Sussex Academic Press, 2021, pp. 139–156.

‘Introduction’, in Surrealist Women’s Writing: A Critical Exploration, edited by Anna Watz, Manchester University Press, 2020, pp. 1–16.

‘Identity Convulsed: Leonora Carrington’s The House of Fear and The Oval Lady’, in Surrealist Women’s Writing: A Critical Exploration, edited by Anna Watz, Manchester University Press, 2020, pp. 42–67.

‘Feminisms’, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol. 28, 2020, pp. 311–328.

‘Feminisms’, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol. 27, 2019, pp. 201–219.

‘Women’s Writing, écriture féminine and femellitude: A Conversation with Xavière Gauthier’, Contemporary Women’s Writing, vol. 13, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–15.

‘Feminisms’, The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, vol. 26, 2018, pp. 368–387.

‘“A Language Buried at the Back of Time”: The Stone Door and Poststructuralist Feminism’, in Leonora Carrington and the International Avant-Garde, edited by Jonathan P. Eburne and Catriona McAra, Manchester University Press, 2017, pp. 90–104.

[In Swedish] ‘Njutningens problematik: postfeminism, normativitet och “mommy porn”’ (‘The Problem of Pleasure: Postfeminism, Normativity, and “Mommy Porn”’), Edda: Nordisk tidsskrift for litteraturforskning, vol. 4, 2014, pp. 292–305.

‘“Look! Hands Off!”: The Performance of Female Exhibitionism in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and Nights at the Circus’, in Naked Exhibitionism: Gendered Performance and Public Exposure, edited by Claire Nally and Angela Smith, I. B. Tauris, 2013, pp. 41–61.

‘The Surrealist Uncanny in Shadow Dance’, in Angela Carter: New Critical Readings, edited by Sonya Andermahr and Lawrence Phillips, Bloomsbury, 2012, pp. 117–129.

‘Angela Carter and Xavière Gauthier’s Surréalisme et sexualité’, Contemporary Women’s Writing, vol. 4, no. 2, 2010, pp. 100–113.

‘Convulsive Beauty and Compulsive Desire: The Surrealist Pattern of Shadow Dance’, in Revisiting Angela Carter: Texts, Contexts, Intertexts, edited by Rebecca Munford, Palgrave, 2006, pp. 21–41.

Catalogue essays, encyclopedia entries, and magazine articles

'Leonor Fini and Second-Wave Feminism', Leonor Fini: The Gaze of the Sphinx, edited by Tere Arcq and Carlos Martín, forthcoming

'Mélusine' (catalogue essay), in Le surréalisme: d'abord et toujours, edited by Didier Ottinger and Marie Sarré, Centre Pompidou, 2024.

'Il Cornetto acustico' and 'La Signora ovale' in Leonora Carrington AZ, edited by Giulia Ingarao, Electa, 2024.

'Esoterism i rörelse: Leonora Carringtons magiska kittel', Kulturtidskriften Hjärnstorm, vol. 150, 2023.

'Låt drömmens mjölk förändra världen', 'Understreckare' about Leonora Carrington, Svenska Dagbladet, 4 July 2021.

Public Lectures

Fabulation (Cecilia Alemani, Sophia Al-Maria, Saidiya Hartman, Elisa Giardina Papa, Anna Watz), panel in the series Meetings on Art, part of the Venice Biennale 2022, 10 June 2022

Leonor Fini's Witches, lecture given at The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 7 March 2023

Surrealism and Motherhood: Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning, lecture given at the Sigmund Freud Museum, Vienna, 31 March 2023