Dr Felicity Gee (She/her)

Felicity Gee is Associate Professor of Modern Literatures and Avant-Garde Studies.

I'm interested in the intersections between critical theory, world modernisms, and avant-garde literature, film, and art. My current research focuses on the ways in which non-traditional forms of activism, belief systems, and collaboration articulate feminism in the twentieth-century. It investigates 'messiness'; affect; and social protest as means by which succesful change is effected. I am inspired by the work of Simone Weil, Simone de Beauvoir, Anaïs Nin, Yayoi Kusama, Valentine Penrose, and Jean Rhys among others. Modernist art and literature often feels ahead of 'its time' because it is so often about opening doors into new realities, new ways of doing things. This is especially signficant when artists and writers push against capitalist, gendered, racist, misogynistic, and class-based boundaries. 

I have published widely on surrealist literature and film, avant-garde fiilm, and affect theory, and my first monograph, Magic Realism, World Cinema, and the Avant-Garde (Routledge 2021) examines the critical inception of magic realism in painting, photography and literature, and its practical application in film. My research spans modernism, surrealism, magic(al) realsim, critical women's writing, and philosophy, and constantly returns to phenomenological readings of the political world through affect theory. 

I have taught at both undergraduate and post-graduate level in Japan and the U.K., and currently teach courses on modernist literature, critical theory, film and material culture, as well as courses on film-philosophy and world literature. I am serving as the elected President of the International Society for the Study of Surrealism (ISSS), and a member of the editorial board for the International Journal of Surrealism (ISJ) published by Minnesota Press.

I am also affiliated with the University of Exeter's Centre for Magic and Esotericism.

Usual office hours - Office 154 Queens Building - Please email for availability.

Biography:

Felicity completed a BA (Hons) in English Literatura and an MA in Film Studies at Southampton University before moving to Osaka, Japan, where she taught at Momoyama Daigaku and Osaka Keisai Daigaku. While in Japan, she also instigated and ran a city-based film studies programme for adults, with the aim of widening accessibility to independent and art cinemas, and engaging a range of public audiences. Upon returning from Japan, Felicity completed a Ph.D in Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, funded by the university, which she completed early in 2013. Her thesis was enitled 'The Critical Roots of Cinematic Magic Realism: Franz Roh; Alejo Carpentier; Fredric Jameson'.

Felicity's work on the modernist avant-garde is fiercely interdisciplinary and focuses on world networks and queer and feminist intersections between literature, art history, and film. Felicity joined the English and Creative Writing Department at Exeter in 2013.

Research supervision:

I would be happy to consider supervising research students in the following areas:

• Modernist and Avant-Garde World Cinema
• Queer Modernisms; World Modernisms
• Women and Literary Modernism - Jean Rhys, Violette Leduc, Valentine Penrose, Anaïs Nin, Leonora Carrington, Gertrude Stein.
• Surrealism
• Magic(al) Realism
• Film Philosophy - Phenomenology; Affect Theory; Cinema and Landscape; Cinema and Activism
• Critical women's writing;
• Japanese Modernism
• Fredric Jameson
• Expanded cinema, art film in the gallery space

Please do feel free to contact me with any enquires.