English Department Faculty
Frances Restuccia
Professor
Frances Restuccia
Ph.D.
Contact
Stokes Hall S379
Telephone: 617-552-8277
Email: restucci@bc.edu
Education
- B.A., Occidental College
- M.A., Occidental College
- Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Department
Biography
Professor Restuccia regularly teaches a “Contemporary Theory” (undergrad/grad) course, “Studies in Narrative” (with an emphasis on critical theory), and “Literary Themes” (with an emphasis on philosophy and art). She has also taught courses titled: “Resisting the Society of the Spectacle,” “Film and Psychoanalysis,” “Milan Kundera,” “The World Novel,” “Agamben and His Universe” (grad seminar), and “Kristeva, Deleuze, Agamben” (grad seminar).
She is a co-chair of the Psychoanalytic Practices seminar at The Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard and a member of the MLA executive committee of the Division on Psychological Approaches to Literature.
Publications
Books
- James Joyce and the Law of the Father, Yale UP, 1989.
- Melancholics in Love: Representations of Women's Depression and Domestic Abuse, Rowan and Littlefield, February 2000.
- Amorous Acts: Lacanian Ethics in Modernism, Film, and Queer Theory, Stanford UP, 2006.
- The Blue Box, Continuum, 2012.
Articles and Essays in Collections
- "'A Cave of My Own': The Sexual Politics of Indeterminacy," Raritan, vol. 9, no. 2 (fall 1989), pp. 110-128.
- “Homo Homini Lupus: Milan Kundera's The Joke," Contemporary Literature, vol. 31, no. 3 (fall 1990), pp. 281-299. (Reprinted in Garland Press 1992 edition of critical essays on Kundera.)
- "'A Black Morning': Kristevan Melancholia in Jane Austen's Emma," American Imago, vol. 51, no. 4 (winter 1994), pp. 447-469.
- "Literary Representations of Battered Women: Spectacular Domestic Punishment," Genders, vol. 23 (spring 1996), pp. 42-71. (Reprinted in Bodies of Writing, Bodies in Performance, ed. Foster, Siegel, and Berry, NYU Press, 1996.)
- "Tales of Beauty: Aestheticizing Female Melancholia," American Imago, vol. 53, no. 4 (winter 1996), pp. 353-83.
- "Conjurings: Mourning and Abjection in Story of O and Return to the Château,” Gender and Psychoanalysis, vol. 3, no. 2 (April 1998), pp. 123-153. (This publication includes a response to a respondent: pp. 171-174.)
- "Ethical Erogenous Zones," Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society, vol. 3, no. 2 (fall 1998), pp. 109-21.
- Foreword to Serge André's What Does A Woman Want? - translated into English, New York: Other Press, July 1999, pp. xvii-xxvi.
- “The Subject of Homosexuality: Butler’s Elision” (long article version), Clinical Studies: International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. 5, no. 1, 1999, pp. 19-38.
- (This essay was also published in Lacan in America, ed. Jean-Michel Rabaté - Philadelphia Lacan Conference proceedings, Other Press, pp. 349-60.)
- "Molly in Furs: Deleuzean/Masochian Masochism in the Writing of James Joyce" reprinted in Deleuze and Guattari: Critical Assessments, Routledge, spring, 2000.
- "Impossible Love in Breaking the Waves: Mystifying Hysteria," literature and psychology, vol. 47, numbers 1 & 2, 2001. This essay has been reprinted in Lacan and Contemporary Film, ed. Todd McGowan and Sheila Kunkle, Other Press, 2004.
- “Queer Love,” in Between the Psyche and the Social: Psychoanalytic Social Theory,
- Ed. Kelly Oliver Steve Edwin. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Press, 2002, pp. 83-95.
- “Taming the Real: Zizek’s Missed Encounter with Kieslowski’s Insight.” Lacanian Ink (internet pub.), spring 2002.
- “Graham Greene’s Lacanian Encore: The End of the Affair.” Religion and the Arts, vol. 7-4, 2003, pp. 369-87.
- “The Use of Perversion: Secretary or The Piano Teacher?” Lacanian Ink (internet pub.), spring 2004.
- "Black and Blue: Kieslowski's Melancholia," in Revolt, Affect, Collectivity: The Unstable Boundaries of Kristeva’s Polis, ed. Tina Chanter and Ewa Ziarek, SUNY Press, 2005,
- pp. 193-207.
- “Sebald’s Punctum: Awakening to Holocaust Trauma in Austerlitz” in European Journal of English Studies, vol. 9, no. 3, Dec. 2005, pp. 301-22 Routledge. Special issue, titled Intimate Transfers, edited by Maria Margaroni.
- “A Radical Ethical Imperative: Sublimation Love.” Journal of Lacanian Studies, vol. 4,
- no. 1, summer 2006, pp. 159-77. (Review-article on Joan Copjec’s Imagine There’s
- No Woman.)
- “Kristeva’s Intimate Revolt and the Thought Specular: Encountering the (Mulholland) Drive” in Psychoanalysis, Aesthetics, and Politics in the Work of Kristeva, ed. Kelly Oliver, SUNY Press, 2009.
- “The Thought Specular: Kieslowski’s White and Streitfeld’s Female Perversions,” Film/Philosophy, spring 2010.
- “The Virtue of Blushing: Assimilating Anxiety into Shame in Haneke’s Caché,” Symplokē, vol. 18, nos. 1-2, 2010.
- “Why Can’t Dulcinea Love Us?” Philosophy Today, special issue titled “Violence and the Sacred,” Vol. 56:2, summer 2012.
- “Sebastian’s Skull: Establishing the ‘Society of the Icon,’” a chapter in Kristeva’s Fiction, Ed. Benigno Trigo, SUNY Press, September 2013.
- “A Messianic Aesthetic: Lily Briscoe’s Vision,” Genre, Vol. 49, spring 2016.
- “The Melancholic and Messianic Allure of Venice or How Best to Access the Inaccessible,” Philosophy Today, Vol. 60, spring 2016.
- “’A Black Passion’: Voiding Melancholic Obsession in Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence,” American Imago, Vol. 73, spring 2016.