Karin Sellberg specialises in feminist and queer historiography, contemporary fiction and theories of gender, sexuality, embodiment and time. She is particularly interested in convergences and communication between feminist and queer fiction, and the intellectual history of science and medicine. She is currently working on evolutionary tropes, and ideas of transcendence/progress in new materialist feminist philosophy and the fiction of Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter and Gore Vidal.
Karin joined Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities as a postdoctoral research fellow in January 2014. Before this she held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and a postdoctoral teaching fellowship in the English Literature department at the University of Edinburgh. She was also co-director of the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School from 2012 to 2014, and organised two large international conferences, "Bodies in Movement: Intersecting Discourses of Materiality in the Sciences and the Arts" and "Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment," as well as the "Bodies in Movement" seminar series at the University of Edinburgh. She is currently co-organising "Technicity, Temporality, Embodiment: the 10th Somatechnics Conference" due to be held on December 1-3 2016 in Byron Bay.
Researcher biography
Research Interests
- contemporary British and American literature
- medical humanities
- cultural studies
- gender studies
- transgender studies
- queer theory
- critical theory
- continental philosophy
- historiography
Qualifications
- Doctor of Philosophy, University of Edinburgh
- Master of Arts, University of Edinburgh
Book Chapters
Sellberg, Karin (2020). Corporeal Creativity and Queer Gaps in Time. How Literature Comes to Matter. (pp. 172-190) edited by Moslund, Sten Pultz, Marcussen, Marlene Karlsson and Pedersen, Martin Karlsson. Edinburgh, United Kingdom: Edinburgh University Press. doi: 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474461313.003.0009
Sellberg, Karin (2019). “Bloody business”: passions and regulation of sanguinity in William Shakespeare’s Macbeth and King Lear. Fluid bodies and bodily fluids in premodern Europe: bodies, blood, and tears in literature, theology, and art. (pp. 113-129) edited by Anne M. Scott and Michael David Barbezat. Leeds, United Kingdom: Arc Humanities Press.
Sellberg, Karin (2019). Queer Patience: Sedgwick’s Identity Narratives. Reading Sedgwick. (pp. 189-202) Durham, NC United States: Duke University Press. doi: 10.1215/9781478005339-014
Sellberg, Karin (2018). Literary temporalities. Gender: time. (pp. 301-316) edited by Karin Sellberg. New York, United States: Macmillan Reference USA.
Sellberg, Karin and Donaghy, Paige (2018). Feminist historiography. Gender: time. (pp. 67-84) edited by Karin Sellberg. New York, NY United States: Macmillan Reference USA.
Sellberg, Karin and Hoogland, Renee C. (2018). Introduction. Gender: time. (pp. xiii-xvii) edited by Karin Sellberg. New York, NY, United States: Macmillan Reference USA.
Bowman, Paul, Cannon, Kristopher, del Rio, Elena, Denson, Shane, Ivakhiv, Adrian, Maccormack, Patricia, O'Rourke, Michael, Sellberg, Karin and Shaviro, Steven (2016). Post cinematic affect: a conversation in five parts. Post cinema: theorizing 21st-century film. (pp. 879-932) edited by Shane Denson and Julia Leyda. Falmer, Sussex, United Kingdom: REFRAME Books.
Sellberg, Karin (2016). The turn to life. New Alchemists: Art Oreinte objet, Oron Catts & Ionat Zurr with Corrie Van Sice, Ian Haig, Nadege Phillipe-Janon, Michaela Gleave, Thomas Thwaites, and Lu Yang. (pp. 8-9) edited by Alicia King (Curator). Hobart, TAS, Australia: Salamanca Arts Centre.
Sellberg, Karin (2015). Embodied platonisms: the erotic choreographies of Angela Carter and John Cameron Mitchell. Corporeality and culture: bodies in movement. (pp. 95-108) edited by Karin Sellberg, Lena Wanggren and Kamillea Aghtan. Farnham, Surrey, United Kingdom: Ashgate. doi: 10.4324/9781315574363-14
Sellberg, Karin (2015). Monsters, margins and corporealising choreographies. Corporeality and culture: bodies in movement. (pp. 47-52) edited by Karin Sellberg, Lena Wanggren and Kamillea Aghtan. Farnham, Surrey, United Kingdom: Ashgate.
Sellberg, Karin, Wanggren, Lena and Aghtan, Kamillea (2015). Preface. Corporeality and culture: bodies in movement. (pp. xiii-xv) edited by Karin Sellberg, Lena Wanggren and Kamillea Aghtan. Farnham, England: Ashgate.
Sellberg, Karin (2015). Queer (mis)representations of early modern sexual monsters. Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past. (pp. 243-264) edited by Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Univerisity Press.
Sellberg, Karin (2015). Beyond queer time after 9/11: the work of Jeanette Winterson. Women's fiction and post-9/11 contexts. (pp. 65-79) edited by Peter Childs, Claire Colebrook and Sebastian Groes. Lanham, MD, United States: Lexington Books.
Sellberg, Karin and Wånggren, Lena (2013). The dismemberment of will: early modern fear of castration. Castration and Culture in the Middle Ages. (pp. 295-313) edited by Larissa Tracy. Cambridge, UK: D. S. Brewer.
Sellberg, Karin and Tym, Linda (2013). Foreword. Northern Light: New Writing 2012-2013. A collection of poetry, prose and essays from the 2012–13 Scottish Universities' International Summer School in Edinburgh, Scotland. (pp. 1-2) edited by Karin Sellberg and Linda Tym. Edinburgh, Scotland, UK: Scottish Universities' International Summer School (SUISS) Publications.
Sellberg, Karin (2012). Transgender identity and passing authentically. Pro-passing, transgender identity and literature: (post-)transexual politics and poetics of passing. Passing/Out: Sexual Identity Veiled and Revealed. (pp. 211-219) edited by Dennis R. Cooley and Kelby Harrison. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.
Sellberg, Karin (2012). Transgender identity and passing authentically: a response to overall. Passing/Out: Sexual Identity Veiled and Revealed. (pp. 229-231) edited by Dennis R. Cooley and Kelby Harrison. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.
Sellberg, Karin (2012). Transgender identity and passing authentically: comments on Christine Overall's "Gender, Aspirational Identity, and Passing". Passing/Out: Sexual Identity Veiled and Revealed. (pp. 223-227) edited by Dennis R. Cooley and Kelby Harrison. Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing.
Sellberg, Karin (2012). Slime and time: cannibalistic erotics at the limits of temporal transgression. Transgression and Its Limits. (pp. 121-132) edited by Matt Foley, Neil McRobert and Aspasia Stephanou. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Journal Articles
Underwood, Mair and Sellberg, Karin (2024). ‘Project Monster’: Exploring Projects of Monstrification in Bodybuilding Communities. Body & Society, 30 (4), 57-84. doi: 10.1177/1357034x241293037
Sellberg, Karin, Stephens, Elizabeth, Efstathiadou, Anna, Pillai, Suja, Yamada, Kazuki and Wise, Beck (2020). Medical humanities research showcase: the emergence of a new trans-disciplinary field in a time of precarity. Continuum, 34 (6), 1-17. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842121
Stephens, Elizabeth, Sellberg, Karin and Donaghy, Paige (2020). Precarious futures: cultural studies in pandemic times. Continuum, 34 (6), 807-815. doi: 10.1080/10304312.2020.1842120
Stephens, Elizabeth and Sellberg, Karin (2019). The somatechnics of breath: trans* life at this moment in history: an interview with Susan Stryker. Australian Feminist Studies, 34 (99), 107-119. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605490
Sellberg, Karin (2019). The ‘turns’ of feminist time: evolutionary logic, life and renewal in ‘new materialist’ feminist philosophy. Australian Feminist Studies, 34 (99), 93-106. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605488
Stephens, Elizabeth and Sellberg, Karin (2019). The somatechnics of life and death: recent trends in gender studies. Australian Feminist Studies, 34 (99), 1-9. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2019.1605492
Sellberg, Karin (2018). Review of The History of British Women's Writing, 1970-Present. Australian Feminist Studies, 33 (95), 164-166. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2018.1498737
Sellberg, Karin (2017). Review of The Feminine Subject, by Susan Hekman. Australian Feminist Studies, 31 (90), 519-521. doi: 10.1080/08164649.2016.1278159
Aghtan, Kamillea, Ford, Akkadia, Kerruish, Erika, Olive, Rebecca, Sellberg, Karin and Stephens, Elizabeth (2016). Technicity, temporality, embodiment: guest editors’ introduction. Australian Feminist Studies, Virtual Special Issue
Sellberg, Karin and Hinton, Peta (2016). The possibilities of feminist quantum thinking. Rhizomes: cultural studies in emerging knowledge (30). doi: 10.20415/rhiz/030.i01
Sellberg, Karin (2016). The subjective cut: sex reassignment surgery in 1960s and 1970s science fiction. Medical Humanities, 42 (4), e20-e25. doi: 10.1136/medhum-2016-010968
Sellberg, Karin and Sellberg, Ann (2014). Fluid Fat: Considerations of Culture and Corporeality. InterAlia - A Journal of Queer Studies (9), 304-318.
Sellberg, Karin and Aghtan, Kamillea (2014). Being and Slime: An Alluvial Introduction. InterAlia - A Journal of Queer Studies (9), 166-185.
Sellberg, Karin (2014). The philosophy of ‘The Gap’: feminist fat and corporeal (dis)connection. Somatechnics, 4 (1), 95-107. doi: 10.3366/soma.2014.0114
Sellberg, Karin, Aghtan, Kamillea and Wanggren, Lena (2014). The somatechnics of movement. Somatechnics, 4 (1), 1-8. doi: 10.3366/soma.2014.0109
Wanggren, Lena and Sellberg, Karin (2012). Intersectionality and dissensus: a negotiation of the feminist classroom. Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, 31 (5-6), 542-555. doi: 10.1108/02610151211235514
Sellberg, Karin (2011). Sublime gender transposition: the reformed platonism of Jacques Rancière’s aesthetics as queer performance. Transformations (19).
Sellberg, Karin (2009). Transitions and transformation: from gender performance to becoming gendered. Australian Feminist Studies, 24 (59), 71-84. doi: 10.1080/08164640802645158
Sellberg, Karin (2008). Rosi Braidotti (2002) Metamorphoses: Towards a Feminist Theory of Becoming, Cambridge: Polity Press. Rosi Braidotti (2006) Transpositions: On Nomadic Ethics, Cambridge: Polity Press.. Deleuze Studies, 2 (Suppl), 137-140. doi: 10.3366/E1750224108000408
Newspaper Article
Stephens, Elizabeth, Dickson, Melissa and Sellberg, Karin (2022, 08 15). Australasian Health and Medical Humanities: Work-in-Progress Series The polyphony: conversations across the medical humanities
Creative Work
Clement, Jennifer, Armstrong, Aurelia, Piccinini, Patricia, Sellberg, Karin, O'Connell, Lisa, Stephens, Elizabeth and Gatens, Moira (2018). Patricia Piccinini, Curious Affection: panel discussion and Mary Shelley's legacy public lecture. Brisbane, QLD, Australia: QAGOMA and The University of Queensland.