Dr Anna Watz (Uppsala University): Surrealism and Feminine Difference

Surrealism and Feminine Difference

This talk explores convergences between surrealism and feminism of difference, a branch of French second-wave feminism indebted to poststructuralism and psychoanalysis and often associated with theorists such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, and Julia Kristeva. Through an analysis of a series of visual and literary works by Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini, Leonora Carrington, and Dorothea Tanning, I locate a concern with symbolising ‘feminine difference’ at the heart of postwar surrealism, one that resonates in tangible ways with the non-phallogocentric mode of representation sought by feminists of difference in the 1970s. These intersections suggest that the two intellectual and aesthetic traditions were contingent on each other in ways not previously accounted for.

The lecture will be in-person (G.01, 50 George Square) and will be followed by a pre-launch drinks reception of Dr Watz's Surrealism and Feminine Difference (2026, Oxford University Press).

Anna Watz is Associate Professor of English at Uppsala University, Sweden. She is the author of Angela Carter and Surrealism: ‘A Feminist Libertarian Aesthetic’ (Routledge, 2016), editor of Surrealist Women’s Writing: A Critical Exploration (Manchester University Press, 2020) and A History of the Surrealist Novel (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and co-editor of the two-volume Angela Carter’s Pasts / Angela Carter’s Futures (Bloomsbury, 2025). Her second monograph, Surrealism and Feminine Difference, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.

Artwork: Ithell Colquhoun, Alcove, 1946.

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