Jane (Anne) Gallop (born
1952) is a Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the
University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee
. Much of her work centers on reading
Jacques Lacan's
psychoanalytic theory, particularly in
the context of the American and French
Feminist responses to it. She has also articulated
a feminist theory of
sexual
harassment, produced largely through analyzing her own
experiences (see
Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment,
and
Anecdotal Theory below.) In
Feminist Accused of
Sexual Harassment she defends student-teacher relationships
and argues that feminists are incapable of sexual harassment.
Her most recent book,
Living with His Camera (Duke
University Press, 2003) focuses on the relationship between
photography as art and photography as family history.
Gallop explores how
the photography of her longtime partner, University of
Wisconsin–Milwaukee
film professor Dick Blau,
chronicles their relationship and also relationships between them
and their two children, Max and Ruby. On the basis of black
and white photographs of them that Blau regularly took, Gallop
became interested in the implications of being the photograph's
subject. Blau's talent for finding the perfect picture in the
mundane moment is combined with Gallop's commentary as a subject
and as a scholar. Each chapter involves analysis of an influential
book concerning photography -- including
Roland Barthes's
Camera Lucida and
Susan Sontag's
On Photography
in relation to Blau's photographs. Gallops' analysis of what she
finds in the photographs focuses on male/female relationships,
childhood, sibling rivalry, intimate and erotic moments, and how
the camera both captures and distorts these moments. Her conclusion
is that the camera has become a "third person" in her relationship
with Blau, creating the triangle of photographer, camera, and
subject. Then too, the camera is able to show new angles, insights,
flaws, and wonders that the individual people cannot themselves see
without the camera's special quality for freezing and framing
moments and experiences in time.
Bibliography of Book-length Works
- Intersections: A Reading of Sade with Bataille, Blanchot,
and Klossowski. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1981.
- The Daughter's Seduction: Feminism and Psychoanalysis.
London: Macmillan Press; and Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1982.
- Reading Lacan. Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
1985.
- Thinking Through the Body. New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988.
- Around 1981: Academic Feminist Literary Theory. New
York: Routledge, 1991.
- Pedagogy: The Question of Impersonation. (ed.)
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
- Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment. Duke University
Press. 1997. (Discussion of this book by Gallop and others,
including witty and pointed remarks by one of the "sad, angry
students": PRETEXT, a Re/INter/VIEW with Jane Gallop)
- Anecdotal Theory. Durham: Duke University Press,
2002.
- Living with His Camera. Durham: Duke University Press,
2003.
References
- The Chronicle: Colloquy: Sexual harassment?:
Background