Participant Info

First Name
Alison M. Downham
Last Name
Moore
Country
Australia
State
Affiliation
Western Sydney University
Website URL
https://www.westernsydney.edu.au/staff_profiles/WSU/associate_professor_alison_downham_moore
Keywords
History of medicine; women's history; global history; historical theory; history of sexuality; history of European psychiatry; long history of the sexes; history of digestive health; governance and management
Availability
Media Contact
Additional Contact Information
PhD
PhD

Personal Info

Photo
About Me

I am a conceptual and intellectual historian of medicine, women’s health and sexuality at Western Sydney University in Australia, where I am Associate Dean of Research in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and a member of the Professoriate Leadership Group. I am Managing Editor of Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, a Senior Teaching Fellow of AdvanceHE, and a Quality Matters qualified international peer-reviewer of online teaching design.

My books include:

A few indicative journal articles include:

  • The Global Proliferation of Radical Gynaecological Surgeries: A History of the Present. Co-authored with Fouzieyha Towghi, Holly Ashford, Tinashe Dune and Rashmi Pithavadian. History & Anthropology 34 (4), September 2023: 1-25. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2021.1987232.
  • Race, Class, Caste, Disability, Sterilization and Hysterectomy, BMJ Medical Humanities 49, February 2023: 27-37. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2022-012381.
  • Modern European Sexological and Orientalist Assimilations of Medieval Islamicate ‘Ilm al-Bah to Erotology. History of the Human Sciences 36 (3) December 2021, 1-27. DOI: 10.1177/09526951211056152.
  • Aphrodisiacs in the Global History of Medical Thought, co-authored with Rashmi Pithavadian, Journal of Global History 16 (1), March 2021: 24-43. DOI: 10.1017/S1740022820000108.
  • The Historicity of Sexuality: Knowledge of the Past in the Emergence of Modern Sexual Science, Modern Intellectual History 18 (2), June 2021, 403-426. DOI: 10.1017/S147924431900026X.
  • Victorian Medicine Was Not Responsible for Repressing the Clitoris: Rethinking Homology in the Long History of Women’s Genital Anatomy. Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (1) August 2018, 53-81. DOI: 10.1086/698277.

Recent media include:

Recent Publications

Peer-Reviewed Authored Books

Alison M. Downham Moore, The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women’s Ageing, A History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022). 488 pages. ISBN: 9780192842916. Shortlisted for the Australasian European History Association Book Prize 2023, and Finalist in the Forward Indies Book Awards in Women’s Studies 2022.

Alison M. Moore, Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology (Lanham: Lexington Books [Rowman & Littlefield], 2016). 324 pages. ISBN: 978-0-7391-3077-3.

Peter Cryle and Alison Moore, Frigidity: An Intellectual History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011). 317 pages. ISBN: 978-0-230-30345-4.

Peer-Reviewed Edited Books and Journal Special Editions

Alison Downham Moore, Tinashe Dune and Fouzieyha Towghi (eds), Australian Feminist Studies. ‘Diverse Perspectives on Health and Medicine’. Forthcoming 2024.

Alison Downham Moore and Sarah Lamb (eds), The Journal of Aging Studies 64: Special Issue on ‘Gendered and Sexual Aging in the History and Culture of Medicine’. Finalisation September 2023. https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/journal-of-aging-studies/vol/64/suppl/C

Alison M. Moore, Manon Mathias and Jørgen Valeur (eds), Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, Volume 29 (2), Special issue on ‘The Gut-Brain Axis in History and Culture,’ 2018.

Manon Mathias and Alison M. Moore (eds), Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture (New York: Palgrave, 2018). ISBN 978-3-030-01857-3.

Alison M. Moore (ed), Sexing Political Culture in the History of France (New York: Cambria, 2012). ISBN: 978-1-604-97822-3.

Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles (sole authored unless otherwise indicated)

Global and World Historiographies of Feminism and Gender-Struggle, co-authored with Bridget Brooklyn. Lilith: A Feminist History Journal. Accepted. Forthcoming December 2023.

The Global Proliferation of Radical Gynaecological Surgeries: A History of the Present. Co-authored with Fouzieyha Towghi, Holly Ashford, Tinashe Dune and Rashmi Pithavadian. History & Anthropology 34 (4), September 2023: 1-25. DOI: 10.1080/02757206.2021.1987232.

Covid-19 Disruption to Research and Research Training in Australia: Gender and Career-Stage Inequalities, Australian Universities’ Review 64 (2), May 2023, 15-26: https://issuu.com/nteu/docs/aur_64_02/s/23587159.

Foucault’s 1960s Lectures on Sexuality, co-authored with Stuart Elden, Special Issue on ‘Foucault Before the Collège de France’, Theory, Culture and Society 40 (1-2) May 2023: 279 – 293.DOI: 10.1177/02632764211017983.

Race, Class, Caste, Disability, Sterilization and Hysterectomy, BMJ Medical Humanities 49, February 2023: 27-37. DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2022-012381.

Modern European Sexological and Orientalist Assimilations of Medieval Islamicate ‘Ilm al-Bah to Erotology. History of the Human Sciences 36 (3) December 2021, 1-27. DOI: 10.1177/09526951211056152.

Aphrodisiacs in the Global History of Medical Thought, co-authored with Rashmi Pithavadian, Journal of Global History 16 (1), March 2021: 24-43. DOI: 10.1017/S1740022820000108.

The Historicity of Sexuality: Knowledge of the Past in the Emergence of Modern Sexual Science, Modern Intellectual History 18 (2), June 2021, 403-426. DOI: 10.1017/S147924431900026X.

Temporal Layering in the Long Conceptual History of Sexual Medicine: Reading Koselleck with Foucault, Journal of the Philosophy of History 15 (1), April 2021, 5-27. DOI: 10.1163/18722636-12341428.

Foucault’s Scholarly Virtues and Sexuality Historiography, History: Journal of the Historical Association 105 (366), July 2020, 446-469. DOI: 10.1111/1468-229X.13015.

Foucault, Early Christian Ideas of Genitalia and the History of Sexuality, Journal of the History of Sexuality 29 (1), January 2020, 28-49. DOI: 10.7560/JHS29102.

L’Amour morbide: How a Transient Mental Illness Became Defunct. Intellectual History Review 29 (2), March 2019, 291-312. DOI: 10.1080/17496977.2017.1374078.

Contextualising the Microbiome-Gut-Brain Axis in History and Culture, co-authored with Manon Mathias and Jørgen Valeur. Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease 29 (2), November 2018. DOI: 10.1080/16512235.2019.1546267.

Coprophagy in Nineteenth-Century Psychiatry, Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, Volume 30 supp. November 2018. DOI: 10.1080/16512235.2018.1535737.

Victorian Medicine Was Not Responsible for Repressing the Clitoris: Rethinking Homology in the Long History of Women’s Genital Anatomy. Signs: The Journal of Women in Culture and Society 44 (1) August 2018, 53-81. DOI: 10.1086/698277.

Conceptual Layers in the Invention of Menopause in Nineteenth-Century France. French History 32 (2) May 2018, 226-248. DOI: 10.1093/fh/cry006.

Historicising Historical Theory’s History of Cultural Historiography. Cosmos & History: The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy, 12 (1), February 2016, 257-291.

文化历史主义再思考: 一条从布克哈特延续至今的谱系? (Rethinking Cultural Historicism: A Continuous Genealogy from Burckhardt to the Present?) History & Thought 1 (1), October 2014, 109-148.

The Spectacular Anus of Joseph Pujol: Recovering the Pétomane’s Unique Historic Context. French Cultural Studies 24 (1), February 2013, 27-43. DOI:10.1177/0957155812466975

Arcane Erotica and National ‘Patrimony’: Britain’s Private Case and the Collection de l’Enfer of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. Cultural Studies Review 18 (1), November 2011, 196-216. DOI: 10.5130/csr.v18i1.1821

Is the Unspeakable Singable? Henryk Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs and the Ethics of Holocaust Empathy, Portal, Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies 8 (1) January 2011, 1-17. DOI: 10.5130/portal.v8i1.1888.

Sadean Nature and Reasoned Morality in Adorno/Horkheimer’s ‘Dialectic of Enlightenment’, Psychology and Sexuality 1 (3), September 2010, 249-260. DOI: 10.1080/19419899.2010.494901

Frigidity at the Fin-de-Siècle, a Slippery and Capacious Concept, co-authored with Peter Cryle, Journal of the History of Sexuality 19 (2) May 2010, 243-261. DOI: 10.5555/jhs.2010.19.2.243.

The Invention of Sadism? The Limits of Neologisms in the History of Sexuality. Sexualities 12 (4), October 2009, 489-506. DOI: 10.1177/1363460709105715.

Recovering Difference in the Deleuzian Dichotomy of Masochism-without-Sadism. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 14 (3), November 2009, 27-43. DOI:10.1080/09697250903407500.

Frigidity, Gender and Power in French Cultural History – From Jean Fauconney to Marie Bonaparte. French Cultural Studies 20 (4), November 2009, 331-349. DOI:10.1177/0957155809344155.

Relocating Marie Bonaparte’s Clitoris. Australian Feminist Studies 24 (60), April 2009, 149-165. DOI: 10.1080/08164640902852373.

Rethinking Gendered Perversion and Degeneration in Visions of Sadism and Masochism, 1886-1930. Journal of the History of Sexuality 18 (1), January 2009, 138-157. DOI: 10.1353/sex.0.0034.

History, Memory and Trauma in Photography of the Tondues: visuality of the Vichy past through the silent image of women. Gender and History 17 (3), November 2005, 657-681. DOI: 10.1111/j.0953-5233.2005.00400.x.

Visions of Sadomasochism as a Nazi Erotic. Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review 6 (3), November 2005, 163-176.

Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters (sole-authored unless otherwise indicated)

The Impact of Sigmund Freud on the History of Sexuality, in The Cambridge World History of Sexualities, Volume 1 Chapter 5, eds. Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Mathew Kuefler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), 89-111.

Marie Bonaparte (1882-1962). In Candice Goucher (ed), Women Who Changed the World (Santa Barbara: ABC-ClIO, 2022), volume 1: 185-193.

Hypatia (c.370-414). In Candice Goucher (ed), Women Who Changed the World (Santa Barbara: ABC-ClIO, 2022), volume 2: 517-522.

The Historical Sexes. In Howard Chiang (ed), Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) History (Farmington Hills, MI: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2019), 671-677.

The Gut Feelings of Medical Culture, co-authored with Manon Mathias. In Manon Mathias and Alison M. Moore (eds), Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture (New York: Palgrave, 2018), 1-14.

Situating the Anal Freud in Nineteenth-Century Imaginaries of Excrement and Colonial Primitivity. In Manon Mathias and Alison M. Moore (eds), Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture (New York: Palgrave, 2018), 55-84.

Androgyny, Perversion and Evolutionary Pasts in Interwar Sexuality: Freud, Marañon, Bonaparte. In Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands (eds), Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 220-242.

Historicizing Sexual Symbols. In Alison M. Moore (ed), Sexing Political Culture in the History of France (New York: Cambria, 2012), 1-25.

The Erotic Republic: Dynamic Exchanges Between Politics and Sexology in the French Third Republic. In Alison M. Moore (ed), Sexing Political Culture in the History of France (New York: Cambria, 2012), 147-172.

Sadism As Social Violence. In Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher (eds), Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2011), 221-235.

Colonial Visions of ‘Third World’ Toilets: A Nineteenth-Century Discourse That Haunts Contemporary Tourism. In Olga Gershenson and Barbara Penner (eds), Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2009), 97-113.

Fin de Siècle Sexuality and Excretion. In Peter Cryle and Christopher Forth (eds), Fin de Siècle Sexuality: The Making of a Central Problem (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2008), 125-139.

Pathologising Female Sexual ‘Frigidity’ in Fin-De-Siècle France, Or How Absence Was Made Into a Thing. In David Evans and Kate Griffiths (eds), Pleasure and Pain in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 191-204.

Sexualités, identités, nationalismes. In François Rouquet, Fabrice Virgili, Danièle Voldman (eds), Amours, guerres et sexualité, 1914-1945 (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), 18-25.

History, Memory and Trauma in Photography of the Tondues: Visuality of the Vichy Past Through the Silent Image of Women. In Patricia Hayes (ed), Visual Genders, Visual Histories. (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), 139-163.

Kakao and Kaka: Chocolate and the Excretory Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe. In Ana Carden-Coyne and Christopher Forth (eds), Cultures of the Abdomen: Dietetics, Digestion and Obesity in the Modern World. (New York: Palgrave, 2005), 51-69.

Spiritual Sadomasochism: Western and Tantric Perspectives. In Natalya Lusty and Ruth Walker (eds), Masochism: Disciplines of Desire, Aesthetics of Cruelty. (Sydney: PG ARC Publications, 1998), 65-78.

The Medieval Body and the Modern Eye; A Corporeal Reading of the Old French Fabliaux. In Francesca Bussey and John O. Ward (eds), Worshipping Women; Misogyny and Mysticism in the Middle Ages. (Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 1997), 237-282.

Peer-Reviewed Conference Papers

Do Menopausal Women Need Estrogen Replacement to Avoid Osteoporosis? Journal of Evolution & Health 4 (1), December 2019, 1-10. Papers from the Ancestral Health Symposium, San Diego CA 2019. DOI: 10.15310/J34145992.

The French Elaboration of Ideas about Menopause, Sexuality and Aging 1805-1920. French History & Civilization 8: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar (2019), 34-50.

Menopause from an Integrative Historical and Evolutionary Perspective. Journal of Evolution & Health 3 (1), February 2019, 1-10. Papers from the Ancestral Health Symposium, Boseman MT, 2018. DOI: 10.15310/2334-3591.1097.

What Became of Cultural Historicism in the French Reclamation of Strasbourg After World War One? French History & Civilization 5: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar 2014, 1-15.

The Invention of the Unsexual: Situating Frigidity in the History of Sexuality and in Feminist Thought. In Vesna Drapac and André Lambelet (eds), French History & Civilization 2: Papers from the George Rudé Seminar 2009, 181-192.

Female Flesh and the Boundaries of the French Nation: A Theoretical Intervention Into Recent Historiography of the Tondues. In Stephan Atzert and Andrew Bonnell (eds), Europe’s Pasts and Presents. Proceedings of the Fourteenth Biennial Conference of the Australasian Association for European History. (Unley SA: Australian Humanities Press, 2004, 355-367.

Book Reviews, Media Articles, Translations, Introductions, Consultation Submissions, Government Reports (non-peer reviewed)

Introduction: Internationalising Lilith, Localising Diverse Feminist Pasts, co-authored with Saskia Roberts, Emma Carson, Zoe Smith, Connie Skibinski, Tianna Killoran, Huda Syyed and Bridget Andresen, Lilith: A Feminist History Journal 2023 (forthcoming).

Introduction: Gendered and Sexual Aging in the History and Culture of Medicine, co-authored with Sarah Lamb, The Journal of Aging Studies 2023 (forthcoming).

Consultation Submission: Australian Universities Accord (April 11th 2023): https://www.education.gov.au/australian-universities-accord/consultations/australian-universities-accord-panel-discussion-paper-consultation/submission/15980

Book Review: Jennifer Mitchell, Ordinary Masochisms: Agency and Desire in Victorian and Modernist Fiction. 226 pp., Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2020. ISBN: 9780813066677. Victorian Studies. Forthcoming 2023.

Book Review: Michel Foucault, Sexuality: The 1964 Clermont-Ferrand & 1969 Vincennes Lectures, ed. Claude Olivier-Doron, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021). 383pp. ISBN: 978-0-2311-95072. Journal of the History of Sexuality 31, no.3 (2022), 409-411.

Media Article: ‘Unnecessary hysterectomies still happening in India, elsewhere’, co-authored with Fouzieyha Towghi and Tinashe Dune. 360info, Special Report on Unnecessary Surgery, September 16th 2022. DOI: 10.54377/1923-09b1: https://360info.org/unnecessary-hysterectomies-are-still-happening/

Book Review:  Sean Quinlan, Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France. 336 pp., Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021. ISBN 9781501758331. Isis, Journal of the History of Science Society 13, no.3 (2022); 661-662. DOI: 10.1086/721042.

Book Review: Maria Kathryn Tomlinson, From Menstruation to the Menopause: The Female Fertility Cycle in Contemporary Women’s Writing in French, Contemporary French and Francophone Cultures, 77. 234pp., Liverpool: Liverpool University Pres, 2021. ISBN 978-1-800-34846-2. H-France 22 (77), 2022: 1-5: https://h-france.net/vol22reviews/vol22no77moore.pdf

Book Review: Jessie Hewitt, Institutionalizing Gender: Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press), 238pp. ISBN: 978-1-5017-53312. H-France 22 (12), 2022: 1-5: https://h-france.net/vol22reviews/vol22no12moore.pdf

Media Article: ‘A Long History of Aphrodisiacs, from Health Tonic to Sexual Aid,’ Psyche Magazine (Aeon Media Group Ltd), 19th May 2021: https://psyche.co/ideas/a-long-history-of-aphrodisiacs-from-health-tonic-to-sexual-aid

Introduction: Contextualising the microbiota–gut–brain axis in history and culture, co-authored with Manon Mathias and Jørgen Valeur, Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease (2019), Article: 1546267.

Government Report: ‘How the Sexes Have Been Counted in World History’. Submission (by invitation) to the Australian Human Rights Commission project on Protecting the Human Rights of People Born with Variations in Sex. September 14th 2018.

Translation: Fabrice Virgili, ‘The Reconstruction of a Virile France 1944-45’. (French to English for Alison M. Moore (ed), Sexing Political Culture in the History of France (New York: Cambria, 2012), 267-284.

Book Review: E. Jane Burns, Bodytalk: When women speak in Old French literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993), 304pp. ISBN: 9780812214055. Parergon 12 (2), 1995, 145-148. DOI: 10.1353/pgn.1995.0087.

Media Coverage
Country Focus
France, Germany
Expertise by Geography
France, Germany, India, Mediterranean, Middle East, United Kingdom, Western Europe
Expertise by Chronology
Medieval, Pre-17th century, 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, Early Modern, Modern, 20th century, 21st century
Expertise by Topic
Book History, Disability, Family, Food History, Gender, Genocide, Higher Ed, Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, Indigenous Peoples, Medicine, Politics, Race, Sexuality, Sexual Violence, Women, World War I, World War II