Fiona Barnett

Fiona Barnett is a Ph.D. candidate in the Literature Program and Women's Studies at Duke University. She is currently at work on her dissertation, entitled Turning the Body Inside Out, which is a genealogy of the fantasy that the body requires investigation, and traces the attachment to the kind of knowledges that can be produced by examining the body (both inside and out). 

She graduated with a B.A. in Modern Culture & Media from Brown University in 2001, and then spent several years working in a multimedia studio in Vancouver, BC.  She is fascinated with both the practical and theoretical implications of digital media and learning, and has incorporated digital pedagogical techniques in her classes at Duke, and participation with several online communities. She has also developed a workshop on how to incorporate digital media and learning for fellow teachers and is always trying new tools to use within the college environment. In particular, she is fascinated with the ability of the digital environment to promote a different kind of conversation, and is especially thrilled when that energy spills over into the "RL" walls of the classroom itself.  

Her scholarly work is at the intersection of feminist and queer theory, science studies, critical theory and visual studies. She is currently writing her dissertation, Turning the Body Inside Out, which considers the social, scientific, aesthetic and theoretical practices which discursively produce the body as a visible – and thus knowable –  object by repeatedly staging the scene of its dissection. 

In particular, her project focuses on the historical practices and contemporary situations that reinscribe the desire for an open and legible body, including the autopsy, dissection, lens technologies, museum exhibits, freak shows, serial killers, DNA and especially critical theory itself.