Associate Professor Alison Downham Moore

Associate Dean, Research,
Dean's Unit, School of Humanities & Comm Arts

Associate Professor of History and Medical Humanities,
Humanities (Arts)

Biography
Contact
Publications
Projects
Supervision
Teaching
Media

Biography

Alison Downham Moore, FRHistS, SFHEA, GIA(affilited), AAICD [she/her or they/them]. I am a medical humanities scholar of global conceptual and intellectual history and have worked at Western Sydney University since 2012. I received both my Bachelor of Arts Honours with Medal in European Studies (1995) and my PhD in history from the University of Sydney (2002). I have published widely on the history of French and German psychiatry and medicine, on the long global history of sexuality, gender and medicine. I have also written about historical theory, the history of French politics, genocide historiographic debates, and the history of European medical ideas about digestion and diet.

I am a Senior Fellow of AdvanceHE (HEA), and a certified Quality Matters (QM) international peer-reviewer of online teaching design, and the Managing Editor of Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, published by ANU Press.

In addition to my humanities qualifications, I also studied biomedical sciences at the University of New England (2012-2015), hold a UTS Supervising Indigenous Higher Degree Research microcredential (2022), two London School of Economics and Politics management microcredentials (2022-2023), two certificates in board directing from the Governance Institute of Australia (2023 & 2024), one from the Australian Institute of Company Directors (2024), and a Graduate Certificate of Tertiary Education (Management) from the University of Melbourne (2023).

I am a certified and experienced university and SoHCA research mentor and am happy to provide mentoring and peer support to scholars in all humanities, communication, practice-based, health and social science disciplines. I welcome prospective honours, masters and PhD projects in any area of global, European or Inidigenous cultural, political or intellectual history, any area of historiography or historical theory, any area of sexuality, feminist or gender studies, and any area of history of medicine, science, sport, diet, digestion or health across time, place or different cultures.

I welcome meaningful research collaboration with scholars of any level of experience, from diverse disciplines, and from all global regions. Corresponding scholars are welcome to write to me in English, French or German.

Most of my publications can be freely downloaded from my academia page: https://alisonmoore.academia.edu/. But feel free to get in touch if you have any trouble accessing any of them.

Some recent podcast interviews and recorded talks include:

- January 2024 Audio Podcast Interview with Jana Byars about my book The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: History. Part of the New Books in History podcast: https://newbooksnetwork.com/the-french-invention-of-menopause-and-the-medicalisation-of-womens-ageing

- June 1st 2022, 2nd Annual Lecture of the Australasian Health and Medical Humanities Network, University of Queensland, 'Gender in Medicine and Health': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tK6Qm3HlF14

This information has been contributed by Associate Professor Moore.

Qualifications

GradCertTerEd University of Melbourne
AdvCert in The Sciences University of New England
Phd University of Sydney
BA(Hons) University of Sydney

Professional Memberships

Australian Historical Association (2021 - 2026)
Australian Women's History Network (2021 - 2023)
American Historical Association (2023 - 2025)
Australasian Health and Medical Humanities Network (2021 - 2026)
Society for French Studies (UK) (2022 - 2027)
Women on Boards (2023 - 2024)
Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg Alumni Fellow (2020 - 2025)
Advance HE Senior Teaching Fellow (2022 - 2027)
Women in Global Health network (2023 - 2023)
Professoriate Leadership Group (2023 - 2025)
Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) (2021)
Alumni Fellow of the Marie Curie Asociation (EU) (2021)
Editorial Board member, History: Journal of the Historical Association (UK) (2021)
International Advisory Board member, New Directions in the Humanities, journal collective (USA) (2021)
Association for Tertiary Education Management, member (2022 - 2023)
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (UK), international advisory board (2022)
Affiliate Fellow of Governance Institute of Australia (2023 - 2023)
Women's History Network (2023 - 2023)
Society for French Historical Studies (SFHS) (2023 - 2024)
European Association for the History of Medicine (2023 - 2025)
Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy & Social Studies of Science (2023 - 2024)
Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine (NSW Vice President) (2022 - 2025)
Quality Matters Peer Reviewer (2022 - 2023)
Lilith: A Feminist History Journal (Managing Editor) (2022 - 2025)

Awards

University Medal and Philip Erdos Prize for Best History Honours Thesis, University of Sydney 1995-02-01
Visiting Scholar grant from the Society for the Study of French History 2017-03-15
Grant-in-Aid from the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality for travel relating to research on gay SM subcultures in the U.S. 2002-09-01
Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP 190101457 2019-01-02
Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg Research Fellowship 2019-01-02
Humanities and Communication Arts (WSU) Researcher of the Year (traditional) 2019-06-01
Humanities and Communication Arts (WSU) Research Collaboration Funding: Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture 2018-06-01
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (UTS) Research Development Grant: The Forgotten History of Cultural Historiography 2009-06-01
Early Career Researcher Development Grant, UQ (unable to be accepted due to change of post) 2008-05-01
Australian Academy of the Humanities Travel Grant: Sadism, Masochism and Gender Identification in France, 1890-1925 2006-07-01
Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (USA): Granti-in-aid: Gay SM Subcultures in the U.S. 2002-07-01
Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies Marie Curie Senior Fellowship 2020-01-01
Humanities and Communication Arts, Research collaboration funding with A/Prof Mark Kelly 2022-01-01
Society for French Studies 2023 International Visiting Fellowship 2022-06-08
AdvanceHE Senior Teaching Fellowship 2021-12-01

Organisational Unit (School / Division)

Dean's Unit, School of Humanities & Comm Arts
Humanities (Arts)

Committees

School Research and Higher Degree committee
School Research and Higher Degree committee
School Disability Support Committee
University Research Committee
History: Journal of the Historical Association
New Directions in the Humanities
Research Quality Forum
University Mentoring Scheme
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society
Professoriate Leadership Group
School of Humanities and Communication Arts Mentor
Lilith: Journal of Feminist History
Quality Matters Peer Reviewer

Contact

Email:	Alison.Moore@westernsydney.edu.au
Phone:
Mobile:
Location:

PLEASE NOTE: obtaining information from this Directory must be for the legitimate purposes of doing business with and within Western Sydney University, and must not be used for unsolicited bulk e-mailing (spamming) or similar purposes.

Teaching

Previous Teaching Areas

100873 Inventing Modernity, 2013
101991 History of Sexuality, 2018
102000 Modern European History and Politics, 2017
102001 Theories and Methods of History, 2015
HUMN7051 How to Write History, 2022

Publications

Books

Moore, A. (2022), 'The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: a History', : Oxford University Press 9780192842916.
Mathias, M. and Moore, A. (2018), 'Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture', : Palgrave Macmillan 9783030018566.
Moore, A. (2016), 'Sexual Myths of Modernity: Sadism, Masochism and Historical Teleology', : Lexington Books 9780739130773.
Moore, A. (2012), 'Sexing Political Culture in the History of France', : Cambria Press 9781604978223.
Cryle, P. and Moore, A. (2011), 'Frigidity: An Intellectual History', : Palgrave 9780230303454.

Chapters in Books

Moore, A. (2022), 'Hypatia (c.370-414 CE)', Women Who Changed the World: Their Lives, Challenges, and Accomplishments through History. Volume 2: E-K, ABC-CLIO 9781440868276.
Moore, A. (2022), 'Bonaparte, Marie (1882-1962)', Women Who Changed the World: Their Lives, Challenges, and Accomplishments through History. Volume 1: A-D, ABC-CLIO 9781440868269.
Moore, A. (2019), 'Historical sexes', Global Encyclopedia of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History, Charles Scribner's Sons 9780684325545.
Mathias, M. and Moore, A. (2018), 'The gut feelings of medical culture', Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture, Palgrave Macmillan 9783030018566.
Moore, A. (2018), 'Situating the anal Freud in nineteenth-century imaginaries of excrement and colonial primitivity', Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture, Palgrave Macmillan 9783030018566.
Moore, A. (2015), 'Androgyny, perversion, and social evolution in interwar psychoanalytic thought', Sex, Knowledge, and Receptions of the Past, Oxford University Press 9780199660513.
Moore, A. (2012), 'The erotic republic : dynamic exchanges between politics and sexology in the French Third Republic', Sexing Political Culture in the History of France, Cambria Press 9781604978223.
Moore, A. (2012), 'Historicizing sexual symbols', Sexing Political Culture in the History of France, Cambria Press 9781604978223.
Moore, A. (2011), 'Sadism As Social Violence', Bodies, Sex and Desire from the Renaissance to the Present, Palgrave 9780230283688.
Moore, A. (2009), 'Colonial Visions of Third World Toilets: A Nineteenth-Century Discourse That Haunts Contemporary Tourism', Ladies and Gents: Public Toilets and Gender, Temple University Press 9781592139392.
Moore, A. (2008), 'Fin de Siecle Sexuality and Excretion', Fin de Siecle Sexuality: The Making of a Central Problem, University of Delaware Press 9780874130379.
Moore, A. (2008), 'Pathologising Female Sexual Frigidity in Fin-De-Siecle France, Or How Absence Was Made Into a Thing', Pleasure and Pain in Nineteenth-Century French Literature and Culture, Rodopi 9789042025028.
Moore, A. (2007), 'Sexualites, identites, nationalismes dans la longue guerre europeenne', Amours, guerres et sexualite, 1914-1945, Gallimard 9782070118960.
Moore, A. (2006), 'History, Memory and Trauma in Photography of the Tondues: Visuality of the Vichy Past Through the Silent Image of Women', Visual Genders, Visual Histories, Blackwell 9781405146654.
Moore, A. (2005), 'Kakao and Kaka: Chocolate and the Excretory Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe', Cultures of the Abdomen: Dietetics, Digestion and Obesity in the Modern World, Palgrave 9781403965219.
Moore, A. (1998), 'Spiritual sadomasochism : Western and Tantric perspectives', Masochism: Disciplines of Desire: Aesthetics of Cruelty: Politics of Danger, University of Sydney 1864513551.
Moore, A. (1997), 'The medieval body and the modern eye : a corporeal reading of the old French Fabliaux', Worshipping Women: Misogyny and Mysticism in the Middle Ages: Six Essays with an Introduction and a Note on the Ruthwell Cross, University of Sydney 9781864512786.

Journal Articles

Moore, A. and Elden, S. (2023), 'Foucault's 1960s lectures on sexuality', Theory, Culture and Society, vol 40, no 1-2 , pp 279 - 293.
Moore, A., Towghi, F., Ashford, H., Dune, T. and Pithavadian, R. (2023), 'The global proliferation of radical gynaecological surgeries : a history of the present', History and Anthropology, vol 34, no 4 , pp 673 - 697.
Moore, A. (2023), 'Modern European sexological and orientalist assimilations of medieval Islamicate 'ilm al-bah to erotology', History of the Human Sciences, vol 36, no 5 , pp 15 - 41.
Moore, A. (2023), 'Race, class, caste, disability, sterilisation and hysterectomy', Medical Humanities, vol 49, no 1 , pp 27 - 37.
Moore, A. (2023), 'Ordinary masochisms : agency and desire in Victorian and modernist fiction, by Jennifer Mitchell [Book Review]', Victorian Studies, vol 65, no 2 , pp 335 - 337.
Brooklyn, B. and Moore, A. (2023), 'Review essay on global and world histories of feminism and gender struggle', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, vol 29 , pp 31 - 49.
Moore, A., Roberts, S., Carson, E., Smith, Z., Skibinski, C., Killoran, T., Syyed, H. and Andresen, B. (2023), 'Internationalising Lilith, localising diverse feminist pasts', Lilith: A Feminist History Journal, vol 29 , pp 3 - 7.
Moore, A. (2022), 'Sean Quinlan. Morbid Undercurrents: Medical Subcultures in Postrevolutionary France [Book review]', Isis, vol 113, no 3 , pp 661 - 662.
Moore, A. (2022), 'Jessie Hewitt, Institutionalizing Gender: Madness, the Family, and Psychiatric Power in Nineteenth-Century France [Book review]', H-France Review, vol 22, no 12 , pp 1 - 5.
Moore, A. (2022), '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 [Book review]', H-France Reviews, vol 22, no 77 , pp 1 - 5.
Moore, A. (2022), 'Sexuality: The 1964 Clermont-Ferrand & 1969 Vincennes Lectures by Michel Foucault [Book review]', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol 31, no 3 , pp 409 - 411.
Moore, A. (2022), 'Covid-19 disruption to research and research training in Australia : gender and career-stage inequalities', Australian Universities' Review, vol 64, no 2 , pp 15 - 26.
Moore, A. (2021), 'The historicity of sexuality : knowledge of the past in the emergence of modern sexual science', Modern Intellectual History, vol 18, no 2 , pp 403 - 426.
Moore, A. (2021), 'Temporal layering in the long conceptual history of sexual medicine : reading Koselleck with Foucault', Journal of the Philosophy of History, vol 15, no 1 , pp 5 - 27.
Moore, A. and Pithavadian, R. (2021), 'Aphrodisiacs in the global history of medical thought', Journal of Global History, vol 16, no 1 , pp 24 - 43.
Moore, A. (2020), 'Foucault, early Christian ideas of genitalia, and the history of sexuality', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol 29, no 1 , pp 28 - 50.
Moore, A. (2020), 'Foucault's scholarly virtues and sexuality historiography', History, vol 105, no 366 , pp 446 - 469.
Moore, A. (2019), 'L'Amour morbide : how a transient mental illness became defunct', Intellectual History Review, vol 29, no 2 , pp 291 - 312.
Moore, A. (2019), 'Menopause from an integrative evolutionary and historical perspective', Journal of Evolution and Health, vol 3, no 1 .
Moore, A. (2019), 'The French elaboration of ideas about menopause, sexuality and ageing 1805-1920', French History and Civilization, vol 8 , pp 34 - 50.
Moore, A. (2019), 'Do menopausal women need estrogen replacement to avoid osteoporosis?', Journal of Evolution and Health, vol 4, no 1 .
Moore, A. (2018), 'Conceptual layers in the invention of menopause in nineteenth-century France', French History, vol 32, no 2 , pp 226 - 248.
Moore, A. (2018), 'Victorian medicine was not reponsible for repressing the clitoris : rethinking homology in the long history of women's genital anatomy', Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, vol 44, no 1 , pp 53 - 81.
Moore, A. (2018), 'Coprophagy in nineteenth-century psychiatry', Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, vol 29, no 2 .
Moore, A., Mathias, M. and Valeur, J. (2018), 'Contextualising the microbiota-gut-brain axis in history and culture', Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, vol 29, no 2 .
Moore, A., Mathias, M. and Valeur, J. (2018), 'Special Issue: Gut-Brain Axis in History and Culture', Microbial Ecology in Health and Disease, vol 29, no 2 .
Moore, A. (2016), 'Historicising historical theory's history of cultural historiography', Cosmos and History, vol 12, no 1 , pp 257 - 291.
Moore, A. (2014), 'What became of cultural historicism in the French reclamation of Strasbourg after World War One?', French History and Civilization, vol 6 , pp 82 - 91.
Moore, A. (2014), 'Rethinking cultural historicism : a continuous genealogy from Burckhardt to the present?', Journal of History and Thought, vol 1 , pp 109 - 148.
Moore, A. (2013), 'The spectacular anus of Joseph Pujol : recovering the Petomane's unique historic context', French Cultural Studies, vol 24, no 1 , pp 27 - 43.
Moore, A. (2012), 'Arcane erotica and national 'patrimony' : Britain's Private Case and the Collection de l'Enfer of the Bibliotheque Nationale de France', Cultural Studies Review, vol 18, no 1 , pp 196 - 216.
Moore, A. (2011), 'Is the unspeakable singable? The ethics of 'Holocaust' representation and the reception of Gorecki's Symphony no. 3', Portal: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, vol 8, no 1 .
Moore, A. (2010), 'Sadean nature and reasoned morality in Adorno/Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment', Psychology and Sexuality, vol 1, no 3 , pp 249 - 260.
Moore, A. and Cryle, P. (2010), 'Frigidity at the fin-de-siecle, a slippery and capacious concept', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol 19, no 2 , pp 243 - 261.
Moore, A. (2009), 'The invention of sadism? : the limits of neologisms in the history of sexuality', Sexualities, vol 12, no 4 , pp 489 - 506.
Moore, A. (2009), 'Rethinking gendered perversion and degeneration in visions of sadism and masochism, 1886-1930', Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol 18, no 1 , pp 138 - 157.
Moore, A. (2009), 'Recovering difference in the Deleuzian dichotomy of masochism-without-sadism', Angelaki, vol 14, no 3 , pp 27 - 43.
Moore, A. (2009), 'Relocating Marie Bonaparte's clitoris', Australian Feminist Studies, vol 24, no 60 , pp 149 - 165.
Moore, A. (2009), 'Frigidity, gender and power in French cultural history : from Jean Fauconney to Marie Bonaparte', French Cultural Studies, vol 20, no 4 , pp 331 - 349.
Moore, A. (2009), 'The invention of the unsexual : situating frigidity in the history of sexuality and in feminist thought', French History and Civilization. Papers from the George Rude Seminar, vol 2 , pp 181 - 192.
Moore, A. (2005), 'History, Memory and Trauma in Photography of the Tondues: Visuality of the Vichy Past through the Silent Image of Women', Gender & History, vol 17, no 3 , pp 657 - 681.
Moore, A. (2005), 'Sadomasochistic desire as fascism', Lesbian and Gay Psychology Review, vol 6, no 3 , pp 163 - 176.
Moore, A. (1995), 'Burns, E. Jane, Bodytalk: When Women Speak in Old French Literature [Book review]', Parergon, vol 12, no 2 , pp 145 - 148.

Conference Papers

Moore, A. (2004), 'Female flesh and the boundaries of the French nation : a theoretical intervention into recent historiography of the "tondues"', Australasian Association of European History. Conference, Brisbane, Qld..

I conduct research in the medical humanities, focussed on French, German, European and global conceptual and intellectual history of medicine, the long history of medical and psychiatric ideas about sexuality, reproductive health, ageing and gender and on the history of digestive health, as well writing about historiography and historical theory, and doing collaborative work with anthropologists, politics scholars, philosophers, sociologists, literary and French studies scholars, geographers, cultural studies scholars and biomedical researchers.

Fully open access latest book, The French Invention of Menopause and the Medicalisation of Women's Ageing: A History (Oxford: Oxford Univerity Press, 2022) ISBN 9780192842916, is part of part of the Australian Research Council Discovery project: DP190101457 on Sexual Ageing in the History of Medicine: https://sexualageinginthehistoryofmedicine.org/

I am now completing another book entitled Gendered Ageing in the Intercultural History of Biomedicine, co-authored with Karin Selberg and Lucia Pozzi.

I am involved in interdisciplinary collaborative projects on the historical writing of Michel Foucault and its global impact, and on the history and current global practice of gynaecological surgeries. In 2023, I held the annual Society for French Studies (UK) International Visiting Fellowship, supporting my emerging collaboration with Dr Manon Mathias on a new project about the history and culture of nineteenth-century French hygiene of the individual (preventative health).

In-press or forthcoming peer-reviewed, accepted publications include:

Book Chapter: "The Impact of Sigmund Freud on the History of Sexuality," in The Cambridge World History of Sexualities, Volume II, eds. Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Mathew Kuefler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024).

Journal Special Edition: "Gendered and Sexual Aging in the History and Culture of Medicine," The Journal of Aging Studies, co-edited with Professor Sarah Lamb (Brandeis University, USA).

Journal Special Edition: "Diverse Perspectives on Medicine and Health," Australian Feminist Studies, co-edited with Fouzieyha Towghi (ANU) and Tinashe Dune (THRI/ACAP).

Journal Article: "Musk and Ambergris Aphrodisiacs in the Premodern Intercultural Origins of Endocrine Pharmacy,' Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.