Vittoria Loreta Lion

Vittoria Loreta Lion

First Name: 
Vittoria Loreta
Last Name: 
Lion
Title: 
PhD Candidate
Biography : 

My project, “‘We Are But Everlasting Animals’: Speculative Darwinism, the Paleontology of the Self, and the Surrealist Adventure,” spans across multiple bestiaries and deep times, taking as its focal point the voluminous outpouring of animal life saturating historical and contemporary Surrealist art and literature. Through their phantasmagoric hybrids, spectral scenes from deep time, and evolutionary trajectories gone awry, past and living Surrealists have rewritten prehistory and dreamt of fossils of the future—tasks ever more salient within the context of anthropogenic climate crisis and mass extinctions. Extending Freud’s archaeological metaphor into the realm of paleontology, Surrealism makes explicit parallels between fragmentary ruins and fossils, and between deep time and the hypothesized timelessness of the unconscious. In the Surrealist vision, extinct flora and fauna flourish among those of the present, and natural history becomes a “royal road” to the inner life of the mind as rich as dreaming. In my explorations, I engage with the history of visualizing and reconstructing prehistoric life, science-fiction representations of hypothetical evolution, and fantasies of the hypnotic and vanishing polar regions.

My research draws upon my experience as a practicing Surrealist writer, painter, and collage artist, and I am co-editor of an international Surrealist publication, Peculiar Mormyrid. My work is generously supported by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Current Research

  • The Paleontology of the Self: Surrealism, Speculative Darwinism, and Psychoanalysis

Selected Publications

  • “Disrupting Temple Grandin: Resisting a ‘Humane’ Face for Autistic and Animal Oppression.” In Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies, edited by Chloë Taylor, Kelly Struthers Montford, and Stephanie Jenkins, in  Routledge Advances in Critical Diversities, edited by Yvette Taylor and Sally Hines. New York: Routledge, 2020. Forthcoming.
  • “Eating Exquisite Corpses and Drinking New Wine: The Chesapeake Ripper as the Authentic Surreal Murderer.” In Eating the Rude: Hannibal Lecter and the Fannibals, Criminals, and Legacy of America’s Favorite Cannibal, edited by Kyle Moody and Nicholas Yanes. Jefferson: McFarland, 2020. Forthcoming.
  • “After Sodom Burned (Or, From the Prehistory of X-Ray Astronomy).” Monstering 2 (2019).
  • “Mundus Subcutaneous.” Peculiar Mormyrid 8 (Winter 2018): 30-33.
  • “Hyenas and Hymens.” Feral Feminisms 6 (Fall 2016): 95-97.

Honours, Awards and Grants

  • 2019. Joseph-Armand Bombardier CGS Doctoral Award.
Education: 
MA, University of Toronto, Art History
BA (Hons), University of Toronto, Department for the Study of Religion

People Type:

Research Area:

Areas of Interest: 
  • Surrealism and the history of science
  • Animals, bestiaries, and nature in historical and contemporary Surrealism
  • Psychoanalysis and visual art
  • Parallel histories of the unconscious and deep time
  • History of paleontological imagery and cultural representations of deep time(s)
  • History of the Anthropocene
  • Encyclopedias and encyclopedic collections
  • Polar fantasies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
  • Medieval animal representations
  • Visual representations of disability

Program:

Cohort:

Dissertation Supervisors: 
Elizabeth Legge

Campus: