Research Seminar: David Bowie and the Pulse of Jean Genet

Lecture Theatre 2, School of Music

Dr Denis Flannery (School of English, University of Leeds)

In the early 1970s David Bowie was introduced by Lindsay Kemp, his mime teacher, mentor, and friend, to the work of the French writer Jean Genet (1910-1986). Genet’s fiction and theatre speedily became a resource for Bowie. Today, Our Lady of the Flowers, Genet’s 1943 novel, reads like a database from which Bowie took phrases, stances, and attitudes – all of which manifested themselves in songs like Queen Bitch (1971), Rock n Roll Suicide 1972) and – most famously – The Jean Genie. It is easy to assume that Genet’s influence on Bowie waned after the end of the glam rock era. But this would be incorrect. Phrases and stances, themes and styles that we find in Genet’s writing pulsed throughout the remainder of Bowie’s career from Diamond Dogs (1974) to Young Americans (1975), from Station to Station (1976) to Heroes (1977), from Black Tie, White Noise (1993) to Outside (1995) to The Next Day (2013) – and beyond.

In 'David Bowie and the Pulse of Jean Genet' Denis Flannery considers the formative, pulsing presence of the great enfant terrible of twentieth-century French Literature across the range of Bowie's extraordinary creative career from 'The Jean Genie' to last works  and last days. 

Denis Flannery is Associate Professor in English at the University of Leeds. He is the author of Henry James: A Certain Illusion (2000) and On Sibling Love, Queer Attachment, and American Writing (2007). In 2016 he co-edited Alan Hollinghurst: Writing Under the Influence. Denis has published essays on figures that range from Henry James to Ivo van Hove, from Eve Kososfsky Sedgwick to Jean Racine. He is editor of The Cambridge Companion to David Bowie. 

This will be a hybrid event. The guest speaker will be present with us in the School of Music, and colleagues and other guests are encouraged to join us there. But if you are unable to do so then please consider joining us via Teams.

No booking is required. Those wishing to attend online should contact series convenor Dr Mic Spencer (m.spencer@leeds.ac.uk).

Main image: Dr Denis Flannery.