Reviews and Press

“For Gallop, the death of the author is a moment not just of anticipation but of surprise, and what she finds most fascinating is the attempt on the part of the writer to make his or her text surprising as well, situating the act of writing in time” Tristan Deveney, College Literature 40:2, Spring 2013, 179-181

“Jane Gallop is no doubt one of the best readers of her generation, but with The Deaths of the Author she proves that her writing is unprecedented: sharp, brisk, with a great sense of rhythm, utterly sophisticated and yet perfectly clear, from the very first till the very last sentence” The Deaths of the Author Jan Baeten in Leonardo

“Jane Gallop is one of the small handful of critics who are keeping close reading alive. With this volume, she illuminates the stakes in paying such careful and loving attention to the words by which writers are turned, and turn themselves, into authors: stakes made visible on the relational field joining reader and author in an intimate bond that’s desirous, companionate, aggressive, indecent, sustaining, disturbing, unstable, and, when elaborated by a critic and thinker as gifted and incisive as Jane Gallop, also endlessly productive.”—Lee Edelman, author of No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive on The Deaths of the Author

“Gallop turns the poststructuralist move of decentering the author to fresh account here, going beyond the necessary evacuation of subjective privilege to a moving engagement with the afterlife of the author as a haunting presence whose shadow still fills us with desire.”
Patrick Pritchett on The Deaths of the Author

“Gallop showcases the marvelous ability to write a book about death, literal and metaphorical, without becoming too bogged down in either jargon or maudlin sentimentality. She deftly summarises the stakes of each conversation, easily steering us through the sometimes densely written post-structuralist theory, allowing each voice to speak – ‘to live'”– Emily Manuel’s Global Comment Review of The Deaths of the Author

“Jane Gallop has balls, and I don’t just say that because she’s naked on the cover of Living With His Camera… In combining this very candid view of her body with her very candid thoughts, Gallop ends up creating her own self-portrait — more vivid than any camera could capture.”
Bookslut Review of Living With His Camera

“Gallop allows herself to enter the grain of her domestic world without too much theoretical interference. Her ruminations on the emotional and intellectual contradictions of being mother, partner and public intellectual are consistently probing, self-aware and generous”Publisher’s Weekly Review of Living With His Camera

“Gallop is our foremost comic theorist. Anecdotal theory, as she observes, is theory with a better sense of humor. Gallop shows us how to be smart and rigorous precisely by refusing to ‘get serious,’ explaining how that imperative in fact makes literary critics relinquish what we do best. Lightening up without in any way producing theory ’lite’: this is one formulation of Gallop’s goal and considerable accomplishment, both here and throughout her career.”—Joseph Litvak, author of Strange Gourmets: Sophistication, Theory, and the Novel on Anecdotal Theory

“Jane Gallop’s essays are lucid, bold, and timely: she gives us our time through a series of brilliant lenses. I’m always grateful for the intelligence, the edge, and the generosity of her vision. We would all be more lost without her.”—Judith Butler, author of Gender Trouble on Anecdotal Theory

“Gallop creates a constantly fluctuating, vibrant field of doubt.”The Women’s Review of Books on Thinking Through the Body

“Jane Gallop points out that anti-harassment policies that seek to limit even consensual teacher-student relationships actually discriminate against the students they seek to protect by removing from them the ability to give consent to, and enjoy, the emotional consequences, pleasurable and difficult, which accompany these decisions,” “Hot for Professor”, Review of Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment, by Michelle Miller, Inside Higher Ed