Dr Cat Moir
Cat Moir gained her PhD from the University of Sheffield in 2014. Before she joined the University of Sydney, she held lectureships at the universities of Cambridge and Durham (UK).
I work across the fields of intellectual history, history of philosophy, continental philosophy, and critical theory. My main areas of interest in these fields are: the relationship between discourses of nature/biology and society; the history of materialist thought in relation to other intellectual currents; histories of utopianism; and the relationship between philosophy, literature, and science.
I have published widely on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and related figures, particularly Ernst Bloch, German idealism and romanticism, historical materialism, and political utopianism.
My first book, Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics (Leiden: Brill, 2020) provides a new interpretation of the thought of Ernst Bloch, challenging influential conceptions of him as an irrationalist and totalitarian thinker. Together with Peter Thompson (Sheffield) and Johan Siebers (IMLR/Middlesex) I co-edit the Bloch Bibliothek, a sub-series of the Historical Materialism book series, published by Brill, which includes translations of Bloch's works in English, and critical engagements with his work and related themes.
In the Germanic Studies major, I coordinate and teach language and culture across a range of levels, including units in German-speaking society and culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, modern German thought, and an advanced translation unit in which students work with previously untranslated archival sources.
In the European Studies major, I contribute to teaching units on political extremism, ideas of Europe, regionalism and identity, and myth and legend. I also co-coordinate the OLE Understanding Europe, and the SLC-wide BAdv unit Ideology and Society.
I am happy to supervise Honours and HDR students working on any aspect of modern German thought, including in its comparative or transnational / transcultural aspects.
I am currently working on a monograph on Philosophy in Modern German History for the Bloomsbury Modern German History series.
Selected publications
Publications
Books
- Moir, C. (2020). Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics. Leiden: Brill. [More Information]
Edited Books
- Winter, B., Moir, C. (2020). Reform, Revolution and Crisis in Europe: Landmarks in History, Memory and Thought. TBC. [More Information]
- Deiters, F., Fliethmann, A., Lewis, A., Moir, C., Weller, C. (2020). Topos Osterreich/Topos Austria. Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft/Rombach Wissenschaft.
Book Chapters
- Moir, C. (2020). Panorama 1989: The Political Aesthetics of the Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany. In Not known (Eds.), Reform, Revolution and Crisis in Europe: Landmarks in History, Memory and Thought, (pp. 19-39). TBC. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2018). Abysmal Humanity: Anthropological Materialism in Georg Buchner and Walter Benjamin. In Corey McCall, Nathan Ross (Eds.), Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature, (pp. 76-90). New York: Routledge. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2018). Ernst Bloch: The Principle of Hope. In Beverley Best, Werner Bonefeld, Chris OKane (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, (pp. 199-215). London: Sage Publications. [More Information]
Journals
- Moir, C. (2022). Wilhelm Reich and Sexology from Below. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Organ der Gesellschaft fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 45(4), 625-650. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2020). Biocentrism and marxism: Bloch's concept of life and the Spirit of Utopia. Praktyka Teoretyczna, 35(1), 15-34. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2020). The Archimedean point: Consciousness, praxis, and the present in Lukács and Bloch. Thesis Eleven, 157(1), 3-23. [More Information]
Edited Journals
- Moir, C., Winter, B. (2017). Special issue of ANZJES. Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies, 9(3).
2022
- Moir, C. (2022). Wilhelm Reich and Sexology from Below. Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte: Organ der Gesellschaft fur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 45(4), 625-650. [More Information]
2020
- Moir, C. (2020). Biocentrism and marxism: Bloch's concept of life and the Spirit of Utopia. Praktyka Teoretyczna, 35(1), 15-34. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2020). Ernst Bloch's Speculative Materialism: Ontology, Epistemology, Politics. Leiden: Brill. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2020). Panorama 1989: The Political Aesthetics of the Early Bourgeois Revolution in Germany. In Not known (Eds.), Reform, Revolution and Crisis in Europe: Landmarks in History, Memory and Thought, (pp. 19-39). TBC. [More Information]
2019
- Moir, C. (2019). Faith, Reason and Peace in Lessing's Late Works. Theoria, 66(159), 117-141. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2019). In Defence of Speculative Materialism. Historical Materialism-Research in Critical Marxist Theory, 27(2), 123-155. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2019). The Birth of Materialism out of the Spirit of Expressionism: Nietzsche and Bloch's Philosophy of Language. Revue Internationale de Philosophie, 289(3), 303-332. [More Information]
2018
- Moir, C. (2018). Abysmal Humanity: Anthropological Materialism in Georg Buchner and Walter Benjamin. In Corey McCall, Nathan Ross (Eds.), Benjamin, Adorno, and the Experience of Literature, (pp. 76-90). New York: Routledge. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2018). Ernst Bloch: The Principle of Hope. In Beverley Best, Werner Bonefeld, Chris OKane (Eds.), The SAGE Handbook of Frankfurt School Critical Theory, (pp. 199-215). London: Sage Publications. [More Information]
2017
- Moir, C., Winter, B. (2017). Special issue of ANZJES. Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies, 9(3).
- Moir, C. (2017). Speculation, Dialectic and Critique: Hegel and Critical Theory in Germany after 1945. Hegel Bulletin, 38(2), 199-220. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2017). The Politics of Prophecy: Reformation Memory and German Exceptionalism in Weimar Thought. Australian and New Zealand Journal of European Studies (ANZJES), 9(3), 7-25.
2016
- Moir, C. (2016). Beyond the Turn: Ernst Bloch and the Future of Speculative Materialism. Poetics Today, 37(2), 327-351. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2016). Casting a Picture. Anthropology & Materialism: A Journal of Social Research, 2016 (3), 1-18. [More Information]
- Moir, C. (2016). Walter Benjamin and the Remains of a Philosophy of History: A Review of Walter Benjamin: An Introduction to His Work and Thought by Uwe Steiner. Historical Materialism-Research in Critical Marxist Theory, 24(4), 221-233. [More Information]
2013
- Moir, C. (2013). Ernst Bloch und die Zukunft des spekulativen Materialismus. Bloch-Almanach, 32, 163-179.
- Moir, C. (2013). The Education of Hope: On the Dialectical Potential of Speculative Materialism. In Peter Thompson and Slavoj Žižek (Eds.), The Privatization of Hope, (pp. 121-143). Chicago: Duke University Press. [More Information]
2012
- Moir, C., Siebers, J. (2012). Aufenthalt im Unerhorten: Blochs Hebel-Lekturen (1926-1965). Bloch-Almanach, 31, 89-108.
2011
- Moir, C. (2011). Revolution, Revelation and Reformation: Towards a Blochian Critique of East German Folk Atheism. Track Changes, Summer(2011), 93-113.
- Moir, C., Siebers, J. (2011). Ubersetzung als Utopie bei Bloch: Uber die Schwierigkeit des Uberschreitens. Bloch-Jahrbuch, (pp. 189-194). NA: NA.
Selected Grants
2020
- Opening Australias Multilingual Archive, Vickers A, Lu Y, Suter R, Loy-Wilson S, Moir C, Wilson S, Stenberg J, Alu G, Australian Research Council (ARC)/Discovery Projects (DP)
2017
- Enlightment Thinking, Milam J, Caine B, Gaukroger S, Sluga G, Nassar D, Waldow A, Borghesi F, Moir C, DVC Research/Sydney Research Excellence Initiative 2020 (SREI)
