Research Overview

My thesis, Dragging the Gothic, argues that drag can be mobilised for queer analyses of the Gothic mode. I specifically focus on five nodes shared by drag and the Gothic, offering a new methodology for queering the Gothic. These are: performances of femininity, camp, lighting, costume reveals, and voice. Throughout my project, I demonstrate that mobilising queer (sub)cultural paraphernalia can refresh queer Gothic analyses, contending that significant queer insights become available when aspects other than queer sexual desire are used for literary and cultural analysis.

Alongside my thesis, I am also co-editing a special issue of Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture with Dr. Dany Girard and Dr. Debra Ferreday, as well as an Edited Collection. Both the special issue and the edited collection focus on contemporary representations of queerness on television.

I am primarily interested in intersections of Gothic and queerness as they play out in contemporary popular culture, and am more broadly interested in anything to do with Gothic and horror, femininities and gender play, queerness, and popular culture.