Hi, it’s my dissertation!

Here’s the situation: I’m working on my PhD in English and I’m writing a novel at the same time, and I’ve decided they’re part of the same project, one that is searching for a queer politics adequate to our current cultural struggles around how to prevent harm and accommodate desire in the realm of sex and intimacy.

The novel is about a dysfunctional English department and MYSTERY and MURDER and QUEER DETECTIVES. In the novel, a PhD student named Lu goes missing while she’s working on her dissertation about contemporary sexual politics via Victorian texts and erotic fanfiction. For my own Ph.D. dissertation, I’m writing HER dissertation–that is, a series of chapters written in a (more or less) traditional academic format that participates in ongoing scholarly discussions of Victorian literature/culture and contemporary queer fanfiction and sex writing. In the end, I’ll have both an academic dissertation and a mystery novel, which can be read separately or together depending on one’s preferences and priorities.

The project, overall, is: novel, dissertation, fanfiction supposedly written by Lu, and this website, which is the place that offers information about all those things under one roof. I’m hoping to interact with all sorts of interested folks here and to share at least some of my work with the communities the project engages with, both scholarly and fannish. More info can be found in the About section!

Navigating multiple identities and modes of discourse online, especially in the intersections of fandom and academia, is weird and difficult, and as I go I’ll be trying to work out what’s best for me and for the communities I’m part of. Let me know, especially fandom folks, if you have thoughts about this. ❤

If you’re interested in queer stuff, murder mysteries, academia, Victorian ghosts, critical theory, fanfiction, fan studies, grad school, and/or experimental writing, please follow this blog or send me a comment!