Student profiles
Rebekah Musk
Email: r.musk@lancaster.ac.uk
Thesis Title
Institution
Supervisors
Professor Lynne Pearce
Professor Simon Bainbridge
Research Summary
My project generates a new understanding of queer spatial theory by queering conceptions of space itself and then applying this understanding to Romantic poetry. Space is often understood in gendered terms, and there are similarities in the way both spatiality and queerness are produced through discourses which seek to confine them within binary and taxonomic systems. Therefore, I look for textual spaces which defy easy categorisation and classification.
These spaces and the characters which appear in them often present us with too much, too little, or a sense of the uncanny, all features which lend themselves to queer spatial analysis. By analysing the spatiality of the texts in this way, queer readings are generated, which often challenge the heteronormative surface narrative and provide different ways of engaging with already well-studied texts.
Research Interests
Queer Theory,
Spatial Theory,
Romanticism,
Byron,
Shelley,
Keats,
Coleridge,
and Landon.