Queer Lit

A PhD on Grindr? Yes, please! Dr Carl Bonner-Thompson (Brighton University) did just that and is an expert, not just on queer data, but also on queer geographies shaped by data and dating apps. Follow us into the gay matrix to learn about the everyday interactions of queer people with data, how data affects physical touch, in which ways tracking apps may reshape cruising spaces, and why Carl and I are into the same random dating dystopia TV series.

For more queer data awareness on your feed, follow @cbonnerthompson and @lena_mattheis on Twitter and if you want to go all out with your digital connections, find @queerlitpodcast on Instagram.

Texts and concepts mentioned:

Bonner-Thompson, Carl and Linda McDowell. “Digital geographies of austerity: Young men’s material, affective and everyday relationships with the digital.” Geoforum 120 (2021): 113-121.
Bonner‐Thompson, Carl. "Anticipating touch: Haptic geographies of Grindr encounters in Newcastle‐upon‐Tyne, UK." Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46.2 (2021): 449-463.
Grindr Data leak: https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2021/12/15/grindr-fine/
Johnston, Lynda. "Sites of excess: The spatial politics of touch for drag queens in Aotearoa New Zealand." Emotion, Space and Society 5.1 (2012): 1-9.
Corporeal Feminist Theory
New Materialism
Feminist Materialism
Critical Data Studies
Tales of the City
Handmaid’s Tale
GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
The Social Network (Indeed, the Mark Zuckerberg film)
The Social Dilemma (Possibly the docudrama Carl mentions)
Facebook and the Rohingya Genocide: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/dec/06/rohingya-sue-facebook-myanmar-genocide-us-uk-legal-action-social-media-violence
The One
Brandon Taylor’s Real Life (2020)

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.In which ways might queer people have to be more conscious about their everyday data use? Which examples does Carl give? Can you think of others?
2.What are haptic geographies?
3.Why are intersections of class, gender and sexuality relevant to queer data?
4.We talk about the representation of queer people’s interaction with data and identify two popular tropes. Which ones are these? Can you think of other ones?
5.How careful are you with your data?

How do you decolonise your syllabus and create a queer book fest at the same time? Dr Vedrana Velickovic (Brighton) shares the amazing origin story of the queer literature festival ‘The Coast is Queer’ and tells us about the many authors, activists, students and creatives that shape the programme every year. We talk about our favourite activist bookshops, about exciting queer books from Eastern Europe and about the perception of the East in the West. Vedrana also talks about her ongoing cooperation with Bernardine Evaristo and gives us a sneak peek into her dream festival programme. Jackie Kay? Are you listening?

If you’re looking for even more queer literary content, look no further: follow @coastisqueer and @Lena_Mattheis on Twitter and check out@queerlitpodcast’s little Instagram.

Texts, shops and people mentioned:

https://coastisqueer.com
Vedrana Velickovic’s Eastern Europeans in Contemporary Literature and Culture: Imagining New Europe (Palgrave, 2019)
Grand Parade Building
Afrori Books (Brighton)
The Feminist Bookshop (Brighton)
New Beacon Books (London)
Jay Bernard’s Surge
Danez Smith
Diriye Osman’s Fairytales for Lost Children
Polari Prize
Jackie Kay’s Trumpet
The Marlborough Theatre (Brighton)
Dr Samuel Solomon (Sussex)
Centre for Sexual Dissidence (Sussex University)
New Writing South @newwritingsouth
Lesley Wood
David Sheppeard
Juno Roche’s Trans Power and Queer Sex
Juno Dawson
Dr Sita Balani (Kings College)
Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain
Festival Krokodil (Belgrade)
Lejla Kalamujić’s Call me Esteban
Dragoslava Barzut
Slovenian Poet Anja Golob
Skin from Skunk Anansie
Gay’s the Word
Maria Jastrzębska
Documentary on trans* rights in Germany https://www.abheute-doku.com/doku?fbclid=IwAR2fE740-9HLF66SbbhaaJZ6MD-rG9uHP16BFpzjJssuaYDxoWjrI4-V87w
H Howitt (Brighton)
Crossing Waves Podcast
DeCol Collective https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/decolonisingatfalmer/
Mohsin Zaidi’s A Dutiful Boy
Bernardine Evaristo’s Manifesto
Black and Asian British Women’s Writing International Conference https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/decolonisingatfalmer/common-threads-black-and-asian-british-womens-writing-international-conference/
Pajtim Statovci’s My Cat Yugoslavia, Crossing, and Bolla
Paul Mendez Rainbow Milk

Questions you may want to reflect on after listening:

1.What role can literature and teaching play in creating a more inclusive society?
2.We talk about several radical or activist bookshops. Please look up another one. Is it in your area? Was it easy to find? Do you think we need these shops?
3.Which literature festivals are you familiar with? Will you attend or support one this year?
4.How do you decolonise your bookshelf?

Can you identify a bear with a fur-tive glance? Will a bearitone voice coax you out of hibernation? Join the cub! In this real-life (!) conversation, Dr Nick McGlynn (Brighton University) tells me all about bears -- generally speaking, a larger, hairier variety of queer men, who you may have seen flying the paw flag at your local pride event. Human geographer by trade, Nick has collected lots of ursome data on bear spaces in the UK and found that what makes them so unique are the geographies of fat bodies. We talk about fat, racialised and stigmatised queer bodies and -- I love this part -- how spaces are created that make bears feel warm and welcome.

If you’d like to learn more about bears and bear bodies, follow @nikku_man on Twitter and if you’re beary interested in the podcast, follow @Lena_Mattheis and check out the @queerlitpodcast Instagram account.

Places, people and concepts mentioned:

McGlynn, Nick. "Bears in space: Geographies of a global community of big and hairy gay/bi/queer men." Geography Compass 15.2 (2021)
Bearspace Findings Report and Community Report: https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/ctsg/2022/02/02/bearspace-report/
Ibaraki prefecture
Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble
“The Butch” with Amy Tooth-Murphy
Rachel Colls (Durham)
Bodily topographies
Murray Bartlett
Critical Whiteness
Queer as Folk
Canal Street (Manchester)

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.What, generally speaking, is a bear?
2.Why would Nick not describe ‘bear’ as an identity?
3.Why is critical whiteness so important in queer studies and in fat studies?
4.What are bodily topographies?
5.Nick mentions Queer as Folk and the impact the show had on Canal Street in Manchester. Can you think of a series, film or novel that has transformed a geographical location or space?

We love a good ‘both and’: both cake and ice cream, both dogs and cats -- Meg-John Barker, who is both extremely clever and very warm and kind! Meg-John is an activist, writer, scholar, therapist, and expert on everything beyond the binary. In this episode, as well as in their multiple graphic guides, MJ explains how rigid binaries harm our bodies, limit our minds and how many benefits life beyond the binary has to offer, not just for genderqueer people but for everyone.

Do you need more mental health input and genderqueer content? Let’s face it; we all do, and here is where you can get some: @megjohnbarker and @Lena_Mattheis on Twitter, @queerlitpodcast on Instagram.

Books and other awesome stuff by Meg-John Barker:

https://www.rewriting-the-rules.com/
Life Isn’t Binary (with Alex Iantaffi)
Gender: A Graphic Guide (with Jules Scheele)
Queer: A Graphic History (with Jules Scheele)
Mad: A Graphic Guide
The Meg-John & Justin Podcast
https://www.patreon.com/MegJohnBarker

People, places and texts mentioned:

Lynda Barry
Justin Hancock
Jack Halberstam
Open Barbers (London)
99% Invisible: On Average
https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/on-average/
Beth Berila’s Contemplative Practices for Ant-Oppression Pedagogy
bell hooks
Torrey Peters
Juno Roche
Crossing Waves Podcast
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home
Ellen Forney’s Marbels
Nicole Georges‘ Calling Dr. Laura
Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer: A Memoir
Becky Chambers

Questions you might want to reflect on after listening:

1.What does ‘non-binary’ mean?
2.How does binary thinking affect our everyday lives? Can you think of one example from the podcast and one from your own experience?
3.How does the (constructed) emotional/rational binary affect learning, teaching and mental health?
4.What are your thoughts about the sex/gender divide?
5.Which book do you read when you need to feel warm and positive?

How can we queer up the countryside? No need, says Joe Jukes (Brighton University), it’s already gay as folk! In this arcadian episode, Joe teaches me all about the dynamic nature of the countryside, about rural erotics and counter urbanization, and about how all of this relates to asexuality and non-sexualities in their research. If you want to learn about queers in the wild (and if you want to hear what my village-dwelling nan thinks about my urbanite sexual identity), this idyllic little podcast is for you!

Do you need more country in your feed? Follow @jsdjukes on Twitter and add @lena_mattheis for the extra dose of concrete and skyscrapers. Also, why not follow @queerlitpodcast on Instagram? You only live once!

Texts and terms mentioned:

Jukes, J. and Roe, E.R. 2022. Queer Constellations: Reflections on Curatorial and Creative Practice at the Museum of English Rural Life. Forthcoming.
Queer Geographies Postgraduate Reading Group (Twitter @QueerGeogPGRG)
Outside/rs Conference (Twitter @Outsiders2022)
https://outsiders2022.wordpress.com/
Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other
Lynda Johnston and Robyn Longhurst’s Space, Place, and Sex: Geographies of Sexualities
Rural erotics
Counterurbanisation
Bend it Like Beckham by Gurinder Chada
Gender trouble
Asexualities
Demisexual
Greysexual
Non-sexualities
Spinster
José Muñoz
Cruising
She Bar
Pastoral
Brokeback Mountain
God’s Own Country by Francis Lee
Kemptown in Brighton
Soho in London
Gay’s The Word
The Oval Office Bar (Theater Bochum)
Skala Eressos
Love to see it Podcast
Queer Constellations (Museum of English Rural Life)
Lauren Berlant
“Immaterial” by SOPHIE

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1.What constitutes a queer space?
2.We talk quite a bit about the narrative of queer people leaving a harmful rural space to thrive in the diversity of the urban space. Can you think of an example (or a counter-example) of this? How does this narrative relate to the traditional bildungsroman binary of the sheltering countryside and the corrupt city?
3.What are the three main factors of rural erotics that Joe mentions?
4.We talk about the ‘gaze’ in relation to queer identity. What potential does the gaze have in rural versus urban spaces? If you’re not familiar with the concept of the (white male) gaze, E. Ann Kaplan can help.
5.What is your favourite queer space, real or imaginary?

Just in time for queer history month, the Queer Lit podcast and the CTSG, the Centre for Transforming Sexuality and Gender (Brighton University), have a special collaboration in store: Every Tuesday, you will get to meet a remarkable member of the CTSG and learn about their research and reading interests right here on the Queer Lit podcast. Our conversations cover topics ranging from the queer countryside and asexualities to bear bodies and nonbinary activism. All recordings were made during my international research fellowship at the University of Brighton, with help and support from a number of great Brightoninans, first and foremost Olu Jenzen and Karen Gainsford. Thank you, Olu and Karen! You're awesome!

First episode on 1 February!

@CTSG_Brighton (Twitter)
https://www.brighton.ac.uk/ctsg/index.aspx
https://blogs.brighton.ac.uk/ctsg/

Do you know the secret butch nod? In this delightful episode, Dr. Amy Tooth Murphy (Royal Holloway) teaches me about the nod, the queer double take, and all the other sources of queer joy butch lesbians encounter when they brave the streets. Amy lets us enter this magical dyke world via the medium of oral history and explains why queer interactions often remain invisible to straight folk, why it is important to study the butch outside of their natural habitat (the lesbian bar) and why a female flâneur can potentially revamp a problematic masc perspective.

People, works and concepts mentioned:
https://notchesblog.com/
Murphy, Amy Tooth. "Butch on the streets: The butch flâneur and the queering of the city." Contentious Cities. Routledge, 2020. 149-159.
Sally Munt
Kennedy, Elizabeth Lapovsky, and Madeline D. Davis. Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community. Routledge, 1993.
Zap
Cook, Matt. Queer Domesticities: Homosexuality and Home Life in Twentieth-Century London. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
Flâneur*se
Charles Baudelaire
Walter Benjamin
Palimpsestuous
Bound (1996) by the Wachowski sisters

I butched it up for this one. Did you notice? Tell me on Twitter (@Lena_Mattheis) or on Instagram (@queerlitpodcast) and follow @AmyToothMurphy as well!

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1. What is a butch? How does butchness intersect with fashion, gender and sexual identity?
2. Why do some people criticize butch/femme dynamics and relationships?
3. Please look up historic examples of the ‘zaps’ Amy mentions.
4. What is a flâneur*se? Why is it a problematic concept? How can butch change that?
5. What is oral history? How does Amy conduct research?
6. Amy mentions several literary studies strategies and concepts that are useful in oral history. Which strategies are those?
7. Which queer film scene do you rewind?

Get ready for the ultimutt dream team: Dr Sarah Parker (Loughborough) and Dr Hannah Roche (York) share their clever mewsings on queer pets and their keepurrs in this pawesome episode. Although a cat called Winky, a poodle named Basket and Whym Chow, the chow, are clearly the alphas of this episode, other Modernist animals and their human companions feature as well: from Gertrude Stein to Radclyffe Hall to 'Michael Field', we’ve got the whole pack! We retrieve their literary hisstories to reflect on how ruff the discrepancy between different timelines of human and non-human animal lives can be, but Hannah and Sarah also read furrmidable love poetry for pets, and talk about the pupstar status most of these animals had in their humans’ lives. At the tail end of the conversation, we all share some furvourite texts and films. Apparently, I need to watch She-Ra!

Texts, people and pets mentioned:
Sarah Parker’s The Lesbian Muse and Poetic Identity, 1889-1930 (Pickering and Chatto, 2013)
Michael Field: Decadent Moderns, edited by Sarah Parker and Ana Parejo Vadillo (Ohio University Press, December 2019)
Sarah Parker’s “Women Poets and Photography, 1860–1970” (National Portrait Gallery)
https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/about/photographs-collection/featured-collections-archive/women-poets-and-photography/
Hannah Roche’s The Outside Thing: Modernist Lesbian Romance (Columbia UP, 2019)
Gertrude Stein
Radclyffe Hall
Djuna Barnes
Alice B. Toklas
Basket
Man Ray
Basket
Marie Laurencin
Una Troubridge
Fido
Fitz John Minniehaha
Hedgehog Warwick
Donkey Hilary
Parrot Cocky
Winky
Amy Lowell’s “Chopin”
Romaine Brooks
Thelma Wood
Cat Dilly
H.D.
Bryher
Ekphrasis
Djuna Barnes’ Nightwood
Kathryn Bond Stockton’s The Queer Child, or Growing Sideways in the Twentieth Century (Duke University Press, 2009, 92-93)
Joyce’s Ulysses
T.S. Eliot
Katharine Bradley and Edith Cooper’s Works and Days
Whym Chow
Jack Halberstam’s Wild Things
Homo Sapiens 141: Dan Savage Part 2
Stein’s Paris France
Picasso
Michael Field’s “Trinity” Whym Chow, Flame of Love (written 1906, published 1914)
Amy Lowell’s “To Winky”
Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
Sarah E. Kersh, “‘Betwixt Us Two’: Whym Chow, Metonymy, and the Amatory Sonnet Tradition.” Michael Fields: Decadent Moderns, 2019.
Caroline Baylis Green, “Sentimental Coatings and the Subversive Pet Closet: Michael Field's Whym Chow: Flame of Love” (2018 blog post)
https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/article/sentimental-coatings-and-the-subversive-pet-closet-michael-fields-whym-chow-flame-of-love
She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix)
Alison Bechdel’s The Secret to Superhuman Strength

I’m not kitten: You absolutely must follow Hannah (@he_roche) and Sarah (@DrSarahParker) on Twitter. If you’d like to see (p)oodles of queer pets, you could also check out @Lena_Mattheis (Twitter) or @queerlitpodcast on Instagram.

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1. Which of the authors mentioned are you already familiar with? Do you remember non-human animals featuring in their writing and life?
2. Why do you think writing about pets is often classified as ‘whimsical’ or in some way less relevant?
3. Please read the final scene of Djuna Barnes’ novel Nightwood (1928). What function do you think the dog has here?
4. What are potential roles that can be ascribed to pets in a queer household? What is problematic about these?
5. Please look up Jack Halberstam’s work on wildness and compare his position to Donna Harraway’s Companion Species Manifesto. You may want to refer to the Queer Lit episode with Jack as well.
6. Do you think queer people have a different relationship to pets? (You may want to consider queer temporality, empathy, and queer childhoods in your response.)

This fine boxing day, I’m introducing you to my queer family: My partner Christian graciously agreed to crunch some candy cane with me for part II of the Holigay Special – and of course the reincats make an appearance as well. Together, we listen to messages from @ibiprofane of Drag & Panto episode fame, from listener @willowcabins, who shares her queer Carol-ling tradition, and from author @c.gemsa_author, who brings us a lesbian reading of The Grinch. We also talk about what our favourite queer spaces are up to for the holidays and we even have a mulled wine chat with our beautiful friend (and very clever author) Helen. This tinselating episode should not be missed!
(This being said, if you’re here for the scholarly content, maybe come back in January.)

People, places and texts mentioned (and their Insta handles):
Kit Heyam
Hannah Roche
Chris Mounsey
Kathrin Horn
Happiest Season
Single All the Way
White Lotus
Carol
Carol of the Bells
John Williams
Charlie Brown’s Christmas
Heavenue
Christian Gemsa‘s Das Flüstern der Kristalle
Nadja (@maladja_tattoo_art)
The Grinch
Nick Cherryman
Above the Stag Theatre & Bar (@abovethestag)
“When Harry Met Santa” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDLumk_rQQw
Royal Vauxhall Tavern (@rvtoffivial)
Duckie (@duckievauxhall)
Butch, Please (@butchpleaselondon)
Pink Glove (@pinkglovedisco)
Oval Office Bar (@ovalofficebar)
Kafe Kweer (@kafekweer)
Skala Eressos on Lesvos (@eressos_womens_festival)
Great Langdale Valley
Lake District
Benjamin Britten
Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
Jackie Kay
Carol Ann Duffy’s Frost Fair

Want to start the New Year right? Follow me on Instagram (@queerlitpodcast) or on Twitter (@Lena_Mattheis) or find Queer Lit Podcast on Facebook. It’s what Rudolph would do.

Questions you might want to reflect on:

1. Can there be a positive relationship between advertising and activism?
2. Which criteria does 'representation' have to fulfil for you?
3. Do you have a queer elder in your life? Can you learn something new from them in 2022?
4. If you are not feeling good or supported this holiday season, there are resources you can reach out too. You are important and you deserve help. Please don't hesitate to contact me if you need help finding groups like Switchboard, an LGBTQIA+ helpline in the UK.

Light the candles, grab the tinsel! Our very first festive special has arrived! In this extravagant episode, I listen to all the fabulours voice notes you have sent in about queer Christmas and reflect on how great it is to be hohohomosexual (or pansexual, or ace or inter or queer in any way -- I'm just doing it for the puns). You will hear familiar voices from past episodes but also meet a lovely listener and a very merry scholar who will be on Queer Lit in 2022. Of course, this episode also includes reading recommendations and a list of (questionable) holigay films.

Queer Lit episodes mentioned:
“Drag, Panto & Genderfuckery” with Nick Cherryman
“Queer Kings and Trans Histories” with Kit Heyam
“Tarot, Femmes and Asian Diasporic Literature” with Xine Yao
“Queer Pets” with Sarah Parker and Hannah Roche (coming in January!)
“Disability and Queerness” with Chris Mounsey
“Black Trans Narratives” with LaVelle Ridley

Other people, films and podcasts mentioned:
Homosapiens Podcast
Chris Sweeney
Kathrin Horn
https://knowledge-failure.org/knowledge-blog/thoughts-on-the-closets-failed-knowledge/
Rose Tremain’s Sacred Country
“Hail Smiling Morn”
Happiest Season
Clea DuVall
But I’m a Cheerleader
The Children’s Hour
Shirley MacLaine
The Retro Bar
Dan Levy
Jana Funke
Radclyffe Halll’s The Well of Loneliness
Jeanette Winterson’s Christmas Days
The Christmas House
Let It Snow
The Christmas Set-up
Carol
Tangerine
Friendsgiving/Dinner with Friends
New York Christmas Wedding
Lez Bomb
Truman Capote’s “A Christmas Memory”

Make my yuletide gayer by following me on Twitter (@lena_mattheis) or Instagram (@queerlitpodcast).

Questions you may want to reflect on this festive season:
1.What do you appreciate most about your queer family?
2.What would be a good gender-affirming gift?
3.Which queer charity could you donate to this season? Donations also make great gifts!
4.Kathrin references Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet to speak about queer temporality and the holigays. Why not read up on Sedgwick and the closet this season?