Queer Lit

Time for a cross-over! I had the absolute pleasure on being invited to join the Amplified network and appear on their superb podcast. Here is our episode and Amplified's show notes:

"Amplified is an audio blog series about the sounds of scholarship from our team here at the Amplify Podcast Network. This month on Amplified, Stacey Copeland and Hannah McGregor are joined by Lena Mattheis to kick off a brand new series featuring the latest additions to our sustained cohort of podcasters. Lena is the creator and host of Queer Lit, a podcast about LGBTQIA2S+* literature and culture. In this conversation, we reflect on podcasting as a tool for community building and queer scholarly practice, tracing how Queer Lit emerged from Lena's teaching practice and a commitment to accessible feminist and queer knowledge creation."

What is the queerest thing you did this year? Listen to the festive special to find out how queer our guests and listeners made 2025!

References:
Liz Breslin
How To Read podcast
https://www.howtoreadpodcast.com/elaine-auyoung-one-sided-relationships/
Queer Forms and Pronouns: Gender Nonconformity in Anglophone Literature (OUP, March 2026)
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/queer-forms-and-pronouns-9780198974116?q=lena%20mattheis&lang=en&cc=gb
Susan Stryker
Louise Siddons’ Good Pictures Are A Strong Weapon
https://www.upress.umn.edu/9781517910730/good-pictures-are-a-strong-weapon/
Category is Books (Glasgow)
Lighthouse Books (Edinburgh)
The Bookish Type (Leeds)
Kit Heyam
Royal Vauxhall Tavern
All Of Us Strangers
Nick Cherryman
European Gay Ski Week
Oliver Slate-Green’s The Way Blood Travels
Leah Davidson
Listenqueer.co.uk
Out and Wild
Leilah King
Coast is Queer
Jack Gieseking
Our Dyke Histories podcast
Julie Enszer
Lesbian Lives 
Sinister Wisdom
The Essential Poems of Pat Parker (The 87 Press)
Caro de Robertis’ The Palace of Eros
Joelle Taylor’s Maryville
Alison Bechdel’s Spent
Allan Johnson 
https://thisisallan.medium.com/elf-and-safety-2b061323dbc1
Flora Johnson’s Christopher Popinkins

What is the queerest thing you did this year? Listen to the festive special to find out how queer our guests and listeners made 2025!  

References:
Happiest Season
Kristen Stewart
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Joe Jukes
https://www.hiss.sydney/
Virginia Gay’s Cyrano
Qtopia Sydney
Queer Britain
@guildfordgaybookclub New House Art Space (Guildford) Juno Dawson’s Stay Another Day Layla McCay’s The Queer Bookshelf: A Reader’s Guide (June 2026) Libro.fm Pillion Arzner @Arznercinema

Share the queerest thing you did this year by 6 December to be featured on the end-of-year special and for the chance to win a special gift (if you are based in the UK). Send an email or voice recording to [email protected] by 6 December.

I can't wait to hear from you!

Medusa, Medea, Artemis… we’ve all heard their stories before but what do they sound like when not told by (or centred on) men? Mara Gold, the sapphic scholar, is here to tell us all about these figures and about how there is always more than one side to a story and more than one reading to a myth. Come for the lesbian legends, stay for the witty witches and follow us @queerlitpodcast and @sapphic_scholar.  

References

Mara Gold’s Ancient Myths and Legends Without Men (2025)
Mara Gold’s “Rebels Against the Tyranny of Men’: Women Performing Greek Comedy in Early Twentieth-Century Britain” in Women Creating Classics (2025)
 https://mara-gold.com/
@sapphic_scholar
Beyond the Binary Pitt Rivers Museum
https://www.prm.ox.ac.uk/beyond-the-binary
Ashmolean Museum
Rebellious Bodies audio tour 
https://app.smartify.org/en-GB/tours/ashmolean-rebellious-bodies-tour?utm_campaign=ashmoleansmartifywebpage&utm_medium=webpagelink&utm_source=ashmoleanwebsite&utm_content=rebelliousbodiestour
Smartify
Hélène Cixous’ “The Laugh of the Medusa” (1975)
Femme fatale
Gorgons
Apotropaic figure
Athena
Hera
Natalie Haynes’ Stone Blind
Madeleine Miller’s Circe
Rosie Hewlett
Pat Barker
Madeleine Miller’s Circe
Sirens
Odyssey
Durham Castle
Hans Christian Andersen
Selkie
Demeter
Penelope
Medea
Maenad
Dionysus
Bacchus
True Blood
Amazon
Atalanta
Nataly Barney
Lesbos-en-Seine
Artemis
Double Slice
https://doubleslice.studio/
Actaeon
Callisto
Zeus
Aphrodite
Jason
Argonauts
Glauce
Suranne Jones
Doctor Foster
Gentleman Jack
Children of Srikandi (2012)
Hector and Hephaestus
Radical Book Fair
Lighthouse Books Edinburgh
The Bookish Type
Caper bookshop
The Magicians
Persephone
Cassandra  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is sapphism?
2.      What is classical reception? How is this relevant to Mara’s work?
3.      What are the archetypes that Mara uses to structure the book? Which one are you most interested in and why?
4.      What does Mara say about Srikandi and Srikandi’s role in LGBTQIA+ activism in Indonesia?
5.      How can we draw on ancient myths for queer activism today? What does Mara say about this? What are your thoughts?
6.      Do you have a favourite figure from mythology or legends?  

Are you ready to descend into the weird world of queer Gothic writing, spooky sexology, and gay ghouls? Brontë Schiltz is an expert on all of these and so much more. We speak about the televisual Gothic and about several of Brontë’s favourite Victorian writers, including masc heartthrob Vernon Lee. If you’re into fun facts about blood transfusions and half-human, half-snake main characters, this episode is for you.  

References:
Manchester Centre for Gothic Studies
Vernon Lee (1856-1935)
Ali Smith
Sarah Waters
Televisual gothic
A Ghost Story For Christmas
M.R. James
“The Dead Room”
Mark Gatiss
The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales
Chris Baldick
Nigel Kneale
Matthew Lewis’ The Monk
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray
Jen Beagin’s Big Swiss
Karl Heinrich Ulrichs’ Manor
Sexology
“Plain Reasons Against Sodomy”
Horace Walpole
John Addington Symonds
Dracula
George Haggerty’s Queer Gothic
John Singer Sargent
Clementina Anstruther-Thomson
Affect studies
Vernon Lee’s Hauntings
“A Wicked Voice”
“Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”
Megan Milks
Ali Smith’s Hotel World
Miskatonic Institute of Horror Studies
The Horse Hospital 
https://www.thehorsehospital.com/events/miskatonic-televisualgothic  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is the Gothic? What did you know about the Gothic before listening and what did you learn from Brontë?
2.      How is the Gothic queer?
3.      Why is the Victorian period an interesting time to look at queerness?
4.      How does Brontë speak about queerness in relation to illness?
5.      What is your favourite spooky story?          

Are you ready to become a showgirl? Poet, scholar, and Swifty extraordinaire Stephanie Burt joins me to talk about Taylor Swift’s musical genius, queer fandom and relationship to femininity. There was simply too much to squeeze into one episode, so make sure to listen to part one first and hear all about the Gaylors, before switching to part two, to learn about Taylor's relationship to femininity, class and race. Stephanie will also tell you why she thought the “You Need To Calm Down” video was a big mistake…

Follow Stephanie and myself at @notquitehydepark and @queerlitpodcast for even more content!  

References
Stephanie Burt’s We Are Mermaids (Greywolf Press, 2022)
Stephanie Burt’s Super Gay Poems (2025)
Stephanie Burt’s Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift (Basic Books, 2025)
Stephanie Burt’s “Prayer for Werewolves”
Poetry Unbound
John Donne
Katherine Philips
Geoffrey Chaucer
Walt Whitman
Charlotte Mew
Sarah Records
Heavenly
Tender Trap
Blueboy
Ella Darling
Motown
Carole King
Dolly Parton
“You Belong With Me”
Red
Reputation
Miss Americana (2020)
Lover
Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road
Gaylorism
Gaylors and Hetlors
“When Emma Falls in Love”
“All Too Well”
Joe Jonas
Taylor Lautner
Jake Gyllenhaal
“Back to December”
John Mayer
The Life of a Show Girl
Elizabeth Taylor
Katharine Hepburn
Ophelia Hamlet
Julia Serano
Frozen
Mononormativity
Evermore
“Tis The Damn Season”
The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection
“Christmases When You Were Mine”
Crass
Grace Petrie
Taylearning podcast
“Clara Bow”
Britney Spears
Miley Cyrus
“You Need to Come Down”
Adeem the Artist
Journey to Fearless
Lara Heimert
@notquitehydepark
Rachel Gold’s In the Silences
Imogen Binnie’s Nevada
X-Men Gold 30
D.A. Powell
Team Dresch’s Captain My Captain
Slater Kinney
Heartbreak High
Sex Education
Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How does Stephanie speak about the relationship between poetry, lyrics and music? Where does this become relevant in Taylor Swift’s work?
2.      What does the term ‘Gaylor’ refer to and why are there so many of them?
3.      We speak about sapphic forms in this episode. What makes a form sapphic for you?
4.      What is feminophobia and why could being femme be read as giving up power? How does this relate to trans femininity?
5.      What does Stephanie suggest about the representation of class in the “You Need To Calm Down” video?
6.      Why does Stephanie stress that Taylor knows that she is white? How does Stephanie describe Taylor’s engagement with race and the music of Black women?
7.      Does Taylor’s music speak to you? Why or why not?

Are you ready to become a showgirl? Poet, scholar, and Swifty extraordinaire Stephanie Burt joins me to talk about Taylor Swift’s musical genius, queer fandom and relationship to femininity. There was simply too much to squeeze into one episode, so make sure to listen to part one first and hear all about the Gaylors, before switching to part two, to learn about Taylor;s relationship to femininity, class and race. Stephanie will also tell you why she thought the “You Need To Calm Down” video was a big mistake…

Follow Stephanie and myself at @notquitehydepark and @queerlitpodcast for even more content!  

References
Stephanie Burt’s We Are Mermaids (Greywolf Press, 2022)
Stephanie Burt’s Super Gay Poems (2025)
Stephanie Burt’s Taylor’s Version: The Poetic and Musical Genius of Taylor Swift (Basic Books, 2025)
Stephanie Burt’s “Prayer for Werewolves”
Poetry Unbound
John Donne
Katherine Philips
Geoffrey Chaucer
Walt Whitman
Charlotte Mew
Sarah Records
Heavenly
Tender Trap
Blueboy
Ella Darling
Motown
Carole King
Dolly Parton
“You Belong With Me”
Red
Reputation
Miss Americana (2020)
Lover
Rachel Hartman’s Tess of the Road
Gaylorism
Gaylors and Hetlors
“When Emma Falls in Love”
“All Too Well”
Joe Jonas
Taylor Lautner
Jake Gyllenhaal
“Back to December”
John Mayer
The Life of a Show Girl
Elizabeth Taylor
Katharine Hepburn
Ophelia Hamlet
Julia Serano
Frozen
Mononormativity
Evermore
“Tis The Damn Season”
The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection
“Christmases When You Were Mine”
Crass
Grace Petrie
Taylearning podcast
“Clara Bow”
Britney Spears
Miley Cyrus
“You Need to Come Down”
Adeem the Artist
Journey to Fearless
Lara Heimert
@notquitehydepark
Rachel Gold’s In the Silences
Imogen Binnie’s Nevada
X-Men Gold 30
D.A. Powell
Team Dresch’s Captain My Captain
Slater Kinney
Heartbreak High
Sex Education
Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      How does Stephanie speak about the relationship between poetry, lyrics and music? Where does this become relevant in Taylor Swift’s work?
2.      What does the term ‘Gaylor’ refer to and why are there so many of them?
3.      We speak about sapphic forms in this episode. What makes a form sapphic for you?
4.      What is feminophobia and why could being femme be read as giving up power? How does this relate to trans femininity?
5.      What does Stephanie suggest about the representation of class in the “You Need To Calm Down” video?
6.      Why does Stephanie stress that Taylor knows that she is white? How does Stephanie describe Taylor’s engagement with race and the music of Black women?
7.      Does Taylor’s music speak to you? Why or why not?

Our favourite feminist killjoy is back! Sara Ahmed joins me to talk about her brand-new book No Is Not A Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining. In her first ever (how special are we) public conversation about the book, Sara speaks about becoming a feminist ear and a complaint collector, sharing stories of her own complaints as well as those shared with her in community. Explaining how the power of complaining lies in creativity and collectivity, Sara shows why saying no is a powerful queer method.  

References:
Sarah Ahmed’s No Is Not A Lonely Utterance (Allen Lane, 2025)
Sarah Ahmed’s The Feminist Killjoy Handbook (Penguin, 2023)
Sarah Ahmed’s Complaint! (Duke, 2021)
Sarah Ahmed’s What’s the Use (Duke, 2019)
Sarah Ahmed’s On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Duke, 2012)
Onomatopoeia
Jean Porcelli
Race Relations Amendment Act
CARD Complaint Against Racial Discrimination
Kennetta Hammond Perry’s London is the Place for Me: Black Britons, Citizenship and the Politics of Race (2018)
 https://global.oup.com/academic/product/london-is-the-place-for-me-9780190909949?cc=gb&lang=en&
Heather Love’s Feeling Backward
Chelsea Watego’s “Always Bet On Black (Power)” (2021)
https://meanjin.com.au/essays/always-bet-on-black-power/  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:

1.      What is a feminist ear? How might you become one?
2.      We speak about the role of energy in complaining. Where can energy come from or disappear to? To quote Sara: ‘puff, puff’
3.      How does Sara define institutional fatalism and why might it be an illusion?
4.      What makes complaint a queer method?
5.      This is a question from Sara’s book: What is the first complaint you remember making? How do you feel about it now?

How many times have you watched the sweaty lesbian fever dream that is Love Lies Bleeding? As you might be able to guess from this episode, Michelle Devereaux and I have stopped counting. Michelle is a feminist film-philosophy expert who joins me to talk about Rose Glass’s super queer neo noir, the interplay of genre conventions and gender dynamics, and all the fun intertexts and easter eggs that we found in Love Lies Bleeding. Whether you’re into bodybuilding and gender transgression or lesbian romance against all odds, this episode is for you.  

References
Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding (2024)
Devereaux, Michelle. "Suspicious Minds and Dead Bodies: Queer Romance and Skepticism in Rose Glass’s Love Lies Bleeding." Film Quarterly 78.2 (2024): 24-32.
Devereaux, Michelle. The Stillness of Solitude: Romanticism and Contemporary American Independent Film. Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Devereaux, Michelle.“‘A lot of people are creative’: Process, Perfectionism and the Everyday Sublime in Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up and First Cow”. Kim Wilkins and Bruce Isaacs, eds. A24: Culture, Aesthetics, Identity. Edinburgh University Press, 2026 (expected).
Devereaux, Michelle.“Inherited Trauma, Postcolonial Scepticism and the Harmony of Voice in Jennifer Kent’s The Nightingale”. Film-Philosophy and Australian Cinema. Saige Walton and Matilda Mroz, eds. Edinburgh University Press, 2026 (expected).
Devereaux, Michelle and Lash, Dominic (eds.). Love, Desire and Stanley Cavell. London: Routledge, 2026 (expected).
MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture: www.maifeminism.com
Russian Doll
Sofia Coppola
Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Harvard University Press, 1981.
Cavell, Stanley. Contesting Tears: The Hollywood Melodrama of the Unknown Woman. Harvard University Press, 1996.
Comedies of Remarriage
Screwball Comedy
Out and Wild
Sleater-Kinney
Bristol Butch Bar
Lindner, Katharina. Film Bodies: Queer Feminist Encounters with Gender and Sexuality in Cinema. Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.
Bound (1996)
The Incredible Hulk
Kristen Stewart 
Twilight
Pumping Iron II: The Women (1985)
Bev Francis David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive (2001) and Lost Highway (1997)
Winkie’s Diner
Lauren Berlant’s epistemic frenzy
Teresa de Lauretis 
[email protected]
Instagram: @michelleldevereaux
Kelly Reichardt’s Showing Up (2022)
Michelle Williams
Derek Jarman’s Caravaggio (1996)
Tilda Swinton
Sean Bean  

Questions you should be able to respond to after listening:
1.      What is Love Lies Bleeding about and why does Michelle suggest it might be more about gender than about sexuality?
2.      How does Michelle describe Lindner’s ‘space of transgender potential’? Can you think of an example for this?
3.      Which genres does Michelle mention to discuss and describe Love Lies Bleeding? How are these genres queered in the film?
4.      What role does the setting play in the film? How might this relate to the ‘space of transgender potential’?
5.      What is your favourite lesbian and/or trans film and why?