Paulina Palmer – The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic Abstract:

Developing ideas from my recently published book The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic (Wales University Press/Chicago University Press, 2012), I shall investigate the roles played by the concept of the uncanny, as defined by Sigmund Freud, Helene Cixous and other theorists, in the representation of lesbian and gay sexualities and transgender in contemporary British and American fiction published 1980 – 2007.

Motifs and themes with uncanny import on which I focus include secrets and their disclosure, queer spectrality, the homely/unhomely house, lesbian social invisibility and transgender doubles. I shall refer to a selection of novels, including Emma Donoghue, Stir Fry; Stella Duffy, Beneath the Blonde; Alan Hollinghurst, The Swimming Pool Library; Randall Kenan, A Visitation of Spirits; and James Purdy, Mourners Below.

Paulina Palmer  taught as senior lecturer in the English Department at Warwick University.  She also helped start the Women’s Studies MA there in the 1980s and taught for it. On retiring from Warwick, she taught part-time for a few years for the Gender Studies MA at Birkbeck, University of London.

Key publications: Contemporary Women’s Fiction: Narrative Practice and Feminist Theory (1989); Contemporary Lesbian Writing: Dreams, Desire, Difference (1993); Lesbian Gothic: Transgressive Fictions (1999); The Queer Uncanny: New Perspectives on the Gothic (2012)

Presented by Queer@King’s. For more information on the event please click here.