The Construction of the Lesbian Reader

Over the next few months I’ll publish drafts of a number of chapters from my unfinished PhD. For now, I’ll allow you to eavesdrop on my research student report, one year into the research (1994).

This project aims to examine the construction of lesbians as readers in and through lesbian writing, especially in the post-1980 period. Texts (most often literary and fictional texts) have provided the major source of knowledge about lesbian desire and lesbian identity, while other cultural and public discourses have maintained a relative silence. Reading issues and practices thus have a special significance within and for lesbian culture. more …

Lesbian eXcursions: Journeying through the personal narrative

Dissertation submitted for the degree of MA Modern Literature: Theory and Practice
at Leicester University, 1991

I had known for a long while that books could be friends, but something happened to me at sixteen/seventeen which meant that life was only mediated through stories. I had my notebooks then, grey, not blue like Mary’s, but funnily enough purchased at Boots where I recently discovered “Poor Miss P”(see Christine Crow’s Miss X or The Wolf Woman) exchanged her library books. The notebooks were friends too because they opened up an imaginary Wilderness to me, where I could tentatively embrace the Unknown and consider who or what ‘X’ might be. Some of the thoughts were turned into poems. more …

The Muted Lesbian Voice: Coming Out of Camouflage

2nd year dissertation for the degree of BA Hons English Literature at University of Leicester, June 1989

Introductory note 2000: Written some ten years ago, this essay is a product of its time. That may seem an obvious thing to say, but I’m aware of how easy it can be to make assumptions about written texts which removes them completely from their historical and cultural contexts. more …