Alice Sholto-Douglas

Thesis title: A Queer Blue Aesthetic: Experimental Form, the Body, and the Sea in Contemporary Literature

Supervisor: Peter Boxall

My thesis examines queer, feminist contemporary novels in which bodies are depicted as watery, porous, and adaptational, leaking and dissolving, shapeshifting and smelling. In particular, I am looking at instances of formal, structural, narratological, and stylistic experimentation common across this ‘queer blue’ literature, considering how an experimental mode accommodates the expression of queer and women characters’ experiences and what this might help convey about how these bodies unfold into their watery worlds. Even though this fiction is often fantastical, magical realist, or speculative, I believe it speaks to plausible empathetic, ecocentric, and alternative ways of being, and I hope my research will offer a methodological model that recognises the value of literary scholarship beyond the discipline.

My research interests include queer and feminist modern, postmodern, and contemporary literature (especially fiction that is in some way experimental) and poetry, future studies, queer ecology, the blue and environmental humanities, the sea, the relationship between the written word and other creative forms (film, visual media, visual art, and music), and how literary imaginaries and encounters build and shape our world.

I also completed my Master’s on Sylvia Plath’s short stories and poetry, considering how she stylistically draws on visual forms to construct the agency of her speakers and characters.

Please feel free to be in touch if you'd like to discuss research related to any of my interests.