The Underside (a novel) and literary representations of the Queer Underground (critical essay)

Steil, Jennifer (2024). The Underside (a novel) and literary representations of the Queer Underground (critical essay). University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis consists of a contemporary novel set in Latin America and a three-part critical section investigating the postcolonial, gender, and narrative aspects of the creative text.
This critical portion of my thesis examines how I crafted a postcolonial katabatic narrative that also reimagines the gender of its literal and metaphorical underworld. In my first chapter, I explain how my creative work integrates a postcolonial consciousness into the katabatic journey. My second chapter examines how literary fiction has gendered the underworld, and how my work counters this. Finally, I examine my own authorial position and narrative interventions.
The creative portion of my thesis tells the story of a group of queer women, forced to live underground after their families reject them. The text explores what kind of community women might form underground, as well as how they find ways to survive and to protest their exclusion from their culture. The text includes the perspective of a young, gay European woman who befriends this group of subterraneans. Through her, it examines the destructive power of white saviour complex.

Type of Work:

Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)

Award Type:

Doctorates > Ph.D.

Supervisor(s):