Alice Chapman-Kelly

Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Biography

Background

Originally from the Isle of Man, I have been based in Edinburgh since 2010. After completing my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in English Literature at the University of Edinburgh, I undertook my PhD on Joseph Conrad’s female characters of colour (funded by the Wolfson Foundation) also at the University of Edinburgh. Since graduating from my PhD in 2019, I have been pursuing its themes of character status, adaptation and lesbian subtext in my work on femslash fanfiction (fan-authored narratives pairing female characters from pre-existing copyrighted media in queer romantic and sexual relationships). I was the 2019/2020 Digital Scholarship Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Edinburgh’s Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Fellow-in-Residence at the University of Oxford’s Rothermere American Institute in 2021/2022. Since August 2022, I have been working with Professor Michelle Keown (University of Edinburgh), Dr Shari Sabeti (University of Edinburgh) and Dr Simon Grennan (University of Chester) on the AHRC-funded project ‘Remediating Stevenson: Decolonising Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pacific Fiction through Graphic Adaptation, Arts Education and Community Engagement’ as Postdoctoral Research Fellow. My first book, Decolonising the Conrad Canon (Liverpool University Press) was published in 2022, and my second, about queer women's storytelling in online fan spaces, Fanfiction as Queer Healing: Femslash Authorship and the Swan Queen Ship is out later this year (Bloomsbury Academic, November 2024). In 2022-2023, I undertook the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. My pronouns are she/her. 

Qualifications

PgCert Academic Practice (2022-2023)

PhD English Literature (2015-2019)

MSc Literature and Society: Enlightenment, Romantic and Victorian (Distinction) (2014-2015)

MA (Hons) English Literaure (First Class) (2010-2014)

 

Research summary

Interests include:

  • Femslash fanfiction - Queer female, wlw, genderqueer, non-binary fandom, F/F
  • Racism and anti-racism in femslash fandom
  • Queer maternity, family, parenting, childhood
  • Queer domesticity, home, shelter
  • Homonormativity and neoliberalism
  • Temporality and theories of time in literature (e.g. crip/feminist/queer time)
  • LGBTQ+ representation in popular culture 
  • Queer and feminist theory
  • Adaptation and fan studies
  • Canon formation
  • Authorship studies
  • Digital archives
  • Print culture scholarship
  • Scottish literature
  • Postcolonial literature
  • Decolonising the curriculum
  • Fairy tale and fantasy genre
  • Literary modernism
  • Character status

 

Knowledge exchange

 

Project activity

  • Remediating Stevenson: Decolonising Robert Louis Stevenson’s Pacific Fiction through Graphic Adaptation, Arts Education and Community Engagement (School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures, University of Edinburgh - UKRI funded - 2022-2025)
  • The Story Middle: Queer Temporality, Narratology, and the Precarious Body in Femslash Fan Fiction (Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford -  2021/2022)
  • Winking Back: Femslash Fanfiction as Literature of Queer Survival in the Digital Age (Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh - 2019/2020)

 

Invited speaker

  • ‘Once Upon a Queer Time’. Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, PhDs: Guest Lecture, University of Glasgow, 20th Jan 2022.
  • ‘Embodiment in Femslash Fanfiction: Actors, Audiences and “Scribbling Women”’. Work in Progress Seminar Series, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, 12th Feb 2020.
  • ‘Secret Sexualities: Homoeroticism, Deception and the Double in Joseph Conrad’s “The Secret Sharer”’. Spies Like Us: Student Showcase, Edinburgh Spy Week 2019, University of Edinburgh, 5th April 2019.

Organiser

  • Archives of Desire: Transformative Fandom and Queer Memory. Seminar Series. Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, 27th April-25th May 2022. Sole Organiser. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sc5diotSqzM&list=PLXu1NaQRmVcxJlyfRQ0eoDnTZNqd0QOmP 
  • ‘Queer(ing) Female Characters’. Roundtable. Fan Studies Network North America 2021 Conference, FSN-NA, 20th-24th Oct 2021. Sole Organiser.
  • Queer Representation: Pasts, Presents, Futures. Conference. Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, 11th-14th May 2021. Co-organiser with Dr Anamarija Horvat.

Papers delivered

  • ‘Dark Swans: Otherness, Queerness and Femslash Reimaginings’. GIFCon: Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations – Fantasy Across Media. University of Glasgow, 27th-29th April 2022.
  • ‘“‘My gift to you is good memories’”: Plurality, Fan Time, and Epilonging in Swan Queen Fanfiction.’ ‘Queer Temporalities’ in Literature, Cinema and Video Games International Conference, University of Murcia, 2nd-4th Dec 2021.
  • ‘Gifting Queer Time: Epilonging, Story-Middles, and Swan Queen Fanfiction.’ Queer Intersections Oxford Research Lunch, University of Oxford, 30th Nov 2021.
  • ‘Affect and Author-Gods: Digital Archives, Queer Pleasures and Fannish Feeling in Literary Scholarship.’ FanLIS: Building Bridges, City, University of London, 20th May 2021.
  • ‘True Love’s Kiss: Once Upon a Time’s Compulsory Heterosexuality and Queer Female Desire in Swan Queen Fanfic.’ Queer Representation: Pasts, Presents, Futures, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, 11th-14th May 2021.
  • ‘Canon, Canons and Anti-Canonicity: Queer Cultural Memory and the Textuality of Swan Queen “#fic recs” on Tumblr.’ Centre for Data, Culture and Society’s ‘Cancelled Conference’ Conference, University of Edinburgh, 16th June 2020.
  • ‘“Lesbian Reading Glasses” and a Digital Archive: Queering Women in the Dead White Man’s Canon.’ Queer Screens, Northumbria University, 2nd-3rd September 2017.
  • ‘“We Are the Creatures of Our Light Literature”: Race, Pulp Covers and Consumable Conrad’. Theorising the Popular, Liverpool Hope University, 21st-22nd June 2017.
  • ‘Behaving Herself: Subversive Subaltern Sexuality and Wayward White Women in Joseph Conrad’s Colonial Fiction.’ Kaleidoscope: Conference of the Postgraduate Gender Research Network of Scotland, University of Edinburgh, 5th June 2017.
  • ‘“The Grip of an Intimate Contact”: Reading Cross-Cultural Encounters and Colonial Discourse in Conrad’s Malay Fiction.’ Postgraduate Diasporic Trajectories Seminar, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, 25th November 2016.
  • ‘“The Problem of Longitude”: Unplottable Subjects and the Imaginary Pacific in Joseph Conrad’s Malay Fiction.’ All That Glitters is Not Gold: Critiques of Globalization in New Zealand and the Pacific, Regent’s University, 8-9th July 2016.

Single-Authored Monographs

Edited Journal Issue

  • Co-editor, with Dr Anamarija Horvat (Northumbria University), of Queer Studies in Media and Popular Cultures, forthcoming 2023, Special Issue: ‘Queer Representation: Pasts, Presents, and Futures’. https://doi.org/10.1386/qsmpc_00104_2

Book Chapters

Journal Articles

  • ‘Fanfiction and Adaptation: Reparation, Return and the Eroticism of Repetition in Telanu’s The Devil Wears Prada “Prizefight” Ficverse.’ Studies in Popular Culture, vol. 43, no. 2, 2021, pp. 48-76. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27122875 
  • ‘“Swallow up Me”: hosts, guests and queer hospitality in Sarah Waters’ Affinity, Fingersmith, and Fingersmith Fan Fiction’. European Journal of English Studies, Special Issue: ‘Neo-Victorian Hospitality’, vol. 24, no. 3, 2020b, pp. 229–40. doi:10.1080/13825577.2020.1876606.
  • ‘“Lots of Us Are Doing Fine”: Femslash Fan Fiction, Happy Endings and the Archontic Expansions of the Price of Salt Archive’. LIT: Literature, Interpretation, Theory, Special Issue: ‘Contemporary Literature and/as Archive’, vol 31, issue 1, 2020a, pp. 42-59, doi:10.1080/10436928.2020.1712791.
  • ‘Fan Fiction as Feminist Citation: Lesbian (Para)Textuality in chainofclovers’s “Done with the Compass, Done with the Chart” (2017)’. Transformative Works and Cultures, vol. 30, 2019c. doi:10.3983/twc.2019.1773.
  • ‘Nina Almayer, Aurora Marion and “The Cultural Air We Breathe”: Character Status and Embodiment in Joseph Conrad’s Almayer’s Folly and Its Film Adaptation, Chantal Akerman’s La Folie Almayer.’ Postcolonial Interventions, vol. IV, no. 1, 2019b, pp. 229–60. doi:10.5281/zenodo.2554522.
  • ‘“My Sable Ingramina”: Queering Colonial Gender Roles in Mary Kingsley’s Travels in West Africa.’ Nineteenth-Century Gender Studies, vol. 13, no. 3, 2017, pp. 43–55.
  • ‘“Lost Amongst Shapeless Things”: The Figure of the Woman in Joseph Conrad’s Colonial Fiction.’ Durham English Review: An Undergraduate Journal, vol. 3, no .1, 2015, pp. 53-67.
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