Aaron Muldoon

AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership/Trinity College Studentship

Queer Cultural Memory in Literature, Film and Television since 1999

Supervisor: Professor Sarah Dillon (Faculty of English, University of Cambridge) 

Abstract:

My PhD research explores how queer culture and cultural identity in the 21st century arises from a specific kind of identification with the past—what I am calling queer cultural memory. My analyses of literature, film and television of recent decades meld queer theory with cultural memory studies and aim to interrogate the assumptions underlying this identification. For example, what political and affective mechanisms facilitate thinking of queer people in terms of a transhistorical and collective ‘us’? What does it mean to inherit the queer past, or to (re)claim it? And what bearing does the historically constituted nature of contemporary queer culture have on the ways we understand ourselves today?

Some authors and directors of interest include Pedro Almodóvar, Desiree Akhavan, Gregg Araki, Neil Bartlett, Michael Cunningham, Samuel R. Delany, Xavier Dolan, Guillaume Dustan, Robert Glück, Garth Greenwell, Andrew Sean Greer, Luca Guadagnino, Todd Haynes, Andrew Holleran, Andrea Lawlor, Sam Levinson, Édouard Louis, Carmen Maria Machado, Adam Mars-Jones, Jamie O’Neill, François Ozon, Céline Sciamma, Will Self, Douglas Stuart, Colm Toíbín, Sarah Waters, Edmund White, Jeanette Winterson.

Academic Background:

MA (Hons) Economics and Philosophy, University of St Andrews

MSc Modern and Contemporary Art: History, Curating, Criticism, University of Edinburgh

MA (Research) Literary Studies, University of Amsterdam

Publications:

Muldoon, A. M., 2023. Softboys in the Age of Millennial Masculinity. Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Gender Research. Available through: https://papers.academic-conferences.org/index.php/icgr/article/view/1174

Muldoon, A. M., 2021 The Location of AIDS: On Boundaries and Posthuman Bodies in Essex Hemphill’s ‘Vital Signs’. FORUM, 31. Available through: http://journals.ed.ac.uk/forum/article/ view/5493/7344

Muldoon, A. M., 2021. What’s Gayer than Being Gay? Writer’s Block Magazine, 45. Available through: https://writersblockmagazine.com/2021/01/15/writers-block-45/

Muldoon, A. M., 2020. On Representing ‘Doubly Othered’ Gay Black Subjects. FORUM, 30. Available through: http://journals.ed.ac.uk/forum/article/view/4481/6060

Muldoon, A. M., 2020. The fine line between subverting stereotypes and perpetuating them. SLEEK. Available through: https://www.sleek-mag.com/article/subverting-stereotypes-andperpetuating-them-rotimi-fani-kayode/

Muldoon, A. M., 2019. Maggie Nelson, The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning. FORUM, 29. Available through: http://journals.ed.ac.uk/forum/article/view/4143/5849

Muldoon, A. M., 2019. What can conceptual art teach us about whether or not art needs to be aesthetic? Aporia, 19(2). Available through: https://ojs.st-andrews.ac.uk/index.php/aporia/article/ view/1931

Teaching:

Aaron supervises on POL17 (Politics and Gender) in the Department of Politics and International Studies. In the Faculty of English, he supervises on Paper 16 (History and Theory of Literary Criticism) as well as Practical Criticism and Critical Practice. Aaron supervises Part I and Part II undergraduate dissertations relating to contemporary queer literature, queer theory/gender studies, feminism, cultural memory, the culture industry, nationalism, and globalisation.