My research interests are disability studies and children’s media, in particular speculative fiction and the history of depictions of illness and embodiment in young adult literature. I’m writing my thesis on the idea of the monstrous adolescent and how magic/curses/fantastic imagery can be a useful and even empowering shorthand in exploring the lived experience of disability for younger readers. I’m really interested in the fact that this isn’t a solid, uncomplicated thing, within the realm of more radical critical disability studies/social model vs the realm of what we consider good for a young person in education and medical model spaces, how non-explicit disability metaphor is a way into understanding yourself as a disabled person as a child. I’m also really interested in how the use of imaginative spaces works within trauma, in particular medical intervention, where the child patient may or may not have a voice or agency at all.

Another potential workshop interest is the construction of queerness and non-normative family structures in children’s media, in particular the current boom of comics and animation for young viewers by queer creators examining these concepts. I think there’s an interesting line to be drawn from the idea of queer sexuality being an especially policed area of children’s lives even within our general culture with regards to children that has been discussed. Growing up in that environment, many creators are making the content they never had as children where queerness is both transgressive just by existing, but also “wholesome” in the way of media created for (default) heterosexual children. What kind of needs are both being fulfilled for the child viewer, and for the adult creator, who were themselves once a child? How does this feed into the idea of reciprocal care and meaning?