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Thomas Lockwood-Moran

Languages and Literature, Nottingham Trent University

Thesis title:

Queer Resistance(s): Contemporary Caribbean Communality

My project explores modes of literary and social belonging that resist the lawful oppression of queer people in the Anglophone Caribbean through contemporary literature. This focus is informed by emergent queer visibility, historically framed by the unofficial and violently opposed Kingston Pride of 1989 and the first publicly sanctioned Pride in 2015. I will consider the ways in which increasingly ‘official’ social visibility has potential critical impact for postcolonial-informed queer theories. Moreover, my project argues that such a critical approach is important for contemporary Caribbean fiction due to the region’s historical and literary exceptionalness. In the Caribbean, the colonial past continues to shape the current regulation of sexualities, as evidenced by the continued enforcements of Buggery and Obeah Laws (1861, 1898). 

My project examines how multiple literary queer resistances are present in the work of authors including Marlon James, Nalo Hopkinson and Thomas Glave. I will consider how their work dramatises and subverts the notion that sexual difference functions asa ‘regulator of society’ (Ferguson, 2004) through a production of multiple literary queer resistances via form and content. I will examine this literary queer resistance as ostensibly a private code within contemporary Caribbean literature, accessible exclusively to those ‘in-the-know’. This is manifested by a distinctly Caribbean cultural rendering of camp’s love of artifice and exaggeration: the similar aesthetic flamboyances of calypso, carnival and dancehall influencing the forms of contemporary Caribbean literature. The sexual and colonial resistances within these Caribbean literary texts connect to contemporary queer theories, particularly international queer-of-colour critique (Muñoz, Gopinath, Ferguson, Lorde, Anzaldúa, Rao, Massad). As such, my critical framework aims to mimic the topography of the Caribbean as separate concepts, converging through a shared belonging, reflecting disparate islands which have become culturally interrelated, due to their colonial and diasporic histories.

Research Area

  • Languages and Literature

Conferences

Co-Convenor:

‘Patterns of Struggle and Solidarity' hosted by Postcolonial Studies Centre/ Bonington Gallery - http://www.boningtongallery.co.uk/events/patterns-of-struggle-and-solidarity Organised by NTU PSC and convened by Dr Nicole Thiara, Dr Amy Rushton, Dr Jenni Ramone, Midlands4Cities funded PhD researcher Thomas Lockwood-Moran and PhD researcher Purnachandra Naik.

Presentation:

'Worldmaking Around the World: Queer Media and Culture in Circulation' hosted by the University of Exeter 21-22 May 2021 - http://translatingforchange.exeter.ac.uk/conference/

44th Annual Conference of the Society for Caribbean Studies (UK) 5-10 July 2021 - http://community-languages.org.uk/scs/conference-2021/

Public Engagement & Impact

February 16th 2022 — live online in-conversation with Indo-Trinidadian poet Shivanee Ramlochan entitled 'The Power of Queer Caribbean Love'. Presented via Bonington Gallery and the Postcolonial Studies Centre at Nottingham Trent University. Avaliable free online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBehfuGHsfA

Public screening of emmy award winning director Reginald Campbell's 'Tolerance' (2013) plus in-discussion event as part of 'Patterns of Struggle and Solidarity' - http://www.boningtongallery.co.uk/events/patterns-of-struggle-and-solidarity — June 2021.

Project manager for a public screening and discussion event at Nottingham Contemporary 'Concerning Violence' (2014), an award-winning documentary written and directed by Swedish filmmaker, Göran Olsson. Followed g will  by a conversation with artist, curator and educator Barby Asante and lecturer Amy Rushton, moderated by poet and researcher Panya Banjoko. Curated by NTU MA and PhD students Roxie Ablett, Arwa Nasser Almefawaz, Victoria Zoe Callus, Bethan Evans, and Tom Lockwood-Moran.
https://nottinghamcontemporary.org/whats-on/artists-film-concerning-violence/

Memberships

The Society for Caribbean Studies (UK).

Teaching Experience

Lecture given on queer representation at Nottingham Trent University (2019) on the second year undergraduate module 'Black Writing in Britian'.

A Maters lecture and worshop teaching assistant for Dr Amy Rushton  - 'Advanced Introduction to Queer Theory' - at Nottingham Trent University (2020).

Employed as Hourly Paid Lecturer, seminar leader, on the first year undergraduate module 'New Horizons' (intro to literary theory), at Nottingham Trent University (2020/21).

Employed as Hourly Paid Lecturer, seminar leader, on the third-year undergraduate module 'Postcolonial Texts', at Nottingham Trent University (2021/22).