Rachel M. Friars is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of English Language and Literature at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her current work centers on neo-Victorianism and nineteenth-century lesbian literature and history, with secondary research interests in life writing, historical fiction, true crime, and the Gothic. Her work on lesbian historical fiction has been published with with Palgrave Macmillan, The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, Lexington Books, Crime Studies Journal, Queer Studies in Media and Popular Culture, and is forthcoming in The Palgrave Handbook of neo-Victorianism.
Neo-Victorianism, Victorianism, Lesbian literature and history
Articles (Peer-reviewed)
[Forthcoming] 漍White snakes of sea-foam: Coastal Space and the Lesbian Gothic in Emily M. Danforths Plain Bad Heroines. Coastal Gothic, edited by Emily Alder, Jimmy Packham, and Joan Passey. University of Wales Press, 2023.
[Forthcoming] 漍My heart is a hand reaching: Lesbian Yearning and Queer Futurity in the neo- Victorian Novel. Victorian Popular Fictions Journal Special Issue: Re-Articulating The Third Sex: Victorian and neo-Victorian Engagements with LGBTQIA+, edited by Helena Esser, Mollie Clarke, Claire OCallaghan. 2023.
[Forthcoming] 漍History digs a shallow grave: Queer Temporality in Emily M. Danforths Lesbian Gothic. Studies in the Novel, Spring 2023.
[Forthcoming] with Connor E.R. DeMerchant. Neo-Victorian Queen Victoria. The Palgrave Handbook of Neo-Victorian Studies. Edited by Sarah E. Maier and Brenda Ayres. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
[Forthcoming]. The Lesbian Neo-Victorian Novel. The Palgrave Handbook of neo-Victorian Studies. Edited by Sarah E. Maier and Brenda Ayres. Palgrave Macmillan, 2023.
with Jesyka Traynor. 漍Dogged, Insightful, and Humane: Writing Womens Lives in Twenty-First-Century True Crime. Crime Fiction Studies, vol. 3, no. 1, 2022, pp. 1025.
漍The curiosity with which that fist moves: Lesbian Erotics in Sarah Waterss Tipping the Velvet and Emma Donoghues Frog Music. Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, vol. 6, no. 3, 2021, pp. 217232.
with Sarah E. Maier. Mashing it Up: Recasting Power in the (Neo-)Victorian Penny Dreadful. Gothic Mash-Ups: Hybridity, Appropriation, and Intertextuality in Gothic Storytelling. Edited by Natalie Neill. Lexington Books, 2021, pp. 55-72.
with Sarah E. Maier. Stoically Sapphic: Gentlemanly Encryption and Disruptive Legibility in Adapting Anne Lister. The Journal of Neo-Victorian Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2020, pp. 125152.
with Brenda Ayres. 漍We should go mad: The Madwoman and her Nurse. Neo-Victorian Madness: Revising Nineteenth-Century Mental Illness in Literature, Television, and Film. Edited by Brenda Ayres and Sarah E. Maier, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, pp. 4972.
In Progress:
[Under Contract] 漍Youre not the stuff of a chapter: Queer Life and Womens Activism in Biofictions by Emma Donoghue. The neo-Victorian and the Late-Victorian, edited by Victoria Margree, Deborah Madden, and Aris Mousoutzanis. Routledge, 2024.
Creative Periodicals
The Lamp, vol. 13, no. 1, Queens University, 2023.
The Lamp, vol. 12, no. 1, Queens University, 2022.
Vox, vol. 16, no. 1, The University of New Brunswick, 2018.
Vox, vol. 15, no. 1, The University of New Brunswick, 2018.
Poetry and Short Fiction
Chapter One: Shadows and Sentimentality. The Lamp, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, pp. 11.
Making Beds With Water. The Lamp, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, pp. 66-72.
A喝眶喝莽喧. The Lamp, vol. 10, no. 1, 2020, pp. 43.
Marigolds and Honey. A Peek in the Attic, vol. 1, no. 1, 2019, n.p.
Chapter Three: Wounds. The Lamp, vol. 9, no. 1, 2019, n.p.
The Dark Between Trees. The Lamp, vol. 9, no. 1, 2019, n.p.
The Honey Gatherers. The Lamp, vol. 9, no. 1, 2019, n.p.
After Sonnet 29. Distortion, vol. 1, no. 1, 2018, pp. 19.
Pennywise & Patriarchy. Distortion, vol. 1, no. 1, 2018, pp. 2-3.
Single White Female. Vox, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, pp. 36.
1975. Vox, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, pp. 24.
The Holes Underneath. Vox, vol. 16, no. 1, 2018, pp. 46-49.
Nine Hearts. The Fog Lit Journal, vol. 4, no. 1, 2017, pp. 44-49.
The Great Puzzle. Vox, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 53-58.
Accidental Clarity. Vox, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 25-31.
10 Things my Grandmother Taught Me. Vox, vol. 15, no. 1, 2017, pp. 62.
The Red Haired Man. The Fog Lit Journal, vol. 3, no. 1, 2016, pp. 45-51.
Rural Affairs. Vox vol. 14, no. 1, 2016, pp. 34-36.
M硃娶勳梗. Vox vol. 14, no. 1, 2016, pp. 28-31.
The Third Man. Vox, vol. 13, no. 1, 2015, pp. 15-21.
Public Articles
#AcademicTwitter: Research Communities and Pandemic Networking. The Angle Newsletter. ACCUTE.
漍.PopMeC Research, 18 November 2021.
漍. The Journal of Victorian Culture Online, 6 August 2021.
Dissertation Title: An exclusively female ensemble: Neo-Victorian lesbian media and nineteenth-century queer narratives.
My doctoral dissertation will analyze the ways in which neo-Victorian lesbian media chronicles silences and misconceptions in the Victorian era regarding female homosexuality in literature and film from the last thirty years. I intend to explore the ambition behind creating art objects that place lesbian women in Victorian settings.
Current Positions:
2022/01 - Present Founder/President, Queer Studies Association of Canada
2020/10 - Present Co-Editor-in-Chief, The Lamp Literary Journal
2020/08 - Present Co-Editor-In-Chief, True Crime Index
2020/08 - Present Freelance Writer, The Lesbrary
Conferences:
05/2023 "'The flesh made word': Lesbian Neo-Victorian Pornography in Heather ONeills When We Lost Our Heads." ACCUTE.
05/2023 Panel Organizer/Panel Chair. Life Writing as Queer Testimony. ACCUTE & The Queer Studies
Association of Canada. York University.
02/2023 漍Am I anywhere in there?: Conflicting Archives in The World to Come. Historical Fictions Research Network Conference, online.
11/2022 I will tell you my story: Narrative Agency and Vampiric Autonomy in Young Adult Retellings of Carmilla. Recovering the Vampire, online.
11/2022 漍Someone elses tragedy: True Crime and Memoir in the Golden State Killer Trilogy. Framing (Serial) Killing: Changing Narratives, online.
10/2022 漍Induced by the demons lips: Vampiric Orality and the Lesbian Mouth in Le Fanus Carmilla.Northeast Popular & American Culture Association Conference, online.
05/2022 A cruelty of nature: American Landscape and the Lesbian Gothic. ACCUTE.
05/2022 漍Pulled into elsewhere, or perhaps nowhere: Erotohistoriography and the Lesbian Gothic. ACCUTE.
03/2022 漍A real queer fish: Erotic Consumption in Sarah Waterss Tipping the Velvet and Emma Donoghues Frog Music. Outsiders: Making Space at the Queer Intersections of Sex and Gender, University of Brighton.
02/2022 漍I say you do not have a name: Queering Draculas Brides in S.T. Gibsons A Dowry of Blood. Gothic Trajectories, online.
02/2022 漍A kindling, a fascination, a yearning: Female Friendship, Marriage, and Queer Communities in Biofictions by Emma Donoghue. The Historical Fictions Research Network, online.
12/2021 漍History digs a shallow grave: Temporal Boundaries in the neo-Victorian Lesbian Gothic in Emily M. Danforths Plain Bad Heroines. Queer Temporalities Conference, University of Murcia, Spain.
09/2021 漍Youre not the stuff of a chapter: Queer Life and Womens Activism in Biofictions by Emma Donoghue. The Neo-Victorian and the Late-Victorian: Texts, Media, Politics, The University of Brighton, UK.
07/2021 Panel Organizer/Panel Chair. 漍Speaking of my oddity: Inclusive Spaces in Nineteenth-Century Womens Life Writing. Victorian Popular Fiction Association Annual Conference.
05/ 2021 漍The curiosity with which that fist moves: Lesbian Vaginal Fisting in the Novels of Emma Donoghue and Sarah Waters. ACCUTE.
04/2021 Moderator. Class and Social Stratification. Victorian Pasts, Presents, and Futures, 04/2021. Carroll University, Waukesha, Wisconsin.
04/2021 Moderator. Aesthetic Elements: Art and Fashion. Victorian Pasts, Presents, and Futures. Carroll University, Waukesha, Wisconsin.
043/2021 Panel Chair, Victorianism. Queens Undergraduate Conference in Literature. Queens University, Kingston, Ontario.
02/2021 White snakes of sea-foam: Coastal Boundaries and Lesbian Spectrality in Emily M. Danforths Plain Bad Heroines. Haunted Shores: Coastlands, Coastal Waters and the Littoral Gothic, online.
03/2019 God fearing, drug hating, laudanum swilling Victorian England: The Neo-Victorian Opium Eater in Philip Pullmans The Ruby in the Smoke. The Age of Anxiety: Literary Studies in a Culture of Risk, Graduate Conference.
04/2018 The Phantom Around the Corner: The Victorian Other in Wilkie Collins The Moonstone and Charles Dickens Oliver Twist. Arts Matters, UNB Fredericton.
03/2017 M硃娶勳梗. Rural Affairs. Atlantic Arts Undergraduate English Conference.
Invited Talks
02/2023 The Lesbian Gothic Novel. ENGL 451: The Nineteenth-Century Gothic, Queens University. (Renumerated Talk).
12/2022 Traps, Trauma, and the Locked Door: Bluebeard in the 21st Century. Romancing the Gothic, Public Talk, Online,12/2022.
05/2021 漍I never knew that there were girls like her: Locating the (neo)Victorian Lesbian. Special Topics Presentation. Queens University Department of English Language and Literature.
04/2021 Keynote Speaker. 漍Like a lovely corpse: The Zombic Fallen Woman in Victorian Art and Literature. Keynote Address. Undergraduate Conference. Carroll University, Waukesha, Wisconsin.
