Being in the picture: the movie fan and queer literature

Studying twentieth-century literature through the lens of film studies and queer theory, “Being in the Picture” stages an interdisciplinary conversation that posits queer film fandom as a move away from current theorizations of queer spectators. Movie fandom, usually dismissed as a way to name an unserious and vacuously emotional type of engagement with cinema, is here presented as a way to theorize engagements with cinema that go beyond mere camp or appropriation. Building on the affective turn in queer theory and recuperating the various pleasures these authors found in cinema while growing up, “Being in the Picture” explores the ways this very engagement with cinema was formally registered in twentieth century queer literature. Thus, while fandom seems like a mere overlooked biographical detail in the lives of the authors that make up my canon, my project uses it to stage conversations both about literary form and queer spectatorship.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Manuel Betancour