Life Writing and Rural Queer Studies: Queerying the Spatialisation of Modern Sexual Identities in Australia and Six Hundred Something Kilometres

Abstract

This research thesis explores significant criticisms levelled by academics of rural queer studies— the spacialisation of modern LGBTIQ+ identity, politics and academia and a metronormative narrative that (re)produces it. Through the practice-led research methodology of Dallas Baker’s “queer life writing,” I argue that creative writing can resist the demands of metronormativity by employing what Scott Herring refers to as a “rural stylistics” and attempt to provide examples of contemporary Australian writers who have done so.