Masterclass with Prof. dr. Teagan Bradway
Queer and Trans Narrative Theory
June 2, 2026: 13:00 – 17:00 hrs
Leiden University
What is queer about narrative form? How has narrative shaped queer and trans theory? And what can contemporary queer and trans narrative teach us about the politics of gender, sexuality, and race now?
To address these questions, this masterclass will trace the recent explosion of interest in queer and trans narrative theory.
Participants will assess competing definitions, theories, and methods for narrative within queer and trans studies, searching for points of solidarity between these often-opposed fields, and the masterclass will pay special attention to the problems that self-narration poses for LGBTQIA+ people and communities.
Finally, participants will debate how queer and trans narrative theory might help to revive humanistic approaches to gender and sexuality, which have been increasingly pushed aside in favor of social science methods.
In preparation for the masterclass, participants are encouraged to reflect on the narrative forms that have been essential to their understandings of gender and sexuality, such as coming-out stories, web comics, fan fiction, serial television, horror movies, literary fiction, gossip, erotica, and fairy tales, to name just a few.
Teagan Bradway (she/her) is Professor of English at SUNY Cortland and a Society for the Humanities Fellow at Cornell University for 2025-26.
She is
a queer theorist and scholar of LGBTQ+ and experimental literatures. Her work examines how queer kinship takes shape and endures through aesthetic and affective labor. She is particularly fascinated by the ways LGBTQ+ people sustain social worlds through storytelling and other narrative practices.
She is the author of Queer Experimental Literature: The Affective Politics of Bad Reading (2017) and co-editor of Queer Kinship: Race, Sex, Belonging, Form (2022) and After Queer Studies: Literature, Theory, and Sexuality in the 21st Century.
Bradway is also the guest editor of Unaccountably Queer (2024), a special issue of differences, and Lively Words: The Politics and Poetics of Experimental Writing (2019), a special issue of College Literature. Currently, Bradway is completing a book on queer forms of relationality and co-writing “Endless Love” with the late Elizabeth Freeman.
Texts to read & watch for masterclass:
- Bradway, “Queer Narrative Theory and the Relationality of Form”: https://www.academia.edu/62487178/_Queer_Narrative_Theory_and_the_Relationality_of_Form_
- Bradway, “Renarratable Bonds: Queer Relationality in the Scene of Redress”: https://www.academia.edu/126249101/_Renarratable_Bonds_Queer_Relationality_in_the_Scene_of_Redress_
- Framing Agnes (dir. Chase Joynt, 2022)
Optional:
- Bradway and Butler, “Queer Narrative Lines: A Conversation with Judith Butler”: https://differencesjournal.org/writing/queer-narrative-lines
Details masterclass
Date & Time: Tuesday June 2, 2026, 13:00 – 17:00 hrs
Location: Leiden University, Lipsius building, room 1.48 (Cleveringaplaats 1, Leiden)
ECTS: 1 EC (small preparatory assignment) or 2 EC (additional assignment)
Registration: The masterclass is open to RMA students and PhD candidates studying at a university in the Netherlands. Please send an email to nog@uu.nl with your name, study programme (RMA or PhD), and the research school you’re affiliated with.
Registration deadline: 15 May 2026.
On the day previous to the masterclass, Monday June 1st, Teagan Bradway will give a lecture titled ‘Group Work: How to Practice and Sustain Queer Kinship’ at the University of Amsterdam. The lecture is followed by a response by Jacob Engelberg and is moderated by Eugenie Brinkema. This event is organized by Queer Formalism.
All are welcome on 1 June from 16:00 – 18:00 hrs at room 1.04 of the P.C. Hoofthuis (Spuistraat 134, Amsterdam).
Registration: queerformalism@gmail.com
More information here.
