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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0006-9820-9487.
Date Available
4-17-2028
Year of Publication
2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
College
Arts and Sciences
Department/School/Program
English
Faculty
Michelle Sizemore
Faculty
Matthew Giancarlo
Abstract
This dissertation investigates comfort in mid-nineteenth century American literature to expand scholarly consciousness of queer subjects’ affective lives. Before the concretization of Western queer identities, queer comforts offer readers a complex array of affective negotiations inflected by both non-normative sexuality and physical space. Comfort, particularly in the nineteenth century, indexes physical normativity of spaces, such as home. Queer subjects contest this naturalization of comfort into normative spaces, fashioning new worlds that are recognizably queer spaces. Although the prevailing definition of nineteenth-century comfort is one of physical contentment with objects and spaces in conformity with heterosexual middle-class ideals, comfort also refers to a sensibility of belonging, familiarity, and security in physical, social, affective, and spiritual senses, among others. Comfort as such makes visible the ways in which queer subjects create and imagine worlds of belonging, familiarity, and security for themselves—not only in political collectives or broader communities but also in everyday living. Because comfort discursively comprises cognitive and physical landscapes, I synthesize scholarly work of queer theorists, affect theorists, architects, and geographers to investigate the worlds queer people fashion to comfort themselves—specifically, the queer comforts of the closet, home, and utopia. Even within literary studies, as my chapters analyze the texts of Herman Melville, Theodore Winthrop, Bayard Taylor, and Sarah Orne Jewett, I revisit several scholarly terrains, including the Gothic and utopia, exploring how queer persons reinvent familiar genres to create their own comforts.
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.13023/etd.2026.102
Archival?
Archival
Recommended Citation
Thibaudeau, Andrew, "Queer Comforts: Comfort and Queer Space in Nineteenth-Century American Literature" (2026). Theses and Dissertations--English. 196.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/196
Included in
Architectural History and Criticism Commons, Geography Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Literature in English, North America, Ethnic and Cultural Minority Commons, Queer Studies Commons
