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Frederic Rukes
Frederic Rukes earned his bachelor’s degree in English Studies and German and Comparative Literature at RWTH Aachen University in 2012. He later completed his master’s degree in English Studies at Cologne University in 2017. For his master thesis, entitled “'Strangeways, Here We Come' – Queer Discourse and the Disruption of Normativity in Morrissey and The Smiths“, he received the Jenny Gusyk Early Career Researcher Award 2017 for an outstanding academic thesis in the field of gender and/or queer studies. During his master studies, Frederic Rukes worked in the English Department for the chair of Prof. Beate Neumeier as general assistant for her quarterly publication, the peer-reviewed academic journal gender forum.
Since April 2018, Frederic Rukes is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (Horizon 2020) fellow of the “a.r.t.e.s. EUmanities global” doctoral program at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School. His dissertation is supervised by Prof. Beate Neumeier (Cologne University) and Prof. Elizabeth Freeman (UC Davis). Frederic Rukes’ research interests include queer, poststructural, postcolonial, and critical race theory, gender, disability, cultural, and media studies as well as popular culture, modernist and feminist literature.
Supervisors: Beate Neumeier (University of Cologne) and Elizabeth Freeman (UC Davis)
Since April 2018, Frederic Rukes is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie (Horizon 2020) fellow of the “a.r.t.e.s. EUmanities global” doctoral program at the a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School. His dissertation is supervised by Prof. Beate Neumeier (Cologne University) and Prof. Elizabeth Freeman (UC Davis). Frederic Rukes’ research interests include queer, poststructural, postcolonial, and critical race theory, gender, disability, cultural, and media studies as well as popular culture, modernist and feminist literature.
Supervisors: Beate Neumeier (University of Cologne) and Elizabeth Freeman (UC Davis)
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ambivalent – an evaluation that applies among other things to his attitude towards gender and sexuality. While Morrissey refuses to classify himself in any predefined categories of gender and sexuality, his own and his band’s musical canon is rife with narratives of queer desire and instances of sexual intimacy, which often allow for both a gay and a straight viewpoint. It is precisely this ambiguity that offers the possibility of an interpretation offside a compulsory heterosexuality and –normativity, therefore opening it to a queer audience. It is furthermore among the reasons why lyrics by Morrissey and The Smiths, as I will argue, qualify as queer texts. In order to establish and defend such a view, this paper will draw on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s approach of a queer reading and her work on homosocial desire in literature, Harold Beaver’s examination of homosexual signs, and Teresa de Lauretis definition of queer texts. One of the pillars of de Lauretis’s classification is that of non-closure of a narrative and is thus closely linked to queer negativity and non-futurity. Morrissey and The Smiths’ oeuvre offers a significant set of songs that embrace these ideas. Deriving from Jack Halberstam’s concept of the queer art of failure, Lee Edelman’s critique of reproductive futurism, Judith Butler’s reflections on the term queer, and José Esteban Muñoz’s conceptualisation of a queer utopia I will show how Morrissey uses different formulas of negativity and longing to generate power from, thus transforming them into critique of regimes of the normal. It is in this diverse and subversive expression of queer negativity and desire that Morrissey disrupts normativity and its underlying stigmatising and discriminating potential.
ambivalent – an evaluation that applies among other things to his attitude towards gender and sexuality. While Morrissey refuses to classify himself in any predefined categories of gender and sexuality, his own and his band’s musical canon is rife with narratives of queer desire and instances of sexual intimacy, which often allow for both a gay and a straight viewpoint. It is precisely this ambiguity that offers the possibility of an interpretation offside a compulsory heterosexuality and –normativity, therefore opening it to a queer audience. It is furthermore among the reasons why lyrics by Morrissey and The Smiths, as I will argue, qualify as queer texts. In order to establish and defend such a view, this paper will draw on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s approach of a queer reading and her work on homosocial desire in literature, Harold Beaver’s examination of homosexual signs, and Teresa de Lauretis definition of queer texts. One of the pillars of de Lauretis’s classification is that of non-closure of a narrative and is thus closely linked to queer negativity and non-futurity. Morrissey and The Smiths’ oeuvre offers a significant set of songs that embrace these ideas. Deriving from Jack Halberstam’s concept of the queer art of failure, Lee Edelman’s critique of reproductive futurism, Judith Butler’s reflections on the term queer, and José Esteban Muñoz’s conceptualisation of a queer utopia I will show how Morrissey uses different formulas of negativity and longing to generate power from, thus transforming them into critique of regimes of the normal. It is in this diverse and subversive expression of queer negativity and desire that Morrissey disrupts normativity and its underlying stigmatising and discriminating potential.