Katie Burke

Research Topic

On Our Backs magazine as an 'archive of desire': lesbian erotic subjectivity, space and the ‘sex wars’ in the late-twentieth-century United States

Supervisor: Matt Cook and Sloan Mahone

My DPhil thesis focuses on the American lesbian sex magazine On Our Backs (1984-2006), exploring how this countercultural lesbian erotic publication developed through and against the context of the 1980s feminist “sex wars”. The thesis uses On Our Backs as a vehicle through which to interrogate the multiple meanings and challenges of queer countercultural publishing, as well as the impact of queer publications upon lesbian identity-formation. My chief research interests are lesbian sex-radicalism, butch-femme resurgence in the 1980s, lesbian personal advertising, D.I.Y. publishing, and the intersections between small-scale queer production and mass-market capitalism.
 
Prior to the DPhil, I completed a Master’s degree in Queer History at Goldsmiths, University of London, where I focused on personal advertisements in On Our Backs as a repository of lesbian desires. I also hold a BA in History from Hertford College, University of Oxford. I am currently a member of the Faculty's Centre for Women's, Gender and Queer Histories Steering Committee.