Katie Burke
DPhil Student - St Hilda's College
katie.burke@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk
Research Topic: 'Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian': lesbian sex, space and sociality in 'On Our Backs' magazine, 1981-1994
Supervisor: Matt Cook and Sloan Mahone
My DPhil thesis reads the American lesbian sex magazine 'On Our Backs' (1984-2006) as an “archive of desire", 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 rich archive through which to investigate the multiple meanings and challenges of queer countercultural publishing, as well as the impact of queer publications upon lesbian identity-formation. It charts the development of the magazine through lesbian social and commercial networks, artist communities and sexual support groups in the San Francisco Bay Area, arguing for the importance of intimate relationships and friendships to lesbian cultural production. The thesis contextualises the magazine's production during the 1980s United States 'culture wars', exploring the social, sexual and political ramifications of the Reagan administration's censorship efforts and a rapidly developing HIV/AIDS crisis.
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.
Prizes & Funding
- Historians of the Twentieth Century United States Conference PGR-ECR Workshop Commonwealth Prize (July 2026)
- University of Goldsmiths Queer History Alumni Prize (January 2026)
- British Association for American Studies Targeted Research Fund (January 2026)
