About Taylor Driggers
Hello, and welcome to my website! I am an early career academic specialising in fantasy literature, theology, gender, and sexuality. Originally from a small town in South Carolina, I moved to the United Kingdom in 2013 to begin my postgraduate studies. In July 2020, I graduated with a PhD in English Literature from the University of Glasgow, where my thesis focused on fantasy literature’s potential to offer queer and feminist re-visionings of Christian theology and religious practices. This project is also the focus of my first book, provisionally titled Faith and Fantasy: Queering Theology in Fantastic Texts, which is forthcoming from Bloomsbury in 2022 as part of the Perspectives on Fantasy series.
My research interests include queer theologies of incarnation, monstrosity, the relationship between religious devotion and sexual desire, deconstruction and post-structuralist feminisms, and gender performativity. I am particularly interested in how popular fantasy writing can function as a kind of deconstructive critical and imaginative activity, particularly for those deemed ‘other’ by established religious institutions because of their gender, presentation, desires, or sexual practices. To date, my studies have encompassed literary works from a diverse selection of authors, including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Ursula K. Le Guin, Angela Carter, Samuel R. Delany, N.K. Jemisin, Neon Yang, Ann Leckie, and Kai Cheng Thom.
I have taught high-level undergraduate and postgraduate seminars on fantasy literature and theology as creative practice, and have additionally taught survey-level English Literature seminars on subjects that include ideology and Marxist theory, feminism, postcolonial studies, and ecocriticism. I have also delivered introductory lectures on gender theory and feminist criticism. For the University of Glasgow’s MLitt programme in Fantasy, I have supervised Master’s dissertations on gender in American speculative fiction, representations of fan cultures in American television, and ‘fantasy’ as an unstable (and de-stabilizing) genre category.
I am a member of the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic at the University of Glasgow, and am currently one of three co-chairs for the Centre’s annual conference, Glasgow International Fantasy Conversations (GIFCon), for 2021, along with Dr Dimitra Fimi and Dr Rob Maslen. I am very passionate about public engagement and have given a number of talks, presentations, and workshops derived from my research at fan conventions, literary festivals, LGBTQ+ support groups at churches, university chapels, and interfaith organizations. Visit the ‘Talks and Lectures’ page on this site to learn more!
My CV, which I update regularly, is here. Feel free to follow me on Twitter (@TaylorWDriggers) or contact me via the form on this website!
Dr Taylor Driggers 