Panel Title: Queer Gothic as Resistance: Subverted Classed and Gendered Binaries in 21st-Century Fiction

Conference: Queer–Class Relations Conference

Dates: April 17–18, 2026

Venue: CUNY Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York City

Presentation Mode: Online

Panel Chair: Faham Zeeshan (fahamzeeshan82@gmail.com)

Co-Chair & Convener: Dr. Muhammad Numan (UMT, Lahore) (muhammad.nauman@umt.edu.pk / nauman.sa18@gmail.com)

Submission Deadline: August 29, 2025 (Extended)
Please send your abstract and a brief bio to muhammad.nauman@umt.edu.pk and cc to fahamzeeshan82@gmail.com.

We invite proposals for panelists to join our session exploring how contemporary queer Gothic fiction reimagines the genre as a space of resistance, intimacy, and reclamation. This panel investigates how queer narratives disrupt classed, gendered, and heteronormative binaries through grotesque atmospheres, destabilized identities, and alternative temporalities.

We welcome abstracts (200–300 words) that engage with themes such as:

• Queer monstrosity and Gothic spaces

• Resistance to heteronormative and class-based structures

• Reinterpretations of Gothic tropes in 21st-century fiction

• Narrative forms that center queer bodies and non-normative identities

This panel seeks to explore how contemporary queer Gothic fiction reimagines the genre not as a space of despair but as a site of reclamation, intimacy, and resistance. The panel negotiates queer Gothic imagery including but not limited to queer monstrosity, grotesque atmospheres, and destabilized gender roles, moving beyond the hegemonic notions of class, gender, and sexuality. Touching base with Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet, the panel seeks thematic and theoretical deliberations on ways in which the subversion of heteronormativity marks a transgression from monstrosity, violence and suspense to the emergence of queer non-normative spaces where resistance shapes gender and sexuality. 

The panel foregrounds the forms and elements of queer Gothic fiction which have evolved from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) to recent anthologies including but not limited to Celine Frohn’s Unspeakable: A Queer Gothic Anthology (2020). The papers in this session interrogate the intersection of class, queerness, and genre by analyzing the metaphorical and structural understanding of grotesque spaces that house queer intimacies, characters and stories that do not only invert Gothic tropes but also construct alternative queer temporalities and spatialities that unsettle the binaries and class within a society. 

This way, the panel invites reflections on how contemporary queer Gothic narratives challenge traditional epistemologies of gender and sexuality by shifting from isolation and monstrosity to community. The major intervention of this panel is to develop a critique of contemporary queer gothic fiction by examining the ways it challenges traditional epistemologies involved in the construction and perception of gender and sexuality within queer gothic narratives. Additionally, it will also encompass the underlying patterns of narrative structure and gothic imagery that nourish and celebrate queer bodies in contemporary gothic fiction in distinct ways.

Keywords: Queer Gothic, Gender and Sexuality, Class and Genre, Monstrosity, Resistance, Heteronormativity