Katherine Griffiths

My PhD is a multidisciplinary investigation into the London lesbian club scene in the 1980s and 1990s. Writings on club cultures have marginalised the contributions and experiences of Black and white queer women, this work intends to counter this erasure of lesbians by mapping and compiling vibrant accounts of a slice of lesbian activism and creativity. Against the grain of their invisibility lesbians put on house parties, fund raising benefits and club nights where music brought a conviviality, community and relative safety from the heteronormative world as well as a messy thrown-togetherness and conflict. Each chapter presents a case study of a specific club event. The case study offers a method to present depictions and analysis of the club through a range of evidence and theoretical readings pertinent to that event. This includes queer oral history interviews, analysis of key musical tracks that were played, accounts of the human and cultural geography of the time and place, archival investigations and data collection, combined with material culture: flyers of clubs and events, mix tapes, photographs and fashion. Thematic discussions will be threaded through each chapter in order to develop understandings of the club scene in its theoretical and historiographic context. Themes explored include identity, memory, queer intersectional readings of cultural activism, music of the Black Atlantic and its continuing legacy and impact, the significance of sonic experiences and the dancefloor, the queer body as archive, feminist geography and mapping of time and place.