The subject of inquiry for my thesis is slash fiction, a subset of fanfiction which creates queer identity, romance, relationships, sex, or desire where it was not ostensibly present in the proto-text. I divide my thinking into a non-linear model of five nodes in order to open up multiple in-roads towards examining the queer work of slash without crystalizing into a comprehensive theory that would efface its nuance and particularities. These nodes figure under notions of failure, embodiment, archives, temporality, and hybrid body erotics. The current, motion, and energy running through all of these nodes is what I call critical queer imagination. Critical queer imagination is not an overarching theory that explains slash (or queer creative works in general), but rather a gesture towards the impulse behind queer activism as well as a signal towards queer futurity. It is ultimately this queer critical imagination that allows me to argue for slash fiction as part of a larger queer project that is necessarily engaged with queer potential and political imagination. / text

This thesis sets out to investigate, and concludes by defining, a genre of modern women's writing. This genre, which 1 have called 'intimatopia' for its depiction of fictional worlds which centre around intimacy, explores close relationships between men, I use this thesis to elucidate the ideological assumptions which underlie this genre, as well as to consider the textual features which are commonly used to support them. My investigation is facilitated by my choice to focus on the appropriative fictions which form a significant part of the intimatopic genre. The appropriative text is particularly apposite to any project which, like this one, seeks to investigate distinctive ideologies, for in a comparison between the text and its source the ideological perspectives of the writer can be glimpsed. As a result of this approach one of the central features of this thesis is a comparison between hegemonic and intimatopic ideologies, which are found to be markedly different. Central to the intimatopic text, which may be sexually explicit, sexually discreet, or sexually ambiguous, is the assumption that there exists a fluid link between love, friendship and intimacy. This ideological perspective is one which many theoreticians, in fields as diverse as literary criticism, psychology and biology, have connected to feminine, rather than masculine, ways of thinking. Although it is therefore unsurprising to find that this is a feature of a predominantly feminine genre, its application to relationships between men runs counter to ideological assumptions about masculine interaction. From examining a variety of appropriative literature 1 move on to less overtly appropriative texts in which the by now familiar intimatopic features can be identified. Following this, 1 discuss the interpretive communities which produce intimatopic texts, using the example of slash fiction, where the interpretive community is readily accessible, I begin to investigate the ideological assumptions about human interaction which underpin the interpretations typical of intimatopic writing. Finally, I consider the genre's antecedents, and mention other texts which, although they do not take male intimacy as their theme, nonetheless share intimatopic features. Thus this thesis offers an insight into an area of women's writing which has received little critical attention and which I have been able to crystallise into the genre of intimatopia. Whilst it is clearly inaccurate to describe all women's writing as intimatopic, this genre accounts for a significant number of texts by women and should be recognised alongside other feminine genres as part of the varied field of women's literature.

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Luise Schröder founded a private business school in 1910 in Stettin, a city once part of Germany. With a focus on typewriting and stenography, she was a local educator of modern communication. Throughout four generations, her family was impacted by global technological developments and socio-political shifts.‘I Never Learned to Type with Ten Fingers’, edited by Schröder's great-great-grandson and graphic designer Laslo Strong, compiles stories from a family-run school. It delves into the past century of typography, through personal and corporate documents. Pictures, letterheads, graphic prints, signs, and newspaper articles provide insight into a particular corporate identity. In dialogue with this research, a series of typefaces was designed dedicated to the characters of the school. They give voice to anecdotes and speculative stories about family and typography.