About Me

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Hi! My name is Ellen Kirkpatrick. I’m an independent cultural studies scholar, writer, and activist. As you’ll see from my selected writings, my work explores and analyses intersections of popular and visual culture, (super)heroic imaginaries, media fan cultures, social injustice and oppression, grassroots movements and activism, and radical cultural production. Matters of situated (and transforming) bodies and identities — always intersectional — loom large in my work, grounded in analysing gendered and racialised systems of exploitation, oppression, and privilege (with an increasing focus on class, citizenship status, and coalition building). I’ve been researching and writing about these subjects for over a decade now, and looking back it’s clear that the animating themes of my work are:

advocating for the transformative power of the radical imagination and (counter)stories, in all their myriad forms;

fathoming and foregrounding strategies and tactics used to escape, survive, and un/make hostile worlds, real and imaginary; and

interrogating barriers to building international (diverse, inclusive) solidarity and securing system change, macro and micro

I described myself above as a scholar, writer, and activist, but that’s not entirely accurate. Seeing my fields of endeavour listed like that — dislocated, partitioned from each other — fails to represent the enmeshment of these positions. In reality, there is no space between them, no gap to cross, no breath to take. In my world, each position flows through and informs the others, always. Along with many other activist-writers, I not only believe that writing can be activism and advocacy, but that academic research too is — or can be — a vital part of our struggle for progressive social transformation.

Corporatized academe is behind me now — I’ve documented some of my experiences here — but I’m still using my cultural studies training and activist experience to contribute to debates and dialogues regarding the utility of creative forms of activism — writing, art, fannish, cryptographic, economic, and so on — in our fight to secure lasting, meaningful progressive social change. I wish now for my work to manifest to its readers as a love-filled intellectual adventure and a call to radical action.

Territories unmapped lie beyond the walls fast enclosing the academic commons. Entering this ‘undisciplined’ space, I want to break free of toxic academic values and working practices and disciplinary (and disciplining) conventions. I want to break down barriers between writing and activism, theory and practice, high and low culture, and scholastic and popular approaches to knowledge production. Centring subjugated knowledges — experiences, cultural artefacts, and so on — and bringing them together in unexpected ways, I want to encourage a radical refusal of the status quo, seeking always revolution not evolution. I want to meaningfully contribute to our cultural commons by producing readerly work more public-spirited and free-hearted than traditional academia usually allows, and that’s where my new publishing venture, The Break, comes into play.

I’ve written further about it here, but The Break is more than just a cultural newsletter; it’s an invitation to come for a dander through the (under)commons, an offbeat wandering, a wondering towards alternative horizons. And I don’t know about you, but I’m always ‘quite ready for another adventure…’.