Biography
I first came to Cambridge to study for an MPhil in Education in 2016. After successfully completing the MPhil and receiving full funding from the AHRC and Churchill College, I moved on to the PhD programme. In my disseration, I examine re-imaginations of medieval(ist) masculinities in contemporary literature for adolescent readers, in particular texts that adapt the Arthurian legend. My research aims to enrich the critical conversation surrounding masculinities and their literary representations (particularly in relation to maturation), to contribute to Arthurian scholarship, and to demonstrate the value of interdisciplinarity for studying masculinities, past, present, and future. Besides the MPhil, I also have a BA and MA in English, and before coming to Cambridge, I worked as a lecturer and academic writing coach.
Publications
Kazianka, Lisa. 2018. "Isolation, Participation and Communication in Young Adult Unidirectional Epistolary Fiction." In The Epistolary Renaissance: A Critical Approach to Contemporary Letter Narratives in Anglophone Fiction, edited by Maria Löschnigg and Rebekka Schuh, 143-158. Berlin: De Gruyter. https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/9783110584813-008/html
Kazianka, Lisa. 2020. “‘Queer King Arthur in Space’: Problematizing Gender Binaries, Heteronormativity, and Medieval(ist) Heroic Ideals in Once & Future.” Children's Literature Association Quarterly 45 (4): 383-406. https://doi.org/10.1353/chq.2020.0045.