WF

Wilde Ferris

Graduate Student, PhD

People Directory Affiliation Category

Biography

I am a queer, trans non-binary lesbian and PhD candidate at Queen’s University. My dissertation explores Queerness and religious repression in Victorian ghost stories and how this connects to current American Christo-fascism through the inception of Evangelical Christianity within the moral framework of 19th century England.

Outside of my dissertation work, I explore queerness and trans identity in new medias, including films, comics, and video games, or wherever I find my current hyper-fixation takes me. When I’m not reading, I can be found playing Stardew Valley beside my large orange cat.

Research Interests

19th century, Victorian literature, queer theory, religion, politics, the gothic, monsters, game studies, pop culture, gender studies

Publications

Ferris, Wilde. “Kiss Your Crewmate Goodbye: Queerness as Piracy Through the Death Drive in Our Flag Means Death.” Queer Identities in Popular Culture: Essays on Representation Since 2010. Edited by Laura J. Getty and Josef Vice. McFarland & Company, 2026. 163-78.

 

Ferris, Wilde. “Overhead Isolation: The Player and the Panopticon in 11 Bit Studios’ Frostpunk.” GAME LAB @ QUEEN’S U. February 2026, .

Other academic work:

Conferences:

  • Is Lucy’s Sexuality a Grave? Haunting Queer Identity and Repression in Villette, VSAWC 2026
  • Fictionalizing the Victim: When the Historic Spectre Becomes Spectacle in Du Lac and Fey: Dance of Death, CGSA 2025
  • Stains of the Self: Leslie Feinberg, Minnie Bruce Pratt, and the Formation of Queer Identity, ACCUTE 2025
  • Kiss Your Crewmate Goodbye: Queerness as Piracy Through the Death Drive in Our Flag Means Death, Works in Progress 2023

Guest Lectures and Invited Talks:

  • Jack the Ripper and the Creation of True Crime, March 2026
  • The Fun of Being a Home: Fun Home, October 2025
  • Queerness: Resistance Through Art, Aids Committee of Durham Region (ACDR), October 2025
  • Overhead Isolation: The Player and the Panopticon in 11 Bit Studios’ Frostpunk, Queen’s GAME Lab, February 2025
  • Watching Queerly: Queerness in Media. Aids Committee of Durham Region (ACDR), September 2024
  • Supernatural Subversion: “The Canterville Ghost”, Satire, and Queer Monstrosity, September 2024
  • Wilkie Collins’ Short Stories, November 2023
  • Wilkie Collins and Sensation Fiction, November 2023
  • The Spectacle of Spectres: The Ghost of Jack the Ripper in From Hell and “The Jack the Ripper Tour with Ripper Vision”, Special Topic Presentation, May 2023
  • Lord Alfred Tennyson: Hearing Homosexuality, February 2023

Awards:

- Greyson Jones Memorial Scholarship, 2025

- R. Samuel McLaughlin Fellowship, 2022-2023