Kelsey specializes in film studies and has an additional background in early modern English literature (1590-1667), drama, and queer studies.

Her dissertation, “Character, Queer Alterity, and Textual Adaptation,” intervenes in the field of adaptation studies by creating a model to understand how writers embed ideas about queer alterity and heterosexual culture into their adaptations of literary characters. Framing adaptation as an act that can be either socially rebellious or dangerously heteronormative, she looks at queer potentialities that circulate and change shape as novels and plays are adapted into films and television episodes. Characters explored in the dissertation include Lady Macbeth, Sherlock Holmes, and Alma Winemiller (from Tennessee Williams’ Summer and Smoke and Eccentricities of a Nightingale).

The project culminates in a creative “practice of adaptation” chapter that intervenes in lingering questions about queer female representation using the model of the academic screenplay. This chapter will feature three comedy scripts that adapt texts analyzed in the previous chapters.

Kelsey’s scholarly work has been presented recently at the World Shakespeare Congress and the Northeastern MLA Conference.

For more information, see her CV.