HRC Poster Competition Finalists

Discover more about their posters and why they've chosen their theme and (possibly) decide your favourite. The winner will be announced on Wednesday 7 June at 1pm.

• Book your place for the HRC Poster Competition Final.

The finalists

• Yanrui Cui
• Tracey Davidson
• Nicholas Dunn McAfee
• Menglan Lyu
• Jo Baumber
• Grace Murray
• Gemma Turner
• Clementine Garcenot
• Zahra Hashemi
• Rebekah Mills
• Lucy Makinson
• Isabelle Carter
• Yuqing Wang
• Tabby Holland

Yanrui Cui - Department of English and Related Literature

Poster title: Out of the Romantic Narrative

How important are romantic relationships in the stories of female development and what issues may arise from the romanticized portrayal of growing up? In the eighteenth and early-nineteenth century, English novels of female development often centred around romantic relationships and ended with a happy marriage, which is often regarded as the symbol of successful social integration. However, the latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed a shift from this optimistic pattern towards a more sombre plot, where the protagonist often faced setbacks and struggles that challenged her growth and development.

This project aims to explore how representations of female development evolved out of the earlier romantic narrative by analysing four representative female coming-of-age novels written in the mid-nineteenth century: Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), Geraldine Jewsbury’s The Half Sisters (1848), Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (1853) and George Eliot’s The Mill on the Floss (1860). While Jane Eyre and Bianca in The Half Sisters obtain romantic fulfilment by finding their true love and getting married, the other protagonists — Alice in The Half Sisters, Ruth, and Maggie in The Mill on the Floss — end up dying. To understand why the shift occurred, it is important to consider the changing social context of the time. This includes factors such as industrialization, the rise of feminist movements, and the emergence of modernity. By examining the continuity between the earlier optimistic romantic narrative and the later pessimistic plot of self-diminishment, this project aims to move beyond the traditional critical dichotomy between the classical Bildungsroman and the failed or anti-Bildungsroman, where the protagonist fails to achieve maturity. Rather than focusing solely on the outcome of the protagonist’s journey, this project will explore how the heroine reaches her conclusion and the prospects of her aspirations besides romantic relationships.

Tracey Davidson - Centre for Medieval Studies

Poster title: Fabric of Thought

I am a PhD candidate in Medieval Studies and my thesis addresses the absence of a body of scholarship devoted to the use and perception of textiles and clothing in Anglo-Saxon England; examining the degree to which the art historical and archaeological evidence for early medieval textiles, clothing and adornment can be woven into and supported by the literature (vernacular, Latin, secular and ecclesiastical) produced and circulating in Anglo-Saxon England.

In early medieval textiles, there is a strong focus on the role of women in their production, decoration and use. In terms of the Church this is demonstrated through women from elite and royal families who embraced the religious life and held positions of responsibility allowing them a degree of autonomy and influence. From a secular perspective, the scale of elite women’s lives and their responsibilities, wealth, power and choices are revealed through elaborate textile bequests in vernacular wills. With only a handful of exceptions this type of bequest is peculiar to female wills. 

Adopting an art historical approach to the material and visual evidence, alongside the way language was used and narratives were structured, vastly enhances our understanding of ‘appearance’ in Anglo-Saxon England.

Supervisor: Professor Jane Hawkes, jane.hawkes@york.ac.uk 

Nicholas Dunn McAfee - History of Art

Poster title: The Double Works of Art

Artist, writer, translator, and designer Dante Gabriel Rossetti was one of the foremost painters and poets of the Victorian era and the central figure of Pre-Raphaelitism.

As two of the dominant critics of the period — John Ruskin and Walter Pater — argue, Rossetti represented one of the most original and influential artistic forces of the nineteenth-century. Ruskin asserts that Rossetti 'should be placed first on the list of men [. . .] who have raised and changed the spirit of modern Art: raised, in absolute attainment; changed, in direction of temper'. Pater recognises Rossetti’s poetry as 'perfect sincerity, taking effect in the deliberate use of the most direct and unconventional expression, for the conveyance of a poetic sense which recognised no conventional standard of what poetry was called upon to be'.

Rossetti's visual-verbal double works of art—typically painting-poem composites that share a title, comment on each other, and elaborate on their joint subject—remain under studied. Their cross-medium composition presents a challenge to segregated art-historical and literary scholarship and monodisciplinary analysis. These visual-verbal constellations, which sit at the core of Rossetti’s oeuvre, continue to resist, disorient, and frustrate critical efforts.

Deploying interlocking visual-verbal analysis, my doctorate delivers original scholarship that is analogous to the interdisciplinarity of the double works. By considering the double works on their own visual-verbal terms, this project recovers Rossetti’s sophisticated use of the image-word form to enable what might be said, thought, or done that could not otherwise be said, thought, or done.

In turn, it demonstrates that the form is concerned with meaning that can be constructed or found at the limits of — or contact zone between — the visual and the verbal. Most significantly, my research demonstrates how the double work form enables, facilitates, or achieves a singularity that the picture or poem in isolation cannot. Through ‘reconstructing’ the double works, this research will contribute to our understanding of the viewer-reader and viewing-reading and develop on existing picture-word relations methodologies and theories — including the concepts of ‘imagetext’, ‘image-text’, and ‘image/text’; ut pictura poesis; ekphrasis; and aesthetic criticism.

By reassessing the relationship between—and experience of—picture and word, my research situates Rossetti's double works at the core of image-text studies. In short, my thesis orientates the aesthetic experience of viewing-reading double works as a key access point to understanding the structures and functions of relationships—between image and word, paintings and poems, subjects and objects, and space and time.

Menglan Lyu - Music

Poster title: Music Emotion Recognition in Cross-Cultural Contexts

Music Emotion Recognition (MER) is a music psychology topic that looks at how people recognise emotions from music. Previous research has studied how people perceived emotions in music from cross-cultural contexts. Listeners were found able to recognise music accurately across cultures, while it may be easier for them to recognise the emotions conveyed by the music of their own culture, which is called the in-group advantage. An association between acoustic features (eg pitch and tempo) of the music and listeners’ recognition of emotions was also found, which has been suggested to be different across cultures. Chinese musical culture shows its suitability to be comparable to Western musical culture due to that it also values the emotional expressivity of music. However, there is still rare research comparing these two cultures regarding cross-cultural MER. Thus, we aim to investigate whether the in-group advantage holds, and how different the associations between acoustic features and MER are, across these two cultures.

We conducted an online listening study via Qualtrics, where 278 Chinese and 136 Westerners were required to find a quiet place to listen to 18 music excerpts, including Chinese traditional music and Western classical music, which were selected from two pilot studies with experts in these two musical genres. All music excerpts were played randomly to participants, who were instructed to rate to which degree they thought the music conveyed happiness, sadness, peacefulness, anger, and fear, on continuous scales ranging from 1 to 5 (low to high).

Quantitative data analysis was employed in this study. The results revealed that regardless of the cultural origin of the music, Chinese participants seemed to be more sensitive than Western participants to the perception of happiness and sadness, while Western participants seemed to be better at identifying fear; the number and degree of acoustic features correlated with emotion recognition differed across cultures. These findings challenge the in-group advantage assumption in cross-cultural MER, which suggests a need for studies on more various emotions and cultural contexts, and further explorations for what makes the similarities and differences in MER and its associations with acoustic features across cultures.

Based on current literature, the above differences found between cultures could be related to the differences in the personality traits or cognitive styles of different cultures. However, these are only theoretical assumptions so far. Thus, we are looking to examine these assumptions using empirical methods in the next step.

Jo Baumber - Department of Language and Linguistic Science

Poster title: One person's burden is another's freedom

In July 2021, during the summer holidays, China suddenly introduced and implemented a new policy, known colloquially as The Double Reduction Policy which had two simple aims. The first was to reduce the overburdened students of excessive homework, and the second was to reduce the use of after-school tuition centres. The seemingly modest policy's effects are far-reaching.

The immediate and observable effects were the closure within China's multi-billion dollar education industry, of many after-school tuition or training centres, leading to job losses, economic shocks, and a re-structuring of state school provisions. The sudden introduction left little time to react. Teachers lost careers or had their jobs altered, parents had affordable resources removed, and students may not have benefitted as much as expected.

This study which will adopt an idealist, interpretive stance using a qualitative design. Critical Discourse Analysis deconstructs the policy, while a Constructive Grounded Theory strategy, using non-probability sampling for interviews, is utilised to unearth the subjective realities of the stakeholders.

While the intention of the policy is known - to reduce the workload of students through less homework and by limiting after-school tuition - little research has been conducted on a micro level on those involved with English language learning in China. What about the tuition centre teachers, the foreign teachers, or the state school teachers who had to increase after-school care? What about parents who are now divided into those who can afford private tutors and those who can't? And what does it all mean for English language learning in China? The burden-reducing policy has created burdens of different weights for each of these groups to carry. The research question being asked is: What are the effects on the participants of English language learning in the shadow of China's Double Reduction Policy?

Grace Murray - Department of English and Related Literature

Poster title: How to Read Early Modern Instructions

My PhD thesis centres on ‘how-to’ books printed in England between 1550 and 1630 (the ‘early modern’ period) that taught practical skills, like gardening, surveying and navigation. These books came in all shapes and sizes, from a guide to farming that was written in rhyming verse (The Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry, first published in 1557) to a tiny instruction manual for the use of a proto-calculator that came bundled with the instrument itself (The Arithmetical Jewel, 1617). Many instructional books recycled information from earlier manuscripts, but the relatively new technology of print gave readers and authors alike the opportunity to experiment with new methods of learning from the page. My thesis asks how and why readers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries interacted with these how-to texts in unusual or unexpected ways.

I aim to uncover the reading practices of those audiences who were less experienced with using books, and the ways in which authors and printers prepared their books to accommodate many kinds of readers. One chapter of my thesis traces a relatively common but under-researched practice in the period: the inclusion of invitations in printed books to go and visit the author or another expert for extra information or help. I also look at some of the earliest pocket-sized books, like the Order of Orthography (1622), a spelling book for adults that could be hidden away so nobody knew its owner struggled with their letters. To discover how people were using their books, I rely on scribbles in the margins that have sometimes survived only by chance, hence the papery notes and scraps that make up the poster.

In this poster, I’ve chosen to represent one particular way of reading the early modern how-to book. The experience of reading instructional books could be like navigating a maze, sometimes literally: one of my chapters traverses mazes and labyrinths in shorthand and gardening manuals. In Greek mythology, the hero Theseus can only navigate the Cretan labyrinth because of the guidance of Ariadne’s thread that trails behind him. Readers of instructional books too followed guidance, but also made wrong turns and lost their way. My thesis highlights these false starts and failures as well as the successes, in order to show that the history of reading ‘useful’ books requires creativity, imagination, and a willingness to make mistakes.

Gemma Turner - Department Of History

Poster title: The Carer's View

My research considers the neglected follow-up to a famous statement made by Roy Porter. While “it takes two to make a medical encounter”, “it often takes many more because medical events have frequently been complex social rituals involving family and community as well as sufferers and physicians”. (Roy Porter, “The Patient's View: Doing Medical History from below”, Theory and Society, 14, no. 2 (1985): 175-198.)

Uniquely, my research takes ‘the carer’s view’.

When I began this project, I expected to have to piece together small fragments of evidence from a few, off-hand mentions of caring in my source material. But one of my most significant findings has been discovering how rich the source material on carers is, with the right methodology to notice it. The three images on my poster are all reproduced in David Turner’s chapter ‘Picturing Disability in the Eighteenth Century’, in The Oxford Handbook of Disability History (2018). And yet the carers depicted receive limited attention. My poster thus highlights how much historians can miss by neglecting to ask certain questions.

My research asks, ‘what was the carer’s view?’ It explores the experiences of two wealthy, early modern women who provided long-term care to a family member. It is based on a close reading of Elizabeth Isham’s (b. 1609 – d. 1654) and Mary Rich’s (b. 1624 – d. 1678) writings. I find that long-term caring was a deeply religious experience which became entwined with the lives and spiritual identities of carers.

Love, time, and suffering were inherently bound to early modern caring. Caring for the long-term sick was incredibly time-consuming. Caring for a relative involved feelings of love, affection, and duty – or a degree of devotion to a person which could suggest these feelings. Caring invariably involved witnessing and experiencing suffering. Caring therefore forced carers to grapple with difficult religious questions relating to these concepts. Because caring involved ‘immoderate’ quantities of love, time, and suffering, it was inherently spiritually problematic; contemporary religious discourses recommended moderation in these areas, to avoid sin.

By examining the experiential and cultural content of early-modern caring for the first time, my research fills a significant gap in the history of medicine and opens a rich seam for further studies. It also offers a unique perspective on histories of family, love, time, lived religion and salvation. Mary and Elizabeth show that carers experienced and negotiated with these concepts in unique ways.

Clementine Garcenot - Department of English and Related Literature

Poster Title: Depictions of The French Revolution in French Aristocratic Women's Memoirs

The title of my PhD is “Depictions of the French Revolution in French Aristocratic Women’s Memoirs,” and it is supervised by Professor Mary Fairclough of the English Literature department. I use the memoirs of six women, similar in age and social status, but whose experiences of the French Revolution and its aftermath wildly differ. Aristocratic women of this era have hitherto been largely ignored by scholars, but I argue that the memoirs provide a rescripted, female version of History, revelatory of these women’s agency. My thesis is divided into four chapters. First, I investigate the memoir genre and the literary and social conventions which constrained aristocratic women when sharing their glimpse into their domestic sphere. The second chapter is dedicated to family life: the memoirists were newlyweds and became mothers during the Revolution.

Thus, I address the daily domestic struggles that they faced. In the third chapter I study their description of Marie-Antoinette. These women had access to the Queen’s inner circle, meaning that they provide a rare glimpse into the private life of this public figure. Finally, the thesis ends with the analysis of the memoirists’ account of their emigration. Having being forced to leave their homes in order to save their lives, the memoirs foreground their authors’ endurance under conditions for which their upbringing had not prepared them. I argue that this is a tool to celebrate their autonomy. Ultimately, the memoirs convey a sense of support in favour of the royalist cause.

Zahra Hashemi - Centre for Women's Studies

Poster Title: An Investigation into the Effects of #MeToo on Gender and Sexuality Representation in English Children's Books

Despite the very specific context in which it was initiated, the #MeToo movement, like many other women’s movements, has had transformational effects on how women are viewed and brought up a general increase in global awareness of women’s rights and gender inequality, and violence. One of the impacts of this revolutionary movement is a call for a deeper look at genders portrayals across different sectors since these portrayals contribute to one’s assessment of gender roles and shape their gender identity.

In the #MeToo era, issues of rape, sexual assault, and the power dynamics of misogyny and structural violence are more than ever being highlighted by feminist and literary scholars. Although the necessity to critically read violence and sexuality in texts goes back to feminist activism before #MeToo, this social movement has opened up new potentials and spaces to fight against gender-based violence by making violence against women and sexuality groups more widely visible, heard, and delved into by researchers, critics, and the general public. A core element of tackling violence against women is gender inequality, which reads as unequal power relations between women, men, and gender and sexual minorities, rigid gender roles, norms and hierarchies, and ascribing women, trans and non-binary people, and sexual minorities lower status in society.

Young children learn about gender roles or gender-based scripts (that are what based on which we are expected to act, speak, dress, groom, and conduct ourselves) from their parents, family, peers, the media, popular culture, and of course literature. Story books, as sites of (re)presenting gender norms and expectations for children may, in effect, perpetuate the norms and scripts that eventually lead to gender-based violence by introducing male roles, attributes, privileges and desires as more profitable, important, and dominant.

In this study, after reviewing the #MeToo movement in its broader historical context of women’s activism, I will draw on feminist and queer theories and focus on a sample of English books written for preschoolers and school-aged children to see if and how #MeToo themes, more specifically sex and gender representations and consent are treated in storybooks written for preschoolers and school-aged children.

Rebekah Mills - History of Art

Poster title: Rebuilding her Legacy: Conservation in the time of Queen Elizabeth I

When Queen Elizabeth I took the throne in 1588, England had years of division. There was social unrest and high tensions. The country had gone from Protestant to Catholic rule, leaving behind a wake of destruction. Additionally, Elizabeth was an unmarried queen, and her ability to rule was questioned by the men around her. Elizabeth, therefore, had to bring the country to peace and prove that she was a capable leader. To do so, Elizabeth disavowed the destruction of antiquities, curbing violence at churches. In 1560, a proclamation outlawed, "the defacing or breaking of monuments of Antiquity, and repairing as much of the repairs as conveniently may be." Elizabeth herself asked for her ancestors' burials at Fotheringhay to be moved after they faced neglect and destruction from Reformation policies.

Further, by focusing on her noble lineage, Elizabeth helped create her legacy. She proved that she was worthy of being queen because of her family history. She emphasized the history of England and created a powerful image of herself. Elizabeth's legacy lasts today, one of the longest reigning monarchs, her reign is seen as the "golden years." Elizabeth used conservation and the protection of antiquities to help create her legacy and peace to England.

Lucy Makinson - Department of Archaeology

Poster title: Did civilians in northern Roman Britain cook and dine in Mediterranean ways?

Roman trade and conquest is associated with the spread of Mediterranean food cultures, and these can be seen in archaeological pottery and food residues. Signs of this in Roman Britannia are the Mediterranean triad of olive oil, wine and wheat, and a preference for pork, beef, fish, and imported ingredients (Cool 2006); cooking pots in their shape can suggest baking or frying
rather than stewing, and fine tableware indicates Roman-style dining (Willis 2004).

I aim to establish how far civilian Romano-British settlements in northern Britain followed Mediterranean diet and dining practices, to explore connections and diversity through food cultures, and assess links to identity, culture and status in a wider context. I will analyse pottery from three civilian sites: Cataractonium (Catterick), Isurium Brigantum (Aldborough) and Eboracum (York Micklegate), looking at shape, functions and decoration of food preparation and dining vessels, and at assemblages from consumption sites, such as houses or
shops. I will also analyse food residues from a sample of pots.

The subject is significant because it could shed light on the extent to which the food culture of Romans in Britain was typically Mediterranean, influenced by local food cultures and production, and / or by a diversity of Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean trends within the empire. I hope the evidence will contribute to the debate about social and economic activity in civilian Britannia, addressing wider questions such as whether there is evidence of people cooking like a Briton (or a Gaul, or a North African) but dining like a Roman, as in Switzerland (Schucany 2005); whether some people eat Roman foods and others eat like their pre-conquest ancestors; whether some people adopted and adapted Roman vessel forms in native culinary traditions, in using Roman tableware shapes with decoration in local styles (Lelekovic 2018). Further, I wish to explore what this reveals about identity, status and
occupation, and in economic terms about production, trade and globalization.

Citations

• Cool, H.E.M. (2006), Eating and Drinking in Roman Britain. CUP.
• Craig, O. et al (2015), Feeding Stonehenge: cuisine and consumption at the Late Neolithic site
  of Durrington Walls. Antiquity , 89 (347) pp. 1096-1109.
• Cramp, L, et al. (2011) What was a mortarium used for? Antiquity, 85(330). 1339–1352
  Leleković, T. (2018) How were Imitations of Samian Formed? Internet Archaeology 50.
• Pitts, M. (2021) York's ‘African-style’ Severan Pottery Reconsidered. Britannia, 52, 3-32.
  Schucany, C. (2005) Cooking like a native, dining like a Roman. In M. Carroll, et al
  (eds) Consuming Passions, P39-48.
• Willis, S. (2004) Samian Pottery: a Resource for the Study of Roman Britain and
  Beyond Internet Archaeology 17.

Isabelle Carter - Department of Archaeology

Poster title: Who owned the land in early modern England?

The early modern period was a time of change: England’s population increased considerably, with large areas of land being enclosed by wealthy landowners. Collectively, these changes pushed more people into the margins, rendering many people homeless. As such, many individuals utilised unenclosed areas of common land- which had provided many individuals with food, fuel, and a space
to graze livestock- as a space to erect dwellings for themselves. Despite homelessness being a major issue that affected many people in England in the post-Reformation, pre-parliamentary enclosure period, and which continues to be a major issue today, current scholarship- both historical and archaeological- has failed to adequately address key questions surrounding those who encroached
and built on common land, termed ‘squatters’ by scholars. Such questions being: were squatters mainly from the local area, or did they travel into the area? Why did they choose the spaces that they did to erect dwellings? Where were squatters’ settlements situated in relation to the parish, manor, and estate? Who were the people who chose to erect these dwellings- what were their ages,
marital statuses, and occupations? Finally, what are the settlements’ legacies?

This PhD project aims to fill the current gap in the research, answering these questions, by being the first in-depth historical archaeology of squatters' settlements in rural England between c.1550 and c.1750, the post-Reformation, pre-parliamentary enclosure period. Three geographically and socially diverse areas have been selected as case studies, being The Forest of Knaresborough in
Yorkshire, a Royal Forest; The Vale of Pewsey in Wiltshire, a greensand lowland (Anon 2005, 49-50; 143-147); and Bradford North Hundred in Shropshire, being mixed upland and lowland (Anon 2006,13). An interdisciplinary approach will be taken by examining relevant documentary, landscape, and material evidence for each case study, maximising the amount of information that can be obtained about squatters’ settlements within these areas, leading to an in-depth understanding of the topic.
The central themes of this study- poverty, mobility, marginality, and the relationship between the individual and the landscape- remain key issues, highlighting, not only the academic significance of this study, but also its social significance.

References

• Land Use Consultants (2005) Wiltshire Landscape Character Assessment: Final Report. [Online]. Available at:
  https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/planning-landscape-conservation [Accessed 28 May 2023].
  Shropshire County Council (2006) The Shropshire Landscape Typology. [Online] Available at:
  https://www.shropshire.gov.uk/media/1803/the-shropshire-landscape-typology.pdf [Accessed 28 May 2023].

Yuqing Wang - School of Arts and Creative Technologies

Poster title: A Study of Sherlock Holmes Adaptations

For more than one hundred years, Sherlock Holmes has been adapted into numerous works. The appearance and personality of this great detective are also in constant change through these different media. From the original Victorian gentleman to Basil Rathbone’s version of a World War II hero; from the young man who uses cell phones to solve crimes to the beautiful Asian woman in the Japanese series Miss Sherlock... These changes, on the one hand, come from the change in modern film style, on the other hand, also come from the considerable fandom and many kinds of fan creations.

My research will focus on the worldwide Sherlock Holmes film and television adaptations since around 2010. I hope to interpret the portrayal of the classic characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson in the recent Sherlock Holmes adaptations from the perspective of feminism and fan culture. By introducing the neglected cases of Japanese adaptations and Chinese fandom, and combining the theories of intertextuality, feminism and fan culture, this paper attempts to explain the adaptation trend of Sherlock Holmes Franchises and the influence of fandom on adapted works. I hope my research can focus on the previously neglected Asian Sherlock Holmes fandom as well as Japanese Animation, Comic, and Game (ACG) adaptations, take such a classic British literary character's spreading trend in the world as an example, and reveal the adaptation model and core attraction of franchises.

My motivation is mainly because of my identity as an Asian woman and a loyal Sherlock Holmes fan, and as an aca-fan, I hope to incorporate what I have seen, heard and experienced in the fan community into my research. It also has a certain degree of innovation in the study of Japan's Sherlock Holmes ACG adaptation. At the same time, by paying attention to the adaptation process of this classic character that has endured for more than 100 years, we can also get a glimpse of the shaping skills of the current franchises and the focus of the adaptation. Today, when the "movie universe" is widespread, the British Victorian novels and Gothic stories represented by Sherlock Holmes are still bringing all kinds of exciting new blood to the screen.

Tabby Holland - School of Arts and Creative Technologies

Poster title: Sick Flicks and Dying Chicks

From the turn of the century the American film industry has been quietly formulating a new sub-genre which has taken off exponentially in the past decade. Steadily drawing in audiences, Disabled-Romance appears to generate time again reliable box office successes despite mixed reviews. However well Disabled-Romance films continue to perform, numerous critiques have arisen to counter their prosperity. The Disabled-Romance genre suffers from an extensive lack of diversity in both non-white and LGBTQ+ characters, with greater diversity representations coming from smaller independent films less seen by mass audiences. Films within this genre are also filled with an overwhelming absence of disabled creatives both behind and in front of the camera leading to considerable unrest within the disability community about who is telling their stories. With these points in mind, it’s crucial we explore how and why Disabled-Romance films continue to prosper.

Most Disabled-Romance films share a common trait: the type of disability representation they depict. These films often exploit young female main characters who have non-visible disease disabilities (NVDDs). They portray cancers, genetic disorders, and ‘high stakes’ illnesses that frequently offer audiences a tailored experience of disability, via an abled gaze, which reflect a fetishised depiction of NVDDs for the sake of appeal to non-disabled viewers. My research will explore how teen girls with NVDDs are represented in Disabled-Romance films by first investigating how NVDD identities are characterised on screen; analysing narrative, costuming, and make up to name a few, before secondly questioning how these films are received in terms audience response; paying particular attention to disabled voices and opinions. From this I aim to answer my main research question: How are teen girls with Non-Visible Disease Disabilities represented and received in Disabled-Romance films?