Digital Commons Network^™

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …

"I Have A Right To Exist Here": An Interview With Photographer Justin Murphy, Nicole Lawrence

Remembrance: A Journal of Queer Culture, Information, and Preservation

An interview with Justin Murphy, founder of Out of the Attic Photography. Born, raised, and still residing in Huntington, WV, Murphy volunteers and freelances for the ACLU of WV. Murphy’s photography and counselor work with AQYS was featured by Nico Lang in Xtra Magazine.

Ga(Y)Zing Backward: Queer Desire In Ovid, Shakespeare, And Scaimma, Falynn Blayre Brickler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As Ovidian myth is a central influence on queer stories throughout time, I am interested in how the female/sapphic gaze impacts the retellings of these narratives. In this thesis, I analyze the action of the gaze as an expression of desire and discuss its multiple meanings in both text and performance. Through tracing the gaze within the queer/sapphic narratives of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I show that the gaze is an intersecting act through which non-normative desire is conveyed. In constructing the gaze as an ephemeral action of queer desire in practice, I …

Mascs: Masculinity Reimagined, Josh Porter

Graduate Thesis Exhibition Catalogue Gallery, 2023

MASCS: Masculinity Reimagined explores how performances of contemporary masculinities can counteract traditional binary understandings of gender. Justin Korver, John Paul Morabito, Betsy Odom, Moises Salazar, and Darryl DeAngelo Terrell expose, question, and subvert the ways that we culturally define masculinity by focusing on gender as performance. These artists not only critique cisgender, heteronormative binary understandings of masculinity, but also embrace the performative nature of gender and celebrate non-normative, alternative, and queer masculinities. By encompassing a range of gender and sexual identifications, these artists share their own personal experiences, interpretations, performances, rejections, and embodiments of masculinity. Breaking down the barrier created …

The Yellow Qipao, Feibi Wang

Honors Projects

This is a creative project centered around the pre-production of a short film about queer Asian American Christianity and the research that went into it. The synopsis of the script written for the short film is a life in the day of Aspen. Aspen prepares for church and is indecisive of the clothes they want to wear, because they are gender non-conforming. They come out to their mom and there is conflict. My research going into this project consists of researching media representation of queerness, Asian American identity, and Christianity, and how the three identities intersect in Aspen’s life and …

There Is Sometimes A Buggy: Queering The Cowboy, Kelsey Gavin

Art and Art History Honors Papers

For my honors thesis project and body of work for the Annual Student Exhibition 2022, I will be interpreting stills from David Lynch's movie Mulholland Drive, sourcing from a singular four-minute scene referred to as The Cowboy scene. I will be recreating this scene in various mediums focusing on three central parts of the scene: The Cowboy, The Skull, and Adam Kesher. This project will examine and delve into the overall theme I have been exploring in my studio practice over the course of the past several years about how film and painting intertwine. For the Annual Student Exhibition it …

Long Live The Queer: Demystifying Noncitizenship In Uncle Frank And Pain And Glory, Andrew D. Manker

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the ways in which a nation infantilizes its citizens, and how family dynamics internalize this infantilization. Queer family members and citizens are treated as threats to the family and by extension the nation because to live into queerness is to refuse the nations infantilization. Additionally, this thesis shows how queer people can cultivate a hopeful future for themselves and the family-as-extension-of-nation by radically redefining what citizenship looks like in a family and nation.

Bisexuality In 21st Century Media, Bethany Abrams

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

This paper sets out to examine bisexuality in 21st century media in order to highlight the importance of good bisexual representation. Media that perpetuates harmful stereotypes only adds to the discrimination that bisexual individuals experience. This paper begins by discussing stereotypes and types of discrimination that are particularly relevant to the bisexual community. After this, pieces of media are analyzed thoroughly for how they portray bisexuality. The three main pieces that are analyzed are Alex Strangelove, Atypical, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. After analyzing each piece, the paper continues to examine audience reactions and discusses the implications of representing bisexuality …

Indie Developers And The Queer Content Renaissance In Video Games, 2013-2017, Shane Michael Hansaruk Mr.

Major Papers

Queer content in video games has existed since the 1970s, but as time and technology have progressed, so too have the potential for queer content in video games. During the mid-2010’s, a sudden increase in the number of games with queer content began, lasting between the years 2013 and 2017. This research project examines this period in great detail to determine the cause of this drastic increase. Through examining queer games literature, two queer games databases, and two select titles from this period, I determine that independent, or “indie” developers, have a substantial impact on the increase of queer games …

Transcinematheque: Defining Cinematic Language In The Trans New Wave, Mel Turnage

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis aims to analyze the films of the Trans New Wave in order to define tropes and motifs of cinematic language and structure. The language of the filmmaking itself presents a different approach from mainstream transgender films, and this changes how certain imagery of transness is contextualized in a larger narrative. In particular, the films of the Trans New Wave operate in contrast to both historical trans films and modern prestige/studio films to deliver more realistic portrayals of trans peoples’ experiences and beliefs. This new language of the Trans New Wave serves to create a more accurate and profound …

Kids, Culture, And Queerness: The Progression Of Lgbtq+ Representation In Children's Media, Sarah Stevens

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

Historically, popular media has functioned as a window into society’s ever evolving idea of normalcy. Children’s popular media, which contains elements of both entertainment and didacticism, is further burdened with the responsibility of influencing the perspectives of upcoming generations. This truth is particularly salient for the LGBTQ+ community, who have faced consistent misrepresentation or utter erasure from children’s media in the recent past. While there have been marked improvements in both the quality and quantity of queer representation in children’s media since 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges case, there is still a significant need to acknowledge intersectional queerness and queer gender …

The Poetess, Savannah Solorio

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

After a thwarted assassination attempt, renowned poet Sappho is forced into exile in ancient Sicily, where her hubris and terrible advice on love from Aphrodite jeopardizes her dreams of artistic greatness.

Article 6.21, Tatiana Stolpovskaya

Theses and Dissertations

Article 6.21 is a short documentary film that aims to examine the state of censorship around queerness in Russia today and its effects on personal lives in the queer community.

Twenty years after Russia decriminalized homosexuality, on June 30th in 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed Article 6.21 "for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values", also known as the "Gay Propaganda Law". Its broad and ambiguous wording allows the government significant leeway in deciding what kind of public queerness is punishable.

In 2020 Russia passed multiple constitutional amendments that affect many areas …

Through Their Eyes: An Analysis Of Misrepresentation In Popular Lesbian Television Narratives, Delana Janine Price

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The purpose of this thesis is to explore lesbian television narratives that shape popular discourse. My goal is to find and expose the implications of monolithic expressions of queerness through both queer and heteronormative presenting television narratives. This exploration of the queer narrative voice addresses three distinct movements of cultural production: the proclaimed self-represented queer television narrative, the connotatively queer heterocentric television narrative, and the queer narrative produced in fan-based literature. For concision, I focus on the popular television dramas The L Word and Rizzoli & Isles, as well as the fan works produced for the latter. Through the lens …

Out And Proud: The Significance Of Jojo Siwa’S Coming Out And Why Queer Representation In Children’S Media Is Important, Savannah Munholland

Capstone Showcase

Queer representation in the media is slowly improving but children's media still severely lacks diversity, especially LGBTQ+ representation. This paper explores JoJo Siwa, a popular children's influencer and entertainer, and how her coming out will effect the integration of queer representation into children's media.

Personal Reflection On 'Boy Crazy: A Screenplay About Gay Fanfiction, Queerbaiting, And Asexual Identity', Luci Mintiero

WWU Honors College Senior Projects

Initially, I planned to make a short film for my senior project, exploring the themes of gender, fan culture and identity. Due to COVID-19, I ended up just writing a screenplay instead. I've decided not to submit the screenplay here, since I want to hold off on presenting it to the world until I've reached the 'final' final version (a completed film), and so instead, this is just an informal reflection on some of the motivations that went into writing the screenplay.

In this reflection, I explore a couple of topics related to fandom, gender, and sexuality. First, I critique …

Lgbtv - A Look Into Queer Representation In Television, Daisy J. Williams

Capstones

In 50 years, the LGBTQ+ portrayals on tv have come along way but with only 6.8% of characters being members of the queer community, there is still a significant amount of work to be done. A look into the rich queer history, the problem and triumph areas and the current state of queer television.

https://daisywilliams.github.io/dw_capstone/

Queer Displacements: Minorities, Mobilities, And Mobilizations In French And Francophone Literature, Thomas Muzart

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Focusing on the work of Virginie Despentes, Jean Genet, Guy Hocquenghem, and Abdellah Taïa, this dissertation challenges the antisocial turn taken in queer theory, by means of a parallel study of the authors’ geographical and intellectual itineraries. While critics like Leo Bersani and Lee Edelman have suggested that the revolutionary potential in queer identity lies in its opposition to romanticized forms of community, I argue, along with José Esteban Muñoz, that their praising of singularity and negativity is similarly extreme. Alternatively, my study shows how the geographical displacements both experienced and imagined by my primary authors can illuminate the passage …

Queer Baroque: Sarduy, Perlongher, Lemebel, Huber David Jaramillo Gil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which queer and trans people have been understood through verbal and visual baroque forms of representation in the social and cultural imaginary of Latin America, despite the various structural forces that have attempted to make them invisible and exclude them from the national narrative. My dissertation analyzes the differences between Severo Sarduy’s Neobaroque, Néstor Perlongher’s Neobarroso, and Pedro Lemebel’s Neobarrocho, while exploring their individual limitations and potentialities for voicing the joys and pains of being queer and trans in an exclusionary society. As I analyze the literary works of each artist, …

Dear Elsa: 10 Letters + 10 Experiments, Amanda Madden

Theses and Dissertations

Dear Elsa: 10 Letters + 10 Experiments is a short form personal experimental documentary in which filmmaker Amanda Madden attempts to embody and communicate with the ghost of the radical poet, model, performance artist, sculptor, and time traveler, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven (1874–1927) about living and creating as a womxn artist.

Undiagnosing Iphis: How The Lack Of Trauma In John Gower’S “Iphis And Iante” Reinforces A Subversive Trans Narrative, C Janecek

Accessus

Trauma has long played a role in queer narratives, including Ovid’s “Iphis and Ianthe”, which many scholars have interpreted as reinforcing heteronormativity through Iphis’s transformation into a man in order to marry Ianthe. However, I argue that John Gower’s rendition of this tale reframes Iphis as a trans man and allows us to understand the poem as a subversive trans narrative that revolts against cisnormative conceptions of gender. Utilizing Judith Butler’s writing on the medicalization of gender, I explore the relationship between trauma, performance, and gender within the Ovidian and Gowerian versions of Iphis.

Negotiating Political Identity In Community-Based Film Festivals: Reflexive Perspectives From Curator-Scholar-Activists, Eve Oishi, Marisa Hicks-Alcaraz

Faculty Papers and Conference Presentations with CGU Graduate Co-authors

This article is a cross-generational exchange of ideas and experiences that explores the intersections of film curating and activism. Its authors set forth accounts of their own experiences as scholars who have worked as film festival curators “on the side” from the 1990s to the present within the context of the new yet rapidly growing field of film festival studies, which provides a useful set of perspectives and methods for understanding how film festivals function and what significance and impact they can have on the multiple stakeholders involved, including but not limited to the filmmakers, festival organizers and staff, and …

Getting Located: Queer Semiotics In Dress, Callen Zimmerman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The body, a long contested site of identity construction, has been used by historically by queers to convey desire, build affinity and transgress norms. Looking at the fashioned queer body, this capstone takes the form of a proposal for an art exhibition at the Leslie Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art. Seeking to engage with objects, performance and film which approximate, provide proxy for or depart from the body as a site, it explores the social and political quagmire of getting dressed. Comprised of contemporary art that looks at the rupture of legible bodily semiotics, this show wonders what …

'Tomboy' Is Anachronistic. But The Concept Still Has Something To Teach Us, Lynne Stahl

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

This article explores the tomboy trope in film and literature and the "taming" that characterizes it, framing both in relation to contemporary debates about gender and sexual identity as well as cultural anxieties around queer, trans, and nonbinary identity. Examining texts from Louisa May Alcott's Little Women to the 1980 film Little Darlings, the article argues that even while the term tomboy may be obsolete, tomboy narratives document processes of rebellion that hold continuing value.

Between Time, Evan Remick

Theses and Dissertations

Between Time is an intimate conversation between transgender artists on their own terms. The film is a ritual in entering the past and writing the future from the present moment. Conversations weave through natural landscapes and present as both intensely personal and connected to a greater story about the vastness of trans experience.

İbne, Gey, Lubunya: A Queer Critique Of Lgbti+ Discourses In The New Cinema Of Turkey, Azmi Mert Erdem

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In my thesis, I examine the intersections between liberalism, neoliberal globalism, and LGBTI+ visibility and identity politics, through films that present “openly” non-normative sexualities through cis/transgender male, female, or non-binary characters in the new cinema of Turkey. First, I survey existing scholarship on how liberal capitalism impacts the formation of LGBTI+ subjectivities and identity politics. Furthermore, I trace how non-normative sexualities, practices, and discourses evolved along with socioeconomic and political shifts in the Turkish Republic following the Ottoman Empire. Accordingly, I review Turkey’s adoption of neoliberal ideologies in the 1980s and how these ideologies engage with its local, heterogenous gender …

Raised On Tv: A Queer Teen's Guide To Syndicated Sexualities, Francesca Petronio

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores the contemporary landscape of LGBTQ adolescent television programming over the past decade. Applying a three-pronged approach to media content analysis—emphasizing a textual reading of the series, the networks’ political economy of production, and audience reception among scholars, culture critics and fans—the author provides both surface and symptomatic readings of Freeform’s Pretty Little Liars (2010-2017), MTV’s Faking It (2014-2016), and ABC’s The Real O’Neals (2016-2017). Thematically and chronologically, this period of programming spans the end of what has been called the gay-positive era, characterized by the politics of anti-bullying campaigns, and the emerging post-gay genre, born after the …

Provocations From The Field - Derangement And Resistance: Reflections From Under The Glare Of An Angry Emu, Pattrice Jones

Animal Studies Journal

The situations of emus may illuminate the maladies of human societies. From the colonialism that led Europeans to tamper with Australian ecosystems through the militarism that mandated the Great Emu War of 1932 to the consumer capitalism that sparked a global market for ‘exotic’ emus and their products, habits of belief and behaviour that hurt humans have wreaked havoc on emus. Literally de-ranged, emus abroad today endure all of the estrangements of émigrés in addition to the frustrations and sorrows of captivity. In Australia, free emus struggle to survive as climate change parches already diminished and polluted habitats. We have …

Adaptive Acts: Queer Voices And Radical Adaptation In Multi-Ethnic American Literary And Visual Culture, Michael M. Means

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptation Studies suffers from a deficiency in the study of black, brown, yellow, and red adaptive texts, adaptive actors, and their practices. Adaptive Acts intervenes in this Eurocentric discourse as a study of adaptation with a (queer) POC perspective. My dissertation reveals that artists of color (re)create texts via dynamic modes of adaptation such as hyper-literary allusion, the use of meta-narratives as framing devices, and on-site collaborative re-writes that speak to/from specific cultural discourses that Eurocentric models alone cannot account for. I examine multi-ethnic American adaptations to delineate the role of adaptation in the continuance of stories that contest dominant …

That's So Gay!: Queer Texts In The U.S., Jesse S. Rice-Evans, Andrea Stella

Open Educational Resources

Gender is facing an identity crisis: queer identities in the new era of gender and genre are subverting paradigms of communication and genre by working with language and narrative in new ways. Queer biography and autobiography mark an important turn in contemporary literature and poetics: the shift from a male-dominant gaze towards a kaleidoscopic perspective on queer embodiment, trans and non-binary narrative, and speculative writing about other worlds & possibilities, which offer us as readers new opportunities for storytelling and thinking about writing. These forms also make space for other identities traditionally excluded from mainstream cultural narrative spaces, and we’re …