Digital Commons Network^™

New York City Homeless Queer Youth Face Harsh Realities; Advocates Fight For Change, Randi R. Love

Capstones

New York City unhoused youth face years of harsh realities because the lack of knowledge and policies that exist to aid them don't provide the protections and outreach to assure they don't live on the streets or in bad situations for years to come. These youths experiences are exacerbated when sexuality or gender are included.

https://randilove.github.io/capstone-2022/

Preservando La Playa Del Pueblo, Tasha A. Sandoval

Capstones

After more than 80 years, the only queer beach in New York City, the People’s Beach at Jacob Riis, is in danger. In 2022, the city announced the demolition of the Neponsit Hospital, a long-abandoned structure that shelters the beach from the street, creating a sense of privacy and safety. Can Riis Beach live on as a safe and joyous utopia for queer communities without the presence of the hospital buildings? Some beach-goers are campaigning to ensure that whatever replaces the hospital space centers the queer community and preserves the beach’s queer history, including the legacy of Ms. Colombia, a …

Charting The Rise Of The Queer Criminal Trope In The Age Of “Peak Tv”, Natalie I. Rash

Capstones

Two shows in 2022 dipped their toes into the world of the queer mobster, an age-old trope seen in film and television since the days of film noir cinema, but that is also rooted in a real and complicated history in film, television and real-life.

https://medium.com/@natalie.rash74/charting-the-rise-of-the-queer-criminal-trope-in-the-age-of-peak-tv-c1f58dc71cc6

One Man's Pregnancy Story, Yvonne S. Marquez, Paige A. Perez

Capstones

Pregnancy is a challenging time for anyone. For LGBTQ people there are unique obstacles that make it especially difficult to navigate a medical system that was not built for them. Finn Schubert is trans and six months pregnant. He’s loving the experience but stressed by insurance claim denials, concerns for his safety, and medical incompetence.

This capstone project includes a 20-minute documentary, text, and a photo essay.

Queer Stories Don't Change Queer Lives, Bhaskar Choudhary

Capstones

Queer representation in films is increasing, and some countries might be doing a better job of depicting the population, with their limited freedom, than the United States. It doesn't often change reality, but perhaps the fact that queer people and queer movies exist is a cause of celebration in itself.

Narrative Side-Stepping: Disability Beyond The Narratology Of Normalcy, Christian Lewis

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation theorizes a new mode of reading, narrative side-stepping, that reveals how disabled characters provide a unique opportunity for non-normative narratives. In insisting on the narratological innovations that disability affords, I revise both Lennard Davis’s notion that the novel form valorizes normalcy and David Mitchell and Sharon Snyder’s theory of narrative prosthesis, which claims that disability is a crutch, and that disabled characters are merely metaphors and/or plot devices. I move beyond these theories to focus instead on the more complicated ways that authors represented disability and used disabled characters to critique societal and narrative norms. I think about …

España Rarita: Performances Festivas En Tiempos Queer (2008–2020), Daniel Valtueña Martínez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies performing arts practices that reimagine Spanishness after the 2008 financial crisis from a theoretical framework based in queer temporalities. I argue how the recession not only allowed Spanish citizens to claim their rights through the organization of social movements such as the 15M or through cultural objects mimetically representing the crisis through a variety of artistic expressions, but that the 2008 financial crisis also enabled a wide range of creators to reimagine how the Spanish State has been traditionally represented. The contemporary performers I study in my dissertation originally propose new visions of the commons by calling …

A Qualitative Exploration Of Discourses In Fan Community, /R/Boyslove, Jessica Lin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The Boys Love (BL) genre, which tells stories of male-male romantic and sexual relationships, and originates in Japan, has made strides through transnational and transcultural engagement across countries, aided heavily by the internet age. I examine the development of the BL genre from its controversial beginnings to its feminist response as well as queer reception. Over the course of fifty years, the genre has exploded in popularity, becoming a more progressive medium of social change. As BL has become more diverse in content and broken with older conventions of the genre, what are the current discourses among the BL fan …

Dusty Miller Thesis Installation, Peter Dusty Miller Macaulay

Theses and Dissertations

Dusty Miller Thesis Installation is about the work and life of artist and drag queen, Peter Macaulay, also known as Dusty Miller. The work entails drawing, painting, performance, and sculpture to narrate a tale of triumphs and tragedies, adventure and heartache, and the discovery of one's own power.

Claiming Ownership Of One’S Body Through Language: The Disability Memoir, Sarah Elizabeth Kaufman

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines the ways in which the disability memoir creates pathways that generate new ways of thinking. Focusing primarily on the disability memoirs of Simi Linton, Ellen Forney, and Kenny Fries, this analysis will personalize the disability experience as these authors live it and redefine its social stereotypes.

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.