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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Curious Natures: Constructing Queer Ecologies In Early America, Richard Lee Parmer Jr.
Curious Natures: Constructing Queer Ecologies In Early America, Richard Lee Parmer Jr.
Theses and Dissertations--English
This dissertation argues that early American writers often constructed queer ecologies in order to naturalize Anglo-American civilization and justify its expansion into Native American territories. Since there is so little textual evidence on the subject, the major challenge to studying sexuality in early America is approaching sexuality studies creatively—to broaden both our understanding of what counts as sexual discourse and our frameworks for analyzing it. My dissertation addresses this challenge through what many ecocritical scholars of sexuality call queer ecology. In their groundbreaking anthology on the topic, Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erikson remind us that, historically and in the present, …
Freakish Taxonomies: How The American Freak Show And Its Literature Redefine The Archive, Megan E. Pillow
Freakish Taxonomies: How The American Freak Show And Its Literature Redefine The Archive, Megan E. Pillow
Theses and Dissertations--English
The American freak show, which dominated the entertainment landscape from 1840 to 1940, is considered by some disability studies scholars to be off limits for critical engagement. In Freakish Taxonomies: How the American Freak Show and its Literature Redefine the Archive, I argue that by casting the freak show solely as an exploitative institution, we overlook its capacity to serve as a model for reinterpreting the relationship between literary studies and the archive. By recognizing the freak show not just as an exploitative institution but also as a dynamic archive of marginalized lives—one that utilizes an imperfect, often deceptive …