Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Beyond Me: Class, Sexuality, And The Work Of The Autobiographical Fragments Of Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, And Eileen Myles, Erin E. Heiser

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation looks at what I am calling the “autobiographical fragments” of three working-class, lesbian (or queer) authors: Audre Lorde, Dorothy Allison, and Eileen Myles whose writing is stylistically quite different from one another’s, but who nonetheless have all produced bodies of work that represent bits of their lives over and over and in different ways, sometimes overlapping in time and narrative detail. While there are certainly other writers whose work shares many of the same characteristics, I argue that the autobiographical fragment has special significance for marginalized subjects. Woven throughout the dissertation are many of my own autobiographical fragments …

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 …

Beyond Coming Out And Queer Tragedy : How Julie Ann Peters, Becky Albertalli, Adam Silvera, And Aiden Thomas Navigate Through The Spectrum Of Queer Representation, Jacqueline Carey

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

In recent years, readers, critics and activists have recognized the importance of more inclusive storytelling, especially in young adult literature. This thesis explores how Julie Peters, Becky Albertalli, Aiden Thomas, and Adam Silvera diversify queer representation within the realm of young adult literature. Drawing on literary analysis, queer theory, and sociocultural perspectives, this thesis will explore how queer representation manifests in each of these works to challenge and complicate representational norms. Ultimately, this thesis seeks to contribute to the ongoing conversations surrounding the importance of having diverse stories that foster a more inclusive literary environment.

Rainbow-Washing The Occupation: A Critical Examination Of Israeli Claims To Feminist And Gay-Friendly Modernity, Melia Oliver

Scripps Senior Theses

In this thesis, I employ a queer analytic to uncover how Israel weaponizes claims to feminist and gay-friendly modernity—referred to as pink- and purple washing, respectively—as forms of propaganda to justify their occupation of Palestine. Pink- and purplewasing narratives rely on racist and Orientalist conceptions of Palestinian “barbarism” which Israel reproduces in order to bolster their settler colonial project. I analyze pink- and purplewashing propaganda as symptoms of larger homo- and femonationalist formations which stem from and further reinforce settler colonialism. I address allegations of “weaponized rape” during and after the events of October 7th and argue that this form …

For What Is A Man?: Towards Languaging Contemporary Dance In A Black, Queer, Male-Presenting Body, Thomas Ford

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines Queering Blackness: Solo on a Theme of Reconciliation, a performance event that invokes movement, spoken text, projections and sound to explore the mechanisms of identity. Engaging performance, Black, queer and dance studies, the paper contextualizes cultural identity markers, towards an understanding of what it means to be Black, queer and male-assigned in Black spaces.

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 …

Some (Im)Material Girls, Living In (Im)Material Worlds, With Seeds, Stars, And Shit, Matthew Weiderspon

Theses and Dissertations

This writing situates material and gestural vocabularies cultivated in my artwork in relation to my lived experience; primarily my rural upbringing in Colorado. Scattered floor dispersals, calling sounds, and bodily movements desire reconsiderations of hope in precarity through a disorientation of place, association, scale, and language.

The Gender Epidemic: Intersecting Disease, Gender, And Sexuality In A Graphic Novel, Autumn Cejer

All NMU Master's Theses

For my thesis, I wrote a graphic novel set in a world where certain people possess powers that society tries to suppress by viewing them as a disease. The story focuses on two super-powered individuals on opposite sides of the law who handle this oppression very differently. Although these characters would easily be able to overpower the non-powered people in charge, they are too afraid to do so. Internalized guilt from possessing abilities they did not ask for adds an additional layer of conflict, just as women and disabled persons are constantly made to feel like they should apologize for …

The Mothman And Other Strange Tales: Shaping Queer Appalachia Through Folkloric Discourse In Online Social Media Communities, Brenton Watts

Theses and Dissertations--Linguistics

Little work has been conducted on the intersections of queer and Appalachian identities, in part because these two identities are viewed as incompatible (Mann 2016). This study uses a multimodal critical discourse analytic approach to examine the Instagram posts of the Queer Appalachia Project, which represent a substantial body of discourse created by and for queer Appalachians. Of specific interest to this analysis are those posts which employ folkloric figures, such as West Virginia’s Mothman, to do identity work that is queer, Appalachian, and queer-Appalachian. Often, this act is accomplished through juxtaposition with Appalachian imagery and the reclamation of homophobic …

Wolf Packs: U.S. Carceral Logics And The Case Of The New Jersey Four, Leilani Dowell

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

On an evening in 2006 a group of black queer women and gender non-conforming people, traveled from Newark, New Jersey, to New York’s Greenwich Village for a night out. When Dwayne Buckle, an African-American man selling DVDs on the street, attempted to flirt with one of them, they told him that they were lesbians. Buckle physically assaulted them and, at some point in the four-minute melee, was stabbed. The seven were arrested. While three of them accepted plea bargains, the other four maintained their right to defend themselves from attack. A New York judge convicted the New Jersey Four (as …

Performing Desire In Times Square: Sailors, Hustlers And Masculinity, Kel R. Karpinski

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From WWII to the early 1970s, New York City as a port town created a liminal space extending from the piers in the Brooklyn Navy Yard all the way to Times Square in Midtown Manhattan. In Times Square, through interactions on the street, in bars and in hotel rooms, desire and masculinity become a performance between and for men. The queerness of these performances lies in the fact that they fall outside of the norms of society both as same-sex encounters and because sex work is viewed as “deviant.” Further, these interactions eschew traditional labels and limits of desire and …

All That You Say Is Beautiful: Stories, Omaria Sanchez Pratt

Theses and Dissertations--English

From the city of High Point to New York City, this collection portrays a certain black experience. Through a sociological lens, the stories in All That You Say is Beautiful study intersections of class, race, family, and sexuality by bending forms, expectations, and seeks to understand what it means to be human when your experience is not that of mainstream American culture.

Cowboy Boogaloo, Paris Loren Adorno

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Cowboy Boogaloo; A Play About Cowboys, Queers, and The American West.

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Arts of Bard College.

Cowboy Boogaloo, Imogen Thomas

Senior Projects Spring 2019

Cowboy Boogaloo; A play about Cowboys, Queers, and The American West.

Unsettling Geographies: Primitivist Utopias In Queer American Literature From Walt Whitman To Willa Cather, Benjamin Meiners

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In “Unsettling Geographies: Primitivist Utopias in Queer American Literature from Walt Whitman to Willa Cather,” I argue that the colonial discourse of primitivism played a central role in the queer literary imaginaries of both canonical and non-canonical U.S. authors. Building on the work of historians of sexuality who trace the complex development of the twentieth-century homo-/hetero- binary, I show how literary works produced in this historical moment—roughly 1860 to 1925—explored and in some instances even advocated alternative queer modes of citizenship and erotic imagination and practice. Focusing on the works of Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Willa …

Boys, Balls, And The Blues: The Erasure Of Genderqueer Bodies, Austin Mcgrath

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The goal of this essay is to re-explore the concept of gender in its relation to genderqueer and nonbinary identities. Before its examination of the gender reveal party, this essay examines male and female, masculine and feminine, and man and woman, carefully critiquing and distinguishing biological sex from gender expression and gender identity using a Queer theoretical framework to contextualize these distinctions in relation to queer identities. Through a modern contextualization, linguistic analysis, and a critical media examination of gender reveal images and footage, this essay acknowledges and analyzes the heteronormative structures that reinforce gender binaries. It challenges the deployment …

Brother Outsider: Queered Belonging And Kinships In African American Men’S Literature, 1953-1971, Debarati Biswas

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Brother Outsider: Queered Belonging and Kinships in African American Men’s Literature, 1953-1971 builds on the work of women-of-color feminists since the late 1960s and queer-of-color critique in the works of José Esteban Muñoz, Robert Reid-Pharr, Roderic Ferguson, and Nadia Ellis, in order to chronicle the emergence of a queer tradition in mid twentieth century African American men’s literature. Through literary analysis and archival research on marginal figures of African American culture during this period, this dissertation proposes that the black pulp novels of Chester Himes, Robert Deane Pharr, Clarence Cooper Jr., and Iceberg Slim perform a queer critique of and …

Tracing Writer/Reader Identity In, And In Response To, Queer Latinx Autohistoria-Teorìa, Corrina Wells

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

This project examines how diverse representation changes the discourse around queer latinx identities. This project extends theories of representation that show how a text changes the imaginary of the reader through a two-part methodology. First, through explicating Spit & Passion and A Cup of Water Under My Bed, this project examines how these texts construct a readers’ imaginary. Then, through a corresponding qualitative assessment on readers’ responses to the texts, this project identifies the extent to which the texts change the beliefs and understandings of a small group of students. Articulating an ecology of identity using the texts under examination, …

(Dis)Appearing Subjects: Managing Violence Through The Discourse Of Bullying, Rachel E. Levitt

American Studies ETDs

In the early 2000’s, “bullying” became the new center of LGBTQ justice organizing. As part of this development a bullied subject emerged. This bullied person on whose behalf liberation was being sought took various forms from the bullied school shooter, to the cyberbullying victim, to the bullied suicidal queer. As the subtitle of my dissertation suggests, I focus on “managing violence through the discourse of bullying.” This marks a two part process: how the discourse of bullying manages to do violence and how it manages populations biopolitically. This study tackles one of the core paradoxes that inform the formation of …

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice Of Black Uplift, 1890–1905, Timothy M. Griffiths

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Bricolage Propriety: The Queer Practice of Black Uplift, 1890-1905 situates the queer-of-color cultural imaginary in a relatively small nodal point: the United States at the end of the nineteenth century. Through literary analysis and archival research on leading and marginal figures of Post-Reconstruction African American culture, this dissertation considers the progenitorial relationship of late-nineteenth century black uplift novels to modern-day queer theory. Bricolage Propriety builds on work about the sexual politics of early African American literature begun by women-of-color feminists of the late 1980s and early 1990s, including Hazel V. Carby, Ann duCille, and Claudia Tate. A new wave of …

We Were There, We Are Here: Queer Collections And Their Repositories And Legacies, Alexandria Deters

MA Theses

Art history and history has gaps within it that are just now starting to be filled and the absences rectified. Those gaps are caused by erasure of queer art history. The way it has been rectified is through queer institutions and queer collections. This study explores how queer institutions and collections are innately political through saving queer objects and art. It is through their efforts that queer art history is finally being recognized in major institutions, collections, and exhibitions. I interview scholars and collectors to understand why they collect, which reveals the political nature and uniqueness of queer art as …

"The Least Of These": Towards An Integrated Queer Of Color Critique Of The Prison Industrial Complex, Jahqwahn J. Watson

Senior Independent Study Theses

The prison is a site of social death and death-making. the technology of social death originates in the American institution of chattel slavery and has reemerged in the prison industrial complex. The text Prison and Social Death approaches social death in prisons through the lens of reproductive justice, but the author does so in a way that neglects the influence of race in one’s prison experience. Using the lens of necropolitics, I seek to understand how the markers of race, gender, and sexuality compound to produce experiences unique to the black woman/queer/and trans folk in the prison. Necropolitics contend that …

Part Of This World: A Personal Exploration Of Media And Queer Identity, Emilee Harrison

Dissertations, Masters Theses, Capstones, and Culminating Projects

This paper is a mix of research and personal narrative exploring the impact of television, film, and online media on identity formation. I look specifically at my own identity as a queer person and how it has been shaped by what I have seen and experienced as a young queer and as an educator. Topics discussed include homophobia in the classroom and workplace, the impact of social media on youth development and identity formation, and our changing culture as queer visibility increases. This piece is primarily a personal reflection that runs from early childhood to adulthood. It addresses social interactions …

Taking Up Space: Community Formation Among Non-Urban Lgbtq Youth, Madison Bishop

Honors Papers

This paper provides an overview of the resources that exist for LGBTQ youth in the Cleveland area and uses the Queers and Allies Club at Oberlin High School (Oberlin, OH) as a case study in community formation among teenagers who identify as LGBTQ or as an ally to the LGBTQ community. Each chapter addresses potential sources of support, including schools, national organizations, and the Internet while presenting opportunities for improvement in each realm, demonstrating that while some LGBTQ youth resources exist, they are designed for youth in urban areas, leaving students in non-urban communities without access to community or information.

Material Embodiments, Queer Visualities: Presenting Disability In American Public History, Andrew B. Marcum

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines the presentation of disability at three of the most popular sites for the consumption of public history in the United States including the U.S. Capitol, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History. I de-construct the cultural and historical narratives and discourses of disability circulating at these sites and offer a visual culture analysis of the images, artifacts, and statuary found at each of them. My study is informed principally by the theories and methods of queer disability studies, visual culture studies, and cultural studies critiques of neoliberalism. I consider how …

Take Off Your Masc: The Hegemonic Gay Male's Gender Performance On Grindr, Duncan Shuckerow

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

The hegemonic Grindr clone is a gay male Grindr user who enforces the privileging of traditional masculine gender performance and condemns effeminacy. Through this project’s own field work along with the website “douchebagsofgrindr,” the hegemonic Grindr clone is here within analyzed. Drawing upon the theory ofhegemony articulated by Gramsci, a historical analysis of the 1970s urban gay male clone, and contemporary analysis and research, the project argues that the hegemonic Grindr clones, while only a minority group of Grindr users, rules over the cyberspace as sexual gatekeepers. Hegemonic Grindr clones maintain their privileged status on the application through depicting and …

Queer Bodies And Queer Materials In Post-Wwii American Texts, William Joseph Whalen

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Although the primary subject of this dissertation is contemporary American literature and popular culture--individual chapters are devoted to careful studies of Octavia Butler's short story "Bloodchild," Cormack McCarthy's gothic novel Child of God, Chuck Palahniuk's epistolary novel Pygmy, and the track "It's Good" by hip-hop artist Lil Wayne featuring Drake and Jadakiss--I develop a reading of these contemporary texts that places them within much older and richer intellectual, spiritual, psychological, and even biological traditions. My primary focus is the human body, both literal and figurative, as the site of dynamic exchanges, movements, blockages, and productive potentialities. I argue that at …

Cold War Pulp: Gender And Fiction In The Age Of Liberation, James Lewis Hood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The early decades of the twentieth century saw incredible changes in both literacy and general publishing. Once literature had been the domain of the elite, but now it was the daily pleasure of compeople. The changes in American culture in the middle of the century, combined with this revolution in publishing and literacy, combined to produce texts frequently referred to as pulp-fiction, works easily and cheaply produced for a mass-market. This market actively catered to diverse interests, perhaps most significantly the sexually alienated. Works of gay and feminist pulp fiction served to show alienated gay men and women, as well …

Aloha, Marriage Equality: Unsettling Gay Constructions Of Paradise, Cuyler Otsuka

Honors Papers

Through studying the discourse deployed by Hawai‘i's predominantly white LGBT political community, this paper explores the limits of single-issue gay marriage politics with respect to the Native Hawaiian community. This paper connects white LGBT political organizations to Hawai‘i's tourism industrial complex through the community's discursive deployment of "aloha" and destination weddings in arguing for same-sex marriage legalization. In exploring the mahu identity, this paper theorizes potential decolonized queer futurities.

As The World Turns...Gay, Not Queer: Privileging Heteronormalized Representations Of Sexuality In American Soap Operas From 1977 - Present, Brett Edward King

Cultural Studies Capstone Papers

This project argues that American daytime soap operas, since the1970s, have adopted prevailing discursive ideas of queerness, re-articulated them, and introduced new discursive understandings of queerness into popular culture. Most often, these re-articulated representations reflect a heteronormalized model,owing to myriad historically-situated discourses related to human sexuality (e.g.,mental health, AIDS, and gender identity). This point is made through a broad examination of these shifting discourses, coupled with a direct analysis of salient queer characters and storylines that appeared concurrently within daytime serials. Building on Feminist and Media theory, this project includes Queer theory to frame a comprehensive historical-discursive understanding of queerness …