Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Homoerotic Medievalism: Looking At Queer Desire In The Homosocial Relationships Of Chaucer’S “The Knight’S Tale” And Fletcher And Shakespeare’S The Two Noble Kinsmen, Juan P. Espinosa

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis is to explore queer interiority within the heteronormative social constructions of late medieval England. Queer interiority is not an occurrence of modernity, but rather a response to social constructions that date back to the Middle Ages. It is essential to account for queerness in the Middle Ages because authors like Chaucer promote the successive resurfacing of queer characters within heteronormative social constructions. Writing during the queer reign of Richard II, Chaucer constructs the interior identities of Palamon and Arcite as a reflection of the king and the political norms of England. Inspired by Chaucer, authors …

A Sailor's Intimacy: Homosocial Labor In Nineteenth-Century Oceanic Narratives By Dana And Melville, Adrian R. Salgado

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies the male sailor community in Richard Henry Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast and Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick and how they are portrayed in terms of homosociality and intimacy. The presence of a homosocial community on board a sailing vessel provided a means of forming a group of men that cultivated relationships and communications through the production of labor with one another. Both Melville and Dana engaged readers in the workings of a sailor’s life and how those interactions on board a ship with fellow sailors formed a premise for the evaluation of maritime labor in nineteenth-century oceanic …

Switch, Freesia Walsh Mckee

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

SWITCH is a collection of post-confessional feminist poems exploring what it means to be a Millennial, a witness, a woman, a daughter, a dissident, and a student and teacher at the same time. Bookended by two long poems, the poetic-narrative heart of this collection dives into experiences of queer self-actualization, violence, community, family, and love. Narratives about simultaneity, empathy, and politics drive home the message of these poems: the dailiness of our lives is both quotidian and profound.

SWITCH is inspired by writers like Ellen Bass, Audre Lorde, Allison Joseph, June Jordan, Judy Grahn, and Marge Piercy, who’ve used intimate, …

The Notions Of The "Closet" And The "Secret" In Oscar Wilde's, The Picture Of Dorian Gray, Jessica Maria Oliveira

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis will discuss the notions of the “closet” and “secret” within Oscar Wilde’s, The Picture of Dorian Gray, as well as offer a clear and precise definition of queer theory to assist in elucidating many of the concepts being discussed. Close reading techniques will be utilized to further uncover the metaphoric, symbolic, and otherwise figurative importance of certain aspects of The Picture of Dorian Gray and supporting texts. Through Judith Butler’s conceptualization of sex and gender, as well as Jacques Derrida’s interpretation of the “secret”, this paper will explicate the intricacies of Wilde’s work and unveil queered aspects …

Offshore, Laurel Nakanishi

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

OFFSHORE is a collection of lyric essays that examines the intersections between human cultures and the natural world. The essays inspect issues of identity and belonging in different geographic, cultural, and political landscapes. Part one of the book centers on the cultural and natural landscapes of Hawaii and Japan. Part two explores interpersonal relationships in Montana. And part three focuses on social justice issues in Nicaragua and Florida. Each of the essays in this collection balances intellectual exploration with personal narrative and poetic description, allowing the essays to be simultaneously concept-driven while maintaining lyric force.

Queering The Library Of Congress, Carlos R. Fernandez

Works of the FIU Libraries

This poster will attempt to apply the techniques used in Queer Theory to explore library and information science’s use and misuse of library classification systems; and to examine how “queering” these philosophical categories can not only improve libraries, but also help change social constructs.

For millennia, philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, have used and expounded upon categories and systems of classification. Their purpose is to make research and the retrieval of information easier. Unfortunately, the rules used to categorize and catalog make information retrieval more challenging for some, due to social constructs such as heteronormality.

The importance of this …

The Commodification Of Queer Virgins In Shakespeare, Spenser, And Keats, Laura M. Ortega

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this thesis was to explore selected works from William Shakespeare, Edmund Spenser, and John Keats, in order to expose textual instances of feminist thought. This analysis was aided with feminist theorists falling under the main strains of queer theory, materialism, and gender performance. Specifically, this thesis focused on the ways in which women, particularly virgin daughters, were viewed as property by their male kin. It also looked at how these women engaged in various symbolic masquerades and/or actual cross-dressing as a response to the aforementioned phenomenon. Finally, the thesis exposed how these masquerades can be construed as …

Bleaching To Reach: Skin Bleaching As A Performance Of Embodied Resistance In Jamaican Dancehall Culture, Treviene A. Harris

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how skin bleaching can be understood within the cultural context of Jamaican dancehall. I argue that as a cultural practice, skin bleaching can be viewed as a critique of the concomitant structural inequalities precipitated by colorism, which is a by-product of racism. In proposing skin bleaching as a queer performance of color, I attempt to illustrate the manner in which the lightening of the skin exposes the instability of racism and colorism as socially constructed, discursive regimes. If race and skin color are biological and embodied facts dictated by social reality, then bodies, which are racially marked …