Arts and Humanities Commons^™

From Sins Of The Cities Of The Plain To Letters From Laura And Eveline: Boulton, Park, And Pornography’S Reaction To Transmisogyny, Daniel Falco

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis builds on the emerging work of scholars who view pornography as literature with sociocultural relevance and adds to trans scholarship through a dissection of gender construction and transmisogyny in a Victorian underground subversive culture. Centering the 1883 erotic novel Letters from Laura and Eveline, I examine how language and biology are unfixed to highlight fluidity within queer sex and gender, and how this helps the novel evade the taxonomical-obsessed era in which it was produced. I examine its roots in the real historical figures of Ernest “Stella” Boulton and Frederick “Fanny” Park, two crossdressers who were arrested a …

The Definition Of A Black Man: The Entanglement Of Race, Sexuality, And Space, Michael Moore

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how Black queer men and transmasculine individuals navigate Black heteronormative and White queer spaces in New Orleans. Over the last few decades, articles, including anthropological and sociological, have focused on the relationship between race, gender performance, sexuality, and emotional expression among men such as Christian (2005), which analyzed how Black queer men expressed their masculinity within queer spaces (Christian 2005). This thesis builds on this literature to explore how societal and cultural pressures of masculinity can hinder Black queer men institutionally, socially, and romantically.

Leonora Carrington’S "Down Below": Transgressive Renderings Of The Grotesque Female Body, Kelsey King

Theses and Dissertations

The classification of the bodily grotesque relies on the transgression of boundaries, marked by an openness to the world. Leonora Carrington’s memoir (1944) and painting (1940) that share the same name, Down Below, illustrate the grotesque body as a revisionist self-configuration, destabilizing traditional representations and eroticization of the female form.

A Dumb Mouth From Which The Teeth Have Been Pulled, Anna Sofie Jespersen

Theses and Dissertations

This paper consists of a series of scenes in which various narratives with proximity to the truth plays out. within it I aim to articulate the dispersed subjectivity and forensic aspects to my work, as well looking at the perverseness in the desire for proximity to the fantasy, utilizing the self as a vehicle of desire.

Ad Infinitum: The Bourgeois Construction Of An American Lady, Miriam M. Cepeda

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the emergence of the Bourgeois culture in Antebellum America during the transition of nineteenth century America into what we refer to as “modern-day America.” This period is crucial in American history as ideological concepts developed as the nation industrialized, thus creating the nation’s identity. In doing so, gender roles were voraciously prescribed with a focus on women’s sexuality as a focal point for Victorian discourse. Unlike prior to the Revolution, which gender roles were previously assumed, by the mid-nineteenth century, modes of surveillance are apparent in sermons, medical treatises, Victorian periodicals and literature, in which ideological productions …

“Mirrors Can Give Us Space To Imagine…” Representations Of Gender And Sexuality In Bbc’S Dracula (2020), Riana S. Slyter

Theses and Dissertations

What follows discusses how BBC’s Dracula uses character representations, scripted dialogue, and narrative to challenge and perpetuate the dominant ideologies of our society. Dracula exposes the tensions in the growing cultural acceptance of, but also increased resistance to, the fluidity of gender and sexuality in contemporary western culture. I contextualize representations of women and queer characters in Dracula with the broader issues of gender and sexuality in our current socio-political environment. Queer horror looks at Dracula as a text that arouses cultural anxieties concerning sexuality, while also attempting to illustrate fear within queer communities and subcultures. In many ways, the …

Keats And Shelley: A Pursuit Towards Progressivism, Serenah Minasian

Theses and Dissertations

An analyzation of the poems, letters, and works of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley from a perspective focusing on the history of sexuality, breaking gender binaries, and pushing towards progressivism. This thesis proves how John Keats is both an effeminate man who displays exemplary ways of breaking gender expectations but also a man who possess misogynistic tendencies. Also, this thesis analyzes Percy Shelley’s use of gender expectations and how he breaks them with the use of his characters. Studying these two British Romantics shows how these two cisgender, straight, white men provide an ability to push back on their …

“What Can There Be But Witchcraft?”: History, Women, And Witches In Sylvia Townsend Warner’S Lolly Willowes And Graham Swift’S Waterland, Thomas Bedenbaugh

Theses and Dissertations

The ambiguous relationship between history, women and witchcraft in Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Graham Swift’s Waterland foregrounds the constructedness of historical narratives while also recuperating women’s marginalized positions within history. Both novels link historical narratives with the received ideas upon which norms of gender, sexuality, and the nation are constructed. In recognizing this, both authors challenge the monolithic male gaze of history, revealing it to be a story which, totalizing as it may be, is not in fact “natural.” While many women in both novels are configured as haunting figures - women who confuse the boundary separation presence …

Digesting Gender: Gendered Foodways In Modern Chinese Literature, 1890s–1940s, Zhuo Feng

Theses and Dissertations

In this dissertation, I investigate Han Bangqing (1856–1894), Lao She (1899– 1966), and Su Qing’s (1914–1982) works to study the literary representations of how people purchased, prepared, shared, and ate food in different social contexts allowing them to adapt to new gender norms. I contend that the intersection of food, gender and literature stages the process through which people reconciled different and sometimes conflicting gender norms through their everyday eating practices. When encountering new cooking and eating practices in these literary works, people reflect upon their past lives and, wittingly or unwittingly, begin to accept different gender norms, and modify …

'Would You Say You Had Sex If...' Rhetorical Meaning-Making Within Intimate Encounters And Their Discourses At The Macro, Meso, And Micro Levels, Megan Orcholski

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation advances a deeper understanding of the rhetoric of intimate encounters by analyzing meaning-making practices at the intersections of sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence at the macro, meso, and micro levels. The object of my analysis is discourse about sex, sexuality, and sexualized violence, but this analysis also has implications on understandings of how corporeal rhetorics, or communicative meaning within bodies, are operating in moments of intimate encounters. Throughout my chapters, I interrogate how normative scripts around sex are constructed, disseminated, and perpetuated, how these normative assumptions impact intimate encounters and their connected public discourses, and how these normative …

The Tragedy Of Theresa Sturla: Murder, Insanity, And Womanhood On Trial In Nineteenth-Century Chicago, Jake Engelman

Theses and Dissertations

On the morning of July 10, 1882, a young prostitute named Theresa Sturla murdered her lover, Charles Stiles, on the sixth floor of the Palmer House in Chicago. During her trial four months later, Sturla’s attorney employed a dual argument of self-defense and insanity. He claimed that his client suffered from dysmenorrhea, or painful menstruation, and that she had gone temporarily insane at the time of the murder due to her defective reproductive system. According to the defense, Stiles’ abuse toward his mistress had exacerbated the disease and her only solution was to respond with violence. After a month-long trial, …

Marriage Maintenance, Miscategorization, And New Manifestations: How People Are Reinforcing And Disrupting Gender And Sexual Inequalities In Married Life, Daniel John Bartholomay

Theses and Dissertations

This research positions marriage as an institution that has historically served to privilege men, masculinity and heterosexuality. Overall, this project is intended to advance our understanding of gender and sexual inequalities in the realms of marriage and family by examining the lived experiences of married people. It draws on data from 41 in-depth interviews conducted with married people living in Wisconsin, many of whom identify as part of the LGBT+ community. Using qualitative social science methods, this research speaks to unanswered questions regarding the capacity of a more gender-fluid society to reshape key social institutions (like marriage) in ways that …

Dead Eye Open., Carlos Guillermo Gomez

Theses and Dissertations

This collection chronicles the youth and adulthood of a speaker, and how those experiences shaped considerations of masculinity, intimacy, and sexuality.

Graphic Intimacies: Identity, Humor, And Trauma In Autobiographical Comics By Women Of Color, Francesca Lyn

Theses and Dissertations

Graphic Intimacies: Identity, Humor, and Trauma in Autobiographical Comics by Women of Color examines works of comics art about the lived experience of the comics’ creator. These graphic narratives address racialized difference and the construction of identity while also using humor to negotiate their narrations of traumatic events. I argue that these creators employ the structure of comics to replicate the fragmentary nature of memory. Comics allow for the representation of trauma as being intimately linked to corporeality. The comics medium allows creators to make visible and present fractured versions of the self, a product of traumatic fragmentation. Drawing traumatic …

Creating Herstory: Female Rebellion In Arundhati Roy’S "The God Of Small Things" And "The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness", Priyanka Tewari

Theses and Dissertations

In The God of Small Things and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness novels, the author Arundhati Roy is not only attempting to give feminist weight to the multiplicity of locations in which gender is articulated by recasting her female characters in their quest for selfhood, she is also focusing on women and women-identified characters as agents of history, thereby contributing to an ongoing project of feminist historiography.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?: The Language Of Trauma And Identity Formation In Virginia Woolf’S Mrs. Dalloway And Vladimir Nabokov’S Lolita, Claire A. Setton

Theses and Dissertations

This paper delves into Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway, and Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, looking at how the instability seen in the narrative structure of the novels correlates to the impact of trauma on the psychoanalytic development of the characters.

Fracaso Y Frustracion Sexual En La Obra Cuentistica De Julio Ramon Ribeyro, Arcadio Bolanos

Theses and Dissertations

In the short stories of Peruvian writer Julio Ramón Ribeyro, there are two important subjects that are mutually connected and are part of a larger literary proposal: failure and sexual frustration. When Ribeyro wrote his short stories, he was portraying the Peruvian reality and the idiosyncrasy of Peruvians in general. Certainly, failure has often been associated with Ribeyro’s literary proposals, as most of his characters fail in one way or another; however, little has been said about sexual frustration, which is quite an important thematic element that should not be overlooked. The theoretical framework relies mostly on psychoanalysis, including Jacques …

An Examination Of The Queer, The Macho, And The Ambiguous Male In Arturo Islas's The Rain God, Delilah Marie Farias

Theses and Dissertations

Mexican-American males are shaped by their cultural values, history, religion, and family values. They are measured by the standard set forth in machismo and are expected to act accordingly. Machismo is a concept that is deeply rooted in Catholicism, the Aztec culture, the Mexican-American nuclear family, and it is handed down in the upbringing of men and women. In Arturo Islas’s novel, The Rain God, he creates a representation of the three different identities that men are subjugated to. He creates the machista within the patriarchal character of Miguel Grande, the ambiguous male in his son Miguel Chico, and …

The Meaning Of Sexuality: A Critique Of Foucault's History Of Sexuality Volume 1, Anne E. Grow

Theses and Dissertations

Michel Foucault is a celebrated post-structuralist theorist that has helped shape gender and sexual theory. In A History of Sexuality Volume 1 Foucault dismantles many longstanding sexual traditions and morals by exposing them as societal constructs. According to Foucault, anonymous yet fully invasive power sources have shaped and continue to shape sexual culture and more importantly, individual beliefs about sexuality. However, Foucault's obsession with the influence of power limits his sexual theory in three particular ways. First, he disregards the female sexual experience; second, he undermines individual agency; and third, he undermines the innate desire for love and family. The …

Adapting Dracula: The Afterlives Of Stoker's Memes In Nosferatu (1922) And Dracula (1979), Ian Duncan Mcarthur

Theses and Dissertations

Dracula is a narrative that has risen above its own origins, having been translated and adapted across mediums it has inundated culture with vampires. However, with each adaptation the narrative and characters adapt into something new. This study is interested in the mechanism behind this evolution and argues that memes and, and their interpretations, are largely responsible for these shifts across adaptations. Three memes, in particular, tend to be adapted in films of Dracula. They include Dracula's appearance, Mina's empowerment, and the nature of the bite that they share. This analysis covers how these memes functioned in Stoker's original …

Decoding Darkmatter, Crystal J. Waterton

Theses and Dissertations

Decoding DarkMatter is a documentary film about two Asian transgender poetry performance artists: Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian. It documents their journey from Stanford University to their first large theater production; It Gets Bitter, at Joe’s Pub in New York City.

Welcome To My Dream – Quasi Queer Fiction, Christian A. Rogers

Theses and Dissertations

Roseate and bodacious, the hand formed surfaces of Christian Rogers' paintings explore gay culture and history though a quasi-fictional lens. While utilizing folk like imagery, Christian depicts dramatic moments of love, lust, sex and violence as he takes us to queer realms.

Gay Liberation Is One Thing, But Nobody Likes A Dyke: Emerging Frames In Queer Radio, Ryan Charles Sugden

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines how a social movement uses the media to progress in society. I conduct a framing analysis on the queer community’s use of radio during two time periods: 1970s queer radio program Gay Perspective and a 2015-2016 program, Queery. I examine the show through three emerging frames: Cultured, Diversity, and Assimilation. The thesis studies how segments of the LGBTQIA+ community framed the discussion of gay rights in the 1970s and how those frames have (and haven’t) changed in 2016. Gay Perspective focused much of its energy on trying to demonstrate the need for rights and attempts to demonstrate …

Toilet Talk, Michael Blake

Theses and Dissertations

Toilet Talk explores both formal and autobiographical themes related to desire, sexuality, and the relationship between public and private space. My work and research aims to reposition and queer the industrial object and its promotion of hyper masculine ideals.

Queer Literary Criticism And The Biographical Fallacy, Shawna Lipton

Theses and Dissertations

“Queer Literary Criticism and the Biographical Fallacy” engages with three fields of inquiry within literary studies: queer literary criticism, modernist studies, and author theory. By looking at the critical reception of four iconic queer modernist authors – Oscar Wilde, Henry James, Radclyffe Hall, and Virginia Woolf– this dissertation reinvestigates the relation between criticism and the figure of the author. Queer criticism-- despite its fundamental critique of identity—relies on the identity of the author when it blurs the distinction between the literary text and the author’s biography. Ultimately this work provides a deeper understanding of the queer relation to the modernist …

A Grenade Of Paper Flowers: A Collection Of Poems, Melissa Dugan

Theses and Dissertations

A Grenade of Paper Flowers is a collection of poems of varying forms, styles, and lengths that explores the themes of love, identity, sexuality, violence, and constructed meaning.

Reflections On Sexuality, Sensuality, And Painting, Loie Hollowell

Theses and Dissertations

The written component of my thesis will take the form of an extended artist statement in which I discuss all six paintings included in my thesis exhibition. A major theme of my work is sexuality, specifically female sexuality. This thesis will begin by looking at the three miniature paintings that spearheaded the investigation of this theme. I will examine the generalized and personal feminist symbolism that these paintings contain. The two works that followed the miniatures are depictions of sexual interactions between my husband and myself. I will explain the significance of my depictions and relate them to the work …

Lake Salt: A Creative Thesis, Erica Lindsay Plummer

Theses and Dissertations

This collection of short stories explores the different ways in which women experience suffering. The narrative focuses on the daily lives of women who have undergone some type of heartbreak. While the stories occasionally include the incident which leads to despair, the collection is more concerned with the way women function after a personal tragedy. The stories show the grace of people who continue to move forward when their lives are filled with suffering. Sexuality enters the stories and exposes both the triumph and destructive nature of sexuality. A critical introduction which explains how complication and beauty amplify story proceeds …

In The Company Of Cheaters (16th-Century Aristocrats And 20th-Century Gangsters), Mark Cammeron Murdock

Theses and Dissertations

This document contains a meta-commentary on the article that I co-authored with Dr. Corry Cropper entitled Breaking the Duel's Rules: Brantôme, Mérimée, and Melville, that will be published in the next issue of Essays in French Literature and Culture, and an annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources featuring summaries and important quotes dealing with duels, honor, honor codes, cheating, historical causality, chance, and sexuality. Also, several examples of film noir are cited with brief summaries and key events noted. The article we wrote studies two instances of cheating in duels: one found in Brantôme's Discours sur les duels and …

Username Tab Password Return, Andrea Nia Burks

Theses and Dissertations

USERNAME TAB PASSWORD RETURN

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