Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Perineum: Erika Lopez, Debra A. Castillo Sep 2017

Perineum: Erika Lopez, Debra A. Castillo

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Erika Lopez is the author of five lavishly illustrated, fictionalized memoirs as well as a postcard book and a performance piece, “Nothing Left but the Smell.” All of her books are road tales of sorts, texts that grapple with the inchoate and often illegible need to assert herself as bi: bi-racial, bi-sexual, bi-cultural, bi-coastal, but also more and different than merely bi (“I contain multitudes,” said Walt Whitman), disrespectful of boundaries, genders, and genres, and unwilling to settle down with one person or one story even when the constant movement and empting out exhausts her. Even worse, in some ways; …


The Two-Sided Coin: Madness And Laughter As Subversion In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland And The Sandman, Tessa Starr Swehla May 2017

The Two-Sided Coin: Madness And Laughter As Subversion In Alice’S Adventures In Wonderland And The Sandman, Tessa Starr Swehla

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Mad female characters in Western literature have traditionally represented attempts by dominant patriarchal discourse to subjugate women’s discourse: these characters are usually pathologized in both their dialogue with other characters and in their physical bodies. This subjugation by representation of mad female characters in dominant discourse parallels similar attempts to portray women as lacking in humor. This thesis studies the intersections between madness and humor and the ability of female characters that embody both to challenge and subvert dominant discourse. By examining the characters of Alice from Lewis Carroll’s novel and Delirium from Neil Gaiman’s graphic novel series The Sandman …