Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Neuroqueering Art Therapy: Bringing Neurodivergent Gender Diversity Into The Creative Arts Therapy Room: A Literature Review, Avital Eisen

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

Recent research across disciplines has established the significance of the overlap between neurodivergence and gender diversity, a truth long espoused by the community. Acting on this research, some mental health disciplines have begun addressing neurodivergent transgender and gender diverse people as a unified population in their research, but the field of art therapy has not yet followed suit. Theoretical frameworks of intersectionality, queer theory, and disability justice highlight the importance of centering the unique experiences and needs of neurodivergent gender diversity. Using these frameworks, this literature review synthesizes community knowledge with art therapy research on both neurodivergence and gender diversity, …

That Way: An Examination Of Male Relationships In Film During The Hays Code, Jane Knudsen

Theses/Capstones/Creative Projects

The Hays Code (1934-1968) influenced the construct of United States masculinity and the discourse surrounding masculine presentation between the 1920s to the 1960s. The Hays Code and World War II affected the culture surrounding male/male relationships in the United States. Previous research done by David Lugowski (1999) and Jeffrey Suzik (1999) shows that both World Wars led to crises of masculinity in which the hegemonic ideal of masculinity was restructured to establish men as providers and warriors, and Code-era films reflected the discourse. To understand the gender roles in the 20^th century, I analyzed the Hays code, male bonds, …

American Perspectives On The Legitimacy Of Transgender Identities, Sethe Zachman

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This mixed-method project examines how Americans’ and Nebraskans’ perceptions of the validity of transgender identities varies by the demographic characteristics of respondents, and how these perceptions are justified. Two representative surveys are used to examine demographic associations with opinion on the cisgender and transgender binary: the 2023 American Values Atlas (AVA) from the Public Religion Research Institute (N=4,788) and the 2022 Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS) (N=934) from the Bureau of Sociological Research. A measure from the AVA data examines the degree to which respondents believe there are only two genders versus a range of gender identities. The NASIS …

Love On The Spectrum: Djuna Barnes’S Case Against Categorization In Nightwood, Kaitlyn A. Alford

Masters Theses

Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood is a challenging and beautiful text that continues to confound readers almost 100 years after its original publication. Though the text is often read as a “lesbian” novel, I consider the possibilities available when we read this text instead with a more open queerness in mind. By looking at the novel’s treatment of image, time, history, gender, sexuality, and identity, a new way of reading is revealed which rejects moves of taxonomization and categorization. This thesis explores how Barnes challenges dominant modes of representation and understanding, not to be a simple contrarian, but to present a new …

Made Of Water, Covered In Mud, Nicole Norman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

My fixation on water as metaphor is a product of my cosmic design; Scorpio sun, Pisces moon, Pisces rising. I am made of water, begging to be held. Anything liquid has this same desire. I use my art practice to examine the fluidity of physical and digital spaces; how they transform almost constantly. This is only possible through the use of containers that give form to abstract ideas and make them easier to drink (read: digest). Containers can vary in size and shape, but their purpose remains the same. A drinking glass, a swimming pool, a creek bed. These are …

Narratives From Appalachia: The Current Stories Of Lgbtq Community College Students, Todd A. Cimino-Johnson

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Theses & Dissertations

LGBTQ students are ubiquitous on community college campuses across the United States. The exact number of LGBTQ students is unknown and often their needs are ignored. LGBTQ students face harassment and discrimination at higher rates than other minority groups. This study was conducted to gather the current narratives of LGBTQ students attending community colleges in the Appalachian Region. This study aimed to determine what LGBTQ students are experiencing on community college campuses across Appalachia. Fifteen students took part in a one-on-one semi-structured interview for this qualitative study. All students were currently enrolled in a program of study when the interviews …

The (In)Visible Woman: A Performative Autoethnographic Exploration Of Queer Femme-Ininity And Queer Isolation, Bri Ozalas

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This thesis is a performative autoethnographic exploration of my experiences existing betwixt-and-between the intersection of queer femme-ininity and isolation. Through a creative, affective rendition of my experiences, I detail and connect the nuances of queerness, femme-ininity, and queer isolation to provide a closer look at understanding queer identity with an absence of connection to the queer community. First, I provide an overview of the main theoretical and methodological approaches, and main concepts I utilize throughout my project. I then provide the intricacies of queer theory, queer intersectionality, and affect theory to provide theoretical explanations of my approach to queer isolation. …

The Morphology Of Sex: Tracking Change In The Sex Discourse At Augustana College, Robert E. Burke

Women's and Gender Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

ere, I track how the criteria for deeming sex as acceptable or unacceptable have changed over time at Augustana College. To do so, I apply two critical lenses to archived issues of the Augustana Observer. The first lens involves Rubin's concept of the "sex hierarchy," a variety of categories by which we may judge sex as good or bad. The second lens is related to Berlant and Warner's "national heterosexuality," a concept that claims that sexual norms are intrinsically elastic but politically, culturally, and economically firm under capitalism. Making use of a localized "snapshot" approach, I use recent Augustana history …

Collective Healing Within Queer Paradoxes: Deconstructing Emotional Abuse In Lgbtq2sia* Communities To Cultivate More Accountable And Compassionate Worlds, Alexia Siebuhr

Cal Poly Humboldt theses and projects

Emotional abuses within LGBTQ2SIA* communities are rarely acknowledged as existing or often normalized. Through care and anti-oppression works, transformative justice models such as community and self-accountability have helped carve out ways of addressing harm directly and breaking cycles of violence. The research in this thesis has been through mixed qualitative methodologies including semi-structured interviews and surveys. The participants' along with other authors, artists, activists and scholars’ narratives draws upon the experiences of emotional abuse lived within structural and social surveillance. The settler colonial state sanctioned projects have responded to harm by perpetuating violence upon those most marginalized. Deconstructing emotional abuse …

The Morphology Of Sex: Tracking Change In The Sex Discourse At Augustana College, Robert E. Burke

Audre Lorde Writing Prize

Here, I track how the criteria for deeming sex as acceptable or unacceptable have changed over time at Augustana College. To do so, I apply two critical lenses to archived issues of the Augustana Observer. The first lens involves Rubin's concept of the "sex hierarchy," a variety of categories by which we may judge sex as good or bad. The second lens is related to Berlant and Warner's "national heterosexuality," a concept that claims that sexual norms are intrinsically elastic but politically, culturally, and economically firm under capitalism. Making use of a localized "snapshot" approach, I use recent Augustana history …

Trans Sports Illustrated: Identities And Experiences Of Transgender Athletes Assigned Female At Birth, Sophia Neely

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

This empirical study explores how transgender athletic adults assigned female at birth narrate their identities and experiences related to gender and sports participation. Using the methodology of social science portraiture filtered through a lens of queer feminist theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with two trans men and three nonbinary participants. The participants are diverse in terms of age (21 to 54), race (white, Asian American, and African American), current primary sports interest (squash, CrossFit, powerlifting, baseball, and rock climbing), and pronouns (he/him/his, ze/zir/zirs, and they/them/theirs). Media reports and extant research on transgender athletes tend to recount bleak histories of exclusion, …

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 …

Virtual Avatars: Trans Experiences Of Ideal Selves Through Gaming, Kai Baldwin

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This article aims to explore the experiences transgender gamers have with avatars. Building on a foundation of identity construction theories from both media studies and queer studies, this study theorizes that these gamers will use their virtual world avatars to experiment with gender performance and ideal selves. These theories of identity construction are explored and examined through digital ethnography, by using the participant observation method, in which trans gamers are interviewed about their experiences with avatar creation and use. Based on the evidence gathered from those interviews, this study concludes that trans gamers in general tend to create avatars who …

Queering Sexual Development Frameworks : A Dynamic Systems Approach To Conceptualizing Other-Sex Sexuality Among Lesbians, Kolbe Franklin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Essentialist models of sexual identity development have dominated social discourse and public opinion since the 1980s. This perspective posits that sexual orientation is an intrinsic, core identity that has roots in specific biological factors. Based on this perspective it is assumed that a person’s sexuality will manifest in a linear fashion throughout the life course. Notably, this model positions individuals with same-sex sexual attractions and behaviors as specific “types” of people. While this perspective has become largely institutionalized in public opinion, within academic research on sexual orientation, there has been little consensus on the veracity of this model. Specifically, the …

Nietzsche And Emancipatory Politics: Queer Theory As Anti-Morality, C. Heike Schotten

C. Heike Schotten

Introduction: For Better Or For Worse? Relational Landscapes In The Time Of Same-Sex Marriage, Michael W. Yarbrough

Publications and Research

As same-sex marriage has become a legal reality in a rapidly growing list of countries, the time has come to assess what this means for families and relationships on the ground. Many scholars have already begun to examine how marriage is helping some same-sex couples, but in this introduction I call for a broader and more critical research agenda. In particular, I argue that same-sex marriage crystallizes a key tension surrounding families and relationships in many contemporary societies. On the one hand, strict family norms are relaxing in many places, allowing more people to form more diverse types of caring …

Rocky Horror Sublimation: Identity As A Contingency Of Experience, Josh Harper

Senior Theses

Queer theory, as a subfield of feminist theories concerned with revealing epistemic, political, and humanitarian problems of a male-dominated society, has been heavily influenced by its founding thinkers, including Judith Butler, the theorist focused on herein. In critiquing various problems of our western society, Butler preserves the structure underlying such problems: through her approach of a gay/straight framework critiquing a male domination of female, the binary is preserved. This is problematic for many reasons, including its exclusion of perspectives that do not fall cleanly into such dichotomies, namely trans and polysexual ones. By appealing to these, as well as to …

The Child To Come: Life After The Human Catastrophe By Rebekah Sheldon, Nathan Tebokkel

The Goose

Review of Rebekah Sheldon's The Child to Come: Life after the Human Catastrophe.

“Realists Of A Larger Reality” Conceptualizing Creative Possibilities That Couldwork In Expanding Contemporary Human Rights, Amanda J. Beckley

Senior Projects Fall 2016

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

A Queer Vegan Manifesto, Rasmus R. Simonsen

Rasmus R Simonsen, PhD

What does it mean for a person to declare her or his veganism to the world? How does the transition from one diet to another impact one’s sense of self? Veganism challenges the foundational character of how we “act out” our selves—not least of all in the context of sexuality and gender. In my paper, I am thus interested in the potential of veganism to disrupt the “natural” bond between gender formations and the consumption of animal products, as this relates to social and cultural genealogies. Consequently, I will explore a queer form of veganism that affirms the radical impact …

Disciplining Queer, Ian Barnard

English Faculty Articles and Research

This article analyzes a particular set of disciplinings by students and colleagues that coalesced around my teaching of a university course in ‘Queer Theory.’ I use these regulatory discourses and practices as a springboard to investigate how academic and other disciplines (English, in particular) enable and reproduce certain stylizations, epistemologies, and methodologies, and what they implicitly and violently conceal and demonize; how style functions as politics and what the politics of style are; how queerness—queer inquiry and intervention, queer methodologies and epistemologies, queer activisms and insubordinations—might activate, exacerbate, and expose some of these questions and mechanisms. The form of the …

Masochism: A Queer Subjectivity?, Amber Musser

Publications and Research

Judith Butler's Gender Trouble elaborates what may be called a queer subjectivity. Characterized by non-essential, performative identity, her theory has been criticized because, according to its critics, it does not give the subject political agency. Liberal theorists, such as Seyla Benhabib, have been particularly concerned with the political effects of this form of subjectivity on already marginalized social groups while other theorists, such as Susan Stryker and Ed Cohen, have articulated concern that the theory does not sufficiently account for embodiment, affect, and identity. This essay brings Deleuze's theory of masochism in dialogue with Butler's theories of subjectivity in an …

Minding Our Q'S, Paisley Currah

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

A personal admission first—it's a scary thing to be stepping in as executive director, following in the very large footsteps of Alisa Solomon, Jill Dolan, and CLAGS's founder and first executive director, Martin Duberman, who have all worked so hard and accomplished so much to make CLAGS a major center for gay and lesbian studies. But, with the support of Alisa, the tremendous CLAGS board, its exceptional staff, and the many others who participate in its work, I am also looking forward to the challenge of building on their work.

Expanding Horizons, Alisa Solomon

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Happy New Year! Welcome to the new semester! Welcome to CLAGS's second decade! Such greetings would be heartfelt under any circumstances, but the artifices of the calendar seem especially useful now as we seek new beginnings after the trauma of the Fall.

Discovering, Again, The Meaning Of "American", Peter Hegarty

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

In his essay, "The discovery of what it means to be an American," James Baldwin described how his exile in Paris led him to new self-knowledge about his national identity. Baldwin left the US to survive what he called "the color problem," but was surprised to find he shared a sense of being "not at home" with white Americans in Europe. He was American in ways he had not realized. Exile afforded him intellectual freedom, but his growing consciousness of the French-Algerian war led him to understand that "there are no untroubled countries in this fearfully troubled world." Leaving home …

Shannon Minter Speaks On Transgender Issues In Queer Theory, Salvador Vidal

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

Shannon Minter, a staff attorney for the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, presented an enlightening and engaging talk called Piety, Projection, and Denial: The Uses and Misuses of Transgender People in Queer Theory at a well-attended CLAGS colloquium on November 30th. Minter is well known for having transitioned from female to male (FTM) while working for a national LGB rights advocacy organization. In addition to his work on LGB custody, parenting, youth, marriage, and immigration issues at NCLR, he is also a leading advocate for the rights of transgendered people.

A Message From The New Executive Director, Jill Dolan

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

I'm honored and pleased to be succeeding Marty Duberman as Executive Director of CLAGS. I taught in theatre and drama and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before I accepted my present position in the PhD Program in Theatre at the CUNY Graduate Center. At Madison, teaching and writing in lesbian performance theory, the fact that a national center for lesbian and gay studies had been established in New York gave me a sense that the field in which I worked was arriving, securing its legitimacy and its vibrancy and insisting on its visibility. In my two years at …