Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Transgressive Acts: Adapting Applied Theatre Techniques For A Transgender Community, Theo F. Lefevre

Masters Theses

This MFA Thesis traces my work as a joker (a la Theatre of the Oppressed) and facilitator through a three-year-long project with a trans applied theatre troupe. The troupe explored several techniques, including Image Theatre, Playback Theatre, storytelling exercises, and somatic movement. In three semester-long workshops, the troupe focused work around three sets of techniques. In the first workshop, the troupe explored the community-based interview process of Undesirable Elements, as designed by Ping Chong in collaboration with Talvin Wilks and Sara Zatz. These techniques were interrogated using queer and trans temporalities. In the second unit, the troupe practiced Augusto …

Opal Clark On Directing Stop Kiss An Exploration Of The Directorial Process, Opal Clark

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The intent of this thesis and thesis project was to execute a successful run of the play, Stop Kiss by Diana Son while achieving the playwright’s intended message. Opal Clark directed this production of Stop Kiss at East Tennessee State University under special arrangement with Dramatists Play Service, Inc. It was performed to sold out audiences in ETSU Theatre and Dance Studio 205 October 2-7, 2017. The play explores experiences and hostility toward same sex couples, their relationships with one another and how one individual discovers sexuality. The discovery and actualization of the characters’ struggles were communicated in the play …

On The Contrary: Subverting The Canon With Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, Christina Pellegrini

Masters Theses

This written portion of my thesis is aimed at documenting and synthesizing how I, as director, staged an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler through ongoing collaboration with a creative team comprised of dramaturges, designers, and actors.

I walk the reader through my exploration of Ibsen’s life and work through travel to the International Ibsen Festival in Oslo, Norway, and describe how I endeavored to lead the production’s creative team by applying feminist theories in directing and embracing the possibility of failure as a means of discovery. I discuss the casting process and establishment of an all-women ensemble, explore the …

Women On Trial: Translating Femininity Through Journalism, William B. Ollayos

Masters Theses

The focus of this thesis is on cultural translation as a means of understanding the relationship between sociocultural identity with respect to bourgeois white female sexuality and interpretations by news journalists, writers and filmmakers. The thesis brings translation scholar Lawrence Venuti’s description of foreign and domestic texts (2008) into conversation with Catherine Cole’s analysis of journalists as active interpreters of newsworthy events (2010) to support my view of the media as a translator of sociocultural identity. The thesis outlines the construction of bourgeois white femininity within the U.S. imaginary and a more detailed account of its direct impact upon journalistic …

The Drama Of Race: Contemporary Afro-German Theater, Jamele Watkins

Doctoral Dissertations

The first investigation of Afro-German theater my dissertation, “The Drama of Race,” argues that Afro-German theater empowers as Black actors take ownership of a German stage, a white German space. My dissertation highlights four crucial Afro-German plays: real life: Germany (2008), Heimat, bittersüße Heimat [Home, bittersweet Home] (2010), Also by Mail (2013), and Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien [Corn in Germany and Other Galaxies] (2015). In Chapter I, I discuss the cultural conditions in which Afro-German theater emerged—after an established literary corpus by Afro-German authors. Chapter II introduces the first Afro-German play and its improvisational methods as empowering for …

Images Of Women In Refugee Drama: Eve Ensler’S Necessary Targets And Ellen Mclaughlin’S The Trojan Women, Kaitlyn Tossie

Theses and Dissertations

In the past ten years, a critique of the conceptualization of refugees in Western mass media has emerged as a developing discourse in response to post-20th century genocides. Photographs in mass media of wailing refugees began to appear in the early 1990s when reports of the Bosnian genocide appeared in the United States. These images, and the stereotypes that surround them, contribute to the universal depiction of refugees as weak. Though the way in which theatre comments on this conceptualization of refugees has largely been ignored, theatre has a unique ability to comment on, reflect, and create a culture that …

Acts Of Provocation: Popular Antiracisms On/Through The Twenty-First Century New York Commercial Stage, Stefanie A. Jones

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This is an abolitionist feminist study of the role of liberalism in the twenty-first century political economy. It takes as its object New York City bourgeois cultural productions (in particular Broadway theatre and the New York Times) from approximately 1984 to 2009. It offers insights into important yet widely-misunderstood features of turn-of-millennium US society: class, art, political practice, and war. In order to understand liberalism’s political and economic agenda, I look at how these objects are pitched in the struggle over racism. Sometimes when we say “liberal” we mean it in the philosophical sense, with particular attention to liberal …

Playing At Women And Men: A Discourse Analysis Of Gender And Sexuality Performance In An Online Play-By-Post Role-Playing Game, Caitlin M. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Online play-by-post role-playing games mark the discursive intersection between computer-mediated-communication and gaming. The performance of gender and sexuality is an important aspect of online play-by-post role-playing games.

Although play-by-post role-playing games are open world and do not have the same graphical and technological constraints as other forms of gaming, the performances on them are governed by both explicit and implicit rules. Performances of gender and sexuality are also governed by cultural standards. This thesis seeks to describe how players perform gender and sexuality within these boundaries.

This thesis describes the performance of gender and sexuality on the website Another Day …

"Hippie Acid Freak Drag Queens:" Situating The Cockettes Within An Art Historical Context, Scott Dow

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis situates the Cockettes – a performance group rarely referenced in art historical discourse - within Bay Area performance art, second-wave feminist art, and the Gay Liberation Movement. Contextualizing the Cockettes within their contemporary art movements provides a new understanding of the group and emphasizes their significance to art history.

The Unkindness Of Strangers: Exploring Success And Isolation In The Dramatic Works Of Tennessee Williams, Chelsea Nicole Gilbert

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to explore the theme of isolation in the dramatic works of Tennessee Williams using his essay “The Catastrophe of Success” as the base theory text. The essay attacks the American idea of success though an in-depth examination of the “Cinderella myth” that Williams claims is so prevalent in both Hollywood and American Democracy. Williams’ deconstruction of this myth reveals that America’s love for stories like it results the isolation of three groups: homosexuals, women and the physically disabled and terminally ill. Williams passes no judgment on his characters, instead showing their lives as they truly are. Through …

Revolutionary Every Day: A Dramatic Exploration Of Women And Their Agency In The Black Panther Party., Kristen Michelle Walker

Master of Arts in American Studies Capstones

This capstone project is centered around Black Panther women and explores what it means to be a revolutionary black woman dealing with politics surrounding gender in both private and public spaces during the late 1960’s and beyond. In addition, the project includes an original fictional play based on the experiences of Panther women around the world. In addressing the social conditions that impacted female Panther activism and agency, together the capstone project and play operate as a commentary on power, gender relations, and society in and around the Black Panther Party.

Sonder: Locating The Unessentialized Self In Movement Practices, Joel Walsham

Honors Theses

This research will contend with the ever-present endeavor in many models of contemporary dance practices to ‘be yourself’ – to seek out an illusive core of your being, and engage with your essential self. Through a survey of cultural studies and social identity that includes the contributions of Judith Butler, Friedrich Nietzsche, Michel Foucault, Todd Reeser, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, the idea of an essential self will be challenged, throwing into question the dominant conception of self used in contemporary dance practices. Through a brief review of two historical conceptions of self in dance, that of Isadora Duncan and the post-modern …

Ecologies Of The Passions In Early Modern English Tragedies, Roya Biggie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ecologies of the Passions recovers a neglected model for understanding early modern relationality, one that turns the seemingly inward experience of emotion outward toward the environment. Drawing on early modern medical texts, I argue that the period’s dramatists imagine bodies as humorally vulnerable to other bodies, both human and nonhuman, within dynamically affective environments. As such, my project illustrates the intimate configurations of human and nonhuman life in early modern tragedies. Building upon recent work in the emerging fields of ecocriticism and affect theory, I argue that the period’s dramatic literature exposes the porous fluidity of the Galenic body—its embeddedness …

Walking In The City: Koji Nakano’S Reimagining And Re-Sounding Of The Tale Of Genji, Isabella Ramos

Scripps Senior Theses

Imagined Sceneries is a work written by composer Dr. Koji Nakano of Burapha University, Thailand for two sopranos, koto, light percussion, narrations, soundscapes recorded in Kyoto, Japan in December 2015, and digital projections of Ebina Masao’s 1953 print series Tale of Genji. Imagined Sceneries’ reimagining and “re-sounding” of Heian Kyoto relies on a balance between what is imagined and what is experienced in performance. Its many elements collectively explore multiple layers of Japanese histories, soundscapes, environments, and sensibilities. Using Michel de Certeau’s concepts of the city, this thesis journeys through Nakano’s imagined spaces.

Lifecasting & Ubiquitous Relationships, Alexis Charlotte Williams

Senior Projects Spring 2017

My subjects do not know I exist. They do not know who I am, and they do not know their lives are the center of my painting series. But I know them - at least, I think I do. My acrylic paintings depict people in domestic spaces in specific moments in time. The relationships of person-to-person, person to space, paint to canvas and voyeur to subject drives my obsession to watch and to paint what I see. What I am seeing are a collection of pixels that make up human forms, living rooms, and kitchens. These digital bodies move through …

Should We Straighten Up? Exploring The Responsibilities Of Actor Training For Lgbtq Students, Matthew B. Ferrell

Theses and Dissertations

Gay actors have a long history with the notion of “straightening up” to remain castable and economically feasible in today’s market. Searching to find answers for young acting students while strengthening their own self worth, I will explore the history of gay actors in film, television and theatre and in society to understand this notion more fully. By interviewing working actors and managers in the business I will explore how I can address this question of “straightening up” to the future generation of actors and analyze how we can face the future with integrity and self-respect.