Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons^™

Imagining The Trans Symphony: Integrating Transgender Composer Identity In Music Analysis, Penrose M. Allphin

Masters Theses

Contemporary music analysts have generally downplayed the relevance of composer intent, a dismissal which ignores the potential for an enhanced expressive context afforded by composers' own assessments and also contributes to the silencing of already othered voices, such as in the case of queer and trans composers. Allowing the trans composer a voice in the reading of their work affirms the integral part of the trans experience that is self-determination. Over time, this project to tell trans stories evolved into a series of vignette-like analyses of trans composers’ works in which I use a methodology that incorporates the voices of …

From Marginal To Mainstream: The Queer History Of Camp Aesthetics & Ethical Analysis Of Camp In High Fashion, Emily Barker

Honors Projects

‘Camp’ has become a buzzword in fashion over the last few years, due to a rise in popularity following the 2019 MET Gala theme, “Camp: Notes on Fashion.” Based on Susan Sontag’s 1964 book “Notes on Camp,” the event highlighted many aesthetic elements of Camp sensibilities, but largely ignores the importance of the LGBTQ+ community in Camp’s development. In this piece, I highlight various intersections of Camp and queerness over the last century and attempt to understand Camp’s place in High Fashion today.

Pornography, The Lgbtq+ Community, And The Queer Alternative, Rebekah Gredler

Student Research Submissions

Pornography is a complicated and controversial topic. Much has been said about how porn may or may not affect individuals, but very little has been done in the academic community on how pornography affects the LGBTQ+ community. In debates of censorship and regulation of porn, their voices are often ignored in public debate in favor of straight, feminist, or puritanical, religious discourses. This is problematic because pornography, particularly queer pornography, has done much for the evolution and self-affirmation of the LGBTQ+ community. It would be remiss if such positive effects of such a controversial exploit were to go unacknowledged. In …

"I Want To Melt Into Her Body": Sexual Empowerment And A Feminist Recentering Of The Female Characters In Dracula By Bram Stoker, Carmilla By J. Sheridan Lefanu, And Villette By Charlotte Bronte, Carson Leigh Pender

Graduate Theses

Simone de Beauvoir argues in The Second Sex, “The normal sexual act [of intercourse] effectively makes woman dependent on the male and the species. It is he–as for most animals– who has the aggressive role and she who submits to his embrace. . . coitus cannot take place without male consent, and male satisfaction is its natural end result” (385). Essentially, de Beauvoir argues that the act of sex cannot exist without the presence of man, but particularly for heterosexual women, the act of sex is dependent on the presence of, responsibility of, and response of men. However, despite the …

The Gender Epidemic: Intersecting Disease, Gender, And Sexuality In A Graphic Novel, Autumn Cejer

All NMU Master's Theses

For my thesis, I wrote a graphic novel set in a world where certain people possess powers that society tries to suppress by viewing them as a disease. The story focuses on two super-powered individuals on opposite sides of the law who handle this oppression very differently. Although these characters would easily be able to overpower the non-powered people in charge, they are too afraid to do so. Internalized guilt from possessing abilities they did not ask for adds an additional layer of conflict, just as women and disabled persons are constantly made to feel like they should apologize for …

The Disparities Of The Marginalized: Focusing Race And Queerness In Science And Medicine, Kearby Stiles

Honors College Theses

The United States is an immensely diverse country in which certain groups have been—and continue to be—marginalized in society because of their differences. Science and healthcare are areas in which marginalized peoples are negatively affected by a society that punishes difference and diversity. This is an immense problem because in biological and medical school education, in clinical research, and medical practices, little attention is given to marginalized populations. In this paper, I focus on the disadvantages faced by people of color, trans, and intersex people. I decided to focus on race because the history and current state of racism in …

Queer Spaces, Religious Places: Sharing Risk And Making Kin Within A Queer Church Amidst A Pandemic, Sadie V. Counts

Masters Theses

This thesis aims to explore the effects of the global COVID-19 pandemic on a queer, Christian congregation of the Metropolitan Community Church in Knoxville, TN and the impacts of the pandemic queer kinship and intimacy within the church setting. The thesis explores the ways in which queer kinship manifests within the church and how those relationships have been disrupted and altered by COVID. It also compares the long-term effects of the AIDS epidemic on the church congregation and they ways in which they may be experiencing COVID in a similar manner. Finally, the project explores the ways that intimacy has …

Big Community In Little Chinatown: How Asian Americans (Re)Present Their Community Today, Meghan Morrison

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

This paper looks at a series of modern Asian American pieces of media in order to analyze how women and LGBT+ depict and create their community, especially in relation to another marginalized ethnic group. By examining the relationship between these groups within popular media, we can uncover how Asian Americans choose to represent themselves and gain a deeper understanding on how marginalized groups choose to portray themselves.

"Coming For To Carry Me Home": Lessons For White Christians On The Integral Role Of Christian Faith In The Fight For Racial Justice In America From Slavery To #Blacklivesmatter, Mary J. Greenfield

Undergraduate Theses

In July 2020, the New York Times reported an increase of 15-26 million people across the United States engaging in #BlackLivesMatter protests. Blackout Tuesday, a social media movement aimed at showcasing solidarity with the movement for racial justice in America, amassed a total of 24 million posts on Instagram, making it easily one of the top hashtags of 2020. There is no doubt that 2020 was the year the Black Lives Matter movement witnessed the most engagement of white Americans since its inception in 2013. Despite this fact, there remains an inability for many white Christians to engage in 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 …

The Car Ride Home, Jonathan Rivera

English Honors Theses

The Car Ride Home explores the coming of age of a young boy into a queer man, searching and sifting through the trauma of home life, and realizing his mother’s addiction affects more than just herself, but an entire family. This realization coincides with views of masculinity, as he carefully watches the men around him. He internalizes these depictions of masculinity when exploring his own confusion and investigation of his own sexual identity and queerness. The poetry collection is broken up into two connected parts. Part one explores the illusion of childhood and nostalgia while introducing subtle glimpses and secrets …

Consumerism And Pride: The Fate Of Paris’ Marais “Gayborhood”, Christina M. Csensich

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the 1980s the Marais neighborhood in Paris, France, became a haven for queer people, specifically gay, white men, filled with queer-owned and queer-centric businesses. By the year 2020, however, these businesses had been priced out by name-brand international corporations. In the 1990s, French television commercials and programs would not speak the word ‘homosexual,’ even when a character was openly queer. By the 2010s, companies regularly featured queer people and gay pride imagery and slogans in their advertising. The queer community in Paris has a unique relationship with the consumer economy, one that ties aspects of queer identity directly to …

When Misclassification Is Misgendering: Gender Prediction In The Context Of Trans Identities, Sean Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a subdomain of author profiling, gender prediction (sometimes called gender inference) has received a substantial amount of attention—both as a task in itself, and for other downstream analyses. Throughout the existing literature various statistical and machine learning methods have been applied to extract features in order to either characterize and differentiate female and male writing styles, or simply to achieve maximum accuracy on gender prediction as a binary classification task. However, researchers often do not disclose how they conceptualize gender nor do they consider the implications that gender prediction has for non-binary and trans individuals. Along with an overview …

Article 6.21, Tatiana Stolpovskaya

Theses and Dissertations

Article 6.21 is a short documentary film that aims to examine the state of censorship around queerness in Russia today and its effects on personal lives in the queer community.

Twenty years after Russia decriminalized homosexuality, on June 30th in 2013, President Vladimir Putin signed Article 6.21 "for the Purpose of Protecting Children from Information Advocating for a Denial of Traditional Family Values", also known as the "Gay Propaganda Law". Its broad and ambiguous wording allows the government significant leeway in deciding what kind of public queerness is punishable.

In 2020 Russia passed multiple constitutional amendments that affect many areas …

Through Their Eyes: An Analysis Of Misrepresentation In Popular Lesbian Television Narratives, Delana Janine Price

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

The purpose of this thesis is to explore lesbian television narratives that shape popular discourse. My goal is to find and expose the implications of monolithic expressions of queerness through both queer and heteronormative presenting television narratives. This exploration of the queer narrative voice addresses three distinct movements of cultural production: the proclaimed self-represented queer television narrative, the connotatively queer heterocentric television narrative, and the queer narrative produced in fan-based literature. For concision, I focus on the popular television dramas The L Word and Rizzoli & Isles, as well as the fan works produced for the latter. Through the lens …

"Now Thinking About It, It's Freedom": Conceptualizing Sexual Pleasure For Fat, Queer Women, Carolyn Elizabeth Meiller

Theses and Dissertations--Educational, School, and Counseling Psychology

Research considering the positive aspects of sexuality, such as pleasure, within a cultural context is especially important for groups of people that are often seen as separate from the experience of sexuality, such as fat, queer women. Due to perceptions of their bodies and how their sexuality goes against traditional heteronormativity, fat, queer women's experiences with sex and pleasure are under represented. Using a critical sexuality framework, the present study sought to explore the definitions and experiences of sexual pleasure for fat, queer women.

In the present study, constructivist grounded theory methods (Charmaz, 2014) were used to analyze the definitions …

Building The Fat Girl Table: Excavating Cultural Memory Of Queer Fat Activism In The ‘90s, Rose Gelfand

Scripps Senior Theses

When we recount the histories of social movements, there is a tendency to imagine either a steady, linear march towards progress or a slow descent from radical ideas into complacency. The feminist movement gets painted in waves, progressing from white to intersectional, while in the LGBTQ+ rights movement the contrast of the Stonewall Riots & ACT UP with late 2010s focus on gay marriage and the corporatization of Pride is understood as a watering down and betrayal of the movement’s origins. Cultural memory is a constant process of construction and revision, and of course the truth of movements’ trajectories are …

A Nameless Blue, Francis (Elle) Lawson Mitchell

Senior Projects Spring 2021

A Senior Project submitted to The Division of Languages and Literature of Bard College, Written Arts. A science fiction novel about queerness, disability, the heart and the body. The novel considers where the biological and the mechanical meet, and where the body intersects with relationships of power, the state, production and religion.

"My Gender Is Lesbian": Community Building And The Endurance Of The Lesbian In Queer Times, Adriana Sisko

Theses and Dissertations--Gender and Women's Studies

During 2016, the same year news of lesbian bar closures hit mainstream media, a small cluster of Tumblr users began to discuss a new gender and sexual identity, nonbinary lesbian, to describe those who identify both as nonbinary and as lesbian. Nonbinary lesbians stand at the crossroads of modern and postmodern identity constructs, engaging in contradictions and ambiguities for the sake of authentic self-expression. What does this demonstrate about the evolution of lesbian identity, particularly as lesbian bars continue to close around the United States? This dissertation explores this question by comparing and contrasting the discursive practices and strategies of …

Heavy Hold: A Physical Score, Alexandra Velozo

Theses and Dissertations

This document is a collection of essays, stories, and fictional interviews that are in conversation with my performance, teaching, and sculpture practice. My research and work considers chronic illness, disability, the historic cultural connection between swamplands and illness, the medical industrial complex, medical theater, the medical gaze, disabled performers, metatactile space, sensory learning, and access.