Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons^™

A Call To Examine Queer Instructors’ Identity Disclosures In The Classroom, Mac Clark

Feminist Pedagogy

Despite the academy and students’ attitudes progressing towards queer instructors (Boren & McPherson, 2018), there is limited scholarship regarding the disclosure of queer identities in the classroom. In ignoring issues of queer disclosure, the communication discipline fails to challenge heteronormative assumptions of instructor identity. My Critical Commentary asks feminist scholars to go beyond traditional conceptions of instructor identities to combat this marginalization. I assert researchers should prioritize deconstructing heteronormativity, apply queer theory, and revisit notions of the classroom closet in their scholarship. By doing so, I argue communication scholars will equip institutions to better support queer faculty and students alike.

Queerform/Ing, Matthew Solon-Lee Weimer

Art Theses and Dissertations

My artwork is situated within and around vessels and the Queer Homoerotic World and explores sexuality as a Demisexual within them. This is accomplished through the two processes of my creation, Minivague and Queerform/ing: balancing sexual tension and explicit expression, while subverting traditional norms and stereotypes with queerness to distance oneself from stereotypical Gay Art. Altering/emphasizing makes the artwork more romantic, lighter, whimsical, softer, and tender than the figure/s and the situations actually are. The process is also emphasizing what one sees or wants to be seen. The Pink Boy becomes a celebration of intimacy of any form. I discuss …

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, …

Ang Mapanglasong Dagta Ng Homophobia: Pagsusuri Ng Kasarian At Pagnanasa Sa "Nagmahal Ako [Ng Bakla]" Ng Dagtang Lason (The Toxic Sap Of Homophobia: An Analysis Of Kabaklaan, Masculinity, And Desire In Dagtang Lason’S "Nagmahal Ako [Ng Bakla]"), Johann Vladimir Espiritu

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Gamit ang malapitang pagbabasa, sinusuri ng artikulong ito ang kantang “Nagmahal Ako [ng Bakla]” ng Dagtang Lason (2009) upang tunghayan ang pagkakahulugan nito sa kabaklaan. Isang seksyon ito ng higit na malawakang pag-aaral sa kabaklaan bilang karakter na nilalaman ng kantang bakla—o mga awit na nagmumula sa [personang] bakla, patungo sa [hantungang] bakla, o may pinatutungkulang [kuwento ng] bakla—nitong huling apat na dekada. Ang pagbasa/panunuri ay nakaangkla sa teoryang queer na kombinasyon ng samutsaring kritikang kapwa kanluranin at lokal, at nakatutok sa tatlong pangunahing salik: ang titik [o teksto, lyrics ng kanta], ang tinig [na kinakatawan ng literal na …

Hozier, Tiktok, And Sapphic Rhetoric, Sophia Marie Kovalcik

English Theses & Dissertations

Through the process of social circulation and critical imagination, Sappho’s poetry, which maintains rhetoric that women, nature, and love are related to ritual and feminine divinity, intersects with queer digital rhetoric. Via discussion of feminist spirituality rhetoric, Marie Cartier’s lesbian theology, and rhetorical and literary analysis of Sappho’s lyrical fragments, I explore her Ancient Greek mythological, cultural aesthetics. I then connect sapphic rhetoric to two contemporary artifacts that represent or influence contemporary feminist, digital, and queer identities: the lyrics of the Irish musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne, known as Hozier and TikTok comment sections surrounding Hozier’s music and concert clips.

More Than Representation Heartstopper: A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, Tracyann Josephine Harmer

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

This thesis is a multimodal critical discourse analysis of Netflix’s Heartstopper, written with the goal of understanding its methods of representation and queer world creation. Through analysis of the ideology of heteronormativity as it relates to masculinity, internalized homophobia, homophobia, and mental health, I expand upon the significance of queer representation for queer audiences, heterosexual audiences, and producers of queer media. Through a nuanced analysis of these themes, I display how and why Heartstopper has had enormous success and expand upon the cultural phenomena surrounding this media. Finally, this thesis places these nuanced analyses into the real-world reaction to …

A Queer Chinese Pilgrimage: Encountering Catholic Life In Manila, George Wu Bayuga

Journal of Global Catholicism

Starting in the late 1990s, Chinese Catholic priests, sisters, and seminarians began journeying to the Philippines to undergo religious and spiritual formation. This paper documents this journey and characterizes it as a kind of queer pilgrimage. Recognizing the queer theoretical parallels between minoritized populations under hegemony and Catholic life under socialism, this paper calls for attention to the queer work of imagining futures that emerges through processes of movement, encounter, and reflexivity across new political and social spaces. Specifically, this paper highlights how state-religious relations under socialism can differentially shape how Chinese Catholics think of themselves, faith formation, and how …

A Relational-Cultural Approach To Examining Concealment Among Latter-Day Saint Sexual Minorities, Samuel Skidmore, Sydney A. Sorrell, Kyrstin Lake

Psychology Student Research

Sexual minorities often conceal their sexual identity from others to avoid distal stressors. Such concealment efforts occur more frequently among sexual minorities in religious settings where rejection and discrimination are more likely. Using a sample of 392 Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”) sexual minorities, we assess (a) the effect of religious affiliation on concealment efforts, (b) the relationship between social support, authenticity, and religious commitment on concealment, and (c) the moderating effect of authenticity on religious commitment and concealment. Multi-level model analyses revealed that religious affiliation alone accounted for over half (51.7%) of the variation in concealment efforts for Latter-day Saint sexual …

Intercultural And International Communication In The Surrogacy Industry, Jessica Baker

Cal Poly Humboldt Capstone Honor Roll

Understanding the relationship between intercultural communication, international communication, and the proper way to discuss sensitive topics (infertility, surrogacy, LGBTQ+) in the surrogacy industry leads to strong communication. When communicating internationally or interculturally, there may be challenges such as language barriers, cultural differences, and cultural taboos. In order to avoid uncomfortable situations or miscommunication, knowing how to change the way we communicate with Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT) is a necessity to navigate important conversations. In the surrogacy industry, knowing how to communicate interculturally and being culturally competent about sensitive topics such as infertility or loss can determine the success of a …

Puppy Love And [Information] Play: An Intersection Of Theatre, Queer Kink, And Consent, Emily Kitchens

Faculty and Research Publications

This note from the field centers on a nexus of queer kink subcultures and consent-based intimacy work in theatre. I report, investigate and wrangle with the process of incorporating queer kink aesthetics into the production of Love and Information by Caryl Churchill I directed at KSU February 2023. What I have learned and hope to demonstrate throughout the paper, is that queer kink subcultures are often paradigmatic examples of communities built on consent, and we as performing arts practitioners can more visibly expand the margins of our cultural competency dialogues to not only include them but look to them as …

Queer Theory In The Metal Music Scene: How These Cultures Influence Each Other, Dalton A. Dalton

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

Queer theory has existed in the metal music scene since its beginning. In this paper, many aspects of both topics are dissected. Focusing on metal fashion and its crossover into queer armor, Queer coding, and its translation to metal archetypes on television. And the analysis of queer comfortability in metal music spaces by using queer theory as it applies to mass cultures and subculture

Ua12/2/2 Talisman: Dimension, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

Fall 2023 Talisman:

• Johnson, Katelyn . Flora & Fauna - Biology
• Pollard, Evynn. Inked Imagination
• Booth, Pandora. Sowing Grace - Mothers
• Murray, Debra. Shapes of Beauty
• Bivens, Emily. The Life Lesson
• Figures of Fall
• Meyers, Jeffrey. Level Up - eGames
• Walsh, Aidan. Unsung Heroes
• Sandlin, Ellie. Place to Be - Habitat for Humanity, Hotel, Inc.
• Youngers, Joel. An Endless Starry Sky
• Muscutt, Carson. True Colors - Queen Venus Knight
• Drury, Faith. Innovative Mind - Concrete Canoe, Steel Bridge
• Ousley, Rachael. One Man's Treasure - Matt Tullis
• Haines, Lily. Chuck Close
• Thompson, Sarah. En Pointe
• Hunt, Janie. Open Your Eyes
• Halstead, …

Queer Crises: Movements From Queerness And Feelings Of White Religion In The United States, Austin Williams Miller

Communication ETDs

Anchored by contemporary crises surrounding queer and trans people in the United States, I employ movements from queerness within an affective queer phenomenological framework to understand how arrangements of “white religion” (Schaefer, 2015, p. 63), a process whereby U.S. American Christian forms escape ideology into religious affective economies in the United States, relegate queer people “to the background… to sustain a certain direction” (Ahmed, 2006, p. 31). I assemble a queer rhetorical context analyzing white religious space in documentary film, secular sexual regulation through contemporary U.S. legal contexts around marriage, and settler colonial Christian nationalist political imaginations to critique how …

You Are Cordially (Un)Invited: My Korean Femme Strategy And Aspiration For Survival And Queer Futures, Nahyun Kim

Masters Theses

You are cordially (un)invited: My Korean Femme Strategy and Aspiration for Survival and Queer Futures documents a series of ceremonies dedicated to the years I have survived. This book has branched from a project of the same name that consists of a durational installation, performance, and series of events. The project and book are an aspirational gesture to send off the part of myself–that had to compromise, comply, and negotiate with institutions–for a rebirth to live a life beyond survival.

As a book and project, You are cordially (un)invited is a culmination of my experiences as a Korean femme, using …

Breaking Glass: A Pedagogical Approach To Understanding Voice In Media, Casey James O'Ceallaigh

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to examine the remediation of voices in media, specifically focusing on the reproduction of voices across different genres and the pedagogical approaches used to teach writing and media literacy. Much of the extant media is created with practices that historically have excluded minority groups, such as people with disabilities and people who speak other languages in addition to English in the US. This project develops a theory of interstices, which are both physical and metaphorical spaces in genres that can become sites of intervention through the composition process. These interstices are burdened by their many complex relationships …

Espacio, Edgar Perez Peña, Edgar Perez Peña

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Edgar Perez Peña (He, Him, His) is a Queer, Chicanx contemporary figurative painter, who lives and works in the Los Angeles County. A native of Los Angeles, California, his paintings, and assemblages are a strong combination of process, materials, and content that displays his fascination on how physical/psychological space (from where he resides), reflects on the Queer Brown body and its comfort/discomfort in relation to public and private space.

Peña looks at his artistic practice as an opportunity to explore the human condition from the Queer and Brown perspective as well the beginning of healing through the meditative process of …

“I Chose To Look Like This”: Body Modification And Regretting Visibility, Stephen Ross

All Theses

I began collecting tattoos and piercings just after I turned eighteen. As my collection grows and it becomes harder for me to conceal my modifications, I must contend each and every day with the ways in which my body is Othered by my choice to look different. Body modification is self-actualizing for so many, but it can position someone to be stared at, to be physically violated, to be tokenized, or to be vilified. This current project dissects a few key literature areas, from body modification history to the contemporary politics of modification to aesthetic and spectacular philosophy, with the …

Imagining Gender Euphorias, Willow Wind

Honors College

Our society needs to talk about gender, but we aren’t very good at it. Avoiding these discussions has harmful impacts on body image and various health disparities (The Trevor Project, 2020). What if we have better and regular conversations about ways we can positively experience gender? This study’s model of negotiating gender can be used by families and educators seeking affirming exploratory learning opportunities. Insights into meanings of gender euphoria help validate diverse sets of experiences, informing a broader cultural discourse that increasingly questions gender binarism (Griffin, 2020).

This study explores conceptualizations and enactment of gender euphoria across demographics and …

"Ok, Groomer" :(Post) Truth Rhetoric And Transphobia, Adit R. Selvaraj

All HCAS Student Capstones, Theses, and Dissertations

Paying attention to anti-LGBTQ rhetoric circulating on social media in Fall 2022, this thesis situates political rhetoric on Twitter, by analyzing the use of the hashtag #okgroomer. This hashtag, a corruption of the popular phrase “ok, boomer,” has been used to show contempt on social media by equating left-wing ideologies to pedophilia. Informed by gender critical theory, this work espouses the idea that #okgroomer is constructed as a post-truth ideal aided by the mythos that queer people are dangerous to children. To study #okgroomer, this thesis employs a critical technical discourse analysis informed by ecological scholarship to a case study …

Centering Transgender Consumers In Conceptualizations Of Marketplace Marginalization And Digital Spaces, Beck Hansman, Jenna Drenten Ph.D.

School of Business: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The purpose of this study is to center transgender consumers in the conceptualizations between marketplace marginalization and digital spaces. We examine trans-gender crowdfunding as a hashtag-bounded digital space created by and for the transgender community–namely, the #TransCrowdFund digital space on Twitter. We draw on trans digital geographies as a novel analytical lens to focus attention on transgender consumers' unique experiences in and between digital spaces. Through qualitative hashtag mapping, we analyzed a sample of 200 Twitter profiles and accompanying tweets drawn from individuals using the#TransCrowdFund hashtag. Findings suggest transgender consumers utilize crowdfunding as a hashtag-bounded digital space in three ways: …

Queer Ecologies: A Final Syllabus/Zine Product Of Our Independent Study, Yeh Seo Jung, Ray Craig

Crossings: Swarthmore Undergraduate Feminist Research Journal

This zine is the product of our independent study course Queer Ecologies, which is an exploration of bio-social systems using a queer and feminist theoretical lens. We aim to look critically at knowledge formation and construct alternative visions for more just and sustainable relationships between science, nature, and ourselves. While queer theory most directly interrogates the normative structure of heterosexuality both in humans and in biology more broadly, these studies include analyses of hierarchy, power, and value. Queer Ecology can be used to examine phenomena such as climate change, extinction, pollution, species hierarchies, agricultural practices, resource extraction, and human population …

Metamorphis, Luca Lee Sobarzo Faust

Theses and Dissertations

Web3D interactive experience that explores time, communication, and transformation, from a personal storytelling perspective. Hosted on a web platform, the experience displays three environments: Metamorphis, Cuir AI, and Hain. These spaces propose a fragmented narrative that seeks to interrogate both the characters and the viewer’s perception on the linearity of time

Ua12/2/74 Lambda Society, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about Lambda Society

Identity And Perception Among Aspec Consumers Of Mass Media, Jericho Franke

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The portrayals of sex and romance, as well as asexuality and aromanticism, in mass media can have a profound impact on the way asexual and aromantic media consumers view relationships and their own identities, and affect the perception and treatment of the aspec community as a whole. This study uses mixed qualitative methods of online discourse analysis and participant interviews to examine the how mass media has shaped the self-perception and life experiences relating to sex and romance among aspec audience members.

Revisiting The Rainbow: Culturally Responsive Updates To A Standard Clinical Resource, Angela M. Dietsch, Richard Mocarski, Debra A. Hope, Nathan Woodruff, Miechelle Mckelvey

Department of Special Education and Communication Disorders: Faculty Publications

Purpose

Cultural responsivity is essential for efficacious and affirming clinical relationships. This may be especially important with historically marginalized clients, such as transgender and gender-diverse (TGD) people seeking behaviorally based affirming communication services. We recommend modifications to standard tools for diagnostics and training that otherwise might undermine our efforts to create an inclusive and affirming environment.

Method

Modifications to the Rainbow Passage, a standardized paragraph utilized for eliciting speech samples in clinical settings, focused on nongendered terminology and the elimination of content with religious connotations.

Results

The recommended edits to the Rainbow Passage maintain similar length, cadence, and phonetic balance …

The Impact On Gay Men Of Support And Enforcement Of Workplace Dei Policies: A Meta Analysis, Steven M. Vega

Student Theses and Dissertations

The poor enforcement of workplace DEI policies affects gay men in ways that are unique and invite close attention. The nature of the impact of missing or unsupported DEI policies on gay men has been widely debated in the field of human resources and communication studies, with scholars such as David Wicks, Helen Seitzer, James Ward, and Diana Winstansley arguing that these effects include lasting negative mental and physical health effects and discomfort with self-disclosure in the workplace. However, the existing research on this topic has not sufficiently considered the effects of the poor enforcement of workplace DEI policies side …

A Photo Documentary: Exploring Queer Identities In Kwazulu-Natal, Nicholas Graves

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Media can be a powerful tool in examining the structures of power that both hinder and advance LGBTQIA+ representation and subsequently, lived experiences. Therefore, being able to understand the varying feelings that everyday South Africans feel towards queer people, will be measured through the media that people consume. For the vast majority of South Africans, this would look like movies, TV soap operas, and discussions that take place on the radio. Understanding the role media plays within the country is vital to understanding the overall progress that has been made.

The media’s ability to reflect lived experiences within gay and …

Fostering Queer Consciousness: Using Performative Art As An Activism Tool To Talk About The Lgbtq+ Community In The State Of Bahia, Brazil, Elisangela Pereira Brito

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The current scenario in Brazil has attracted the attention of queer artists activists since violence against LGBTQI+ ranks the country as one of the most dangerous places for this community. This study examined how Black gay men have used performative art as activism to foster queer consciousness in the state of Bahia, Brazil. This research employed a qualitative approach, in-depth interview, by providing the unique experiences of three Black queer men artists. Results showed that the early and present experiences of the participants provided a single understanding of how the three Black queer men have used the principles of Pedagogy …

Exploring The Impacts Of Covid-19 On Lgbtq+ Intimate Communication, Jakob L. Coykendall

Ursidae: The Undergraduate Research Journal at the University of Northern Colorado

The question guiding this exploratory qualitative research study is, “How has the COVID-19 pandemic impacted LGBTQ+ intimate communication and relationships?” Recently, scholars have demanded that communication scholarship be conducted through an intersectional lens that analyzes multiple dimensions of social identities, including LGBTQ+ identities. Queer Theory poses questions around gender, sexual, and romantic identities that can help expand our understanding of different forms of intimate communication. “Queering” interpersonal communication research involves challenging traditional understandings of communication within identities such as sexuality and gender at the individual and structural levels (Chevrette, 2013). Queering communication research supports a more in depth analysis of …

Clubbing Criminals: The Hirschfeld Centre And The Emergence Of Queer Club Culture In Dublin, Ann-Marie Hanlon

Irish Communication Review

Ireland in the 1970s and 80s was an extremely hostile place for the LGBT community: male homosexuality remained a criminal offence and social, legal and political oppression was the norm. This article documents the emergence of a nascent queer clubbing scene in Dublin in this period and investigates the historical intersection of partying and politics in a DIY translocal music scene defined by the sexual politics of the time. In particular, this research focuses on exploring the social and political importance of Ireland’s first purpose built queer club, Flikkers, which opened in the Hirschfeld Centre, Temple Bar on St. Patrick’s …