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

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 …

Performing (Female) Masculinity In The Early Modern Ibero-Atlantic World: An Analysis Of The Mujer Varonil In Gender And Genre, Nathaniel L. Redekopp

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

The following dissertation on the trope of the mujer varonil^[1] employs bibliographical research in literary criticism and historiography to identify and describe socio-historic attitudes about gender. In particular, this dissertation examines gender as communicated by texts that use the mujer varonil, or “masculine woman”, characterization to either praise or vilify exceptional female subjects in ways that highlight normative limits for masculine and feminine gender expression. Four texts are examined: a male author writes each and each represents a literary genre that was significant in early modern Spain and Spanish America. These genres are the hagiography, the relación, the …

Incomplete Utopianism: Homosexuality In The Dispossessed, Beck O. Adelante

Access*: Interdisciplinary Journal of Student Research and Scholarship

This paper draws on research about queer theory and history to analyze, through a literary utopian lens, Ursula K. Le Guin’s treatment of homosexuality in her novel The Dispossessed. The novel itself is said to be “an ambiguous utopia,” a description that holds up in an analysis of the other various parts of the novel. When it comes to sexuality, however, Le Guin’s discussion and writing on the topic is notably lacking. It is paid lip service through a brief showing of neutral attitude on the “anarchist” planet in the novel, but never given further analysis or a more …

Queer Theory, Sex Work, And Foucault's Unreason, Brooke M. Beloso

Scholarship and Professional Work - LAS

During the late nineties, leading voices of the sex worker rights movement began to publicly question queer theory’s virtual silence on the subject of prostitution and sex work. However, this attempt by sex workers to “come out of the closet” into the larger queer theoretical community has thus far failed to bring much attention to sex work as an explicitly queer issue. Refusing the obvious conclusion—that queer theory’s silence on sex work somehow proves its insignificance to this field of inquiry—I trace in Foucault’s oeuvre signs of an alternate (albeit differently) queer genealogy of prostitution and sex work. Both challenging …

F-Word Fun Home, Kim Cosier

Journal of Social Theory in Art Education

Growing up fundamentalist can be challenging for any child, but when you do not fit within the confines of traditional gender norms, when you are masculine, female-bodied or feminine, male-bodied, navigating identity can make you feel like a foreigner within your own family. Certain forms of feminism, too, can feel alienating. In this article, I share personal experiences with both social constructions of feminism and fundamentalism. Borrowing from queer theories, I wrestle with ways of doing, undoing, and redoing religion and gender that may have implications for teaching in a more inclusive and expansive manner.

Teaching Critical Looking: Pedagogical Approaches To Using Comics As Queer Theory, Ashley Manchester

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

Given the challenging depth of queer theoretical concepts, this article argues that one of the most effective ways to teach the complexities of queer theory is by utilizing comics in the classroom. I focus on how college-level instructors can use the content, form, and history of comics to teach students how to enact and do queer theory. By reading and making comics, students learn concrete and theoretical tools for combatting oppressive discourses and modes of meaning making. Teaching comics as queer theory promotes both innovative critical thinking and critical looking skills by centralizing both the rich history of queer comics …

Transgender Rights Without A Theory Of Gender?, Paisley Currah

Publications and Research

Why do courts and legislatures ban discrimination based on gender, and increasingly, gender identity, but exempt grooming and dress codes from the protections these laws offer? I argue that culpability for the courts’ and legislatures’ defense of hegemonic gender norms cannot be assigned to transgender rights movement, as some have done. These norms do not regulate only transgender people, they are not minoritizing—and neither should be the politics that seeks to transform them. The thought experiment of this review essay was to sever the analysis of particular political strategies from various assumptions about what gender really is. Agreement on the …

Reimagining Movements: Towards A Queer Ecology And Trans/Black Feminism, Gabriel Benavente

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples.

In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but …