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

Disrupting Cisheteronormativity In Stem Through Humanism, Meg C. Jones, Desiree Forsythe, Rachel Friedensen, Annemarie Vaccaro, Ryan A. Miller, Ezekiel Kimball, Rachael Forester

Biology, Chemistry, and Environmental Sciences Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Cisheteronormativity is prevalent throughout college STEM discourses and classrooms. In this paper, we present findings from a U.S. based study focused on the experiences of collegiate STEM students with minoritized identities of sexuality and gender (MIoSG) as the backdrop for discussing how current harmful ideologies in STEM perpetuate cisheteronormativity through discursive practice. We propose that humanistic classrooms and pedagogy can work to dismantle cisheteronormative D/discourses in STEM and create MIoSG inclusive STEM classrooms and programs. Our findings highlight the ways participants experienced cisheteronormative D/discourses in their collegiate STEM contexts. We discuss how these experiences might be mitigated through humanistic educational …

Dirt Circus: Queering Sports And Home Through Filth, Hannah Patteson

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This monograph accompanies the MFA Thesis Exhibition, “Dirt Circus”. I outline the history of circus and carnival culture and the ways in which queer identities are expressed through these artistic modes. I describe the nonconforming expressions of gender in these arenas through bearded ladies, aerialists, clowns, and the freak show. I then explore various groups from the 70’s to present day, including Bread and Puppet Theater, The Cockettes, and Split Britches, who utilize performance to further their ideologies of gender freedom, anti-capitalism, and sexual liberation. I compare our differing uses of cheap art and public engagement within the realm of …

Smokebox: Writing Into Embarrassment, Julia Storch

Theatre & Dance ETDs

Engaging with theoretical concepts and dramaturgical tools, this essay follows my journey through The Dramatic Writing MFA program at the University of New Mexico, focusing on the production of my thesis play, Smokebox. In Part I, I give the background and development of my journey as a playwright, exploring the obstacles I faced and overcame through my engagement with coursework and staged readings. I map out the development of Smokebox, from its humble beginnings as a class assignment, to its transformation through workshop, and finally its realization through an intense rehearsal and production process. In Part II, I …

Spit Brimming With Futures, Penny Molesso

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

SPIT BRIMMING WITH FUTURES is an immersive video and audio installation that uses ASMR (Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response) to investigate the intersection of transgender and neurodivergent identity, expressing an urgent need to imagine stories about transgender, autistic people that affirm our agency and autonomy amidst a political climate that weaponizes neurodivergence to delegitimize trans experiences. The American political right’s vilification of transgender people is used to uphold structures of white supremacy and heteropatriarchy that become destabilized when rigid binary gender categories are challenged. The political right has a vested interest in keeping trans people out of public view, thus weaponizing …

How Art Therapy Can Be Used To Teach Queer Inclusive Sex Education To Queer Youth: A Literature Review, Olivia Souza

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

This literature review examines the potential of art-making as a tool to educate and inform queer youth about queer sexual experiences. Many queer individuals lack information about safe and healthy sex due to the exclusion of queer experiences in sex education programs. Current sex programs solely focus on abstinence and heterosexual experiences, leaving queer youth in the dark about what to expect from future sexual experiences they may have and how to practice safe queer sex. Through a search of the literature, it was discovered that there is a gap in research using art therapy in this specific context. Through …

Playing With Policy: What Insights Arise From Transgender Adults After Participating In A Legislative Theatre Exercise, Skylar A. Stratemeyer

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The transgender community is underrepresented in the current body of academic research, underserved in the current clinical model of healthcare services, and legislatively oppressed on a state and federal level in the United States. As of March 2023, more than 400 anti-LGBTQI laws have been introduced on a state level in 2023 alone (ACLU, 2023). In response to the hostile Western sociopolitical climate, this thesis will focus on what insights arise from transgender adults and cisgender allies (N = 12) after participating in a dramatherapeutic group therapy session that explored current anti-trans legislation and highlighted the legal needs of …

Someone Will Remember Us / I Say / Even In Another Time, Paul Anagnostopoulos

Theses and Dissertations

Paul Anagnostopoulos’s paintings and vases use mythological melodrama in a contemporary context to portray vivid images of queer life in the wake of homophobic erasure and tragic loss. “someone will remember us / I say / even in another time” traces his aggregate interests in Greco-Roman cultures and art history.

For What Is A Man?: Towards Languaging Contemporary Dance In A Black, Queer, Male-Presenting Body, Thomas Ford

Theses and Dissertations

This paper examines Queering Blackness: Solo on a Theme of Reconciliation, a performance event that invokes movement, spoken text, projections and sound to explore the mechanisms of identity. Engaging performance, Black, queer and dance studies, the paper contextualizes cultural identity markers, towards an understanding of what it means to be Black, queer and male-assigned in Black spaces.

Transcendence: Exploring The Connections Between Transgender/Gender Non-Conforming Identities And Experiences Of Nature Through Art, Mc Jackson

Undergraduate Theses

“Transcendence: Exploring the connections between transgender/gender non-conforming identities and experiences of nature through art” is the written portion of a creative thesis revolving around an immersive art installation and short film. Transcendence, the installation, was created to promote connection by exploring the overlap between transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) experiences and experiences of nature. Part of this installation is a short film of interviews conducted with transgender and GNC individuals about nature, their gender experiences, and the transcendent nature of the two. The written thesis analyzes existing literature on nature as a restorative, therapeutic, spiritual setting, offers insight into …

Lovecraftian Queerness: Weird And Queer Temporalities In Lovecraft Country And Detransition, Baby, Eurydice Dye

English (MA) Theses

By analyzing H. P. Lovecraft’s work through the lens of queer temporality, I offer a queer perspective on Lovecraft, reading the monstrous outside in his work as a queer figure and casting the temporal conflict common to Lovecraftian horror as a conflict between dominant time and outside time. I argue that, by placing queerly-temporal protagonists in conflict with dominant temporalities, queer fiction is essentially an inversion of Lovecraftian horror. Drawing on Mikhail Bakhtin’s concept of the chronotope of the novel, I develop a theory of the queer chronotope in fiction to align with the queer temporalities that queer characters inhabit. …

Minority Stress Through Time: Sexual Minority Stress & Suicidality Across Generations, Jenessa Canen

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Research suggests that sexual minority populations are at a much higher risk for suicide than their heterosexual peers. The primary explanation for this disparity is minority stress theory. The theory of minority stress proposes that in addition to everyday stressors experienced by most people, sexual minorities experience additional unique stressors related to their sexual minority identity. Since minority stress theory was proposed in 2003, much has changed about how the United States understands and views sexual minorities. Theoretically, this should impact the way minority stress is being experienced, which may be seen by examining minority stress across sexual minorities of …

Development & Validation Of A Scale Of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Alexander Davy

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are important to organizations and their employees. However, confusion in conceptualization and operationalization hinders the development of DEI research and application. The purpose of this study was twofold. First, I conceptualized DEI as a composite construct of three interrelated but differentiated components, that is, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Possible relationships among the three constructs were discussed. Second, I developed a three-dimensional scale to measure diversity, equity, and inclusion as separate constructs. The scale showed acceptable reliability, with Cronbach’s alpha levels for the overall scale and subscales range from .81 to .94. Convergent and divergent validity …

How Lgbtqia+ Citizenship Transcends The Nation- State Paradigm: An Argument For Supranational Queer Citizenship, Marcus Cantrell

Political Science Undergraduate Honors Theses

Current conceptions of citizenship, which are heteronormative and tie citizenship to membership in a nation-state, do not account for the quotidian experiences of LGBTQ people across the globe. Seeing as the queer community is a relatively small one, many queer people feel a sense of shared fate with LGBTQ people across the diaspora and feel helpless when they see their queer siblings being persecuted in egregious ways. Thus, the need for a new type of uniquely queer citizenship becomes salient. This thesis posits that a supranational queer citizenship would be the most effective conception of citizenship for queer people because …

Ga(Y)Zing Backward: Queer Desire In Ovid, Shakespeare, And Scaimma, Falynn Blayre Brickler

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

As Ovidian myth is a central influence on queer stories throughout time, I am interested in how the female/sapphic gaze impacts the retellings of these narratives. In this thesis, I analyze the action of the gaze as an expression of desire and discuss its multiple meanings in both text and performance. Through tracing the gaze within the queer/sapphic narratives of Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night and Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I show that the gaze is an intersecting act through which non-normative desire is conveyed. In constructing the gaze as an ephemeral action of queer desire in practice, I …

Algorithms And The Alphabet Mafia: How Tiktok Influenced Gender, Sexuality, And The Lgbtq+ Community During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Hope Smith

Honors Theses

A massive surge in popularity of the social media app TikTok coincided with the first major surge of COVID-19 cases in the United States. As U.S. Americans began leaving their houses again and the U.S. approaches a semblance of a “post-pandemic” era, many LGBTQ+ social media users, particularly TikTok users, have mentioned the influence social media had on understanding their queer identity. This study seeks to contribute to a larger field of research into how social media is affecting identity development in adolescents and young adults. This study employs an anonymous online survey to ask undergraduate students at the University …

“The Urgent Necessity For More Original Creative Works By Transgender And Gender Expansive Artists" Is Not The Title Of My Thesis., Alicia Fireel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a mix of personal reflection, academic research, and an examination of The Girl Crazy Queer and Other Fairy Tales, a play I wrote and performed in October of 2023, co-produced by The University of Louisville’s Department of Theatre Arts and Pandora Productions, a Louisville-based theatre company dedicated to Queer theatre. This thesis and the play mirror each other; both contemplate Queer experiences, Queer histories, Queer trauma, and Queer stories. In the thesis I accomplish this through examining four subjects: myself, my play, the connection between modes of storytelling and aspects of transgender Queerness, and the perils that …

“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 …

The Gray Area: Sexuality And Gender In Wartime Reevaluated, Natalie Pendergraft

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

These three works, two academic papers and one screenplay, challenge traditional notions of gender and sexuality during wartime. Queer Vietnam service members did not all experience oppression, all the time, but rather carved out a space for themselves amongst their peers. Female nurses in the early cold war could keep their careers in the medical field due to its unique gendered history despite demobilization efforts across the country in different industries. Finally, through the medium of historical fiction, a Civil War soldier’s fears and desires are questioned as he experiences the phenomenon of the Angel’s Glow, a blue light that …

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 …

The Effect Of Minority Stress On Sexual Minority College Students' Mental Health: The Role Of General Social Support And Sexuality-Specific Social Support, Lee A. Golembiewski

Psychology Theses & Dissertations

Sexual minority (SM) college students continue to face greater mental health problems relative to their heterosexual peers (Woodford et al., 2014; Wilson & Liss, 2022). According to minority stress theory, SM individuals face distal (e.g., heterosexist discrimination) and proximal (e.g., expectations of rejection, internalized homophobia, and concealment) stressors related to their SM identity which can have negative effects on their mental health (Douglass & Conlin, 2020; Meyer, 2003). However, social support has been hypothesized to help protect against the effects of minority stress experienced by SM individuals (Cohen & Wills, 1985; Moody & Smith, 2013). Most of the existing research …