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

“The Ground On Which I Stand” Healing Queer Trauma Through Performance: Crafting A Solo Performance Through The Investigation Of Ritual Poetic Drama Within The African Continuum, Ashley W. Grantham

Theses and Dissertations

“The Ground On Which I Stand”

Healing Queer Trauma through Performance:

Crafting a Solo Performance through the investigation of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum.

By: Ashley W. Grantham

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Fine Arts in Performance Pedagogy at Virginia Commonwealth University

Virginia Commonwealth University

April 16^th, 2019

Thesis Adjudicator: Dr. Tawnya Pettiford-Wates

Committee: Dr. Keith Byron Kirk, Director of Graduate Studies and Karen Kopryanski, Head of Voice and Speech

How does this method of Ritual Poetic Drama within the African Continuum, by extension, solo performance, …

(And I Can't Stress This Enough) In My Mouth: Extradiegetic Affect As Material, C. Klockner

Theses and Dissertations

(and i can’t stress this enough) in my mouth: Extradiegetic Affect as Material is a non-linear exploration into the structures of feeling that exist in relation to cinema in its role as a technology for generating subjectivity. In the development of this research, a proposal of cinema’s likeness to the ecological circulation of microplastics is drawn in order to illustrate cinema’s materiality and nearly invisible ubiquity. The notion of extradiegetic affect is outlined as a post-cinematic condition in which lived experience becomes secondary to cinematic representation and which, simultaneously, becomes directly shaped by engaging with these representations.

Coming Out Online And On Campus : Queer Perspectives On Identity Work, Ian Callahan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

This research aims to describe the experiences associated with coming out—both on campus and online—for sexually and gender nonconforming college students. In 2014, I conducted a pilot version of this study at a public American university in the Northeast, utilizing data from semi- structured in-depth interviews and a demographic questionnaire. A thematic analysis using open and axial coding techniques found that social media interactions contributed to ‘outing’ students on campus. This finding inspired a second iteration of the study, which replicates the original research design and expands its interview script to include a more expansive series of questions related to …

“Country Faggots” Are Everywhere: Gay And Lesbian Life In Rural America, Katie Taylor

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will challenge many scholarly works that define being “out” and visibility as the ultimate expression of gay resistance. To define outness as the ultimate expression of resistance is to erase a group of people who did not have the privilege of always being able to be out and any contributions they made towards LGBT resistance. When studying LGBT resistance, it is important to acknowledge the necessity of political resistance, but that does not mean that other forms of resistance should be ignored. To analyze the importance of LGBT resistance outside of the public sphere means to re-examine the …

Anti-Lgbt Backlash And The Shifting Public Opinion On Lgbt Rights In Contemporary Russia: A Case Study, Sean T. Skillings

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The wealth of literature which intends to explain various aspects of LGBT rights, politics, and activism in Eastern Europe has been well established (Swimelar, 2017, p. 912). There are currently two opposing theories on the effect of backlash on LGBT attitudes and activism. One theory, purported by O'Dwyer, suggests that backlash is beneficial to the visibility of LGBT issues and for attracting international attention and support. Rosenberg argues that right-wing backlash is detrimental to attitudes and activism (Rosenberg 2008, p. 344-347). These two arguments for and against the "benefits to backlash" approach are clearly defined and testable. With this paper, …

Photography, Visual Culture, And The (Re)Definition/Queering Of The Male Gaze, David Nicholas Martin

Theses and Dissertations--Art and Visual Studies

The traditional notion of the Male Gaze, first conceptualized by feminist film critic Laura Mulvey in 1975, focused on the objectification of women through depictions structured to gratify a male heterosexual perspective. In this chapter we will revisit this concept and investigate how that gaze may have shifted away from a primarily heterosexual perspective to a socially dominant male perspective (maleness here referring to dominance rather than specific gender, just as “whiteness” might refer to privilege rather than race). With gender roles in an increasingly global and mobile society becoming more fluid and complex, opening up visibility to LGBTQ communities, …

The Equality Toolkit: Practical Skills For Lgbtq And Dsd-Affected Patient Care, Laura Weingartner, Emily Noonan, Amy Holthouser, Jennifer Potter, Stacie Steinbock, Suzanne Kingery, Susan Sawning

Undergraduate Medical Education

The eQuality Toolkit is a training manual that helps healthcare providers build a foundation of inclusive clinical skills to competently care for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer-identified (LGBTQ) patients and individuals born with differences of sex development (DSD). Although this toolkit was designed for medical students, any healthcare provider who wants to learn inclusive clinical skills can benefit from this accessible, brief primer through its actionable steps to improve clinical care.

Seropositivo: Queer Solidarity & Survival In Severo Sarduy’S Fiction, Huber Jaramillo Gil

Publications and Research

With the onset of the HIV epidemic, to prevent transmission, the Cuban government aggressively tested its sexually active population, sending infected people to live in quarantined sanitariums. It is in these establishments, in which an HIV-ridden Sarduy sets his last novel, entitled Pájaros de la playa (1993). Even as the reader witnesses the degradation and disintegration of sickened bodies, which the Nation rejected and discarded, Sarduy provides gender and sexual dissidents with a vision of themselves that does not compromise their queerness when confronting institutions of power. Instead, through subversion, appropriation and solidarity, he enacts a creative exploration of existence …

Advancing The Field Of Human Services: Lgbt Competencies, Narketta Sparkman-Key, Nicola Meade, Ne'shaun Bordern

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Ethical Standards for Human Services Professionals and Generic Human Services Professional Competencies adopted by the National Organization for Human Services do not include language or competencies specific to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities. Without a specific ethical code and/or competency outlined by the field, human services practitioners do not have clear guidelines for their work with these populations. Additionally, researchers lack a way to formally measure professionals’ abilities with these populations. This leaves potential for these historically marginalized populations to continue to be in a vulnerable position. To address these needs, authors reviewed established competencies in other helping …

Uncovering Alice Bag: An Alternative Punk History, Emily Macune

Scripps Senior Theses

The intention of this thesis is to provide an alternative counter-narrative to the mainstream histories of punk that center white men. By focusing on the contributions of fem queer and POC punks, I aim to legitimize punk music as a form of resistance against systems of oppression that are oppositional to the commodified forms of mainstream punk. Using Alice Bag, as my central case study as a fem queer punk that is often left out of punk historical narratives, I contextualize her work through feminist, queer, and media studies lenses to bridge the gap between academia and forgotten personal experience.

Love At First Byte: An Economic Analysis Of The Internet Dating Apocalypse, Hamsa Srikanth

CMC Senior Theses

We’re often warned that the internet will hasten the dating apocalypse. The internet (it is posited) is depriving us of the elusive in-person magic, and modern courtship is now little more than love at first byte.

There remains uncertainty, however, about what the independent impact of the internet on the dating market has been. Similar to the internet, the telephone also changed the way we communicate, but its effect on the dating market was mostly complementary to the 'traditional' ways of meeting – i.e. calling your school crush at home. So the question remains: Is the effect of the …

Development And Implementation Of An Lgbt Initiative At A Health Sciences Library: The First Eighteen Months, Jessica Petrey

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Background: The University of Louisville School of Medicine is the pilot site for the eQuality project, an initiative to integrate training for providing care to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) patients into the standard medical school curriculum. Inspired by and in support of this School of Medicine initiative, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library staff have developing our own initiative. Because of past and current lack of competent provider training and the resulting need for patients to be knowledgeable self-advocates, however, our initiative was broadened to include the goal of providing LGBT individuals in our communities—both on campus and in the …

Adaptive Acts: Queer Voices And Radical Adaptation In Multi-Ethnic American Literary And Visual Culture, Michael M. Means

Theses and Dissertations

Adaptation Studies suffers from a deficiency in the study of black, brown, yellow, and red adaptive texts, adaptive actors, and their practices. Adaptive Acts intervenes in this Eurocentric discourse as a study of adaptation with a (queer) POC perspective. My dissertation reveals that artists of color (re)create texts via dynamic modes of adaptation such as hyper-literary allusion, the use of meta-narratives as framing devices, and on-site collaborative re-writes that speak to/from specific cultural discourses that Eurocentric models alone cannot account for. I examine multi-ethnic American adaptations to delineate the role of adaptation in the continuance of stories that contest dominant …

"Bachelor Buttons": Feminist And Womanist Essays And Poems, Billy E. Clem Jr.

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

In this critical and creative dissertation, I sketch a brief study of selected multicultural hybrid texts in contemporary US Anglophone literary studies; discuss their implications for reading, writing, and teaching; and present my own hybrid text.

Second-wave feminist and womanist theories and practices opened literary and cultural studies to new and exciting ideas and methods for reading, teaching, and writing both canonical and non-canonical Anglophone texts. One genre emerging anew by these theories, practices, and practitioners is the literary hybrid text, a multi-genre form composed of a variety of prose genres, poetry, drama, and/or visual imagery. Hybrid texts ask readers …

Wellness In Asexual-Identified Individuals: The Impact Of Social Support And Microaggressions, Elisa Marie Woodruff

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

One hundred sixty asexual identified individuals living in the United States were recruited from asexual online communities. The participants completed a comprehensive survey consisting of Zimet et al.’s 1988 Multidimensional Scale of Social Support, Foster’s 2017 Asexual Microaggression Scale, and the Five Factor Wellness Inventory Adult Version Revised (FFWEL-A2) developed by Myers and Sweeney in 2014, as well as 15-item demographic items. Regression models were used to assess relationships among the factors.

Social support was found to have a significant positive impact on participant wellness, supporting previous social science research. Microaggressions were not found to have a negative impact on …

Rationale And Design Of A Remote Web-Based Daily Dairy Study Examining Sexual Minority Stress, Relationship Factors, And Alcohol Use In Same-Sex Female Couples Across The United States: Study Protocol Of Project Relate, Kristin E. Heron, Robin J. Lewis, Alexander T. Shappie, Charlotte A. Dawson, Rachel Amerson, Abby L. Braitman, Barbara A. Winstead, Michelle L. Kelley

Psychology Faculty Publications

Background: The Healthy People 2020 initiative aims to reduce health disparities, including alcohol use, among sexual minority women (SMW; eg, lesbian, bisexual, queer, and pansexual). Compared with heterosexual women, SMW engage in more hazardous drinking and report more alcohol-related problems. Sexual minority stress (ie, the unique experiences associated with stigmatization and marginalization) has been associated with alcohol use among SMW. Among heterosexuals, relationship factors (eg, partner violence and drinking apart vs together) have also been associated with alcohol use. Negative affect has also been identified as a contributor to alcohol use. To date, most studies examining alcohol use among SMW …

"Like Two Beach Umbrellas Put Together": Investigating The Health Information Practices Of South Carolina Lgbtq+ Communities, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Valerie A. Lookingbill, Alexander N. Vera

Faculty Publications

This poster presents initial findings from an exploratory, qualitative study investigating the health information practices of LGBTQ+ communities in South Carolina (SC). Significant health disparities exist between LGBTQ+ people and their cisgender, heterosexual counterparts. An important but under-researched barrier producing disparities is informational, as LGBTQ+ people face challenges in learning about their healthcare needs, navigating the healthcare system, and overcoming barriers to care. This study addresses research gaps via the following questions: 1) How do LGBTQ+ communities create, seek, share, and use health information?, and 2) What social and structural factors affect these health-related information practices?Findings are informed by ~30 …

Resituating Public Library Values To Leverage The Health Information Practices Of South Carolina Lgbtq+ Communities, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Alexander N. Vera, Valerie A. Lookingbill

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

We Try To Find Something For Whatever Obstacle Might Be In Our Way": Understanding The Health Information Practices Of South Carolina Lgbtq+ Communities, Vanessa Kitzie, Travis L. Wagner, Valerie A. Lookingbill, Alexander N. Vera

Faculty Publications

Title: “We Try to Find Something for Whatever Obstacle Might be in Our Way”: Understanding the Health Information Practices of South Carolina LGBTQ+ Communities Objective: LGBTQ+ people experience health disparities compared to heterosexual, cisgender peers. Individual and systemic barriers produe these disparities. One barrier is informational, as LGBTQ+ people experience challenges when learning about their health needs, navigating the healthcare system, and overcoming obstacles to care. This paper investigates the future of libraries and the health sciences by exploring how they can address these informational barriers. Methods: This paper reports on ~30 ongoing interviews with LGBTQ+ community leaders from South …

A Spectacle And Nothing Strange, Taylor Z. King

Theses and Dissertations

Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the …