Queer Studies Commons^™

Queering The Troubled Tropics In Panx Solajes’ Post-Haiyan Short Films, Ian Harvey A. Claros

Filipino Faculty Publications

This article apprehends a precarious moment when the queer and the tropics coincide to form a new fabric of sensing in this age of climate crisis. Queer and tropics are intimate, not only because both embody their inherent openness and fluidity, but also because each is woven closely by the corollary contradictions that besiege them, such as heteronormativity, capitalism, and environmental degradation. Within such an intersecting framework, this study critically engages with a selection of three works by the queer Filipino filmmaker Panx Solajes who attentively observes the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan (locally called Yolanda) in the Philippines, a tropical …

Symposium: From Coming Out To Coming In: Roundtable Conversation Among Southeast Asian Queer Theologians, Michael Sepidoza Campos, Jayeel Cornelio, Erich Von Marthin Elraphoma, Joseph N. Goh, Jerlo M. Jaropillo, Joshua Marasigan, Kristine C. Meneses, Irene Nainggolan, Kakay Pamarán, Lizette Tapia, Amadeo Devin Udampoh, Wan Wei-Hsien

Development Studies Faculty Publications

Through a roundtable conversation via Zoom, teachers, pastors, and graduate students discussed the place of gender, citizenship, and faith in their identity formation and social accountability to articulate a hermeneutical lens specific to Southeast Asian contexts that shape and critique queer identities. These participants—primarily ministers, theological students, and seminary formators—engaged in organic, fluid, and multifocal turns to capture experiences that undergird the realities of women and LGBTQIQ+ people of faith in the region.

Aging On The Margins: The Older Woman As A Queer^ Subject, Taylor Austin

Film Studies Honors Papers

Across film genre and history, the figure of the older woman has remained largely invisible. “Frail, Frumpy and Forgotten: A Report on the Movie Roles of Women of Age,” a 2020 study conducted by The Geena Davis Institute on Gender and Media, finds that female characters made up just 25.3% of characters over the age of 50 in the top-grossing films of 2019 within the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. All of these characters occupied minimal, supporting roles: none of the leading characters in the selected films were women over the age of 50, and the large …

Complexities Of The Underrecognized: Conceptualizing Erasure And Exposure In Queer Caribbean Narratives, Noemi Saladin

Dissertations and Theses

Queer is not explicitly about homosexuality, it is questioning orientations, identity, and the binary. This work aims to explore the multivalence of erasure and exposure in queer Caribbean narratives, which deconstructs or reconstructs stereotypes, sexuality, and identity. Erasure is defined as the exclusion or suppression of a member of the LGBTQ+ community in history and the present time due to differences in their gender orientation, sexuality, and sexual preference. Exposure allows these suppressed voices to be lifted and rejoiced through inclusivity and awareness. Colonization erased gender diversity in the Caribbean, instilling their Christianity and heteronormative beliefs. Colonization did not only …

It’S Giving Genocide: What Feminist Theory, Indigenous Thought, And Queer Theory Have To Say About Climate Change, Owen George

MS in Environmental Studies Master's Theses

Climate change is having profound impacts on communities around the world. In some cases, and with time, more and more, the impacts of climate change are happening on a level that constitutes genocide. Raphaël Lemkin’s and Claudia Card’s definitions of genocide are most applicable to climate change as they have broader understandings of victim groups and social death, and they recognize that inaction to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm constitutes genocidal intent. The UN’s more rigid definition does, to a lesser extent, also apply to climate change. Across the three definitions examined here, the argument of climate change as genocide is …

Lgbtq+ Clothing Habits In Appalachia, Kirstyn Korte

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This study investigated clothing preferences among cisgender queer women within Appalachia and whether they used these preferences to identify their own peers. It also further investigated whether they use clothing as a tool to conceal or reveal their own LGBTQ+ identity. Participants were invited for two interviews each. Between interviews, there was a one-week rumination period for each woman. The women reported themes of using clothing to blend in with their hetero-normative surroundings as they grew up and now lean into a more alternative style and less narrow-minded view of clothing. Perspectives gained from interviewees lined up with current knowledge …

Queering The Tropics: A Cartography Of Tropical Materialism, Queer Ecology & Spectral Tropicality, Christian Jil Benitez, Gregory Luke Chwala, Anita Lundberg, S. N. Nyeck

Filipino Faculty Publications

This special issue entitled “Queering the Tropics” explores how queering as a methodology and gender and sexuality as a critical rubric complicate the study of the tropics and conceptions of tropicality. It also engages with how the tropics as a worldly zone, and the notion of tropicality as simultaneously material and imaginary, reconfigure notions of queer sexuality. In other words, our aim has been to study how the tropical might queer queerness itself. This is to attempt to understand queer as a way to initiate and pursue critical encounters with the tropical world—indeed to begin queering the tropics. This first …

The Boy With The Pet Dog, Allan N. Derain, Christian Jil Benitez

Filipino Faculty Publications

Set at the beginning of the hot season in the Philippines, when heat starts to crawl on skin, the short fiction “The Boy with the Pet Dog” (“Ang Batang May Alagang Aso”) stages an encounter between the titular character and a young man from the province who intends to work on his family’s farm. Queerness figures in the narrative as intimately entangled with class, and becomes articulable only through a language made possible by the tropics itself, in the form of butterflies coming out of chrysalises, brown bodies glowing with sweat, and swiftlets flocking mango trees. At the heart of …

John Laird And Matt Friday At Monterey Pride

Monterey County LGBTQ Histories Exhibit

No abstract provided.

“Muchakang Pangkalawakan”: Queering Engagements With Bakla Of The Philippine Tropics, Artemio P. Millo

Sociology & Anthropology Department Faculty Publications

The performance of participants in the Miss Gay Muchakang Pangkalawan [Miss Ugly Gay Universe] in Quiapo, Manila, reflects characteristics of the flamboyant and effeminate bakla. However, these stereotypical depictions may not always be consistent with how participants view themselves. This study argues that an introspective understanding of how participants make sense of their identity work engendered by ever-turning tropes reveals slippages that can liberate them from existing oppressive stereotypes. By utilizing personal narrative and ethnographic reflexivity, this study deconstructs the participants’ performances, revealing identity-making that may reinforce or resist dominant discourses on the bakla under which these narratives are …

Incorporating Sex-Diverse And Gender-Inclusive Perspectives In Higher Education Biology Courses, Breanne N. Harris, A Kelsey Lewis, Sam L. Sharpe, Teri J. Orr, Christopher T. Martine, Chloe C. Josefson

Faculty Journal Articles

Inclusive teaching is teaching in a way that reaches all students in the classroom; this is beneficial for everyone, particularly for those with minoritized identities. Instructors play a critical role in scaffolding how students are exposed to and learn science content in the classroom. In this manuscript, we discuss how biology instructors can make their classrooms more inclusive with regard to sex and gender diversity content. Many topics in biology are based on androcentric, heteronormative, and oppressive framing, even though those lenses are more reflective of our own history and culture than they are of the diversity we see in …

Interactional Queerscapes: Representations Of Men Attracted To Men In South Korea, Tegh Khosla

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the representations of men attracted to men (MAM) in South Korean media through the theoretical lens of queerscapes. Queerscapes refer to the physical and metaphorical spaces alternative queer existences occupy amidst dominant heteronormative environments. By analyzing a queer independent film, a bestselling novel, and a subversive boys’ love (BL) drama, this study examines how characters in these media actively carve out alternative spaces of existence. The first chapter delves into the concept of queerscaping as a verb to articulate direct conflict with intolerant institutions and dominant ideologies that seek to suppress non-normative sexualities. This precarious balancing act …

Queer Liberation In Young Adult Fantasy: An Analysis Of Rainbow Islands, Sydney Brouillard-Coyle

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this study was to explore how the theme of queer liberation can be represented in young adult fantasy novels. I conducted an in-depth analysis of the novel Rainbow Islands (Devin Harnois) utilizing the lenses of queer, transgender, intersectional, and narrative theory. In the novel Rainbow Islands, Harnois presents a utopia in which queer people are able to counter their oppressive realities by building systems of community that support one another; yet, the novel ends up replicating systems of oppression. Thus, Rainbow Islands offers a complex opportunity for analysis when considering the theme of queer liberation and how …

The Grief Of Identity Formation: How Non-Death Loss Complicates Trans Identity Narratives, R. Frank

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Trans members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and other marginalized sexual and gender identities (LGBT+) community may be at risk of erasure from both dominant sociocultural scripts and clinical psychological research. Identity development experts have asserted that identity is fixed by late adolescence, with some room for evolution depending on context (Marcia, 2002; Sokol, 2009). Research about grief suggests that anything that has been lost has the potential to be experienced through the lens of grief (Chapple et al., 2016; Collings, 2007). This grief of non-death loss has been linked to loss of relationships, expected life trajectory, and self-concept. …

Zine And Collage-Making As An Engine For Queer Self-Making: Cutting, Pasting, And Seeing What Sticks, Robin Lao

Postgraduate

The purpose of this project aims to explore the potential of graphic design as a means of discovering and expressing queer identity on both a personal level and as a form of public engagement- to connect the individual to community and discover new knowledge of the self.

This project aims to add to the conversation and representation of queer identity so that both current and future generations can exist comfortably in their bodies and the spaces they occupy in the world. The necessity of more queer, more diverse and nuanced perspectives within studies of queer identity is more important than …

The Bible And Normative Experiences Of Queer Marriage In The United States: The Interconnected Influences Of Scripture, Law, And Queer Context, Ross H. Potter Jr.

Theses

This thesis explores the relational influences between scripture, law, and queer context as they drive understandings of queer marriage norms in the United States. Emphasis is placed on the role that particular scriptures play in teasing out meaning from the various lived experiences of queer communities over the last century. These lived experiences, in turn, have influenced both approaches to scriptural interpretation and religious and legal norms surrounding the acceptance of queer people and their marriages within society. By utilizing queer biblical interpretation in dialogue with these influential biblical passages and legal and social norms that have developed in the …

Queer Perspectives On Mentorship In Higher Education: A Phenomenological Study, Anthony T. Fucci

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

This qualitative study explored the way in which LGBTQ+ college students experienced mentorship. Despite improvements in LGBTQ+ rights over the last 50+ years, recent scholarship has shown that queer students still face unique challenges, including discrimination and harassment based on their queer identity. Mentorship has been found to be an effective resource for assisting marginalized student populations transition successfully into college. The purpose of this study was to investigate how LGBTQ+ students experienced mentorship in order to better understand how these relationships may (or may not) contribute to their experience on college campuses. A phenomenological research design and queer theory …

Out And About, Fall 2023, Queer Coalition

Queer Coalition

Newsletter of Queer Coalition, Illinois State University's sponsored LGBTQIA+ faculty, staff, and graduate student affinity group. Also available as a dynamic Foleon site: https://dig.illinoisstate.edu/isuqueercoalition/out-and-about/fall-2023/

Cuento De Todas Las Cosas, Mariana Romo-Carmona

Publications and Research

"Este cuento breve tal vez cae en el antiguo género de lo real maravilloso o, lo que se conoce en inglés como especulativo. Explora los efectos de la homofobia, el exilio, la enajenación, a través de personajes en un parque encantado, que puede ser el Parque Central en la ciudad de Nueva York." from the editor, Bilingual Review

This short story was translated into English and published in Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas, Vol. 57, No. 2, Dec. 2024, issue 109

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 …