Queer Studies Commons^™

Sinning As Empowerment: Reclaiming God As A Black, Queer Woman In Alice Walker’S The Color Purple, Bethany Abrams

Audre Lorde Prize

In this paper, the author embarks on the task of re-imagining the seven sins of Christianity in the context of Alice Walker's The Color Purple, specifically in relation to the character Shug Avery.

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 …

Perceptions Of College Campus Climate Among Queer Female Sexual Assault Survivors, Elyxcus J. Anaya

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

One-fifth of women in the United States report at least one lifetime experience of rape (Black et al., 2011; Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2014; Smith et al., 2018). Sexual assault (SA)is a common experience among cisgender women college students, with 20% reporting experiencing a rape during their time in college (Cullen et al., 2000). Universities generally have resources designed to help survivors of SA, though research suggests many of these resources are underutilized by survivors. The current study was guided by social constructivism and used a transcendental phenomenology approach to explore six queer, female participants’ decision-making processes about …

Or To Be Eaten Alive, Christopher Williams

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

“or to be eaten alive'' is a multimedia exhibition in which I merge my own coming of age story with a mythological ecology. In this work I reclaim my queer identity by communing with my past selves in a fantasy world created through the lens of Queer Ecology and Queer Eco-Futurism. The visuals in this exhibition obscure reality. They are abstractions of the landscapes I occupy—particularly the Tallgrass prairie and Ozark ecoregions. Through a speculative, fantasy world the exhibition introduces moments of adoration, death, fracturing, growth, joy, and failure. I form, draw, color and arrange the work embracing mistakes and …

Parodies Of Pleasure: Remedios Varo's Queer Surrealism In Narrative And Painting, Kathryn Everly

Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics - All Scholarship

Remedios Varo (1908-1963) wrote numerous surrealist texts that dialogue with her prolific artistic production. Alchemy, feminism, and psychoanalysis have been studied as central themes in her paintings, yet this paper focuses on humor and parody in Varo’s written works –including her letters, short stories, and dreams– to uncover the seminal ideas and images that emerge in her visual art. Humor and parody are fundamental links between Varo’s narrative and paintings. She embraces the spontaneity of the surrealist écriture automatique and the illogical amor fou but at the same time pushes the limits of surrealist dogma and creates a uniquely nonpatriarchal …

Weaving Rituals For Resistance: Queering The Tallit, Sam Simons

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

“Weaving Rituals for Resistance” explores the history and significance of the tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl, as an immersive and transformative experience. Since 2022, I have been researching the historical development, making practices, and use of tallit, and its intersections with gender, sexuality, and power. Traditionally, tallit are worn by men; that is changing. There is no one way to feel about wearing tallit, but many share that they feel safe, protected and held. I worked with my rabbi to develop educational programming – a five-session course in Fall 2023. We covered history, textual sources for design and use, biblical …

Felt: Leaning Into The Chaotic, Fafnir Adamites

Textile Society of America: Symposium Proceedings

This presentation is a reflection on felt as a chaos structure, an underdog and a queer material capable of offering a physical manifestation of exhilarating, transformative possibility. Images of artwork from my own studio practice will act as orientation points to examine the physical and the psychological. The physical exploration includes the intrinsic characteristics of wool as well as the material transformation of the wet felting process. The psychological aspects include opportunities to embrace intuitive, collaborative and expansive ways of making. Writing on feltmaking as it relates to the canon of textile scholarship will also be examined. Viewing felt through …

Black Lgbtq+ Students’ Perceptions Of Belonging: Resource Centers, Relationships, And Intersectionality On College Campuses, Wesley M. Cox

CGU Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation takes a non-traditional approach to qualitative research. Kikimethodology focuses on the lives and perspectives of Black Queer and Transgender college students. This dissertation shows how these collegians navigate identity politics, resource centers, and seek out belonging on their campus. The findings hone in on four broader themes: (a) relationships with peers; (b) relationships with faculty/staff; (c) campus environment; and (d) intersectionality. This dissertation is about Black Queer and Transgender advocacy, knowledge, leadership, life and expression in context with college campuses. The results of this research center on the students’ navigation of campus, agency, family, programming, student leadership, and …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

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 …

“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 …

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 …

John Laird And Matt Friday At Monterey Pride

Monterey County LGBTQ Histories Exhibit

No abstract provided.