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

Review Of Walaa Alqaisiya. Decolonial Queering In Palestine. London: Routledge, 2023, Ankita Chatterjee

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Decolonial Queering in Palestine by WalaaAlqaisiya offers an in-depth study of the conquest of Palestine with respect to the variegated power structures of settler colonialism and underscores the political significance of a reformulated mode of decolonization. It argues for the need to interweave queer into the native Palestinian positionality termed as 'decolonial queering', so as to challenge the (hetero) sexualizing and gendered discourses embedded within both the Israeli/Zionist settler colonial regime and the Palestinian Nationalist visions of liberation. By the 'ethnographic' engagement with the works of Palestinian artists and activists from one of the prominent queer groups, alQaws, the book …

Feminists As Cultural ‘Assassinators’ Of Pakistan, Afiya S. Zia

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Pakistan’s annual Aurat March (Women’s March) signifies a milestone in the culture of feminist protest, but a tense impasse follows a series of encounters between sexual and religious politics, and this has serious implica- tions for rights-based activism in the Islamic Republic.

The Fundamentalist Nexus Of Neoliberalism, Rentier Capitalism, Religious And Secular Patriarchies, And South Asian Feminist Resistances, Fawzia Afzal-Khan

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In two case studies from Pakistan, which I then link to Afghanistan (under the Taliban before and after the Soviet/ US proxy war there) as well as the Farmer’s Movement in India—I wish to proffer an intersectional analysis of debates around the issue of women’s rights in the global south. Feminist artivism (art-as-activism), can help build solidarities to mount resistances against globally-inflected state repression in our age of neoliberal economic and religious fundamentalisms, which, working in tandem, seek to roll back the rights of women and minorities in and across South Asia, as elsewhere.

The Still Unfathomed Trans+Oceanic, Daze Jefferies

The Goose

For centuries, violence against mermaids has coexisted alongside slippery sexualizations in much of Newfoundland’s folk and popular cultures. This is demonstrated most grievously in colonist Richard Whitbourne’s 1620 text, A Discourse and Discovery of Newfoundland. The fishy reality of simultaneous disposability and desirability also mirrors the life histories of trans women and sex workers in the capital port city of St. John’s. Imagining mermaids as trans and sex-working ancestors in a province that has been structured by ecologies of fish trade, this work of research-creation drifts through precarious survival in the North Atlantic.

The Queer Student Affairs Career Of Stephen Lenton, 1970-1980, Michael S. Hevel, Timothy Reese Cain

Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article primarily uses document-based historical methods to reconstruct Stephen Lenton’s LGBTQ advocacy while a student affairs professional at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1970 to 1980. Lenton enjoyed significant career success in his first several years at VCU, establishing popular and successful programs and a strong rapport with students. In 1974, Lenton agreed to advise VCU’s first LGBTQ student organization, even as its members sued the institution for refusing to register their group. After the students won the lawsuit, Lenton became a visible and noted advocate for LGBTQ people and became an openly gay man on campus. Yet as Lenton’s …

Homosexuality In Leviticus: A Historical-Literary-Critical Analysis, Ian Jarosz

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

The book of Leviticus from the Hebrew Bible is often referenced when discussing the LGBTQ+ community and related topics. This project offers historical, literary, and etymological analyses of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13, exploring cultural and thematic similarities between Leviticus, the Avestan Vendidad of ancient Persia, and the Book of the Watchers in 1 Enoch. The influential views of other ancient Near Eastern cultures and the growing Persian culture during the time of the Exile establish a tolerant cultural background for the Levitical authors and for the Hebrew Bible. Moreover, the exilic priests who finalized the laws within Leviticus did not …

Homotextualité Réaliste: Cryptosexualité Et Subculture Homosexuelle Masculine Chez Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert, Vincent Sallé

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Cette thèse étudie les romans du canon réaliste français, en particulier Le Rouge et le noir et L’Éducation sentimentale, sous l’angle d’une textualité parallèle ancrée dans la langue érotique et les pratiques et les lieux de la subculture pédéraste. Principalement étudiée jusqu’ici dans des corpus identifiés comme érotiques ou dans des passages représentant l’homosexualité, cette homotextualité est ici inscrite dans la diégèse hétérosexuelle qu’elle permet de relire de manière située et historicisée.

La période de 1830 à 1870 est perçue par l’histoire et la littérature comme un hiatus sur le thème de l’homosexualité, pris entre son histoire moderne à …

Ann Dunkin, Rachel Taylor

Idaho LGBTQ Oral History Project Part 2

Ann Dunkin shares her experiences as a queer activist in Boise, Idaho, during the 1980s and early 1990s. She recounts moving from a larger, diverse city to Boise, where she quickly became involved in LGBTQ activism, helping to organize Boise’s first Pride parade in 1990. Dunkin describes the challenges of fostering a tight-knit community in a conservative environment and highlights the roles of local organizations, safe spaces, and allies, including PFLAG and MCC. Her story illustrates the resilience and unity within Boise’s LGBTQ community during a transformative time in its history.

_Not That Bad_: Lessons Women Learn In A Rape Culture, Sydney J. Selman

Pursuit - The Journal of Undergraduate Research at The University of Tennessee

In 2018, Roxane Gay assembled an anthology that addresses the severity of rape, rejecting the common belief that some sexually violent acts, compared to others, are not that bad. This collection, titled Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, compiles pieces from thirty different authors and sheds light on how the notion of not that bad contributes to a broader structural social problem involving sexual violence. This social problem, known as rape culture, is commonly defined as a culture that normalizes sexual violence and blames victims of sexual assault (“What is Rape Culture?”). In other words, rape culture …

Limp Wrists, Clenched Fists: An Analysis Of Queer Performance Art As A Tool For Political Resistance, Neha Verma

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

This paper explores the use of queer performance art as a tool for community mobilization and resistance to socio-legal oppressions. This essay is grounded in movements for queer liberation in the Global South, racialized working-class queer communities, and queer disability justice. As queer culture and aesthetics are often misappropriated for wider cisheteronormative audiences, this work reminds the revolutionary nature of queer performance art.

Queer History In The Streets: A Walking Tour Of Portland, Maine, Megan Macgregor

Faculty and Staff Scholarship

The University of Southern Maine’s Jean Byers Sampson Center for Diversity in Maine’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer + Collection preserves the history of LGBTQ+ communities in Maine. The collection contains books, personal papers, photographs, and newspapers documenting the LGBTQ+ activism from 1970s to 1990s.

While three research publications have some out of the collection (one article and two thesis), no overall history about Maine’s LGBTQ+ community has been written. As a result many Mainer’s, queer and straight, know very little of the history. The instruction and outreach librarian and the staff of USM’s Special Collections wanted an opportunity to …

Scenes Of Screens, Scenes Of Sodomy: The Role And Impact Of The Folding Screen In Eighteenth-Century French Erotic Novels, Katherine Delony

English Undergraduate Distinction Projects

This project provides an analysis of the folding screen as a literary agent and signifier which reflects the cultural happenings of the eighteenth century with specific emphasis on new ideas about queerness which arise in France during the eighteenth century. I will focus primarily on the Marquis de Sade’s (1740-1814) Justine, ou Les Malheurs de la vertu (1791) (as well as La Nouvelle Justine, 1797) and John Cleland’s (1709-1789) Le Fille de Joie (translated 1751) with reference to Jean-Louis Fougeret de Monbron’s (1706-1760) Margot la Ravaudeuse (1753), Sade’s Philosophie dans le boudoir Jean-François de Bastide’s (1724-1798) La …

"Death Can't Touch Them Now": Aids Response And Memorialization In Louisville, Kentucky, 1982-1992., Olivia A. Beutel

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to address the role of the queer community in Louisville, Kentucky during the AIDS epidemic. Beginning with the first reported AIDS death in the city in 1983 throughout the 1980s, dialogue focused on those living with AIDS, specifically on education for prevention and aid to those afflicted by the disease. Individuals in the queer community—gay men, lesbians, bisexual men and women, transgender men and women, and others—created resources that were not being provided by the larger city government. Then, in the 1990s, national attention to the AIDS Memorial Quilt encouraged people to participate in rituals of commemoration, …

Same-Gender Pathways To Parenthood, Sydney T. Inger

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

LGBTQ+ individuals and couples who want children negotiate systemic inequalities in the United States of America. This literature review surveys America’s confusing legal map and the gaps in its enduring scholarly theories. The paper then examines the challenges that LGBTQ+ individuals and couples confront in working through the common pathways—same-gender adoption and fostering, in vitro fertilization, and surrogacy—to become parents. Dispersing information on the pathways will be a positive step towards breaking down the inequities for those in the LGBTQ+ community who want to start a family.

Nelson, Linda, Morgan Lindenschmidt

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Linda explored many topics in this interview, primarily focusing on her political activism rooted in radical lesbian seperatist feminist ideology. She grew up playing sports in Connecticut. She has been involved in a myriad of political movements, ranging from founding a Gay-Straight Alliance at her college in the 70s to being involved in the Anti-War Movement. She has extensive experience also in anti-racist and climate-related activism. She describes herself as a working-class butch woman with an interest in intersectional community organizing.

She also discusses studying in Maine before living in New York City for 16 years, where she worked at …

Anti-Pornography Feminism, Kinktok, And Consent: What We Can Learn From The Sex Wars And Leather/Sadomasochistic History, Nic Cloyd

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

Sex education and LGBTQA+ history have long been censored and removed from curriculums across the United States. As this information has disappeared from our education systems, important values like consent and boundary setting have become increasingly obsolete despite the modern body autonomy movement. Leather and SM culture, which began post-WWII and reached their peak in the 1970s during the sexual liberation, have become increasingly important as their ethical and moral codes have been lost over time to the HIV/AIDs epidemic and censorship from second and third wave feminsism. Two prominent movements, anti-pornography and sex-work exclusionary radical feminism, have worked to …

Queer Survival Amidst Hiv/Aids, Covid-19 And Homelessness, Julia Young

Pitzer Senior Theses

The treatment and survival of a society's marginalized peoples reveal the true impacts of a pandemic. An analysis of homeless queer youth during the HIV/AIDS and SARS-CoV-2 crises lays bare the systemic failure of the United States government to provide equitable healthcare.

I compare the HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 pandemics in queer homeless youth to demonstrate the dangers of disease moralization via a sociocultural analyses of disease stigma and responsibility politics. Utilizing syndemic theory I draw on the synergistic relationship between disease and illness to describe the unique challenges queer homeless youth face. A syndemic framework is applied to address common …

Part-Time Normals: Embodied Trans Geographies Of Homonationalism, Ivy Faye Monroe

Theses and Dissertations--Geography

Self-understanding of one’s gender identity both emerges from, and rearticulates into, the ways one experiences and mediates their personal and social relationships with the geographic worlds they inhabit. Trans geographical literature has, to date, created compelling work on the social geographies of trans people in highly-gendered spaces. This thesis extends the existing literature to research how gender is both experienced and performed in the mundane structures of everyday life. Building from theories of cruel optimism and homonationalism, this research examines how the discursive and spatial epistemologies of gender identity inform attachments to structures of normativity. Through archival research of transvestite …

Archiving Feminist Truth In Trump’S Wake Of Lies, Julie Shayne

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations

This article is about an assignment I do in one of my Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies social movement classes. I revised the assignment the first time teaching the class after Trump lost the 2020 election. For the assignment, students work in groups to research local feminist and gender justice organizations and deposit all of their original materials – recordings, photos, flyers, etc. – into a digital, open access archive I co-created several years ago with librarians and staff on my campus. In 2021 I had my students do the “post-Trump” edition where they researched local organizations about how their …

Gormley, Quinn, Liam Dunn, Katherine Sucy

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Quinn Gormley, who uses she/they pronouns, is 27 years old and lives with their husband and dog in Auburn, Maine. Quinn became involved in activism and trans liberation in 2011 after attending a support group with Maine TransNet, a grassroots trans organization serving Mainers. Since then, they have been highly involved with the organization and took on the role of Executive Director in 2016. Prior to Maine TransNet, Quinn worked in public health managing an HIV testing program for the Health Equity Alliance, one of the state’s main AIDS service organizations. She attended the University Church of Chicago for Percussion …

Edwards, Florence, Roukia Houssein, Annie Karim

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

The interview was conducted in a USM classroom Roukia and Annie. Florence is a 40 years old dentist who also served in the military. In this interview, Florence shared their journey in being a queer black woman in the military. Florence was asked about their identity and their story on coming out as their preferred sexuality. In the interview, Florence also talks about being a dentist in the military and also outside of the military. In the interview, Florence puts important people in their life in specific stories. They also touched on their education and difference in living in NY, …

Nero, Dr. Charles, Hana Elabe

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Charles Nero was born in Decatur, Alabama and was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. He discusses discovering at a young age that he was not heterosexual but not acting on that until college. Nero also talks about the challenges he faced when he came out to his parents. During his time at college, he made decisions that led him away from organized Christianity. He discusses the HIV/AIDS epidemic and his work with the Ithaca NY AIDS Taskforce. He also discusses some of the challenges presented by racism and homophobia. He and his husband have adopted two children and he talks …

Clough, Travis, Josh Allen, Rachel Shanks

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Travis Clough is a 44 year old trans man who grew up in the small town of Bucksport, Maine. He uses the pronouns he/him/his, and identifies as queer or trans. From a young age, Travis felt different with his gender identity. He attended the University of Maine Farmington in the late 1990’s, and was the only school he applied to because it was “where all the queers went”. Having been into music since the age of 14, he began playing in bands while in college. Him and his band would make the long drive from Farmington to Portland every week …

Williams, Maya, Daisy Pelletier

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

*Included at the end of the interview is an original poem read by Maya.

Maya Williams is a 25-year-old Black, queer, trans, Christian person who grew up in North Carolina. Ey moved to Maine to attend grad school at the University of New England. They worked at Maine Inside Out as an intern while at the University of New England. She has also worked at Equality Maine, and now works at Maine Trans Net. Her Christian faith is important to her, and organizations like ChIME (Chaplaincy Institute of Maine), and interfaith organization that educations and ordains chaplains, and The BTS …

Twomey, Danielle, Elizabeth Cantey

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Danielle Twomey is a trans woman who was born and raised in Maine. She was born into a working class home and has four other siblings. Her mother died when she was seven and her father’s second wife helped to put the family into a better class. Her father was abusive, as were her peers, and her younger years were “brutal” as she was “physically small”, “effeminate”, and “clueless” when it came to fighting. She watched the world around her to learn how to fit in. She knew she was expected to be like the little boys her age but …

Ekart, Donna, Gretchen Muehle, Brooke Hall

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Donna Ekart is a 53-year-old queer, femme woman living in Portland, Maine. Ekart grew up in Manhattan, Kansas surrounded by both her immediate and extended family. Ekart moved to Portland, Maine with her wife when she was in her mid-forties. Ekart came out as queer to her friends and family when she was 40-years-old. She has been involved in LGBTQ+ organizations including Equality Maine, which is Maine’s biggest queer organization whose aim is to secure full equality for the LGBTQ+ community in Maine through political action, community organizing, education, and collaboration. Ekart’s religious identity and relationship with the Catholic Church …

Fra-Molinero, Baltasar, Sandra Jose

Querying the Past: LGBTQ Maine Oral History Project Collection

Baltasar Fra- Molinero grew up in Northern Spain with his four siblings and his parents.

Baltasar Fra- Molinero grew up in Northern Spain with his four siblings and his parents. He attended college in his hometown and out from the watchful eyes of his parents began to explore his sexual identity. Baltasar received a fellowship to study in the United States at the University of Bloomington in Indiana. It was during his first week in the United States that he met his now-husband, Charles. They knew right away that this relationship was forever. Together, they also knew that they wanted …

Exhibit Me / Prohibit Me, Alok Vaid-Menon

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

No abstract provided.

Racialization.Spectacle.Liberation, Sm Rodriguez, Chriss Sneed

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

This special issue navigates the complexity of racialization, experiences related to identity, social structure, and inequality, and that which emerges when one/many embark on journeys towards liberation. “racialization.spectacle.liberation” is an intentional provocation; in both punctuating each word and leaving them affixed, wegesture towards the curious amalgamations that are produced at the intersections of where each project begins and ends. Such processes are not benign.

The Fantasy Of Spotting Human Trafficking: Training Spectacles In Racist Surveillance, Elena Shih

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

In January 2019, in honor of National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month in the US, the Marriott International hotel group announced that it had successfully trained 600,000 hotel workers to spot the signs of human trafficking in its hotel properties around the world. This training, planned and executed in partnership with anti-trafficking organizations and law enforcement, reflects the recent proliferation of training schemes to identify victims of trafficking. This paper explores how such trainings script racist optics into the surveillance and policing of potential victims. Using proxy markers of poverty, sexuality, race, and nation, victim identification trainings expand policing--by …