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

Aesthetic Exclusion Within American Capitalist Culture: Lgbtq Students At Gettysburg College And The Creative Reappropriation Of Clothing To Forge Personal And Communal Identity, James M. Mikulski

Student Publications

For LGBTQ individuals whose identity expression transgresses heteronormative aesthetic values, mass production and its prioritization of a heteronormative consumer base for profit create feelings of otherness and ostracism. Previous anthropological theory on mass production and advertising recognizes the transference of meaning onto material culture through marketing and identifies the generic symbolic meaning that carbon-copy, mass-produced products hold. Theory and research surrounding colonial encounters attest to power imbalances wherein material culture is imposed on a powerless group, and marginalized individuals react through rejection or creative reappropriation of the material culture, which provides a basis for examining the power imbalance between corporations …

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 …

Hozier, Tiktok, And Sapphic Rhetoric, Sophia Marie Kovalcik

English Theses & Dissertations

Through the process of social circulation and critical imagination, Sappho’s poetry, which maintains rhetoric that women, nature, and love are related to ritual and feminine divinity, intersects with queer digital rhetoric. Via discussion of feminist spirituality rhetoric, Marie Cartier’s lesbian theology, and rhetorical and literary analysis of Sappho’s lyrical fragments, I explore her Ancient Greek mythological, cultural aesthetics. I then connect sapphic rhetoric to two contemporary artifacts that represent or influence contemporary feminist, digital, and queer identities: the lyrics of the Irish musician Andrew Hozier-Byrne, known as Hozier and TikTok comment sections surrounding Hozier’s music and concert clips.

Do Bisexuals Thrive In The Corridor? Liminal Identity, Communication, And Well-Being, Katie Kassler

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

In this dissertation I aim to test direct and moderating associations between bisexual liminal identity, social identity complexity, micro-aggressions and micro-affirmations, and well-being. In Chapter One, I offer my theoretical definition of and position bisexuality as a liminal identity. Next in this chapter, I (a) hypothesize a direct association between bisexual liminal identity and well-being, (b) posit competing hypotheses related to social identity complexity as a positive cognitive appraisal moderator (i.e., social cure perspective) and negative cognitive appraisal moderator (i.e., uncertainty identity perspective) of the main effect, and finally (c) posit hypotheses related to individual- and group-aimed micro-aggressions and micro-affirmations …

Ang Mapanglasong Dagta Ng Homophobia: Pagsusuri Ng Kasarian At Pagnanasa Sa "Nagmahal Ako [Ng Bakla]" Ng Dagtang Lason (The Toxic Sap Of Homophobia: An Analysis Of Kabaklaan, Masculinity, And Desire In Dagtang Lason’S "Nagmahal Ako [Ng Bakla]"), Johann Vladimir Espiritu

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

Gamit ang malapitang pagbabasa, sinusuri ng artikulong ito ang kantang “Nagmahal Ako [ng Bakla]” ng Dagtang Lason (2009) upang tunghayan ang pagkakahulugan nito sa kabaklaan. Isang seksyon ito ng higit na malawakang pag-aaral sa kabaklaan bilang karakter na nilalaman ng kantang bakla—o mga awit na nagmumula sa [personang] bakla, patungo sa [hantungang] bakla, o may pinatutungkulang [kuwento ng] bakla—nitong huling apat na dekada. Ang pagbasa/panunuri ay nakaangkla sa teoryang queer na kombinasyon ng samutsaring kritikang kapwa kanluranin at lokal, at nakatutok sa tatlong pangunahing salik: ang titik [o teksto, lyrics ng kanta], ang tinig [na kinakatawan ng literal na …

Stony Brook Souvenir And Other Translated Poems, Christian Jil R. Benitez

Akda: The Asian Journal of Literature, Culture, Performance

This essay preliminary elucidates on the process of translating Jaya Jacobo’s poetry from Filipino to English. It briefly recounts the unprompted beginning of this translation work, citing it as an instance of a gift; as well the author’s general translation practice in his scholarly work, as demanded by the contemporary academic culture. Recognizing that translation is an argument in and of itself, the gesture—as it is hoped to be demonstrated here in five of Jacobo’s poems, gathered here on their comparable staging of encounters with gifts that cleave time, space, and category of matters—ultimately insists on a careful attention to …

Band Members’ Attitudes Toward The Queer Community And Perception Of Band As A Safe Space, Brian J. Panetta

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological framework of human development and Yuval-Davis’ analytical framework of belonging as a lens to explain how the band environment might cultivate positive attitudes toward the queer community, this study investigated band members’ attitudes toward the queer community and their perception of the band as a safe space. Utilizing adapted inventories with established reliability and validity, the following research questions were addressed: 1) What are queer and non-queer band members’ attitudes toward the queer community? 2) What are queer and non-queer band members’ attitudes toward the band as a safe space? 3) What differences exist between the independent …

“Éowyn It Was, And Dernhelm Also”: Reading The ‘Wild Shieldmaiden’ Through A Queer Lens., Sara Brown

Journal of Tolkien Research

The Éowyn we first meet in 'The Two Towers' is a woman who has been traumatised by the loss of her parents at a young age, the recent loss of her cousin Théodred, the apparent weakening of her uncle Théoden, and her inability to escape the lascivious gaze of Wormtongue. Marginalised by her gender and by social expectation, her desire to find purpose in her life as a shieldmaiden is repeatedly thwarted. Seeking to reclaim control over her life and to make her own choices, she rides out with the Rohirrim not as Éowyn, but as Dernhelm.

Past scholars have …

My Gender In The Closet, Aspen Balducci

Student Sequential Art and Comics

This book details the transitioning and rediscovery of gender from a single person's perspective. Gender is not linear or binary, something all people should be free to study and discover.

Queer Rural Youth Online: A Digital Ethnography, Joseph Robert Burns

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is based on digital ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2023 within Queer subcommunities on the social media sites Reddit and Twitter (now known as X) and data collected from interviews with Queer rural youth members of these communities. The data reveal that social media use directly influences the lives and actions of Queer rural youth, who use the space to build social connections, shape their personal identities, and seek advice pertaining to their in-person lives and decisions. By using these spaces, Queer rural youth build both bonding and bridging social capital, learn to subvert restrictions to their Internet access, …

Religious Queer Trans-Nationalism: A Zine And Theory, Eli Butler

Student Zines

From the author:

The relationship between religion and its institutions, sexuality, and gender is both historically and personally complex, and the intricacy and discourse between these constructs disproportionally affects religious queer and transgender communities.

The "Divine Transgender" concept, embraced by a growing community of proudly religious trans and gender non-conforming people, views bodies that identify with these categories as enlightened to break down restrictive gender binaries and undergo a spiritual self-realization process in the form of transition, becoming closer to God during the journey. This zine aims to creatively and imaginatively manage these relationships and educate about the ways religions …

1. Beyond Pink And Blue: A Zine Celebrating Trans Childhood, Eli Butler

Student Zines

From the author:

Trans childhood has long been infantilized, positioning trans children as passive and powerless beings in need of adult (and governmental) supervision and political intervention – an infantilization which is grounded in cisnormative and heteronormative beliefs about childhood innocence and purity.

Trans children are often seen as disruptive to the social order, and their existence is met with fear, hostility, and punishment. Against this backdrop, trans childhood has become a site of resistance, a space where trans children can challenge and subvert normative understandings of gender and sexuality.

As a former trans child turned trans adult, I created …

A Queer Chinese Pilgrimage: Encountering Catholic Life In Manila, George Wu Bayuga

Journal of Global Catholicism

Starting in the late 1990s, Chinese Catholic priests, sisters, and seminarians began journeying to the Philippines to undergo religious and spiritual formation. This paper documents this journey and characterizes it as a kind of queer pilgrimage. Recognizing the queer theoretical parallels between minoritized populations under hegemony and Catholic life under socialism, this paper calls for attention to the queer work of imagining futures that emerges through processes of movement, encounter, and reflexivity across new political and social spaces. Specifically, this paper highlights how state-religious relations under socialism can differentially shape how Chinese Catholics think of themselves, faith formation, and how …

A Relational-Cultural Approach To Examining Concealment Among Latter-Day Saint Sexual Minorities, Samuel Skidmore, Sydney A. Sorrell, Kyrstin Lake

Psychology Student Research

Sexual minorities often conceal their sexual identity from others to avoid distal stressors. Such concealment efforts occur more frequently among sexual minorities in religious settings where rejection and discrimination are more likely. Using a sample of 392 Latter-day Saint (“Mormon”) sexual minorities, we assess (a) the effect of religious affiliation on concealment efforts, (b) the relationship between social support, authenticity, and religious commitment on concealment, and (c) the moderating effect of authenticity on religious commitment and concealment. Multi-level model analyses revealed that religious affiliation alone accounted for over half (51.7%) of the variation in concealment efforts for Latter-day Saint sexual …

Queer Students: Issues In Public Schools, Hope Philea Henning

Lincoln LGBTQ+ Resource Center Student Work

A brief overview of issues queer students face in American public schools, for the purpose of the Out to Lunch with Allies presentation series from the Gonzaga Lincoln Center.

Digital Rhetoric Of The Invisible: Bisexual Literacy Practices On Tiktok, 2020–2021, Olivia Wood

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation uses auto- and digital-ethnographic methods to analyze the literacy practices of bisexual TikTok users primarily during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States, during which time TikTok exploded in popularity among U.S. social media users, especially among young adults. It is also an exercise in neuroqueer composing, diverging at times from the norms of academic writing and the dissertation genre to perform and intentionally draw attention to neuroqueer styles of thinking and communication. I argue that bisexual invisibility and contemporary bi+ rhetorical activity must be understood within the context of LGBTQ+ political history, particularly …

Racial-Sexual Normativity In/As Narratives Of “The Human”, Jeri Brand

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis synthesizes Sylvia Wynter’s and Judith Butler’s models of identity-formation to analyze discourses of racialization and sex/gender difference in normative scientific theories of “the human.” I argue that eugenicist white supremacism and sex/gender normativity form a single conceptual framework – what I call “the racial-sexual matrix” – throughout these scientific narratives. I then trace an epistemological consistency across 18^th- through 21^st-century scientific literature as evidence for the ongoing legacies of coloniality, white supremacy, and eugenics in current hegemonic sex/gender ontologies. Finally, I contend that the racial-sexual matrix functions as an index of proper humanness not …

'Since No Expressions Do': Queer Tools For Studying Literature, Filipa G. Calado

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation explores how digital methods and tools for studying text engage with queer literature. I critique digital methods and tools by posing computation, where textual data is cleaned and structured for electronic processing, against the complexity of queer subjecthood and affects expressed in textual style, form, and voice. While tools like quantitative text analysis, for example, transform, and necessarily reduce, qualitative elements of gender and sexuality into numerical data such as word frequencies or concordances, I argue that this reduction opens up possibilities for interpreting the formal qualities of queer literature. Just as digital formats transform and manipulate text …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

Magazine edition of the College Heights Herald for the period November 6, 2023 - January 29, 2024.

• Arnold, Emilee. WKU Memorabilia – Big Red, Hilltoppers
• Wilborn, Price. Renee Shaw Inducted into Hall of Distinguished Alumni
• Dobberstein, Molly. WKU’s Hall of Distinguished Alumni – Claude Bloch, Charles Reynolds, Amir Zaheri
• Costellow, Ali. LGBTQ+ WKU Alumni Share Stories from the Hill – Karen Stewart, Georgena Brackett, Spencer Jenkins, Seth Church
• Homecoming Hotspots – Restaurants
• Abney, Shayla. Veterans & ROTC Cadets Share Experiences on the Hill
• Edmonds, Luke & Jake McMahon. Home Field Advantage – Football Fans
• Dobberstein, Molly & Maggie Phelps. Who’s …

Grace, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Grace (2023), directed by Natalie Jasmine Harris.

Layla, Christopher R. Deacy

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Layla (2024), directed by Amrou Al-Kadhi.

"In Some Ways They’Re The People Who Need It The Most": Mobilizing Queer Joy With Sex Ed Teachers In New Brunswick, Canada, Casey Burkholder, Melissa Keehn

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

Teaching about sexuality can be messy. What does it mean to incite queer joy as an educational language in sex education? In this article, we explore how queer joy can be used by teachers as a language to confront this messy work of sex education and teach in more pleasurable, joyful, and inclusive ways. In our analysis, we draw upon the conversations and visual data we created alongside 43 teacher-participants from New Brunswick, Canada in a series of participatory media-making workshops and describe how queer joy informs the artful praxis that transpired in these spaces. In these workshops, we observed …

The Imperative Of Rejecting "Gender-Critical" Feminism In The Law, Henry F. Fradella

William & Mary Journal of Race, Gender, and Social Justice

Roughly a half-century ago at the height of the second-wave feminist movement, some feminist scholars and activists found themselves arguing with transgender people about who is a woman. While much of contemporary feminist thought has moved past biological essentialism’s outdated embrace of a sex binary to embrace trans-equality, a relatively small but vocal group of self-proclaimed “gender-critical feminists” (who are sometimes called trans-exclusionary radical feminists, or “TERFs” for short) eschew transgender legal rights that they perceive as potentially threatening to the rights of cisgender women. Most gender-critical arguments in that regard are fallacious; they are based on myths and false …

Exploring Lgbtq+ Cultural Competency And Dei In Continuing Education: A Cross-Sectional Review Of U.S. Pharmacy Legislation, Jennifer Ko, Jeremy Carlos, Yvonne Nguyen

Pharmacy Faculty Articles and Research

Background

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual, or other sexual orientations or gender identities (LGBTQ+) cultural competency training is offered in pharmacy curricula to variable extents. State legislation directly dictates pharmacist training through continuing pharmacy education (CPE) requirements.

Objectives

This study aimed to identify the U.S. states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) that require CPE or training on topics related to LGBTQ+ cultural competency or topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in general. In addition, this study quantified and compared each state’s CPE hours required for each renewal period.

Methods

This cross-sectional study retrospectively …

Leilani's Fortune, William L. Blizek, Monica Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Leilani's Fortune (2024), directed by Loveleen Kaur.

Understanding The Lgbtq+ Divide: A Review On The Impact Of Geographic Location And Political Climate On Lgbtq+ Patient Care In The United States., Conner Clark

Cooper Rowan Medical Journal

Background:

In the United States, laws and policies are proposed and passed daily that either protect or restrict transgender patients’ access to care. The objective of this study is to review the existing body of literature on the effect of state-level policy on transgender patients’ overall health.

Methods:

Primary literature was identified through PubMed and the National Institutes of Health. Search terms included keywords related to the following concepts: LGBTQ terms, differentiating terms, regional terms, and health outcome terms. Inclusion criteria: Quantifiable studies conducted on the American LGBTQ and Transgender population from January 2015 to April 2023. Exclusion criteria: Studies …

Access To Urban Leisure: Investigating Mobility Justice For Transgender And Gender Diverse People On Public Transport, Shahin Shakibaei, Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Literature on mobility justice suggest that socially disadvantaged people experience uneven access to movement. The theme of diversity in terms of gender and its interplay with mobility and leisure have attracted some scholarly attention. However, research into transgender and gender diverse mobilities and its impact to leisure access remains limited, particularly from non-Western perspectives. This paper endeavors to fill this gap by investigating transgender and gender diverse mobilities in Istanbul, Turkey. Drawing upon 49 qualitative interviews with gender diverse and transgender public transport users in Istanbul, this study contributes to a scholarly discussion exploring the relationship between gender diversity, mobility, …

What Is A Lesbian Document? Platforming Archival Description, Documents, And History In Sweden, Rachel Pierce

Proceedings from the Document Academy

As Joanna Drucker (2014) convincingly argues, “Most information visualizations are acts of interpretation masquerading as presentation" (p. 10). This article investigates the visuality and built-in argumentations of the Alvin interface for digitized Swedish cultural heritage, focusing on how the platform defines a document and the effects this definition has on the accessibility and interconnectedness of documents related to lesbian and feminist histories. This paper addresses how (failed) systematization and an emphasis on large quantities of documents and metadata breathes new life into outdated historiographies and renders documents and information related to feminist and lesbian histories and connections between these histories …

Translation As Consciousness-Building In The Portuguese Lesbian Press (1990–2002), Grace Holleran

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The following article examines the political potential of the intimate, affective translation practices of Portuguese lesbian feminist activists in the publications Organa (1990–1992) and Lilás (1993–2002). Both publications, which I analyze through the rubric of the countercultural genre of “zine” or “fanzine,” arose in response to the repression and invisibilization that Portuguese lesbians faced, from criminalization and censorship at the hands of the fascist Estado Novo [New State] dictatorship (1933–1974) to exclusion from post-1974 feminist groups. Disconnected from any notion of lesbian identity and isolated from each other, the first lesbian activists turned toward experiences and connections abroad to build …

The Mystification Of Gender Affirmation: Galathea, Gender, And Fantasy, Jubilee W. Finnegan

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

John Lyly's Galatea centers the role that gender expression plays in both communal interactions and interpersonal relationships. I argue that the way in which Galatea and Phillida present themselves within the play parallels the modern interpretation of transgender theory as outlined by Judith Butler. The actions that the two take are in service of manufacturing the kind of gender expression that breaks from conventional norms. While still rooted within fundamentalist dynamics, Lyly breaks free of bioessentialist understandings of gender in favor of a more liberating approach.