Queer Studies Commons^™

Living With Flying Colors: Associations Among Lgbtq+ Identity, Religiosity, Spirituality, Community, And Overall Well-Being Among Lgbtq+ Older Adults, Madison T. Diomede

Theses and Dissertations--Psychology

Experiences of discrimination and prejudice place LGBTQ+ individuals in older adulthood (i.e., 55 years old and older) at risk for poor overall well-being. This risk can be especially salient in the Southern and Midwestern U.S., where LGBTQ+ individuals enjoy fewer legal protections than in the Northeast and Western regions of the U.S. In defiance of these odds, LGBTQ+ individuals in older adulthood cultivate overall well-being through psychological-level constructs, like LGBTQ+ identity affirmation, and community-level constructs, LGBTQ+ community connection. Yet, little research has examined these avenues of strength among LGBTQ+ individuals in older adulthood. Guided by Iridescent Life Course Theory and …

Feeling Foreign / Foreign Feeling: Affect In Southeast Asian Diasporic Short Story Collections, Francys Aerin Fortes

Theses and Dissertations

Affect studies have long been saturated with scholarship investigating the fluidity of emotions, though a larger turn in the field now prioritizes the felt experiences of marginalized peoples. Sianne Ngai’s work is one part of this turn that seeks to unpack the effects of oppressive systemic forces on Black, Brown, and queer bodies. Sianne Ngai reexamined the nature of emotions in her seminal text Ugly Feelings (2005), particularly concerned with how negative feelings are disproportionately felt by marginalized bodies as a result of conditions of obstructed agency, systems of power, and wage labor capitalism. Drawing from Ngai’s writing, this thesis …

Queer-Keying: Performing Video Processes As [Trans]Gressive Resistance, Wren Tiffany

Theses and Dissertations

As part of the 2025 VCUarts MFA Thesis Exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), I transformed the 'Sponge' gallery on the top floor of The Anderson, VCU’s historic thesis exhibition home, into The Green Room, a neon green, immersive video and performance space featuring mirrors, disco lights, a foam tile dance floor, makeup stations, and a functioning green-screen editing suite. This hybrid drag rehearsal and ‘Chroma-key’ green video production room deepened both my understandings of Queer performance art and process-based art making during the Spring of 2025, through two public performance activation …

Voicing The Violence: Carmen Maria Machado's Contribution To A Queer Archive, Audrey C. Bryant

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This project analyzes In the Dream House (2019) alongside “The Husband Stitch” and “Eight Bites” from the collection Her Body and Other Parties (2017) by Carmen Maria Machado. The first, a memoir, details Machado’s personal experience with domestic abuse between partners who share a female gender identity; the latter is a collection of short stories outlining everyday violations made against women. Scholars have discussed these works with specifications including female domestic horror, Machado’s use of retellings, and domestic violence and abuse. This project fills a gap in the discourse by intersecting and connecting queer theory with archival studies to support …

A Monstrous [Un]-Becoming: Defining The Final Boy, Rhys Crumpton

College of Graduate Studies: Theses & Dissertations

Through an exploration of horror theory, monster theory, queer theory, and disabilities studies, this thesis defines a 21st century archetype within the serial horror narrative, known as “the Final Boy.” This character is a manifestation of a queer, often neurodivergent man in peril at the hands of a monstrous society. This harmful socionormativity is narratively represented by a monster wearing the face of a man, one whom the Final Boy must subdue and overcome if he wishes to survive. The seven tenets found in this project highlight the fluctuating morality the Final Boy is forced to engage in per the …

“A ‘Normal’ Life”: Red Dwarf, Temporality, And The Neuroqueer Absurd, Gretchen B. Graf

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

The science fiction series Red Dwarf, beginning in 1988 and broadcasting sporadically over the past nearly four decades, takes place more than three million years in the future where human beings have gone extinct. All, that is, except one; the show’s central character, Dave Lister, is the last known living human being in the universe, outliving humanity by remaining in stasis during a radiation leak that killed the rest of the crew of the titular mining ship. Besides Lister, the narrative also focuses on the nonhuman beings that keep him company. Besides residing in the genre of science fiction, …

Phantasma, Grace Wright

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

Ever since the infamous Ides of March, scholars have been debating the true psychology behind Brutus’s betrayal. The purpose of this project is to take a step back from the politicized motivations and explore the emotional, strenuous conditions of Julius Caesar’s assassination. This project will transform William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar into a novella with its central focus on the relationship dynamics between the key figures of Caesar, Brutus, and Cassius. The intention of the novella is to not only analyze the play through a critical queer lens, but to interrogate the themes of violence and desire that surround male relationships …

A New Normal: An Autoethnographic Analysis Of Gender Complexities In Los Angeles Social Justice Theatre Storytelling, Sue Hamilton

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

This study uses autoethnography to examine the role gender plays in Los Angeles social justice theatre storytelling. Chronicling my autoethnography as a queer, nonbinary artist and social justice theatre practitioner, I will examine gender through the context of my social justice theatre company, Artists Rise Up Los Angeles (ARULA), by analyzing selections of its original, politically focused, professional stage plays performed from 2017 to 2019, utilizing ARULA’s emerging themes of gender expression and inclusion. ARULA was born out of a determination to create original social justice theatre storytelling to understand and transform reality by bringing theatrical expression to the environment …

Exploring Canadian Social Work Students' Aphobic Attitudes: The Role Of Knowledge About Asexuality And Asexual People, Brianna V. Azzoparde

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Aphobic attitudes are negative biases and prejudices against asexual individuals that can contribute to aphobic discrimination. While the Canadian Social Work Code of Ethics states that social workers should not discriminate and should provide culturally responsive services to marginalized populations, individually held aphobic attitudes have the potential to diminish one’s ability to provide culturally responsive services to asexual people. This national study examined aphobic attitudes among 326 Canadian social work students, exploring the relationship between knowledge about asexuality and aphobic attitudes, including controlling for demographic factors, social contact with asexuals, and social attitudes that previous research has identified as being …

Ballroom: An Exploration Of Queer Survival And Self-Sufficiency, Jet Mezini

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

The AIDs epidemic and its disinformation alienated queer people from U.S culture. As a result, queer people, especially queer people of color, began meeting together to express their self-made culture, a series of competitions among themselves, the underground scene of “ballroom.” Ballroom reveled in self-awareness and bordered on satire, being inspired by Western standards that were unable to be applied to a queer populous. This essay will analyze these cultural norms, understanding how they served as methods of reclamation for queer people, and how ballroom evolved to reflect social progression.

Mindfulness Matters: Addressing Anxiety And Navigating Toward Wellbeing Through Miea Mindfulness Practices, A Mixed-Methods Study Of Lgbtiq Graduate Writing Students, Kim Westerman

Doctoral Dissertations

ABSTRACT

Mindfulness Matters: Addressing Anxiety and Navigating Toward Wellbeing Through MIEA Mindfulness Practices, a Mixed-Methods Study of LGBTIQ Graduate Writing Students

Anxiety has always been a part of the human experience, even before the phenomenon was conceptualized in the 17^th century and named by Freud in the 19th. And human beings have devised many strategies for addressing anxiety: reducing it, ignoring it, distracting oneself from it, despairing over it, medicating it, engaging with it, moving through it, co-existing with it. The current zeitgeist, more than four years into the COVID-19 global pandemic, situates anxiety as a central facet of …

Story Of Everything, Mariana Romo-Carmona

Publications and Research

Story of Everything, by Mariana Romo-Carmona. Translated by Caragh Barry.

Original title: Cuento de todas las cosas.

Ephemeral Legacy, Allison Hall

Master's Theses

Recently, my thoughts have centered on the problem of legacy. How do we forge bonds with other humans? What happens on an interpersonal level when these humans pass away, or when we pass, and they continue in life? How do queer spaces consistently offer deeper phenomena of interpersonal legacies; how does death operate as generational catalyst? I am particularly interested in putting these questions in the context of queer spaces. In queer culture, kinship is formed in ways that break from typical western notions of kinship. Despite being incoherent to western notions of family, queer bonds are extremely strong (Bradway …

Señoritas On And Off The Silver Screen: How Chicana Women Organized For Equality And Challenged The Cultural Prison Of Sexualized Media Representations In The First Half Of The Twentieth-Century, Rossandra Paloma Martinez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This research is personal for me due to lived experience and day-to-day situations where I have felt the pressures of unattainable beauty standards and society’s fluid definition of beauty and femininity surrounding Chicana, Latinas, Mexican, and Mexican-American women. What inspired me to pursue these issues and topics was the work of Dr. Vicki Lynn Ruiz in her book From Out of the Shadows: Mexican Women in Twentieth-Century America. This research focuses on rival and contested images of Chicana, Mexican, Mexican-American and Latina labor advocates and activists from the early twentieth as opposed to sexualized and eroticized packaged caricatures that Hollywood …

Celebratory Queer Space: Innovation Beyond Safe Space, Ezra Hebron, Adriane Sparks

Faculty & Staff Research & Creative Activity

"Safe space" refers to a place "free of bias ... or potentially threatening actions [or] ideas ... "* Simply, it is a place where one is accepted. A "celebratory space" is a safe space, but it is ALSO a place that reaches out to queer patrons to make them feel that they are not only accepted by the community, but that they are a part of the community.

"safe space." Merriam-Webster.comM. erriam-Webster, 2024. Web. 1 July 2024.

Out And About, Fall 2024, 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-2024/

Féminas Speaking Up: Three Papers On Feminine Transgender Identities, Gender Identity Activism, And Language Reform In Lima, Peru, Ernesto Cuba

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this three-paper dissertation, I explore the linguistic and discursive practices of Féminas, a leading transgender rights activist organization based in Lima, Peru. Building on scholarship on language ideologies (Irvine & Gal, 2000), queer linguistics (Motschenbacher, 2011), and socio-onomastics (Ainiala & Östman, 2017), I analyze the role that language beliefs and language-in-use plays in performing local (trans)gender identities and shaping grassroots politics within this specific community of practice (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 1992). Based on an extensive corpus of semi-structured interviews and ethnographic material gathered during my long-term investigation with Féminas, I present three studies exploring distinct –though related– ideologically-driven sociolinguistic …

“As Blind Men Learn The Sun”: Towards A Poetics Of Queer Mysticism In American Literature, 1860-1960, Bradley M. Nelson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to play with the similarity between the queer and the mystical, and in the process, defines something I call “queer mysticism.” I include four cardinal figures of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American poetry: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gertrude Stein, and Robert Duncan. Beginning with Walt Whitman, I show how each of these poets bear witness to an experience of the divine that is both immanent and immanently queer. Through historical and biographical research, I uncover their poetic inspiration in popular modes of expression and in the esoteric and arcane. By establishing a connection with a few Catholic mystics …

Just Say Gay: An Exploration Of Authenticity And Connection; Queer Identified Therapists’ Lived Experiences Of Identity-Based Self-Disclosure, Courtney Dunne

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The current sociopolitical climate in the United States continues to reinforce the complexities and nuances that mental health providers face when facilitating therapy. Over the past few years, anti-DEI legislation has aimed to control the narrative in educational and therapeutic settings regarding what therapists and educators are permitted to teach and share about themselves (Flannery, 2024). At the same time, anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric continues to dominate the media and further marginalizes individuals whom are in the queer community. In turn, LGBTQ+ individuals continue to face an increased risk for homelessness, substance use disorders, and suicide, which particularly has impacted LGBTQ+ youth …

Considerations For Interviewing And Intervening With Suicidal Gender Expansive Individuals, Abigail Herrold

Graduate School of Professional Psychology: Doctoral Papers and Masters Projects

It has been well documented that transgender individuals are at a higher risk for death by suicide compared to their cisgender peers. However, limited consideration has been given to studying suicidality in individuals who identify outside of the gender binary (non-binary, gender queer, gender fluid, etc.). Additionally, while there is considerable evidence for risk factors for suicide and protective factors against suicide, there is a lack of guidance on how to implement this information. The aim of this paper is to expand upon the literature of research that is inclusive of all gender identities and propose guidelines working with gender …

Shared Shame And Affect In Nella Larsen's Passing, Claudia Ludwick

All Theses

This project focuses on the negative affect of shame in Nella Larsen’s 1920s American novel, Passing. While shame is a universal feeling everyone feels, the project argues that Larsen’s two main characters, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, feel a specific type of invisible shame that pulls on them differently. For Irene, this shame is reactive and aggressive, but for Clare, this shame is passive and often ignored. The project details where and how the shame manifests for each character, particularly focusing on how shame can be seen visibly and invisibly in and on the body. Because no other character recognizes …

Trabajo De Auto Y Trans-Ficción En La Narrativa Chilena Reciente: Abordajes Y Tramitaciones Del Yo(T) En Iván Monalisa Ojeda Y Ariel Florencia Richards, Fernando A. Blanco

Other Faculty Research and Publications

This article explores two literary texts written by two Chilean trans or non-binary individuals in which the processes of constructing and subjectivizing the Self are framed by their material and symbolic conditions of existence, differentiated by class, the type of work (labor) performed, and the political and aesthetic expectations of their own writing project. In the case of Monalisa Ojeda, the autofiction narrative (journal) responds to the reality of travesti/trans migrant, sex-working communities in 1990s NYC, while in the case of Ariel Florencia Richards, the novel explores the complex relationships between an upper middle class mother and her trans daughter …

My Last Concussion, Shannon Valkr

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

MY LAST CONCUSSION is a thesis consisting of a critical introduction, a number of poetic influences, and a collection of poems. The introduction touches on the themes of the collection, my personal history with my subject, my changing approach to poetry, and a brief evaluation of the work as a whole. It details my approach to Catholicism, paganism, transgender identity, and oppression. My work grapples with both my current understanding of myself and my inability to enunciate my reality in the past. I aim to view divinity and personal history through a lens of queerness.

Advisor: Kwame Dawes

Queer Coding And Representation: The Motion Picture Production Code And Its Impact On The Lgbtq Community, Amber Leech

English and Creative Writing Summer Fellows

The Motion Picture Production Code was a set of guidelines for films imposed between 1934 and 1968 that prevented them from depicting immoral themes such as profanity, blasphemy, and glorification of criminal activity. While homosexuality was never explicitly mentioned, it was banned in films through a rule prohibiting the depiction of sex perversion. This resulted in many films using a technique called queer coding in which they could imply that a character was queer without alerting the Production Code Administration. Because queer characters could not be depicted without glamorizing homosexuality, however, many of these characters were villains, died in the …

Lgbt Cultural Competence Education For Nurse Leaders In A Large Metropolitan Healthcare System: Quality Improvement, Trevor Mcguffin, Andrew Mitchell

Doctor of Nursing Practice Papers

Background: In the United States, seven percent of adults identify as LGBT. The LGBT population is disproportionately affected by health disparities and barriers to care when compared to the cis-heterosexual population. Due to healthcare providers’ limited LGBT health education and experience, inconsistencies in LGBT culturally competent care perpetuate health disparities and barriers to care for the LGBT population.

Purpose: The purpose of this quality improvement project was to educate nurse leaders on LGBT cultural competency and facilitate nurse leaders’ behavior change.

Methods: This quality improvement project consisted of three LGBT cultural competence modules and two guided behavior change pathways. Outcomes …

Shifting Forms: Queer Placemaking Amidst Neoliberalism In New York City Through Art, Colin J. Donnelly

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

This project explicates how queer people produce space for themselves through art in New York City amidst the prevalent neoliberal frameworks that have existed since the 1980s. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with queer artists and nonprofit workers, participant observation in art spaces, and close reading of art compiled through archival work, I explore sites of presentation (places in which art is displayed) and modes of presentation (how specific artists decide to present their art). I analyze museums and nonprofit spaces, and engage with queer artists that create what I consider to be site-specific art. I zoom in on spatial art …

John Xxiii Aids Ministries Christmas Party

Monterey County LGBTQ Histories Exhibit

No abstract provided.

Wild Joy: An Exploration In Queer Spatial Dynamics, Kipper Thomas Reinsmith

Masters Theses

What does it mean to feel represented in a space?

What does a trans space look like?

How can we queer our interior spaces?

Our world is crafted by the many designers that have come before us. These systems, products, and spaces are built upon assumptions of the bodies that will use and occupy them—namely cisgender, able-bodied, straight folks.

Designing and creating objects as a trans person is an act of radical nature. To take up space, to design for trans luxury, for the sake of beauty, for joy itself, feels counterintuitive to the narratives we’ve been served: that of …

It's Disco, Baby: Queer Possibilities And Conservative Outrage, Lottie Bromham

University Honors Theses

From 1974 to 1979, disco music was a cultural phenomenon, gracing radio airways and dance clubs across the United States. Just as disco music reached peak popularity, growing disapproval from rock fans and other Americans who saw the genre and scene as overly lavish, too effeminate, and too racially inclusive, forced disco out of American mainstream favor. This paper proposes a viewpoint that contextualizes disco culture as integral to the lives of queer people in New York City, analyzes the prejudices that accompanied the anti-disco movement, and situates the mainstream death of disco as an early cultural consequence of America's …

The Realm That I Am: An Interdisciplinary Memoir On Identity And Healing, Maria Rowen Flores

University Honors Theses

This thesis is an interdisciplinary exploration into identity, self, and meaning-making. Engaging queer studies, Chicano/a Studies, narrative therapy, creative nonfiction, and visual arts, this project is both a collage and self-portrait in two parts. Part one uses the ideas of philosophers Gloria Anzaldúa, María Lugones, Jack Halberstam, and Judith Butler to explore identity formation in the author’s family and social contexts. Part two follows the experience of having C-PTSD and uses memoir and creative writing to explore the narrative therapeutic mode. Both sections explore themes of identity, social isolation, relationships, failure, mental illness, trauma, and addiction. The work is underscored …