Queer Studies Commons^™

Grief As A Constitutive Shadow Of Queer Joy: Reclaiming Negativity And The Ethics Of Staying For Education Research, Akira Sawata

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

In education scholarship, authors have increasingly called to center queer joy to disrupt the conventional deficit model that normally accompanies queer communities. However, in this paper, I argue that an exclusive emphasis on joy may risk instituting and normalizing a happiness duty that marginalizes negative affects and subjects. I propose queer grief not as an opposite, but as a constitutive shadow of joy. Drawing on theories of queer, trans, and crip negativity and the studies on loss, grief, and mourning, I critique the imperative to mobilize affect solely for future utility and teleological meaning. I contend that such mobilization-driven …

Sexuality-Related Lexical (In)Visibility In Asian Englishes: A Corpus-Based Study Using The International Corpus Of English (Ice), Jess V. Mendoza, April N. Salvador, Teri An Joy G. Magpale

Journal of English and Applied Linguistics

This study examines the visibility and invisibility of sexuality-related terms in four Asian Englishes using data from the International Corpus of English (ICE). Drawing on Wilkinson’s (2022) sexuality-related lexical set and informed by scholarship on heteronormativity, the study analyzes the proportional visibility of 19 target lexemes across Englishes in Hong Kong, the Philippines, Singapore, and India. The findings show that only a small subset of terms (gay, lesbian, same sex, sexual preference, bisexual, and sexual orientation) appear in the corpora, and even these occur at low frequencies. Among these, gay emerges as the most recurrent. The remaining terms are not …

Charting Queer Visibility: A Content Analysis Of Queer Picture Books, 2000-2024, Amanda Melilli, James W. Rosenzweig, Alicia G. Vaandering

Library Faculty Research

This poster session presents findings from a content analysis of queer picture books published from 2000 to 2024. In an initial review of more than 650 books, the authors analyzed narrative themes and the identities, orientations, and BIPOC and/or disability intersectionality of queer characters in each book. This research built a final book sample of more than 430 unique titles with identifiably queer characters. The findings map queer representation and narratives in picture books published in the U.S. and Canada during the twenty-first century.

Who Tells Our Stories?: An Analysis Of Lgbtqia2s+ Community-Museum Collaboration In Northeastern Wisconsin, Frances Kerkhof

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Traditionally, histories of LGBTQIA2S+ individuals have been excluded from mainstream conversations and censored from public records. This exclusion was evident in how LGBTQIA2S+ history is retold in museum spaces. Over the past few decades, public institutions have shifted how LGBTQIA2S+ histories are communicated, with efforts to include more diverse histories and perspectives. During the summer of 2025, I conducted a museum ethnography of the Neville Public Museum’s Telling Our Stories: LGBTQ+ Voices of Northeastern Wisconsin to answer the research question: How does community engagement enhance the representation of the LGBTQIA2S+ community in a local museum in Northeastern Wisconsin? Through this …

Defying Impossibility: Critical Qualitative Reorientations To Black Lgbtqia+ Sense Of Belonging, Olivia H. Hunte

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Belonging is a human need central to survival and can be cultivated within all spheres of life. Social environments are vital for experiencing a sense of belonging. In some social environments, Black LGBTQIA+ people encounter greater impediments to their daily lives with consequences for survival, including threatening their belonging needs. Within the United States, systems of oppression create and inform conditions within social environments that can potentially thwart pathways to belonging for Black LGBTQIA+ people. Thus, fulfillment of belonging needs for Black LGBTQIA+ people is one of nuance, pain, resilience, hope, harm, trauma, resistance, and healing; scant research is available …

Pretty Much From Scratch: A Braided Essay On Autistic Diagnosis, Creativity, Identity, And Community, Jenée Stanfield

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This braided essay uses memoir and research to explore autistic diagnosis, creativity, identity, and community. It examines how the misinformation around these topics harm and “other” autistics: the fallacy of diagnostic objectivity/neutrality, the dual myths of autistic hyper- and hypo-creativity, and autism as an identity defined solely by medical professionals. The memoir sections play with point of view and genre.

Jenée is a late-realized autistic with ADHD and OCD, who identifies as neurodivergent and neuroqueer. She lives in Washington state with her spouse and dog. She has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and is currently a Master …

Quiet Hills, Restless Hearts: An Intersectional Exploration Of Lgbtq+ Religious Journeys In Appalachia, Allison S. Monroe, Stacey L. Williams

McNair Culminating Research Projects

Many researchers have utilized Meyer’s (2003) minority stress model to examine the social factors influencing the daily lives of LGBTQ+ individuals. Previous research has looked at negative mental health outcomes for LGBTQ+ individuals (McGraw et al., 2023), the presence of religious stress for this community (Page et al., 2013), and religious journeys of these individuals (Halkitis et al, 2009).  However, few studies have examined the intersection of religion, LGBTQ+ identity, social support, and the overarching values of Appalachian culture. The proposed study seeks to add to the literature and understand the breadth of these experiences by employing qualitative semi-structured interviews. …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Erosion And Accretion: Mobilities Of Sand, People, And Memory At Queer Riis Beach, Jah Elyse Sayers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The People’s Beach at Jacob Riis Park on the Rockaway Peninsula of Queens, New York, is a vibrant place of queer and trans public-space placemaking—and especially Black and working class queer and trans placemaking. A distinct queer ecology emerges in the interplay of the dynamic movement of the barrier island, queer and trans—especially queer and trans Afro-diasporic—mobilities. This queer ecology, while articulated with, also defies and exceeds logics and workings of private property. In response to a convergence of pressures on Black, queer, trans, and working-class placemaking on the beach site in the 2020s, beachgoers have mobilized longstanding provisional socialities …

Kanak-Ish Misfits: Queer Imaginaries, Racialized Borders, And The Politics Of Care In Berlin, Germany, Faruk Seref

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines queer Muslim experiences of border politics, racialization, and care in Berlin, Germany. By formulating bordering as a domineering and oppressive practice of boundary-making, I study how global bordering mechanisms shape and disrupt structures of care, caring, and being cared for. With an intersectional focus on race, gender, sexuality, and sex, I argue that borders are simultaneously materialized and challenged in varying localities, including the nightclub, the queer scene, the diasporic neighborhoods, and households. Ultimately, viewing collective care as fundamental to survival, healing, resistance, and building non-punitive lifeworlds, I theorize the counter-hegemonic practices of queers of color through …

“I Don’T Think We Do A Good Enough Job Acknowledging How Much This Space Is Needed By The Adults”: Making Intergenerational Futures At Camp Fyrefly, Ontario Ontario, Mayera Chazan, Megan Hill, Rachael Nicholls, Ziysah Von Bieberstein

Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education

This paper examines the liberatory potential of intergenerationality at Camp fYrefly, Ontario—an overnight summer camp for 2SLGBTQIA+ youth that is unique within its rural region. In 2023, we conducted research in partnership with Camp fYrefly, including one arts-based workshop, two focus groups, and five key informant interviews. The analysis explores one core finding: participants experience this youth-focused program as an intergenerational future-building project. Extending scholarship on queering mentorship, generativity, and futurity, the article concludes that Camp fYrefly’s intergenerationality binds past, present, and future in the collective project of queering education and making better futures possible. Intergenerationality is also what sustains …

Embodied Leadership And Conditional Legitimacy: Critically Conscious Male Leaders Navigating Systems Of Power, Luis A. Legaspi

Dissertations

Leadership is not a neutral concept; it is shaped by overlapping systems of power, including empire, whiteness, neoliberal capitalism, and cisheteropatriarchy. These interlocking systems influence how leadership is defined, recognized, and legitimized, often privileging particular identities and forms of authority. The persistent underrepresentation of people of color, women, and queer individuals in positions of leadership reflects how dominant conceptions of leadership remain closely aligned with historically entrenched structures of power.

This critical narrative inquiry study examines how men, who disproportionately occupy positions of social and institutional authority, make meaning of masculinity, power, and leadership within these systems. Drawing on relational …

Tùn-Scene And A-Futurism: Biomythography, Opacity, And Posthuman Imagination, Minglu Du

Masters Theses

Grounded in the author’s position as a Chinese feminist, this thesis examines how East Asian women, as well as East Asian-coded femininity more broadly, are objectified and othered within futurist visual culture in the age of artificial intelligence. Through an engagement with ornamentalism, techno-Orientalism, and posthumanism1 , it argues that the persistent figure of the feminized humanoid cyborg continues to reproduce colonial and patriarchal structures of desire, rendering marginalized bodies as fetishized and violable surfaces. In response, the thesis develops Tùn-Scene, a biomythographic artistic framework and the first experiment in what the author provisionally names A-Futurism. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s …

Archives Of The Future, Ka Oskar Ly

Masters Theses

Archives Of The Future is a practice-based thesis that invokes the archive and the future as simultaneous.

This research insists on the recentering of HMong Indigeneity and its own rooted traditions of HMong Queerness and HMong Feminism as ancestral knowledge systems.

They are the medicine. To recover their cosmological capacity is to traverse centuries of systematic eradication by empires and patriarchy.

I treat artistic making, community encounter, memory, and materials as equally valid ways of knowing and as collaborators. Field research from 2020 to 2026 moves through kinship and artisan teachings. It spans Southeast Asia, France, the United States, and …

Navigating Faith And Sexuality: Christian Pastors' Experiences In Providing Pastoral Care For Lgbtq+ Youth, Keith I. Raymond

Theses, Dissertations and Culminating Projects

Within the Christian context, religion and sexuality are often cultural factors that shape the identity development of LGBTQ+ youth, with congregational stance (affirming, tolerant, non–affirming) and individual religiosity/spirituality serving as protective or risk factors (Crockett et al., 2018; Raedel et al., 2020; Yarhouse & Sadusky, 2021). Christian pastors’ theology, relational ministry approach, and pastoral skills influence how they engage with and care for queer youth, yet the professional ties between pastors and LGBTQ+ youth remain underrepresented in counseling literature. Guided by queer theory, this qualitative case study examined how Christian pastors understand and navigate pastoral care for LGBTQ+ youth within …

Do Clothes Make The Man? Ftm Crossdressing In The 18th-19th C. Anglo-American World, Aidrian Graber

Theses and Dissertations

This paper seeks to analyze the legacy of "Female Husbands" and other female-to-male crossdressers in the 18/19th c. Anglo-American world and how such people can illuminate the field of transgender history.

Luja Volume 6: Issue 1 (Full Volume)

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Out In The Arena: Examining The Lgbtq+ Experience In Ihsa, Katharine C. Didier

Honors College Theses

This study investigated factors influencing Intercollegiate Horse Show Association (IHSA) LGBTQ+ riders’ perceptions of inclusion, safety, and belonging, with the hypothesis that teams with diversity and inclusion policies would be perceived as more accepting. An online survey was developed to gather information from self-identified LGBTQ+ IHSA students. Questions covered demographics, team environment, and perceived inclusivity within their equestrian programs. Question types included multiple choice, Likert-type, short answer, and open-ended. IHSA coaches were asked to share the survey link with team members. Students were able to respond anonymously. The survey was open for 8 weeks. Reminders were sent out at 3 …

Rhetorical Violence: The Rhetorics Of Women's Counter Political Violence, Kylie Rowland

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Protest is omnipresent, and yet not much is known about the efficacy and impacts of its different rhetorical strategies—particularly so for marginalized populations, whose available means of protest are already limited by both material realities and assumptions that govern who and what can make waves. This bind is further exacerbated by gendered and racialized civility politics that determine which bodies can be disruptive and which already are considered “violent.” To address this gap, I turn toward the under-researched rhetorical potentials of marginalized people’s—specifically women and queer folks’—use of symbolic protest “violence,” which works to strategically make evident the larger ongoing …

An Examination Of The Relationships Between Types Of Strain And Substance Misuse Among Queer Adults​, Mckenzie T. Nguyen, Katelyn Mcmahon

The Cardinal Edge

Current research has paid particular attention to outcomes of different strains using samples of sexual and gender minority (SGM) youth; however, minimal research has examined Agnew's (1992) General Strain Theory (GST) using samples of SGM adults. Using a path analysis, this study seeks to investigate how different strains - including financial strain, relationship strain, and victimization - are predictive of drug misuse, and if those effects are mediated by negative mental health outcomes. The study utilizes Meyer's (2016) Generations Study and includes a sample of 1,518 SGM Americans. Results indicate that only financial strain is partially mediated by negative emotions, …

Transwoman Motherhood: Analyzing Film Die Beautiful Within Butler’S Gender Performativity Theory, June Louie A. Flores, Mina Elfira

International Review of Humanities Studies

This study explores the representation and construction of gender identity and motherhood of transgender women within the Philippine society, focusing on Jun R. Lana’s 2016 film, Die Beautiful. Recognizing the increasing visibility of the queer community in media and social discourse, the research aims to analyze how the film reflects and challenges the binary construction of gender and societal gender norms using the theory of gender performativity by Judith Butler from her book Gender Trouble. Employing a qualitative content analysis approach, specifically the conventional method, selected scenes were examined to identify instances of gender performance and explore how …

Writing From The Rift: Queer Temporality And The Refusal Of Resolution, Daniela Ruiz Perez

Masters Theses

This thesis develops a phenomenological method for reading speculative literature as a site where queer ecological temporality is experienced rather than explained. Working with Annihilation (2014) by Jeff VanderMeer, The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham, and Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (2020) by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, the project treats reading as a bodily practice shaped by forms of attention. Texts are not interpreted for stable meaning and instead I remain with moments where resolution is withheld. The work is informed by a Marxist attention to how capitalist time organizes labor, productivity, and value, and how …

From Progressive Politics To Media Censorship: Analyzing The Trajectory Of Lgbt Rights In Taiwan And China, Sabrina Malec

CISLA Senior Integrative Projects

No abstract provided.

Can Love Bloom On A Battlefield: An Analysis Of Queer Militaristic Fanfiction, Brandon Bost

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

It is noted that readers and fans hold unique and valid interpretations of texts, interpretations that become expressed in fan works like fan art, memes, or the subject of this study, fanfiction. This study performs textual analysis on queer fanfiction in Metal Gear Solid and Code Geass fandoms. It examines the unique relationship militarism holds with intimacy, and how intimacy intersects with violence and control in unique ways in these fan texts. Within these fanfics, militarism can serve as a barrier to intimacy, forcing relationships to adapt to militaristic structures within these fan interpretations.

Representation Of Indigenous Spiritualities In The Ontario Grade 11 World Religions Curriculum: A Discourse And Textual Analysis, Katelin A. Chavez

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Introduction, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Revisionist Political Coalitions, Queering, And The Transmission Of Violence, Tom Y. Inouye

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the ways in which violent non-state actors (VNSAs), specifically revisionist political coalitions (RPCs), emerge from a state-centric international system that denies them access to formal avenues of political advocacy, legitimacy, and recognition. Challenging dominant portraits in international security that cast non-state-perpetrated violence as irrational or deviant, I argue that RPCs turn to brutality as a strategic response to exclusion produced by the Westphalian paradigm. Queer theory, particularly the concepts of legibility and strategic disidentification, is central to the reconceptualization of RPCs as “queered” political objects whose existence falls outside the normative boundaries of sovereignty and legitimacy.

To …

Examining Marginalized Sexual Identity Development Through Perry’S Scheme Of Cognitive Development, Miranda Bejda

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

Existing models of LGBTQ+ sexual identity development are critiqued for their linearity and lack of inclusion for diverse experiences and sexual identities. There is a call for a more robust understanding of the cognitive aspect of sexual identity development. The purpose of this dissertation is to further the understanding of how people think about their sexual identity through the developmental process using Perry’s scheme of cognitive development as a framework. Through semi-structured interviews, I analyze the LGBTQ+ sexual identity development process (Stage 1), how Perry’s scheme applies to LGBTQ+ sexual identity development (Stage 2), and propose a Perry-informed model of …

Teacher Education For Religious Diversity In British Columbia: Policy Recommendations For Sikh And Chinese Mahayana Buddhist Inclusion, Ashton Kemper

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Editors' Note, Jenna Abdel-Kader, Hannah Desjardine

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.