Queer Studies Commons^™

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 …

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 …

Recognition Or Refusal? Marginalized Identity Development In Passing And The Color Purple, Lee M. Kassay

Theses & Honors Papers

The novels Passing by Nella Larsen and The Color Purple by Alice Walker both involve identity development in their black queer female protagonists, but previous scholarship has rarely discussed the works in tandem. Thus, I merge the discussion around these two works by analyzing them through the concept of G.W.F. Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Assessing how both protagonists participate in their relationships with their female love interests versus their male husbands shows the importance of mutual recognition in the development of identity.

Queerly Cultivating Anti-Racist Feminist Pedagogy, Laurie Fuller

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

Queerly Cultivating Anti-Racist Feminist Pedagogy raises questions and analyzes classroom practices based on adrienne maree brown’s (2017) Emergent Strategy, a radical self-help manual for our current political climate that calls for a paradigm shift in organizing work. Black, mixed, queer, pansexual, feminist writer, pleasure activist, facilitator and sci-fi scholar, brown builds on a continuous tradition of women of color feminists resisting oppression to bring together science fiction and permaculture, biomimicry and organizing, pleasure and activism. She offers fresh perspectives on how to imagine liberation and provides dynamic ways to think about teaching and learning. Emergent Strategy provides principles to …

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 …

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

Impacting Queer Trans-Migrations In Mexico: A Case Study Of Civil Society Organization Casa Frida Refugio Lgbt+, Leticia Morales

Master's Theses

Mexico has historically been known as an emigration or transit country. In this context, civil society organizations have played pivotal roles in addressing the voids in support for migrants. Among these organizations, Casa Frida Refugio LGBT stands out as a significant service provider, specifically for LGBT+ migrants. This study engages in a qualitative case study analysis of the organization Casa Frida, drawing from interviews conducted with nine LGBTQ+ migrants and refugees, personal observations, and Casa Frida’s website and social media accounts. The research seeks to answer two central questions: Firstly, what role does an LGBT+ specific service provider like Casa …

Knowledge Production And The Unthinkable: Weaving Stories Of Art, Gender, And Land, Christin Huntsman

Master's Theses

Colonialism is deeply and violently embedded in Western knowledge formation—dominant power structures produce epistemes that uphold and perpetuate colonial narratives. This kind of knowledge production forecloses other possibilities. Western discourse of truth becomes universalized to the point that other worldviews, other knowledges that do not conform to hegemonic norms, are suppressed or silenced. This thesis examines three areas of hegemony and erasure: art, gender, and land. First, the history of art clearly marks a delineation between Western elitist artistic masterpieces and non-Western ethnographic artifacts. Eurocentrism of art in the academy determines what counts as art and how art is categorized. …

The Queer Gazes Back: A Dowry Of Blood As A Queer Mirror To Cisheterosexual Gothic Fears, Robin Bozik

English

This paper examines the connection between the contemporary Gothic A Dowry of Blood and its literary predecessors, Dracula, Frankenstein, and Carmilla. Through a focus on queer bodies, this work demonstrates the evolution of queer lineage-making and responses to cisheterosexual threats. Using literature as a “mirror” to gaze back on the visceral fears held by those who fall outside the norms of gender and sexuality in their respective time periods, this work also examines social tensions in the 21^st century surrounding reproduction and gender-affirming care.

In addition to literary analysis of the primary texts, this paper is …

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 …

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.

The Grief Of Identity Formation: How Non-Death Loss Complicates Trans Identity Narratives, R. Frank

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Trans members of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and other marginalized sexual and gender identities (LGBT+) community may be at risk of erasure from both dominant sociocultural scripts and clinical psychological research. Identity development experts have asserted that identity is fixed by late adolescence, with some room for evolution depending on context (Marcia, 2002; Sokol, 2009). Research about grief suggests that anything that has been lost has the potential to be experienced through the lens of grief (Chapple et al., 2016; Collings, 2007). This grief of non-death loss has been linked to loss of relationships, expected life trajectory, and self-concept. …

Queer Liberation In Young Adult Fantasy: An Analysis Of Rainbow Islands, Sydney Brouillard-Coyle

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

The purpose of this study was to explore how the theme of queer liberation can be represented in young adult fantasy novels. I conducted an in-depth analysis of the novel Rainbow Islands (Devin Harnois) utilizing the lenses of queer, transgender, intersectional, and narrative theory. In the novel Rainbow Islands, Harnois presents a utopia in which queer people are able to counter their oppressive realities by building systems of community that support one another; yet, the novel ends up replicating systems of oppression. Thus, Rainbow Islands offers a complex opportunity for analysis when considering the theme of queer liberation and how …

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 …

Forbidden Temporalities: The Wayward Aesthetics Of Punchdrunk’S Sleep No More, Thomas Fish

Faculty Articles

Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More is an immersive theatrical adaptation of Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Hitchcock’s Rebecca that has been staged in New York since 2011 with over 2000 performances. Sprawled over a hundred rooms within three intricately designed warehouses, the event offers a visceral exploration of a labyrinthine space and the potential for anonymous—even erotic—one-on-one encounters with a performer in the dark. This paper offers a new angle on Punchdrunk’s immersive style by considering the embodiment of temporality in performance and its concurrent aesthetic politics. Borrowing from queer theory’s temporal turn, it details how the company manipulates time in the space …

A Letter For God, Alexis Uribe

A Midwestern Review: A Magazine of the Arts and Issues at DePauw University

No abstract provided.