Queer Studies Commons^™

“‘And Númenor Went Down Into The Sea’: Tolkien, Beowulf, And The Masochistic Jouissance Of Westernesse”, Christopher Vaccaro

Journal of Tolkien Research

In Tolkien, Enchantment and Loss, John Rosegrant avers that Tolkien wrote of the downfall and destruction of Númenor in order to release a personal emotional complex (John Rosegrant, Tolkien, Enchantment, and Loss, 118-20). In this essay, I examine in greater detail the emotional power of this story and relate it to the psychological notion of primary masochism (Freud, Deleuze, Bersani) and the pleasures connected to the dissolution of the self. The Beowulf poem renders conspicuous the dependency of heroic Anglo-Saxon male subjectivity on experiences of masochistic desire and the Death Drive, the desire to be unburdened of great …

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 …

Uplifting The Critical Value Of The Lgbtq+ Climate Workforce, San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative, Brenda Castruita, Nicole Fassina

San Diego Regional Climate Collaborative

As the world faces unprecedented environmental challenges, the need for a robust and diverse environmental workforce has never been more critical. Historically, marginalized communities are at the forefront of these challenges and often bear the brunt of impacts from our changing climate. It is vital that the climate workforce reflects the diversity of our communities and is inclusive of individuals with lived experiences that can inform equitable and effective solutions. Among these marginalized communities, the LGBTQ+ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer or Questioning, and others) community is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change.¹ Research underscores how LGBTQ+ individuals …

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 …

Reaping In The Dark, Rae Perez

Honors Projects

This project, reaping in the dark, aims to answer the question ‘How do we live in a world where we were never meant to survive?’ Surrounded by heinous war and deathmaking, violent vulnerabilities, and demands that our own bodies must be contributions in the machinations of killing and exploitation, I found myself simultaneously isolated by the devastation, and empowered by solidarity and care networks and coalitions being formed in real time. In particular, I take part in and document my grief and grieving, love and loving in response to the new cycles of escalating violence in Gaza, the …

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 …

A Case Study In Vacillant Literary Analysis: Nella Larsen's Passing (1929), Sara Casten

University Honors Theses

For the last 95 years, Nella Larsen's Passing has been a topic of discussion within the literary and scholarly communities. First considered Larsen's folly, her second novella Passing had struggled to received a compliment from critics and was quickly lost to readers until her work was rediscovered in the early 1970s. However, unbound by the restrictive literary trope of the era, scholars now wonder if Larsen's Passing had been a misinterpreted masterpiece. This thesis outlines the initial interpretations of critics and modern understanding of scholars in order to highlight the influences of outside influences when reading a written work from …

Queering Futures With Data-Driven Speculation: The Design Of An Expanded Mixed Methods Research Framework Integrating Quantitative, Qualitative, And Practice-Based Modes, Jess Parris Westbrook

College of Education Theses and Dissertations

Queering’ questions, unlearns, disrupts, and transforms approaches, expectations, and realities. Futures are time and change. The approach I have designed to operationalize Queering and futures, or Queering futures, is the Queering Futures Framework (QFF). The Queering Futures Framework (QFF) is a brand-new transdisciplinary research framework intersecting values, positionality, complexity, Queerness themes, and futures praxis. This framework expands traditional mixed methods research conventions by integrating quantitative, qualitative, and practice-based research modes and mindsets. The Queering Futures Framework (QFF) prototype presented in this dissertation functions as a test case and proof of concept. The prototype quantitative mode measures attitudes towards AI, and …

The Mariner (And His Wife): Queering Aldarion's (A)Sexuality, Rory M. Queripel

Journal of Tolkien Research

“Aldarion and Erendis” (Unfinished Tales) is a rare example in Tolkien’s work of a marriage gone severely awry. Many readings of the tale apportion blame to Aldarion, who is seen as “unwilling” to make the marriage work (Fitzsimmons, 2015), cruel and unfeeling towards Erendis, who herself is characterised as resentful and unaccepting (Rosenthal, 2004). However, these readings rely on an assumption of a cisheteronormative and, more importantly, allosexual relationship between the couple.

This paper proposes an alternate view of Aldarion and his role in the story, suggesting the possibility that he is asexual and/or aromantic (i.e., he does …

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. …

Queering Tv In The Age Of Tiktok, Greta Reel

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Capstones

This thesis asks how fans have created their own queer representation on the social media platform TikTok. It looks at the tools afforded by TikTok that fans have used to “ship” non-canon woman-loving-woman couples and to “queer” television show characters. It also examines how fans on TikTok have reacted to television plotlines they were unhappy with, such as the “bury your gays” trope. Four shows, all after the year 2000, are used as case studies. These shows are Wednesday (2022-present), Criminal Minds (2005-present), Stranger Things (2016-present), and Killing Eve (2018-2022). Numerous TikTok videos and comments revolving around each show are …

Parodic Attunement: Contesting Gender Categories Through Kierkegaard’S Knight Of Faith And Butler’S Allegorical Usage Of Drag, Abraham James A. Mata

Undergraduate Honors Theses

What does it mean to appear under a gender identity that fails to convey who you really are? Is it possible to truly be free from prevailing identities even as one contests them? Søren Kierkegaard’s knight of faith and Judith Butler’s allegorical usage of drag may offer clues to re-thinking how our self-conceptions undergo crisis even as they get reproduced. Instead of being entrapped within a particular identity category, the knight of faith and the drag performer show us ways to negotiate established ethical or gender categories through a “parodic attunement”. Is Kierkegaard attempting to bring us into harmony with …

A Queer Take On Hell And The Hellmouth, Pre-Modern Era, Haley Brothers

Arts & Sciences Undergraduate Showcase

Taking a look at pre-modern depictions of hell and its entrance, the hellmouth, this presentation uses the imagery seen in these pieces to bring about a new perspective on how hell may have been seen back when it was first being drawn up. Through a queer lens, these concepts are explored to have a deeper meaning as it applies to gender equality through divine punishment, all as seen in art that was made to depict the concepts of hell and the hellmouth when they were made with such detail. This project explores the possibility of concepts born hundreds of years …

American Perspectives On The Legitimacy Of Transgender Identities, Sethe Zachman

Department of Sociology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This mixed-method project examines how Americans’ and Nebraskans’ perceptions of the validity of transgender identities varies by the demographic characteristics of respondents, and how these perceptions are justified. Two representative surveys are used to examine demographic associations with opinion on the cisgender and transgender binary: the 2023 American Values Atlas (AVA) from the Public Religion Research Institute (N=4,788) and the 2022 Nebraska Annual Social Indicators Survey (NASIS) (N=934) from the Bureau of Sociological Research. A measure from the AVA data examines the degree to which respondents believe there are only two genders versus a range of gender identities. The NASIS …

Lessons In Persistence, Syble Heffernan

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

LESSONS IN PERSISTENCE is a thesis that operates within the tradition of writing about trauma and resilience, taking up themes of mental illness, class, colonialism, loss of a parent, navigating queerness in a conservative Christian context, and reckoning with gender-based violence and expectations directed toward people socialized as women. The use of ecopoetics highlights the relationship between traumas to the earth brought about by climate change, war, and worldwide suffering, and those brought upon the human body (specifically marginalized bodies) by grief, illness, abuse, and the loss of self. The collection ultimately aims to establish explicit connections between internal and …

The Role Of Family And Peer Social Support Against Bullying Involvement Among Sexual Minority Latine Young Adults, Guadalupe Gutierrez

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

Bullying is a significant risk factor for healthy youth development and functioning. Research on bullying has provided evidence that bullying involvement is linked to negative mental health outcomes for young adults; however, researchers have yet to fully explore the relationship between the different bullying statuses (victims, perpetrators, bully-victims) and internalized problems (anxiety and depression), and whether peer/friend and family support serves as a protective factor. In addition, a significant amount of research on bullying has been conducted in Europe and the United States but it remains limited in Latin American countries. The current research demonstrates that bullying is a significant …