I denna uppsats undersöks likheter och skillnader mellan huvudkaraktärerna i Kerstin Thorvalls Det mest förbjudna (1976) och Martina Montelius Oscar Levertins vänner (2015) utifrån figurationen av den kvinnliga grotesken. Den kvinnliga grotesken är hon som gör ett spektakel av sig själv och omkullkastar hierarkierna genom att inte bete sig enligt den normativa kvinnorollen – hon är en emancipatorisk figuration som har möjlighet att trotsa rådande maktordningar. En komparativ närläsning görs av romanernas huvudkaraktärer utifrån fem valda aspekter: Den manliga blicken, Plikten som kvinna, Kladdet och den groteska kroppen, Skrattet och att göra ett spektakel av sig själv samt Sexuella begär och skam. Uppsatsens teoretiska begrepp hämtas i första hand från Anna Lundbergs Allt annat än allvar - Den komiska kvinnliga grotesken i svensk samtida skrattkultur (2008) och Mary Russos The female grotesque: risk, excess and modernity (1995). Avslutningsvis diskuteras hur båda romanerna skildrar kvinnliga utvecklingshistorier där huvudkaraktärerna bejakar sina inre grotesker och på så sätt undviker samhällets konventioner. Den kvinnliga grotesken har inte förändrats nämnvärt under de senaste 40 åren, utan de kvinnliga plikter och normer som upplevdes tryckande under 70-talet gör sig påminda än idag och den rebelliskt tvära attityden mot dessa är lika stark hos båda huvudkaraktärerna.

The aim of the thesis is to explore depictions of sexuality in popular science fiction film and television through a focus on storytelling, narrative, characters and genre. The thesis analyses science fiction as a film and television genre with a focus on the conventions, interpretations, and definitions of genre as part of larger contexts. Central to the argumentation is films and television series, from Star Wars and Star Trek, to Firefly and Torchwood. The approach allows a consideration of how the storytelling conventions of science fiction are, and have been, affected by its contexts. Through a consideration of a historical de-emphasis on narrative complexity and character formation in science fiction, the thesis displays and analyses a salient tendency towards juvenile and heteronormative narratives. This tendency is represented by a concept that I call the Star’verses, through which this dominant idea of science fiction as a juvenile, techno-centred, masculine, and heteronormative genre became firmly established. This generic cluster has remained a dominant influence on science fiction film and television since the 1980s. However, as argued, a major discursive shift took place in science fiction at the turn of the millennium. This adult turn in science fiction film, and television in particular, is attributed to contextual changes, but also to the influence of television dramaturgy. It explains why science fiction in the 21st century is not as unfamiliar with depictions of sexuality as its predecessors were. This turn does not signal a total abandonment of what the Star’verses represent; it instead contributes to a change to this dominant idea of the generic identity of science fiction. While sexuality has been disassociated from much science fiction, it is also argued that the science fiction narrative has extensive queer potential. Generic conventions, such as aliens and time travel, invite both queer readings and queer storytelling; the latter however is seldom used, especially in science fiction film. A majority of the examples of science fiction narrative that use this queer potential can be found in television. In cinema, however, this progression is remarkably slow. Therefore, the thesis analyses whether the storytelling techniques of Hollywood cinema, to which science fiction film owes much of its dramaturgy, could be considered heteronormative. A comparison is made to television dramaturgy in order to display the possibilities for the serialised, character-focused science fiction narrative. Ultimately, the thesis investigate the possibility for subversive storytelling and whether a normative use of dramaturgy needs to be overthrown in order to tell a subversive story.

This study, the first in its scope on transgender religiosity, is based on in-depth biographical interviews with 13 transgender participants with a Jewish Orthodox background (currently and formerly Orthodox). The primary aim of the study has been to elucidate the entanglements of gender and religion in three periods of the participants’ lives: pre-transition, transition and post-transition. One of the main topics investigated have been the ways participants negotiated gendered religious practices in those three periods. A secondary aim of this study has been to co-theorize, in dialogue with the participants, different possible paths for religious change; that is, the ways in which the larger Orthodox community might respond to the presence of openly transgender members in its midst. Concerning the findings, in the course of this study I have developed the themes of dislocations and reversal stories to explain how the participants negotiated the entanglements of gender and religion particularly in the transitional and post-transitional periods. The latter theme–reversal stories–has been of special relevance to explain how gendered religious practices, which were generally detrimental to the acceptance of the participants’ gender identities during the pre-transitional period, had the potential to become a powerful source for gender affirmation after transition. In this study I argue that this possibility and its related mode of agency are not contained within the binary resistance/subordination that feminist scholars have developed to account for the agency of women in traditionalist religions. In order to better conceptualize the notion of agency and explore the nature of the mutual entanglements of gender and religion, I deploy the body of theoretical work developed by Karen Barad known as agential realism. Lastly, I conclude by examining my initial commitments to social constructionism (in Peter Berger’s definition). In the final chapter, I describe how in the course of my study I have encountered three unexpected sites of resistance to social constructionism that have led me to reconsider my previous epistemological commitments and embrace posthumanism as a more satisfactory alternative. / The Impact of Religion - Challenges for Society, Law and Democracy

The purpose of this study is to explore how well prepared educators at pre-schools are to receive children with another gender identity than their biological gender. The focus for the study lies on the discourses that exist in the pre-school regarding gender norms and how they become visible through the language educators use in the equal treatment plans, that are a part of the pre-schools value works, and in talks between educators. My research questions are: ·         How does pre-schools describe their work with children with another gender identity than their biological gender? ·         Which discourses regarding gender norms does the pre-schools equal treatment plans and group talks with educators show? To answer these questions, I have used the analyses of five equal treatment plans and two group talks. By analysing the equal treatment plans and the group talks with the four strategies for anti discrimatory education from Kumashiro, by letting the strategies make the discourses visible, I have come to the result that gender identity is made invisible in the pre-schools by the educators. The equal treatment plans contain descriptions of the discrimination grounds but not how the educators work with these in the daily workings with the children, and the educators describe gender instead of gender identity in the group talks. In my discussion and conclusion I reason about the causes for this in relation to previous research about norms around gender and gender identity in pre-schools.

Depuis les débuts de la deuxième vague féministe, la participation quasi-universelle des femmes au marché du travail a causé la perte, pour les pères de famille, du rôle de pourvoyeur exclusif que ces derniers avaient tenu depuis si longtemps. Les femmes hétérosexuelles de la société contemporaine sont dorénavant plus scolarisées et atteignent des carrières plus avancées que leurs contreparties masculines. Alors que les femmes soutiennent davantage la famille par leurs emplois, les hommes doivent proportionnellement assumer des rôles plus actifs et participatifs à la maison. En cette période de transition, de transformation et de redéfinition rapides des rôles genrés à l’intérieur de l’économie familiale hétérosexuelle, les pères participent de manière plus équitable à l’éducation des enfants et à l’entretien du domicile, ces rôles ayant longtemps été attribués presque exclusivement aux femmes. Ces nouvelles responsabilités détonnent avec les représentations stéréotypées des hommes dans la culture populaire, ainsi qu’avec les modèles d’identification de la masculinité normative que les hommes ont requis et requièrent toujours sous l’égide de l’hétérosexualité imposée. De ce fait, les hommes occidentaux de moins de cinquante ans se trouvent souvent à cheval entre deux mondes d’exigences concurrentes. La place que peuvent et doivent prendre les pères au sein de leurs familles requiert un questionnement critique. L’ironie de la place du père peut être comprise comme la tension entre les normes du genre rétrogrades ou conservatrices et les exigences – à la fois politiques et pragmatiques – de la masculinité de la classe moyenne contemporaine. Cette tension fondamentale et structurante de la masculinité contemporaine est vécue par l’anxiété d’association au genre, ainsi qu’à travers des difficultés filiales, paternelles et intergénérationnelles. Ce mémoire de maîtrise adopte une approche déconstructiviste envers l’analyse de constructions contemporaines de la masculinité reproductive. À travers les gender studies, la théorie queer ainsi que la psychanalyse, le mémoire offre des lectures analytiques du discours de croissance personnelle de John Stoltenberg, de la fiction autobiographique de Karl Ove Knausgaard, ainsi que de la série télévisée américaine Dexter. / Since the onset of second-wave feminism, the nearly universal participation of women in the labour market has loosened fathers’ grip on the role of exclusive household provider that they had held for so long. Increasingly, heterosexual women in contemporary society have higher levels of education and more advanced careers than their male partners; in direct proportion as women are breadwinners, men are required to assume more active, participatory domestic roles. In this time of rapid transition, transformation, and redefinition of gender roles within the heterosexual domestic economy, fathers participate more equitably in raising children and homemaking, roles that historically and culturally had long been assigned exclusively to women. These new responsibilities sit uneasily with popular culture’s stereotypical representation of men, and with identificatory models of normative masculinity that men have required under the auspices of compulsory heterosexuality. Consequently, western men younger than fifty often find themselves straddling two worlds of competing imperatives. The place that fathers can and must take in their families requires a critical inquiry. The irony of the father’s place can be understood as the tension between retrograde or conservative gender norms and the demands – both political and pragmatic – of contemporary middle-class masculinity. This underlying, structuring tension of contemporary masculinity is experienced in gender alignment anxiety, along with filial, paternal, and inter-generational difficulties. This thesis adopts a deconstructionist approach to the analysis of contemporary constructions of reproductive masculinity. Working among gender studies, queer theory, and psychoanalysis, it offers analytical readings of the ‘self-help’ discourses of John Stoltenberg, the fictional autobiography of Karl Ove Knausgaard, and the American television series, Dexter.

Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Todd F. Simon / This paper explores queer self-presentation on the social network site, Facebook, emphasizing gendered functionality, gender and queer politics and presentations of gendered identities. It provides a review of early critical cyberculture studies, identity performance and queer theoretical considerations. This study is based on hermeneutic analysis of public profile information and transformative changes of Facebook users as well as in-depth interviews of two queer Facebook users. Results indicate that queer users are always-already gendered, even in the seemingly liberal environment of a social network site, but some, aware of the restrictive structures of Facebook, manipulate presentation to negotiate adequate gender performance. With specific attention to heteronormative structures, this paper challenges former claims of the potential for social progress inherent in social network sites and calls for changes within.

Formulated as a feminist project, written as a pulp fiction, Architectural Flirtations: A Love Storey begins with our claim that the architectural discipline is centered around a culture of critique, which is based in what bell hooks calls “a system of imperialist, white supremacist, heterosexist, capitalist, patriarchy,” and that the values instilled by this culture not only begin with, but are reinforced and reproduced by, the education of young architects. Sounds serious. Right? In a move toward a more vulnerable, ethical and empowering culture of architecture, the project aims to displace the culture of critique, by questioning and undermining relationships of power and privilege through practices that are explicitly critical, queer feminist, and Campy. In other words, it takes seriously, in an uncertain, improper and playful way, what is usually deemed unserious within the architectural discipline, in order to undermine the usual order of things. All of the (love) storeys take place on March 21st, the spring equinox, in and around a 1977 collaborative row house project called Case Unifamiliari in Mozzo, Italy, designed by Aldo Rossi and Attilio Pizzigoni. Beda Ring, PhD researcher, constructs a Campy renovation of one of these row houses, full of theatricality, humor, and significant otherness; while architectural pedagogue, Brady Burroughs, guides a student group from KTH in an Architecture and Gender course; and Henri T. Beall, practicing architect, attends to the details upstairs. / <p>QC 20161025</p>

With increasing recognition that reducing carbon emissions from energy in the UK will make a significant contribution to the mitigation of anthropogenic climate change, and with carbon budgets forged following the Climate Change Act 2005 looking unlikely to be met, it is clear that sectoral changes are required to catalyse the decarbonisation process. Alongside the need for this industry to be at the forefront of decarbonisation, the energy sector needs to diversify and employ more women, Black and Minority Ethnic (BAME), LGBT and disabled people, as well as those from different social classes and varied educational backgrounds. In short, the energy industry in the UK presently has a diversity issue that transcends being an image problem; it is hampering progress. This masters’ thesis explores how the dual aims of decarbonisation and diversifying the workforce can aid one another, and the extent to which greater diversity within the energy sector could actually be the key to decarbonisation. Using transcripts from the interviews I conducted with eight individuals, as well as meta- analysis of existing data that examines the impacts of diversity in various industries, the ways in which greater diversity in the energy sector has the potential to be positive for decarbonisation are explored. Further, this paper also examines barriers to diversity, proposing a series of recommendations for industry and policy makers in order to create an energy sector that is more diverse. These recommendations can be found in the next steps section of the paper, which aims to provide guidance for those wishing to make the composition of their organisation more representative of wider society.

This bachelor thesis examines how terms of heterosexuality are negotiated within the Swedish reality show Gift vid första ögonkastet (Married at first sight), which is presented as a social experiment where strangers marry each other and go on to live together for four weeks. The couples are matched by four experts (two psychologists, one sexologist and one couple’s counsellor), and their roles as professionals and distributors of knowledge are the main focus of this study as it permeates how the terms are negotiated by the six participants. By applying queer theories such as the heterosexual matrix, performativity and temporality, the terms are identified as monogamy, height difference, desire, emotional labour, and equality. These are analysed using the three-dimensional model of critical discourse analysis, while also adopting its framework for ideological power to examine how the experts use their position to give way for their interpretations of relationships, love and gender. The findings conclude that the programme works within a discourse of gender equality to support its own eligibility and does not challenge heterosexual ideals but rather furthers them by offering the heteronormative idea of monogamous love as a solution to a supposed increase of loneliness.

Em um contexto caracterizado pela exacerbação da masculinidade, no qual a homofobia e a misoginia são reiteradas e, muitas vezes, naturalizadas, com o propósito também de demarcar seres abjetos por não se adequarem a essa norma, o presente trabalho estuda a trajetória de grupos e de movimentos de torcedores cujos discursos e performance vão na contramão da ideia de que o futebol brasileiro é um jogo pra machos, reduto de homens cisgêneros e heterossexuais. Tal exercício tem como propósito analisar as ações de grupos, que por meio de sua ação política em diferentes períodos históricos, reivindicaram o direito de torcer pelas pessoas LGBT e mulheres, desestabilizando, assim, a norma regulatória baseada em um modelo de masculinidade hegemônica. Para isso, serão estudadas as torcidas gays do final da década de 1970, como a Coligay (torcida do Grêmio Foot Ball Porto Alegrense) e a Fla-Gay (torcida do Clube de Regatas Flamengo), que surgem em meio ao regime militar brasileiro, e os movimentos de torcedorxs contemporâneos contrários à homofobia e à misoginia no futebol brasileiro, que constroem a sua visibilidade principalmente por meio do site de rede social Facebook: Galo Queer (formada por torcedorxs do Clube Atlético Mineiro), Bambi Tricolor (que reúne torcedorxs do São Paulo Futebol Clube), Palmeiras Livre (coletivo de torcedorxs da Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras) e Movimento Toda Poderosa Corinthiana (coletivo de torcedoras do Sport Club Corinthians Paulista) / In a context characterized by the exacerbation of masculinity, in which homophobia and misogyny are reiterated and often naturalized, with the purpose of also demarcating abject beings for not conforming to this norm, the present work studies the trajectory of groups and of movements of fans whose discourse and performance go against the idea that Brazilian football is a game \"for machos,\" a stronghold of cisgender, heterosexual men. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the actions of groups that, through their political action in different historical periods, have claimed the right to support for LGBT people and women, thus destabilizing the regulatory norm based on a model of hegemonic masculinity. To this end, I will study the gay fans of the late 1970s, such as Coligay (supporters of Grêmio Foot Ball Porto Alegrense) and Fla-Gay (supporters of the Clube de Regatas do Flamengo), as well as the movements of contemporary fans against homophobia and misogyny in Brazilian football, who construct their visibility mainly through the social network site Facebook: Galo Queer (formed by fans of Clube Atlético Mineiro), Bambi Tricolor (that unites supporters of the São Paulo Futebol Clube), Palmeiras Livre (a collective of fans from the Sociedade Esportiva Palmeiras) and Movimento Toda Poderosa Corinthiana (a collective of female supporters from Sport Club Corinthians Paulista)