Failure Theatre: An Artist’s Statement, is an invitation to a rumination on failure. The project is divided into four discreet offers that combine together to form a portrait of failure. A full play text, a manifesto and a choreographed response to research as well as an Artist Statement merge into a pastiche that sheds light on failure’s possible position(s) within the Canadian theatrical milieu. Basing the overall approach on work by Judith Halberstam, Sara Ahmed, Ann Bogart plus several other Feminist, Queer and Performance authors, this thesis examines failure as a force for resistance and change. / Thesis (Master, Cultural Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-01-28 15:45:13.857

Contemporary Western feminist scholarship fails to explore the backdrop to the naturalization of feminine subjugation. By analyzing the structures, histories, and theories of gender relations, this study dislocates femininity from its ascribed Otherness and, in doing so, demonstrates how empowered femininities have been overlooked or rendered invisible within gender studies. Femme, as the failure or refusal to approximate the patriarchal norms of femininity, serves as the conceptual anchor of this study and is used to examine how femmephobic sentiments are constructed and perpetuated in contemporary Western feminist theory. In part, this perpetuation is achieved through the pedagogical and theoretical exclusions from the texts chosen for gender studies courses, revealing a normative feminist body constructed through the privileging of identities and expressions. Privileging of identities is demonstrated through the designation of literary space and in an overview of dominant theories, such as how the feminine subject is maintained as the object of critique and as not able to be “properly” feminist. This assessment of gender studies course texts reveals a limited understanding of femme and femininity that maintains these identities as white, middle-class, normatively bodied, and without agency. Feminist theory demonstrates an embedded normative feminist subject, one marked by whiteness and body privileges. By deconstructing the privileging of theories of the normative feminist subject, this study argues that gender studies has replicated feminist histories in which the politics and concerns of the white socially privileged subject are the first to be addressed. While white femininity is present in hir Otherness and in critiques of hir femininity, the racially marked femme does not exist, even in absence. The femme—as a queer potentiality—offers a way of thinking and re-thinking through the limitations of contemporary Western feminist theory and the paradoxical preoccupations with the absented femme. / Thesis (Master, Gender Studies) -- Queen's University, 2013-09-09 19:36:29.903

Background: Gender Variance (GV) is an experience that the gender assigned at birth is different to one’s preferred gender identity. It includes the possibility of a preferred gender identity being different to either male or female. It is reported that around 4000 people per year access care from the NHS in relation to GV (Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES), 2009) and both the physical and psychological elements of these experiences is well documented. However, little research specifically explores how Gender Variant (GVt) people make sense of their experiences and construct meaningful expression of their preferred identity. The aim of this study is to further the understanding of GV with a view to considering the implications for service provision to this population. Methodology: The study employed a qualitative method that explored the narratives of the participants. A purposive sample of seven participants self identified as GVt was recruited for a single interview. The interviews used a topic guide to elicit the narratives that these people tell about their experiences. All interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a narrative approach to explore what the participants said and the way they said it. This was then situated within the local and broader social contexts within which the narratives exist. Analysis and findings: The findings are presented through a global impression of each of the individual narratives and then through discussion of the similarities and differences in relation to the collective storylines. Particular attention is paid to the identity construction and the emotional experiences that take place during the interviews. These two elements are told within and through each of the storylines. The local and wider narratives available to the participants are used to contextualise the analysis and findings, and so are reported within the analysis. The analysis offers the following findings: i) their first experiences of understanding GV was important, leading them to find others who felt the same to gain a sense of hope of a normal life ii) sharing their experiences with others was an anxiety provoking time and was part of a decision making process about treatment and establishing an acceptable gender expression iii) relationships with family, friends, peers and members of their social context influence sense making and identity constructions of GVt people and typify the challenges faced within their GVt experiences. Some of these challenges were reported as ongoing and illustrated throughout the stories of the day to day lives of the participants iv) for these participants distressing emotional challenges were often situated in the past and participants spoke of ‘overcoming’ challenges. This offered a counter to the more dominant isolation and loneliness narratives within the literature on GVt experiences The findings of the study are discussed in relation to its clinical implications, the strengths and limitations of the methodology, and directions for future research.

Contemporary debates in anarchism, particularly the conceptual debates sparked by the development of post-anarchism and those surrounding the emergence of the anti-globalization movement, have brought an old question back to the table: what is anarchism? This study analyzes the canonical representations of anarchism as a political movement and political philosophy in order to reflect on the ways in which that critical question, 'what is anarchism?' has been answered in mainstream literature. It examines the way that the story of anarchism has been told and through a critical review, it discusses an alternative approach. For this purpose, two seminal canon-building texts, Paul Eltzbacher's The Great Anarchists, and George Woodcock's Anarchism have been identified and their influence is discussed, together with the representations of anarchism in textbooks describing political ideologies. The analysis shows how assumptions, biases, and hidden ideological perspectives have been normalized and how they have created an official history of a political movement. In challenging the official account, this study highlights the exclusions and omissions (third world anarchists, women anarchists, queer anarchism and artistic anarchism) that have resulted in the making of the core. The question of how to tell the story of anarchist past carries us to the shores of postmodern history where theoreticians have been discussing the relationship between past and history and the politics of representation. The anarchism offered in this study demands an engagement with a network-like structure of information rather than a linear, axial structure. Consequently, this study aims to show several layers of problems in the existing dominant historical representation of one of the richest political ideologies, anarchism; and then to discuss ways of representing the past and especially the anarchist past, to seek an answer to a principal question: what is anarchism?

This thesis examines the gender-subversive potential of mixed-sex martial arts. The research problem takes its significance from the well-documented linkages drawn within feminist research between combat sports and hierarchal gender differentiation. It is posited that from a feminist perspective, gender-subversive physical practices are desirable because they instigate a shift towards fairer and freer bodily discourse, and as such they are deserving of critical academic attention. Furthermore, sex-integrated sports have the potential to lead participants towards embodying and propagating such subversive gender discourses, and when these changes take place within highly masculinised activities such as combat sports, the significance of this subversion is amplified. While existing literature has addressed these themes with reference to women s participation in these kinds of activities, there is a relative paucity of sociological work explicitly examining mixed-sex participation, which this thesis is intended to redress. Using semi-structured interviewing, qualitative data were gathered from a group of male and female martial artists across the English East Midlands. The interviews were transcribed and then subjected to discourse analysis. Findings suggested that mixed-sex martial arts does involve gender subversion but that the practice also remains structured by dominant, hierarchal gender discourse in several significant ways. It is therefore suggested that mixed-sex training can present the possibility of gender subversion under particular conditions, such as: martial arts being accessible to both men and women at multiple levels of participation; a normalised presence of women, particularly at higher levels such as being coaches and competitors; participants coming to share an identity as martial artists which is irrespective of sexual difference; and ultimately training being integrated as much as possible, particularly with regard to the more intensely physical, combative aspects, such as sparring. The participants indicated that under these conditions they were able to conceive of and practice their gender differently, in ways which portrayed little or no hierarchal distinction between the sexes, and as such is considered subversive . Following these findings, the thesis ultimately concludes with a brief outline of some recommendations for good practice in martial arts clubs. In this way, the thesis contributes towards feminist understandings of the body and of physical culture, by highlighting one possible way in which to conceive of the sexed body differently from the prevailing norms of hierarchal sexual differentiation.

The perspectives of gay men on college and university campuses is informed by a rich gay social history and extensive roots of community politics. The experiences of gay undergraduate men have been illuminated in segmented ways in scholarly literature to date. This narrative inquiry develops and advances those efforts by exploring how gay undergraduate men construct, experience, and make meaning of their gender as a population ascribing to both liberationist and assimilationist viewpoints. Data for this qualitative study were collected at one public, four-year research university in the southeastern United States in the fall 2015 semester using recorded personal interviews with eleven men. Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed for data analysis. The men included in the study represent a broad range of personal identity backgrounds, including a variety of college majors and years of experience in university study. Self-authorship and queer theoretical frames were used to analyze participants’ gender interpretations. Findings suggest men do not understand gender in isolation, but in tandem with intersections of familial ethnic and cultural backgrounds, social class status, and involvement on campus. Four major themes of experience that effect self-authorship of gender evolved from narrative analyses: masking, agency, costs, and policing. Implications for higher education professionals, including faculty, staff, and administrators, are discussed. Opportunities for further research in navigating lived experiences of marginalized campus subpopulations are also suggested and explored.

Uppsatsen utgår ifrån Sara Ahmeds bok “Queer Phenomenology – Orientations, Objects, Others”. I uppsatsen diskuteras  hur vi människor upplever världen genom föremålen som omger oss och hur detta orienterar oss på olika sätt. På samma sätt som vissa förmål orienterar oss och gör att vi följer normativa linjer så kan andra föremål, eller föremål i andra situationer bryta dessa linjer och desorintera oss. Konst skulle kunna ses som sådana desorienteringsföremål som låter oss se världen på nya sätt. Uppsatsen innehåller också en diskusion kring induktiva resonemang i realtion till att förstå och navigera sig i välden och hur dessa år både nödvändiga och otillräckliga.

<p>“War Worlds” reads twentieth-century British and Anglophone literature to examine the social practices of marginal groups (pacifists, strangers, traitors, anticolonial rebels, queer soldiers) during the world wars. This dissertation shows that these diverse “enemies within” England and its colonies—those often deemed expendable for, but nonetheless threatening to, British state and imperial projects—provided writers with alternative visions of collective life in periods of escalated violence and social control. By focusing on the social and political activities of those who were not loyal citizens or productive laborers within the British Empire, “War Worlds” foregrounds the small group, a form of collectivity frequently portrayed in the literature of the war years but typically overlooked in literary critical studies. I argue that this shift of focus from grand politics to small groups not only illuminates surprising social fissures within England and its colonies but provides a new vantage from which to view twentieth-century experiments in literary form.</p> / Dissertation

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The purpose with this paper is to use an older belletristic litterature, like in this case Ett sällsamt öde by Frida Stéenhoff and do a queer theoretical analysis of the short story and then discuss the didactical implications the short story and my reading of the short story can have in the Swedish school and the work to active counteract discrimination. I have designed three questions who can answer my purpose with this paper. The following questions are: - How do Mikael and Ethel challenge the heterosexual standard? - How can the important breakfronts in the short story be comprehended and explained by the queer theory? - What in my reading of the short story can be actualized as relevant in the didactic field? The method I have used to answer these questions is a queer theoretical close reading of the short story. I have been able to use this method with the help of the queer theoretical perspective as my thesis and concepts such as Butler’s perfomativity and Foucault’s categorizing and exlusion are important concepts in my analysis and result. The conclusion I have been able to reach is that the short story Ett sällsamt öde actually is a story that can be used in the Swedish school and the work to actively counteract discrimination. With the queer theoretical perspective as my basis I have been able to find four different aspects that I consider important for the story itself but also to discuss with the students in school. These four aspects are Mikael Ignace’s identity, his suicide and Ethel’s psychological state and her way back to the nursing home as she herself once upon a time was admitted to. These four aspects challenge the heterosexual state and can from a queer perspective interpreted as Frida Stéenhoff’s figurative metaphors for a more comprehending society. With these aspects to my help I want to use queer pedagogy with my students to show them that norms, categorizing and similar aspects are constructions built by human beings and therefore are able to be critically examined and that they are changeable.