When Donald Trump took the stage as the Republican presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, he made a historical appeal to LGBTQ Americans: to the boisterous applause of a Republican audience, he promised "to protect LGBTQ citizens from the violence and oppression of a hateful foreign ideology." Utilizing this historical moment as an indicator of shifting political views around LGBTQ rights in the Republican Party and the US nation-state as a whole, this paper links contemporary iterations of the War on Terror to the legalization of same-sex marriage in June 2015. Connecting same-sex marriage to the US nation-building project, I argue that the "dignity" newly available to certain queer folks via the institution of marriage makes possible an articulation of queer-defensibility that services a Republican investment in the aging War on Terror and the sustained targeting and hyper-surveillance of Muslims globally.

In this two-manuscript dissertation, framed through queer and minority stress theories, I focus on heteronormative pressures and their impact on sexual identity fluidity and health of lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and young adults. Heteronormativity, or the expectation to meet heterosexual norms in relationships, may be stressful for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) youth and be linked to poorer health. In particular, I focus on bisexual young people because bisexual people can enter into either same- or different-gender relationships; these young people could experience pressure from family members and religious communities to conform to heterosexual norms, resulting in sexual identity transitions that could explain health differences between sexual minority groups. In the first manuscript, I conducted life history narratives interviews with 14 racially and ethnically diverse youth and young adults between the ages of 18-24 on how LGB youth make sense of expectations to conform to heterosexual norms and how their experiences vary based on youths’ characteristics. In the second manuscript, I used structural equation modeling analysis of one of the largest community samples of LGB youth and young adults between the ages of 15-21 in the U.S. to examine youths' current and future relationship desires in a broader system of heteronormative expectations and how these expectations operate as mechanisms to influence the mental health of sexual minority youth. Qualitative results from the first manuscript show that for many youth and youth adults, gender and sexuality intersect to influence their experiences of heteronormativity: Gender and sexuality were conflated for gay men who stated that their gender nonconformity meant that family members already knew their sexuality before they came out as gay. Many bisexual women described their experiences being gender conforming in which they struggled to legitimize their sexuality to others because they were feminine. Though gay and lesbian identities were present in discussions of gender, an expression of gender that signaled and was named as bisexuality was fundamentally missing in the interviews. That is, participants did not describe a gender presentation that would indicate someone attracted to more than one gender. Participants consistently considered childbearing, but not marriage, to be highly desirable. Latino participants discussed heteronormativity through the racialized lens of machismo. However, religion was a greater source of pressure to conform to heterosexuality for Latino participants than were racial communities. My quantitative results from the second manuscript showed that gay men, lesbian women, and bisexual men are more likely to desire same-gender marriages later in life compared to bisexual women, who are more likely to desire different-gender marriages. Participants who desired different-gender marriage were more likely to identify as a different sexual identity over time. However, neither relationship desires nor sexual identity transitions related to depressive symptoms. The findings of this manuscript suggest that initial transition to a sexual minority identity may be the most vulnerable time for youth. After this initial transition, lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth may be inoculated to stress related to identity transitions, even in the context of heteronormativity. This research informs queer and minority stress theories: Gender, sexuality, and family norms intersect to structure how youth understand heteronormativity and predicts whether youth maintain their sexual identity, but such norms might not be stressors that influence health after youth first identify as LGB.

<p>Confronting the rapidly increasing, worldwide reliance on biometric technologies to surveil, manage, and police human beings, my dissertation <italic>Informatic Opacity: Biometric Facial Recognition and the Aesthetics and Politics of Defacement</italic> charts a series of queer, feminist, and anti-racist concepts and artworks that favor opacity as a means of political struggle against surveillance and capture technologies in the 21st century. Utilizing biometric facial recognition as a paradigmatic example, I argue that today's surveillance requires persons to be informatically visible in order to control them, and such visibility relies upon the production of technical standardizations of identification to operate globally, which most vehemently impact non- normative, minoritarian populations. Thus, as biometric technologies turn exposures of the face into sites of governance, activists and artists strive to make the face biometrically illegible and refuse the political recognition biometrics promises through acts of masking, escape, and imperceptibility. Although I specifically describe tactics of making the face unrecognizable as "defacement," I broadly theorize refusals to visually cohere to digital surveillance and capture technologies' gaze as "informatic opacity," an aesthetic-political theory and practice of anti- normativity at a global, technical scale whose goal is maintaining the autonomous determination of alterity and difference by evading the quantification, standardization, and regulation of identity imposed by biometrics and the state. My dissertation also features two artworks: <italic>Facial Weaponization Suite</italic>, a series of masks and public actions, and <italic>Face Cages</italic>, a critical, dystopic installation that investigates the abstract violence of biometric facial diagramming and analysis. I develop an interdisciplinary, practice-based method that pulls from contemporary art and aesthetic theory, media theory and surveillance studies, political and continental philosophy, queer and feminist theory, transgender studies, postcolonial theory, and critical race studies.</p> / Dissertation

Essa dissertação percorre a obra da escritora francesa, Violette Leduc, elaborando uma reflexão crítica a partir das noções de performatividade e performance, tal como conceituadas por Judith Butler. O núcleo da investigação proposta é a maneira como tais noções operam na obra leduciana, sobretudo sua trilogia autobiográfica, composta pelos livros La bâtarde, La folie en tête e La chasse à lamour. A partir da lente da crítica feminista, com especial atenção aos estudos queer (sem, no entanto, esquecer as vertentes críticas que os precedem), a análise da obra de Leduc torna-se, também, uma discussão sobre poder, gêneros, sexualidades e potências da linguagem literária. As narradoras-personagens dos livros de Leduc constantemente se debruçam sobre a própria obra da autora e a tomam para si: reescrevem os livros publicados como ficcionais, denunciam suas estratégias criativas, falam sobre os impasses do exercício da escrita, desestabilizam a obra de Violette Leduc, transformando-a constantemente. Para além disso, há na literatura leduciana um questionamento recorrente das estruturas sociais, culturais e políticas que regulam os gêneros, os desejos e as práticas sexuais. Tanto a lesbiandade, a bissexualidade, a heterossexualidade, a fluidez dos desejos e das possibilidades para sua práxis quanto as feminilidades e masculinidades, são temas narrados e explorados ao longo de toda a trilogia autobiográfica e também dos romances. Tais indagações culminam em transformações na própria escrita literária, revelando como característica central da literatura leduciana a relação simbiótica entre criação (performance) e citação (performatividade). / The following dissertation explores the work of french writer, Violette Leduc through Judith Butlers definition for both gender performativity and performance notions. The investigations core is the part such notions play in Leducs work, especially her autobiographical trilogy, which comprehends the novels La bâtarde, La folie en tête and La chasse à lamour. This research views Leducs work from the feminist criticism perspective, with special attention to queer studies (but without losing account of the critical thinking that preceded it). The result is an literary analysis that transforms into a discussion of various themes, such as power, genders, sexualities and the different potentials for literary language. Leducs autobiographical protagonist-narrators constantly address Leducs own literary work and claim their ownership over it: they rewrite Leducs fiction and also denounce their creative strategies as well as her impasses with literary writing. The result is a narrator that destabilizes Violette Leducs work, persistently transforming it. Beyond that, in the leducian literature there is a recurrent interrogation of social, political and cultural structures that regulate genders, desires and sexual practices. Lesbianhood, bissexuality, heterossexuality, feminility and masculinity as well as desire and its practical potentialities are themes explored throughout the entire autobiographical trilogy and also in the fictional work. Such inquiries result in transformations on the very literary writing, revealing a key aspect of Leducs literature: the symbiotic relationship established between creation (performance) and citation (performativity).

Esta tese tem como objetivo principal apresentar Princesa (1994), de Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque e Maurizio Jannelli. Embora escrito a quatro mãos, o texto nasce de uma narrativa em três vozes, dentro do cárcere romano de Rebbibia: Fernanda Farias, uma transexual brasileira; Maurizio Jannelli, um ex-terrorista italiano; Giovanni Tamponi, um ex-assaltante de bancos de origem sarda. Princesa narra a história de múltiplos trânsitos entre cidades, países, identidades, gêneros, consciências, contextos e corpos e, devido à sua particular gênese criativa, de conteúdo, de edição e de publicação, encontra-se em uma zona fronteiriça, o que nos levou a realizar, de forma semelhante, longas e intricadas viagens pela teoria literária. Assim, para o estudo da obra, recorremos à noção de entrelugar, com base nos pressupostos de Santiago (1971), Bhabha (1998) e à teoria da tradução, de Santos (2002); de autoria, gênero e nacionalidade literária; de dialogismo com obras pertencentes tanto ao sistema literário italiano quanto brasileiro; e, por último, nos apoiamos nos estudos da teoria queer, bem como nos Estudos Culturais e Pós-Coloniais, na medida em que a narrativa entrelaça a história da transformação de um corpo, para além dos limites do sexo e do gênero, com questões como pertencimento, Estado-Nação e migrações contemporâneas. / This thesis main objective is to introduce Princesa (1994), written by Fernanda Farias de Albuquerque e Maurizio Jannelli. Although it was written by four hands, the text stems off a narrative of three voices, inside Rome´s prison of Rebbibia: Fernanda Farias, a Brazilian transsexual; Maurizio Janelli, an Italian ex-terrorist; Giovanni Tamponi, a former Sardinian bank robber. Princesa narrates the story of multiple transits between cities, countries, identities, genders, consciences, contexts and bodies and, due to its particular creative genesis, of content, edition and publication, lies on a borderland, which makes us realize, in a similar way, long and intricated journeys through literary theory. Therefore, for the study of this work we resort to the notion of in-between, based on the assumptions of Santiago (1971), Bhabha (1998) and on the theory of translation of Santos (2002); on authorship, genres and literary nationalities; on dialogism with titles belonging to the Italian literature system as to the Brazilian; and lastly, support ourselves on the study of the queer theory, as to the Postcolonial and Cultural Studies, and as far as the narrative interweaves the story of the transformation of a body, to beyond the limits of gender, with matters as belonging,Nation state and contemporary migration.

Este trabalho tem como propósito lançar uma reflexão sobre as maneiras pelas quais os usos descontextualizados da roupa podem consistir em uma subversão do sistema, sobretudo por meio das práticas de crossdressing. A moda, aqui, foi analisada em dois movimentos: o primeiro, que consiste no reforço ao modelo binário de gênero; e o segundo, em que se aproveita de fissuras oriundas da própria norma para causar-lhe perturbações. A partir de referenciais teóricometodológicos feministas e queer, foram realizadas investigações qualitativas, como entrevistas e pesquisas de campo, que possibilitaram uma perspectiva dos sujeitos como provisórios e cambiantes, contribuindo para que suas narrativas fossem compreendidas de maneira mais ampla e menos limitada. A roupa, no contexto do crossdressing, foi observada como parte fundamental da construção das subjetividades e da imagem feminina à qual as crossdressers aspiram, denunciando precisamente o caráter construído da naturalidade dos gêneros que encontra endosso na moda. Ainda que parte dos discursos de produção da normalidade, a vestimenta encerra inumeráveis possibilidades de (r)existência que desestabilizam e desmantelam hegemonias / This research aims to propose a reflection on the ways through which the decontextualized uses of clothing can consist in a subversion of the system, especially through crossdressing practices. Hence fashion was analyzed in two movements: the first, which consists in reinforcing the binary gender model; and the second, in which it takes advantage of the cracks originating from the very norm in order to disturb it. From feminist and queer theoretical-methodological frameworks, qualitative inquiries such as interviews and fieldwork were carried out, which permitted a perspective of the subjects as provisional and mutable, allowing their narratives to be comprehended in a wider and less constrained manner. Clothing, within the crossdressing context, was seen as a fundamental part in the construction of the subjectivities and of the feminine image to which crossdressers aspire. That way, it precisely exposes the fabricated character of gender, which finds support in fashion. Though being part of the production of normality discourses, clothes encompass numberless possibilities of (r)existence that destabilize and dismantle hegemonies

The Atlantic Canadian provinces (Newfoundland, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia) have long been associated with agricultural romanticism. Economically and culturally entrenched in a stereotype of quaintness (Anne of Green Gables is just one of many examples), the region continuously falls into a cycle of inferiority. In this thesis, I argue that queer theory can be infused into performance analysis to better situate local theatre practice as a site of mobilization. Using terms and concepts from queer geographers and other scholars, particularly those who address capitalism (Gibson-Graham, Massey), this research outlines a methodology of performance analysis that looks through a queer lens in order to destabilize normative assumptions about Atlantic Canada. Three contemporary performances are studied in detail: Christian Barry, Ben Caplan, and Hannah Moscovitch's Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story, Ryan Griffith's The Boat, and Xavier Gould’s digital personality “Jass-Sainte Bourque”. Combining Ric Knowles' "dramaturgy of the perverse" (The Theatre of Form 1999) with Sara Ahmed's "queer phenomenology" (Queer Phenomenology 2006) allows for a thorough queer analysis of these three performances. I argue that such an approach positions new Atlantic Canadian performances and dramaturgies as sites of aesthetic and semantic disorientation. Building on Jill Dolan's "utopian performatives" (Utopia in Performance 2005), wherein the audiences experience a collective "lifting above" of normative dramaturgical structures, my use of "queer phenomenology" fosters a plurality of unique perspectives. The process of complicating normalizing tendencies helps dismantle generalizing cultural stereotypes.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-11-14T12:27:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlos Antônio Braga de Souza.pdf: 3837923 bytes, checksum: b4aafbae10eb0febe70aba2f4e5413a8 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-11-14T12:27:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Carlos Antônio Braga de Souza.pdf: 3837923 bytes, checksum: b4aafbae10eb0febe70aba2f4e5413a8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-11-09 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present doctoral thesis is a reflection on intersexuality in the face of the complexity of the Brazilian religious system markedly Christian. In this reflection diverse questions are raised, involving sexualities considered peripheral to the patriarchal system. These peripheral sexualities enter into political and academic debate, whether through the feminist movement, the LGBTQIA + collective, or the queer theory. The struggle for political rights in these segments has met with strong resistance from conservative sectors. In this sense a system reactive to the achievements of women, of the LGBTQIA + collectives, is identified in religions. The religions provide support to conservative sectors, which are organized in the institutional political scenario, intercepting advances in the area of human rights and enactment of the laity of the state. This research aims to provide subsidies to understand the increase in intolerance in Brazil, a country with high rates of fatal violence on LGBTQIA + collectives and on women, according to data presented in the thesis. At the same time, it also seeks to reshape the Brazilian cultural system from its peripheral position, with strong postcolonialist traits, in the face of the central European and North American neoliberal system / A presente tese de doutorado é uma reflexão sobre a intersexualidade diante da complexidade do sistema religioso brasileiro marcadamente cristão. Nessa reflexão questões diversas são suscitadas, envolvendo sexualidades consideradas periféricas ao sistema patriarcal. Essas sexualidades periféricas entram no debate político e acadêmico, seja através do movimento feminista, dos coletivos LGBTQIA+ e da teoria queer. A luta por direitos políticos desses segmentos tem encontrado forte resistência de setores conservadores. Nesse sentido identifica-se nas religiões um sistema reativo às conquistas de mulheres, dos coletivos LGBTQIA+. As religiões fornecem suporte a setores conservadores, que se organizam no cenário político institucional, interceptando avanços na área dos direitos humanos e na promulgação da laicidade do estado. Essa pesquisa visa fornecer subsídios para entender o aumento da intolerância no Brasil, um país com alto índice de violência fatal sobre coletivos LGBTQIA+ e sobre as mulheres, de acordo com dados apresentados na tese. Ao mesmo tempo, pretende também redimensionar o sistema cultural brasileiro a partir de sua posição periférica, de fortes traços pós-colonialista, diante do sistema neoliberal central europeu e norte-americano

This thesis explores the relationship between sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) and career progression (CP) by applying a performative, post-structuralist, and queer theory influenced approach to career theory. It analyses how, that is to say in what ways and by what means, homosexual and transgender difference is produced through the processes associated with CP. It is based on 36 interviews with individuals of diverse ages and occupations who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender (LGBT) and are based in the south-west of England. Hitherto career theory has based its understanding of CP on individual differences and/or category based explanations. The contribution of this thesis comes from using an anti-categorical understanding of difference to show how SOGI and CP are interacting disciplinary regimes. SOGI not only affects CP through assumptions about capability and suitability, but difference is constituted through CP – as the associated acts and interactions shape the way we think of ourselves, our possibilities, our becoming. Responsibility for achieving SOGI and CP is devolved to the individual, who is then often forced to prioritise one or the other. The findings show some shared patterns (which are argued to be based on situational, performative, embodied experiences not identity categories), such as minimising or compensating for difference, femininity as a locus for limiting discourse and self-employment as a mode of exclusion. Trajectories, choices and aspirations are affected, though not necessarily disadvantageously, leading to the conceptualisation of careers as queered by homosexual and transgender difference. This research contributes by arguing that rather than consider CP in terms of category based ceilings, CP and the production of difference can be understood as multiplicitous, emergent, and co-productive processes. This thesis forms a timely contribution to understanding LGBT experience during a period of intense change in social recognition, which includes discourses of normalisation, by suggesting that we still need to recognise the often subtle internal and external reiterations of heteronormative discourse that produce difference.

The aim of this study is to analyze how homosexuality is represented in the modern tv-series Riverdale (2016-). Two confirmed homosexual characters from the show, Kevin Keller and Cheryl Blossom have been used to examine this. To showcase how their homosexuality is represented a multimodal discourse analysis was conducted. The method was used to analyze 34 scenes from varying episodes of the currently available three seasons. Queer theory was used as a theoretical point of departure in the study of the characters sexuality. Findings of the analysis shows that Kevin often withers down to stereotype of being a feminine and comedic gay best friend. Cheryl on the other hand is shown being more than just a stereotype but however noticeably lacking in sexual relations with her same-sex partner. Comparisons with previous studies was further used to see how homosexuality is constructed in the show. Through the comparison similar representation could be found from previous gay characters in terms of stereotypes and roles. The study showed however that Cheryl and Kevin’s depiction in the show was noticeably more positive.