Fairy tales’ magic is powerful because it has the potential to enter different cultures at different times. They teleport readers and displace them in alternative realities to shock them with a profoundly different world where there are possibilities they have not seen and impossibilities to be accepted. However, despite the clichéd opening of most fairy tales— “once upon a time”, the lack of a traceable origin and the arbitrariness of the tales’ contextualization, they are not ‘timeless’ or ‘universal’. These tales have a history. They evolve with new plots, characterizations and morals in response to the dominant discourses in different societies. For this reason, Red Riding Hood is not always a helpless prey of the predator Wolf, who can either be swallowed alive or depend on the huntsman who comes to rescue her. In fact, in contemporary re-writings, the heroine appears to be ‘liberated’ from the victim status she attains in the canonical versions of the tale by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, as she can now choose to sleep with the Wolf. I believe the evolution of the Red Riding Hood tale shows the changing values and epistemes female readers have been subjected to and internalized over the years in different societies to discipline themselves. As different powers, including the patriarchal, second-wave feminist and postfeminist discourses interfere with the tale, different ‘truths’ have been advocated to construct different images of a ‘proper woman’. The main questions my thesis seeks to answer are: whether women can be liberated from these ‘truths’ and epistemes that subjectify them, how such liberation has been attempted, at what costs, and how successful these attempts have been.

A semester spent studying gender through the eyes of a female Hamlet.

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Much of the literature on lesbian relationships links the positive feminine relational trait (intimacy or communion) with problems of psychological merger (Burch, 1982, 1985; Decker, 1984; Elise, 1986; Krestan and Bepko, 1980). Karpel (1976), describes psychological merger as a person's "state of ernbeddedness in and undifferentiation within, the relational context" (p. 67) . This study explores the femininity/masculinity sex role traits as they relate to psychological merger in lesbian couples. Thirty-eight lesbian couples were recruited through friendship and acquaintance networks, newsletter announcements and direct solicitation of members of the Portland Lesbian Community Project (LCP). Couples had to have been living together in a primary relationship for one year or longer in order to qualify for the study.

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With the number of Chinese gay men affected by HIV rising annually and social media serving as popular information sources, this study aims to examine the information channels used by Chinese gay men to acquire safer sex knowledge and to test the effect of safer sex knowledge, information channel use, safe-sex communication with sexual partners on Chinese gay men's safer sex practices. Due to the sensitive topic and hard-to-reach population, a snowball sampling method was used to recruit eligible participants. Specifically, an online survey was designed and distributed to three LGBT-NGO-related WeChat groups. A total of 191 valid data points were used in the study. Different from previous studies on safer sex knowledge and safer sex practices, this study focused on a marginalized group and examined some of their unique information channels. Descriptive data reveal that social media platforms surpassed traditional channels (e.g., books, school, parents) becoming the most frequently-used channel to obtain safer sex knowledge. In addition, the findings revealed that even though Chinese gay men had high levels of sexual knowledge, they tended not to practice safer behaviors consistently. Chinese gay men also did not communicate with their sexual partners about their previous sexual relationship, HIV/STD testing and results. Regression analyses discovered that safer sex knowledge level and social media use for safer sex knowledge can predict condom use for anal sex. Surprisingly, social media use was associate with high-risk sexual behaviors such as not limiting sexual activity to only one person who only has sex with you. On the other hand, traditional channel use for safer sex knowledge was associated with HIV/STD testing behavior. Implications on health promotion on safer sex practices and HIV/STD prevention were discussed.

This thesis investigates the representation of asexual individuals in the works of Murata Sayaka, Kawakami Mieko, and Kamatani Yuki, all of whom are contemporary Japanese writers that portray near–suffocating social environments in their depictions of modern-day Japan. Their texts illustrate the augmented demands Japanese society places upon a cross-section of asexual and neurodivergent individuals. Despite the thematic and character–related similarities in their works, I argue that each author presents a unique interpretation of how these asexual individuals interact with—and try to integrate into—wider Japanese society and mainstream culture. Murata's texts demonstrate an unapologetically radical separatism by invoking an idealized queer utopia free from constraining notions of heteronormative sexuality present in Japanese society. In contrast, Kawakami's text suggests a more subtle—yet still subversive—integration of asexuality into society, one where asexual individuals strive for the same rights and privileges as all other citizens but still struggle to obtain acceptance or genuine equality. Kamatani's text, on the other hand, strikes a balance between these notions. Our Dreams at Dusk offers a utopic space for asexual and other queer individuals but does not go as far as suggesting a radical separatism like Murata's texts. Analyzing these texts alongside such seminal Queer Theory texts like Adrienne Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, Jack Halberstam's In a Queer Time and Place, and José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia uncovers the hidden sexualities buried within the texts: Not all asexual characters in the texts are explicitly labeled as such, yet they still occupy closeted lifestyles. This innovative examination of the existence of queer spaces within these works demonstrates the increasing prevalence of the presentation of asexual identities in Japan, allowing for the broader discussion of the invisible queer members of Japanese society.

Feminism conjures divisive and at times conflicting thoughts and feelings in the current political climate in the United States. For some, Wonder Woman is a feminist icon, for her devotion to truth, justice, and equality. In recent years, Wonder Woman has become successful in the film industry, and this is reflected by the growing community of cosplayers at comic book conventions. In this study, I examine gender performativity, gender identity, and feminism from the perspective of cosplayers of Wonder Woman. I collected ethnographic data using participant observation and semi-structured interviews with cosplayers at comic book conventions in Florida, Georgia, and Washington, about their experiences in their Wonder Woman costumes. I found that many cosplayers identified with Wonder Woman both in their own personalities and as a feminist icon, and many view Wonder Woman as a larger role model to all people, not just women and girls. The narratives in this study also show cosplay as a form of escapism. Finally, I found that Wonder Woman empowers cosplayers at the individual level but can be envisioned as a force at a wider social level. I conclude that Wonder Woman is an important and iconic figure for understanding the dynamics of culture in the United States. In the era of #MeToo and TimesUp, Wonder Woman is a character that defies normative boundaries of gendered expectations.

Insofar as human beings try to “know” we must define concepts, objects, actions. We label, we distinguish between one concept and another, and in doing this, we make categories. Labels are categories. Our categories are imperfect. Our labels are always relative, defined by and dependent on that which they exclude. The boundaries of our terms, what “counts” as something or what is considered to be within a certain term, are always shifting. Our definitions change based on our method of analysis. For instance, the definition of “human” is different in different disciplines, like science, philosophy, sociology, economics, etc. Given their instability, categories can only be rough approximations of what we mean, and not always very good ones at that. To our detriment, we sometimes forget that they are approximations, and already laden with meaning of their own. Michel Foucault and other thinkers have pointed out that some of our ways of knowing, for example, the scientific method, have become synonymous with truth, objectivity or neutrality. When this happens, we cease to question those ways of knowing, and the questions within those ways of knowing. We forget that the kinds of questions we ask determine the kinds of answers we find. Then, when something that does not prove easily “knowable” or categorizable troubles our ways of knowing, we call it trouble. Instead of remembering that our methods are imperfect, we think that the thing we want to know about is flawed, wrong or bad. This thesis is a reclamation of the flawed, the failed, the queer, a revaluation of it as something positive and productive. It is a reminder to be critical of our categories, and to rule them rather than be ruled by them. Categories are tools, not truth.