<p> The purpose of this project was to partner with a host agency, LA Gay &amp; Lesbian Center, locate a potential funding source, California Community Foundation, and write a grant proposal to obtain funding for an independent living skills group that can address the special needs of the LGBT homeless youth population. A literature review was conducted to examine best practice in working with the population and to examine current policies and programs that work to address the needs of this population. The independent living skills group will better prepare the target population for living on their own. It will increase their level of support and encourage higher and longer rates of employment, better wages, higher educational attainment, less returns to the streets and better psychosocial outcomes. The actual submission or funding of this grant was not a requirement for the successful completion of the project.</p>

abstract: Gays identity is usually cast in generics--statements about an indeterminate number of members in a given category. Sometimes these generic statements often get built up into folk definitions, vague and imprecise ways to talk about objects. Other times generics get co-opted into authentic definitions, definitions that pick out a few traits and assert that real members of the class have these traits and members that do not are simply members by a technicality. I assess how we adopt these generic traits into our language and what are the ramifications of using generic traits as a social identity. I analyze the use of authentic definitions in Queer Theory, particularly Michael Warner's use of authentic traits to define a normative Queer identity. I do not just simply focus on what are the effects, but how these folk or authentic definitions gain currency and, furthermore, how can they be changed. I conclude with an analytic account of what it means to be gay and argue that such an account will undercut many of the problems associated with folk or authentic definitions about being gay. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. Philosophy 2012

Abstract not available.

This thesis is an exploration of expressions and representations of heteronormalized gender and sexuality discourses constructed by a group of students and educators involved in a pilot program at an eastern Ontario vocational high school. These performances of stereotyped queer identities or experiences overpower and silence the performances of identities outside the norm. Moreover, by defining what queerness is through a heterosexual frame, mainstream curricula defines what is acceptable (in education), and what is perceived as unwanted deviant queerness. Within this study I will reiterate the students' and educators' responses, reactions and opinions on a range of queer issues, and through autoethnography and currere methodologies, I will analyse my past and present reactions to queerness within the classroom in order to inform pedagogical strategies that one could possibly approach issues of heteronormalization in the future.

<p> My dissertation, <i>Performing Politics: Visibility, Identity, and Meaning-Making in Docudrama,</i> challenges scholars' privileging of documentary theatre, which relies solely on primary source material such as trial transcripts, over docudrama, which allows a blending of primary sources with fiction. I focus on contemporary docudrama theatre practitioners in the United States, and specifically on productions that address issues of gender and sexuality. My work argues for the feminist potential of docudrama to disrupt hierarchies of knowledge and destabilize the primacy of the primary source. I demonstrate in Chapter One that in a docudrama like Paula Kamen's <i> Jane: Abortion and the Underground,</i> "reality" operates alongside the imaginative potential of fiction, thus providing practitioners and audiences a unique realm in which to tackle difficult and politically charged issues. My second chapter argues that the interdisciplinarity of documentary theatre can be a feminist ethnographic model for scholar-artists to employ ethical research methods for artistic engagement. Through a critical examination of E. Patrick Johnson's <i>Sweet Tea,</i> I argue that reflexivity and the post-show talkback are promising tools for foregrounding the practitioner's positionality and raising public consciousness. Finally, I challenge implications that documentary theatre is inherently pedagogical. Through an analysis of Dustin Lance Black's 8, I question the ways in which parroting primary source material reifies dominant ideologies, further entrenching cultural hierarchies. I conclude by considering other promising feminist attributes of docudrama, specifically the symbiotic potential of dialoging documentary scholarship with scholarship on queer temporalities.</p>

<p> This thesis seeks to expand understandings of resistance, particularly in the context of everyday actions and social institutions. It achieves this by tracing the development of a gay community that became increasingly visible in Lafayette, Louisiana, from the late 1960s through the late 1980s. By crafting their own social mores and spaces, religious institutions, Mardi Gras associations, AIDS service organization, and political association, gay men resisted and contested efforts to marginalize or denigrate their identities and desires. Relying on oral histories and periodicals distributed within gay bars, this work highlights the importance of primarily non-political institutions in affirming gay identity, same-sex desire, and gender nonconformity. It finds agency within a group that has a largely undocumented history in Louisiana, outside of New Orleans. Previous scholarship on gay communities has focused too broadly on entire states or too exclusively on major metropolitan areas. This thesis, then, also brings to light the experiences of gay men in a small southern city, tracking the development of various means of resistance within that community.</p>

<p> Three dances, <i>On This Day, Panties and Pathologies </i>, and <i>Naked Spotlight Silver</i> were choreographed and performed in fulfillment of the requirements to complete an M.F.A. degree in dance. The performances took place at the Martha B. Knoebel Dance Theater located on the campus of California State University, Long Beach. <i> On This Day</i> premiered October 2012, <i>Panties and Pathologies </i> premiered March 2013, and Naked Spotlight Silver premiered October 2013. </p><p> This thesis examines how each project investigates choreographic approaches used in concert dance to communicate issues of gender and sexuality as well as participate in a discourse on identity politics. The three dance pieces attempted to confront themes of marriage equality, representation and the marketing of femininity, and queer identity representations in performance. Each piece was unique in its methodologies and served as an explorative approach to political communication and artistic development.</p>

This research project attempted to identify and describe the essence of the experience of being an out lesbian in elite coaching. Through the use of a feminist epistemology, a phenomenological methodology, and in-depth interviews with eight high performance coaches who identify as lesbian, it was possible to identify and describe the essence of their experiences being out lesbians in elite coaching. The data were analyzed using an inductive phenomenological analysis procedure. The six themes that emerged from the data were: sexism, lesbophobia, the old boys' club, acknowledgement and positive reinforcement, the supportive feminist network, and the nature of the job. Sport was identified as a domain rife with sexism, lesbophobia, and dominated by the old boys' club all of which negatively impacted the lesbian coaches' experiences and career advancement. However, with positive reinforcement of their lesbian identity and the supportive feminist network, the participants nevertheless experienced great personal and professional success.

<p> The Christian ex-gay movement was born in 1973 with the founding of Exodus International, which would soon become an international umbrella ministry purporting reparative "ex-gay" therapies as a viable method of dealing with "unwanted same-sex attractions". In 2012, then-president of Exodus, Alan Chambers, renounced reparative therapies in recognition of the wide-spread harm they had caused. In June of 2013, Chambers announced his intention to close Exodus' doors. Aspects of minority discrimination inherent to the broader Christian sex prescription and mirrored in the Christian ex-gay movement are discussed, along with the influence of the Post-Victorian conceptualization of sexuality on ex-gay ideology, the social movement ideologies driving the reparative therapeutic model, and the ex-gay and pro-gay Christian hermeneutics of the queer-relevant Biblical canon. In its final days, Exodus International served as a methodological tool to discern ex-gay collective action frames. The present research purposively sampled Exodus Association member churches and qualitatively analyzed the framing work performed by Exodus Association pastors in sermons addressing homosexuality. The data was coded according to the core collective action framing tasks conceptualized by David Snow and Robert Benford: diagnosis, prognosis, and motivation. A clear division among the churches emerged as themes from the "pulpit discourse" unfolded, one faction emphasizing truths and objectifying the issue of homosexuality, and the other faction emphasizing grace and humanizing homosexuals as people. The division of member churches of the now-dead Exodus Association into truth and grace perspectives is discussed as a reflection of the splintering of the larger ex-gay movement. </p>

<p> Transpersonal genealogy is the experience of feeling pulled toward and guided by deceased ancestors in researching their history, and how such genealogy enriches the psychospiritual development of the researcher. In this autoethnographic study, I explored such experience and enrichment by composing a narrative of my own ancestor's life as an early Mormon in the 19th century juxtaposed against my lived experience as a lesbian in the late 20th and early 21st century. Based on primary sources, historical documents, family lore, and my own felt-sense, I constructed a narrative that explored the lived experience of my fourth great grandmother, Elizabeth "Betsey" Arnold n&eacute;e Bliss. Contemporary sources and my own personal narrative were woven together with Betsey's story. Significant events in both of our lives were compared to demonstrate how my pull to learn more about her life has brought exceptional insight into the events of my own life. Creative expression further deepened my understanding and focus on significant events in both Betsey's and my life. I wrote the first 3 chapters (Introduction, Literature Review, and Research Method), conferred with 2 of Betsey's other descendants: 1 of my cousins who was a bishop in the Mormon Church to corroborate his understanding of the church's history and doctrine, and a second of my Mormon cousins on her transpersonal experiences conducting genealogy. Then through Michael Harner's approach to shamanic journeying, I contacted our shared ancestor regarding the details of her story and how they intertwined with mine. I wove the results of the interviews including the recurring themes of societal and personal neglect, persecution, perseverance, and resilience throughout the narrative comprising the fourth chapter. In the final chapter, I provided a reflection on my experience of the dissertation process including potential applications and transpersonal implications of the results, how I was transformed by the research, and ideas for future study. </p>