Thesis (M.A. History)--University of Waikato, 2007. / Title from PDF cover (viewed April 9, 2008) Includes bibliographical references (p. 127-140)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 155-164). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Doctor of Philosophy / Following on the proposition that the history of Western thought is importantly constituted by a discourse of male-male pedagogic or pederastic relations stretching in narrative form, according to Allan Bloom, from the Phaedrus to Death in Venice, the deconstructive project of reading 'against the visible grain' has been mobilised in the interests of interrogating and unsettling what can only be defined as homophobic misreadings of Martin Boyd. Critical discursive practice, by the near-uniform imposition of a tacit censorship, has refused by means of erasure, silence and repression to reflect on Boyd from the perspective of sexual definition or same-sex love and desire, presumably in the belief that there are no interpretive consequences. In the process, an hypothesis of Boyd as himself mounting an act of social criticism by surreptitiously contesting conventional and hierarchical typologies of masculinity in the margins of institutionalised and popular hegemonic culture, seems to have escaped inscription in the canonical records. Martin Boyd's 'dividedness', 'doubleness', ambivalences and dichotomies point to a complexity that is not ultimately or ontologically resolvable. The Derridean 'de-sedimentation' modus operandi used here makes no claim to a relevatory hermeneutics of Hegelian essence. It does, however, utilise the various tropes of ambivalence, uncertainty, anxiety and incoherence — aspects of Boyd which may be correlated, perhaps, with his sense of the unheimlich or not being at home with himself or his environment — to reposition him in terms of his psychosexual constitution. In the process, the advocacy of aestheticism and pleasure for which he is recognised is found to be tempered and/or subverted by an overt recourse to the transgressive and 'decadent', elements irretrievably linked to his fetishization of the beautiful male body and his obsessive redeployment of the Hellenic ideal of manly love. The interpretive frameworks applied in the reclamation of the 'different' sensibility Boyd articulates by means of an alternately subtilized and strenuous challenge to sex/gender identity and behavioural norms encompass a field ranging from late nineteenth century theoretical discourse on homosexuality through to the intertextual influences of cultural innovators like Pater and Wilde. It includes reference to the literary strategies devised by Sedgwick to uncover deviance and 'erotic pathways'; it surveys the psychoanalytic hypotheses of Freud and Adler as relevant; and it pays heed to an aesthetics of the religio-erotic.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2004. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Apr. 29, 2006). Advisor: William J. Tyler, Dept. of East Asian Language and Literatures. Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 376-400).

Thesis--Leipzig. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-172).

published_or_final_version / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

The intention of this masters thesis is to examine how homosexuality is represented in Thomas Mann's 1913 novella Death in Venice, and to demonstrate how Mann was able to incorporate such a taboo issue in a story that Wilhelmine Germany would come to embrace. / The study consists of four chapters which examine four contexts in which the story, for the purposes of this thesis, should be interpreted. The first is historical, in which the previous reception of the novella, as well as the author's own struggle with his identity, is investigated. In the second, Mann's philosophical paradigms to represent homoeroticism, drawn largely from classical Greece and Nietzsche, are examined. Freud's views of homosexuality and sublimation furnish the basis for the third chapter, in which sublimated imagery of sexual desire in the text is considered. Finally, the narrative strategies employed by Mann that render the story palatable to his heterosexual, bourgeois reading audience are illustrated in the fourth chapter.

The research presented in this dissertation examines South African queer autobiography. The primary texts that I have chosen to analyse are four recent collections of autobiographical accounts by queer-identifying individuals, which I believe to represent a current trend in queer life writing in the South African context. These four texts are Hijab: Unveiling Queer Muslim Lives (Hendricks 2009), which is a collection of short pieces of writing by queer Muslims; Yes I Am! Writing by South African Gay Men (Malan & Johaardien 2010), a collection of writing by gay men; Reclaiming the L-Word: Sappho’s Daughters Out in Africa (Diesel 2011), a collection of lesbian writing; and Trans: Transgender Life Stories from South Africa (Morgan, Marais & Wellbeloved 2011 [2009]), a collection of writing by transgender individuals. I have isolated a number of chosen narratives from each collection and engaged in a critical exploration of the construction of autobiographical selfhood through the theoretical lens of collective identity and the African humanist concept of ubuntu. I begin by individually examining the major concepts relating to queer theory, ubuntu, collective identity and autobiography, and then charting the manner in which they intersect in the primary texts. I illustrate the relational nature of autobiographical self-construction by examining how it is constructed in various social locations and the interactions in these locations, including: community spaces, family spaces and spiritual/religious spaces. I foreground how the community is represented as shaping the family structure, and how each of these two institutions contributes to the manner in which the autobiographical subject views and presents the self textually. In terms of ubuntu and spirituality/religion I explore the Ubuntu Theology of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. I consider how it offers new modes and progressive ways of positioning the queer autobiographical self in terms of spirituality/religion, especially when one considers the often discriminatory manner in which monotheistic religion views the position of queer-identifying individuals. I conduct my analysis in this dissertation in a manner that not only seeks to engage with the literariness of each of the primary texts, but also highlights the socio-political value inherent in the texts, as well as how they function as vital tools in the struggle for equality that the queer minority is currently engaged in. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.

Errata slips inserted inside front cover. / Bibliography: leaves 307-331. / v, 331 leaves ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of English Language and Literature, 1994

Doctor of Philosophy / Following on the proposition that the history of Western thought is importantly constituted by a discourse of male-male pedagogic or pederastic relations stretching in narrative form, according to Allan Bloom, from the Phaedrus to Death in Venice, the deconstructive project of reading 'against the visible grain' has been mobilised in the interests of interrogating and unsettling what can only be defined as homophobic misreadings of Martin Boyd. Critical discursive practice, by the near-uniform imposition of a tacit censorship, has refused by means of erasure, silence and repression to reflect on Boyd from the perspective of sexual definition or same-sex love and desire, presumably in the belief that there are no interpretive consequences. In the process, an hypothesis of Boyd as himself mounting an act of social criticism by surreptitiously contesting conventional and hierarchical typologies of masculinity in the margins of institutionalised and popular hegemonic culture, seems to have escaped inscription in the canonical records. Martin Boyd's 'dividedness', 'doubleness', ambivalences and dichotomies point to a complexity that is not ultimately or ontologically resolvable. The Derridean 'de-sedimentation' modus operandi used here makes no claim to a relevatory hermeneutics of Hegelian essence. It does, however, utilise the various tropes of ambivalence, uncertainty, anxiety and incoherence — aspects of Boyd which may be correlated, perhaps, with his sense of the unheimlich or not being at home with himself or his environment — to reposition him in terms of his psychosexual constitution. In the process, the advocacy of aestheticism and pleasure for which he is recognised is found to be tempered and/or subverted by an overt recourse to the transgressive and 'decadent', elements irretrievably linked to his fetishization of the beautiful male body and his obsessive redeployment of the Hellenic ideal of manly love. The interpretive frameworks applied in the reclamation of the 'different' sensibility Boyd articulates by means of an alternately subtilized and strenuous challenge to sex/gender identity and behavioural norms encompass a field ranging from late nineteenth century theoretical discourse on homosexuality through to the intertextual influences of cultural innovators like Pater and Wilde. It includes reference to the literary strategies devised by Sedgwick to uncover deviance and 'erotic pathways'; it surveys the psychoanalytic hypotheses of Freud and Adler as relevant; and it pays heed to an aesthetics of the religio-erotic.