<p> Schools present unique opportunities to foster and improve belonging for all students. Meaningful inclusion requires visible and equal representation as well as safe environments (Cerezo and Bergfield, 2013; Sadowski, 2016). Students who may be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning (LGBTQ) deserve equal attention in educational models which seek to be inclusive and acknowledge diverse student populations in schools. Key studies from the United States indicate there is much to be done, suggesting LBGTQ students often do not feel safe or visible in schools (Kosciw, Greytak, Giga, Villenas &amp; Danischewski, 2016). School-based resources, however, such as student-led clubs known as Gay-Straight Alliances, are helping to address the needs of LGBTQ students. The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of a group of LGBTQ students who attend an international school in Asia and who are all regular members of a Gay-Straight Alliance. It aimed to gain a better understanding of their school experience in terms of support systems and structures through the unique lens of an international school. A qualitative research design was implemented through the use of semi-structured interviews with four participants, who voluntarily took part in the study. Seven themes emerged from the study, (1) formal support systems are perceived to be secondary to peer support, (2) less formal support services such as friends and peers carry a higher level of trust, (3) the Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) is the primary, most visible, safe space, (4) outreach beyond the GSA is limited, (5) existing barriers prohibit inclusive practices for LGBTQ students, (6) LGBTQ educational programs would help raise awareness, and (7) There is a need to create and implement school policies, which are more inclusive and will better protect LGBTQ students at the school. Implications of this study entail specialized training for counselors, outreach beyond the confines of the GSA, inclusive policies and targeted LGBTQ educational programs.</p><p>

abstract: Here I explore three varieties of theatrical responses to the cultural amnesia brought about by what scholars have termed “post-AIDS” rhetoric. Specifically, I examine how AIDS history plays, AIDS comedies, and solo plays provide opportunities for theatregoers to participate in, or reflect on the absence of, what I call “AIDS mourning publics.” I understand these publics to be both the groupings of people that gather around a text, film screening, play performance, or event that was created in response to loss due to AIDS, and the text, screenplay, or play text itself when circulated. In these publics participants work through their grief, make political interventions, and negotiate the meanings of AIDS history for gay men whose sexual awakening occurred before and after the development of protease inhibitors. I join theories of grieving, affect in performance, and the public sphere to study these communal events. I use films, plays, and critical reviews to identify how mourning through performance can be therapeutic for cultural and social actors despite activists' and scholars' sole attention to the counterpublicity of these events. Still, counterpublicity remains an important concern because many in the dominant US public sphere consider AIDS to be a benign “manageable condition” in affluent countries like the US. As such, I also present a dramaturgy of mourning and counterpublicity in twenty-first century US AIDS drama and solo performance with attention focused upon how dramatists and solo performers are inviting spectators to engage with, and find new meaning within, this epidemic. For example, I investigate how pairing mourning with genres like comedy produces political interventions within the space between laughing and astonishment. My dramaturgy of mourning also examines recurring themes such as ghosts, the past, intergenerationalism, and AIDS amnesia to interpret how performers have framed individual and collective loss to challenge spectators' understanding of AIDS history. To support my claims I use sources from the New York Public Library Manuscripts and Archives Division, gay and lesbian community newspapers, personal interviews, and my own experiences as a spectator viewing productions of The Normal Heart, thirtynothing, and The VOID. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Theatre 2015

<p> It is within the scope of practice of a speech-language pathologist to work with a client who is transgender for voice. However, regardless of the setting, a speech-language pathologist is likely to encounter a person who is transgender on their caseload. The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association mandates that all of its members be culturally competent when working with clients from different cultural backgrounds, including those from the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer community. </p><p> This thesis pulls from sociological, linguistic, and queer theory literature to provide an in-depth understanding of identity, gender, and transgender identity formation. With this nuanced understanding of these topics, the thesis explores the practical implications to cultural competency, and voice and communication therapy. Additionally, this thesis reviews current topics for debate in Gender Spectrum Voice and Communication therapy.</p><p>

<p> Large bodies of literature reveal two salient experiences during adolescence and young adulthood for many men who identify as gay and bisexual: disclosing one&rsquo;s sexual identity to parents and going to college. Research suggests the reaction of one&rsquo;s parents to sexual identity disclosure serves as a powerful indicator of subsequent health-related and psychosocial outcomes, yet little is known regarding the relationship between parental reaction and accessing college and financial aid. This study explores the lived experiences of White gay and bisexual young men and how they navigated the college choice and financial aid processes. The study investigates three interconnected constructs with regard to one&rsquo;s sexual identity disclosure to his parent: the nature of the college choice process; the navigation of financial aid and scholarships; and other experiences that work to facilitate or restrict the college choice and financial aid processes. This qualitative study employs a phenomenological lens to retrospectively gather data using semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 18 gay and bisexual-identified men, ages 18 to 24 years old, from a large U.S. metropolitan area. Participants were selected using online and phone-based social media dating applications, popular in gay and bisexual men&rsquo;s communities. The findings of this study suggest that prior to disclosure, the young men expressed a perceived fear in coming out to their parents. After disclosure, most participants reported that families were supportive of their sexual identities as well as their college choice process, and all participants went to college with financial aid support from their parents. Due to the limited sample size and specific characteristics of men in this study, future research must be conducted to explore this relationship of sexual identity disclosure and college access further. This study concludes with a set of suggestions and recommendations for parents, counselors, and higher education leaders.</p><p>

<p> The historic 2015 Supreme Court ruling in the case of <i>Obergefell v. Hodges</i>&mdash;which extended marriage equality to every state nationwide&mdash;coupled with an increase in the number of reported same-sex parent households in America (Gates, 2013) has resulted in greater social, political, and academic visibility for same-sex families in recent years (Breshears &amp; Braithwaite, 2014). Despite this increased cultural visibility, because gay parent families (GPFs) fall outside the parameters of the traditional family model (i.e., a married heterosexual husband and wife couple raising biological children) (Baxter, 2014a), they necessarily rely more heavily on discourse to manage their nontraditional family identity (Galvin, 2006; 2014). To date, little is known about how married gay male parents discursively create and sustain family identity and how they position their families in relation to the dominant heteronormative discourses of traditional marriage, family, and fatherhood. Framed by Baxter&rsquo;s (2011) relational dialectics theory&mdash;a heuristic communication theory useful for investigating the meaning-making process&mdash;this study explored the meaning(s) of marriage, family, and fatherhood in married gay fathers&rsquo; relational talk. I interviewed 13 married gay parent dyads twice to collect data from the couples across time as well as member check initial results during secondary interviews. Using contrapuntal analysis, I identified the following discourses at the three sites of meaning-making in the data: the discourses of marriage as symbolic and marriage as practical ; the discourses of traditional family structure and nontraditional family structure ; and the discourses of gay culture and gay fatherhood in addition to the discourses of heteronormative fatherhood and co-parenting. I argue that the couples&rsquo; talk reflected discursive struggles and, in one case, transformation, to generate relational meanings for their family identities. </p><p>

<p> Sustained gay activism in Charlotte, North Carolina, only emerged in response to the HIV AIDS epidemic. Community building among Charlotte&rsquo;s closeted gays and lesbians began in the 1970s with the emergence of safe spaces, particularly gay bars. However, before the mid 1980s, activism was intermittent, largely inward facing, and suffered from over-reliance on a few leaders. As the reality of AIDS gripped the community after 1985, two imperatives created by the epidemic gave rise to sustained gay and lesbian activism. First, the critical need to provide care for people suffering from AIDS galvanized the gay community into action and led to the creation of the Metrolina AIDS Project (MAP). MAP became the first outward looking and visible gay organization in Charlotte, and, critically, it enjoyed a degree of civic legitimacy. However, this civic legitimacy did not extend to the second imperative, the more contentious terrain of AIDS education. In this arena Charlotte&rsquo;s gay activists came into conflict with the Religious Right and the county government, which forced activists to become more politically organized. By the early 1990s, it became clear that further progress would require partnerships with straight allies, but because these allies were motivated largely by sympathy for AIDS there was limited progress on the broader gay rights agenda. The timing of gay activism and the necessity for straight alliances shows that Charlotte&rsquo;s experience as a mid-size Southern city differed from larger metropolitan areas and progressive university/capital cities that have been the focus of previous historiography. </p><p>

abstract: Through the lived experiences of Georgian queer migrants, this thesis argues that the international and national refugee laws and practices are an essential starting point but remain weak and, in some cases, even exclusionary when it comes to protecting lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQI) individuals. Specifically, this thesis documents the experiences of Georgian LGBTQ migrants to reveal the social, political, cultural, and economic factors in Georgia and recipient countries essential to shaping their experiences with belonging and protection. It critically explores how one’s LGBTQ identify shapes their sense of belonging in Georgia, how their identity played a direct role in deciding to migrate, and how queer migrants’ identities shape processes in migration and resettlement. Engaging the academic scholarship on citizenship and migration, this thesis contributes new insights for understanding how international and national institutions and laws overlap to create a restrictive regime that forces Georgian migrants to navigate asylum by detaching their claims from their persecution as LGBTQI individuals. Through centering the experiences LGBTQI, this thesis reveals injustices and harms as well as possible top-down legal remedies to improve identity-based protections in national anti-discrimination law and international asylum law. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Social Justice and Human Rights 2020

abstract: On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen entered Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL and shot and murdered 49 people and wounded over 50 more. At the time, it was the deadliest mass shooting ever to occur on U.S. soil. That particular evening, Pulse, a queer nightclub, was hosting a “Latin Night,” which resulted in over 90 percent of the victims being Latinx in descent and many that identified as Afro-Latinx or Black. Essentially, Pulse is the most lethal act of violence against queer and trans bodies of color in this country. Pulse reminds queer and trans people of color of the conditions of the world that position Brown and Black queer and trans death as mundane. That is to say, the lives of trans and queer bodies of color are lived in close proximity to death. And yet, Pulse was anything but mundane. In every practical sense, it was a fantastical event of radical violence. The tension between these and the implications found within is what this project seeks to engage. Utilizing critical/performance-based qualitative methods and data derived from the queer and trans of color communities in Phoenix, AZ, this project investigates the performative afterlife of Pulse. I apply and name the term performative afterlife to suggest that the events at Pulse are connected to material conditions and consequences that get performed by and through queer and trans bodies of color. Interlocutors share the afterlife is performed within the context of ubiquitous whiteness found in Phoenix, often manifesting as a survival mechanism. Additionally, many interlocutors express the mundane threat of violence everyday has prevented a thorough engagement of what it means to live in a world after the events at Pulse nightclub have occurred. Ultimately, the performative afterlife of Pulse gets performed by queer and trans bodies of color in Phoenix through a co-performance between one another. Much like the dancing that occurred at Pulse, the performative afterlife is a performance that moves the world towards queer or color futures not yet here. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Communication 2020

This thesis details the development of Savage Daughter, a full-length play performed over Zoom on March 18th, 2021. Savage Daughter tells the story of queer and BIPOC (Black and Indigenous People of Color) characters who fight for their right to exist in a world controlled by white, cisgender, Christian males. Centering on themes of midwifery, witch trials, and queerness, my play follows Constance’s journey of empowerment. Chapter one provides background information about witchcraft, midwifery, setting, and character development. Chapter two outlines my writing process and the first two workshop readings of the script. Chapter three describes the pre-production which includes casting, design meetings, meetings with the director, and rehearsals. Chapter four analyzes the production and future considerations. Finally, chapter five outlines my experience in the program and my growth as a playwright.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study explored lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) individuals’ strength of identification with their subgroup (lesbian/gay or bisexual) and superordinate group (LGBTQ+) and whether the discrepancy between these identity dimensions relates to binegativity (the stigmatization of bisexuality). Our hypothesis that there would be a significant main effect of self-categorization level (superordinate vs. subgroup) on identity centrality was not supported. Our hypothesis that the difference between strength of subgroup and superordinate group identity centrality would be related to expressed binegativity among LG participants was partially supported. There was a significant negative correlation suggesting that as participants felt that their subgroup was relatively more important than the superordinate group, the less they acknowledged the existence of prejudice against bisexuals. Additionally, bisexuality threat, stigma-based solidarity, linked fate, and ingroup representations were significantly correlated with binegativity. Our results provide a first foundational step in a series of studies that will investigate the causes of binegativity among LG people and potential interventions.