abstract: This dissertation project examines the cultural labor of the drag queen in the United States (US). I explore how the drag queen can be understood as a heuristic to understand the stakes and limits of belonging and exceptionalism. Inclusion in our social and national belonging in the US allows for legibility and safety, however, when exceptional or token figures become the path towards achieving belonging, it can leave out those who are unable to conform, which are often the most vulnerable folks. I argue that attending to the drag queen’s trajectory, we can trace the ways that multiply-marginalized bodies navigate attempts to include, subsume, and erase their existence by the nation-state while simultaneously celebrating and consuming them in the realm of media and consumer culture. In the first chapter I introduce the project, the context and the stakes involved. Chapter two examines representations of drag queens in films to unpack how these representations have layered over time for American audiences, and positions these films as necessary building blocks for queer semiosis for viewers to return to and engage with. Chapter three analyzes RuPaul and RuPaul’s Drag Race to outline RuPaul labor as an exceptional subject, focusing on his investment in homonormative politics and labor supporting homonationalist projects. Chapter four centers questions of trans* identity and race, specifically Blackness to analyze how Drag Race renders certain bodies and performances legitimate and legible, constructing proper drag citizens. Chapter five utilizes ethnographic methods to center local drag communities, focusing on The Rock and drag performers in Phoenix, Arizona to analyze how performers navigate shifting media discourses of drag and construct a queer performance space all their own. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Gender Studies 2020

abstract: This doctoral dissertation proposes an analysis of a selection of photographic series by a diverse group of Latin American photographers such as Argentinian Gustavo Di Mario, Brazilians Claudio Edinger and Alair Gomes, and Mexican Dorian Ulises López Macías. The analyzed material focuses on a revision of characteristics of masculinity and imperative heteronormativity in the discourses on their respective national identities. The projects put-fourth by these four artists represent a political proposal that unveals the homoaffective possibilities of their photographic referents. Susan Sontag postulates in her On Photography (1979) that “the powers of photography have in effect de-Platonized our understanding of reality, making it less and less plausible to reflect upon our experience according to the distinction between images and things, between copies and originals” (179). These artists understand the power of the image and, through its meticulous composition, they propose to not only photograph, but to also narrate the reality of dissident identities and their belonging to a collective national identity. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Spanish 2019

This dissertation offers an outlined proposal and a model for practicing queer oral history—a nuancing of oral history praxis. Queer oral history is rooted in performance studies’ call to consider everyday texts alongside Dwight Conquergood’s (1985) articulations of ethical and dialogic performance of the other. I propose that queer oral history exists as an alternative praxis to traditional oral history; in order for this distinction to emerge, a practitioner must accept two charges. The first is a commitment to destabilizing oral history through the inclusion of other diverse methodological practices. Further, the researcher must welcome the ethical imperative to reflexively question subjectivity through their own role in constructing an oral history. Queer oral history demands of its practitioners a different set of goals that grow from traditional oral history, but also carefully complicate the practice of oral history as a methodology in order to address the in-between role of the subject-researcher. This placement within the gaps—the in-between—renders queer oral history theoretically queer, opening up possibilities beyond simply an oral history about queer themes. Because of its focus on commitments as a way to lead practice, queer oral history could prove useful for other person-based qualitative research methods. In order to propose queer oral history, this document traces one specific performance—Bless Our Hearts: An Oral History of the Queer South—from intellectual inception through scripting, staging, performance, and reperformance. Offering theoretical precepts, a completed script, and deep discussions of choices in scripting and embodiment, this dissertation offers a model that shows one queer oral history—about the intersections of queer and Southern identities—as it moves from interview process to complete performance project.

Through a series of in-depth qualitative interviews and a discourse analysis of academic publications this study explores the definition of indie video games, relationships between queer players and indie video games that they play, and ways in which queer players relate to games in general. The comparison of definitions between academic publications and player interviews shows that “indie” is a vague term that is too broad to define, either relying upon modes of production or becoming impossibly narrow in attempts to describe indie game trends. Instead, a more productive point of discussion seems to be located around affect typical for genres and categories of games, with modes of production being an important but not defining part of the conversation. / Media Studies & Production

This study explores how knowledge and reality is constructed within an online fandom’s communication, with a focus on LGBTQ+ discourse within Taylor Swift’s fans on Reddit. This is done through a qualitative digital ethnographic method and uses LGBTQ+ symbols and parasocial relationships as tools to analyse 75 posts and 850 comments total. The theoretical framework mainly consists of Berger and Luckmann’s (1966) theory on the social construction of reality and Couldry and Hepp’s (2017) reinterpretation of their work that considers the effects of digitalization and how our construction of reality has changed with it. The analysis showed that the group uses symbols to build a shared collection of facts and continuously follows an us-versus-them narrative to construct their community. Their foundational belief that Swift herself is secretly queer is not to be too closely questioned within the group and they often use the version of Swift that outsiders have built up to discuss hypothetical what-ifs. To participate in the community and be seen as “logical” it appears to require that you to some extent correctly consume the media in a way that aligns with pre- existing facts that the group shares. Meaning that the group has unspoken rules that dictate the knowledge hierarchies within it.

This dissertation examines the contributions of Quakers, specifically from the liberal tradition of the Religious Society of Friends, to the advancement of lesbian, gay, and bisexual rights in the United States between 1946-1973. In this period, Quakers established the first social service organization for gay people in the United States, wrote the first public and positive evaluation of homosexuality from a religious perspective, and composed the first public statement in support of bisexuality from a religious assembly. A critical study of Quaker pamphlets, periodicals, lectures, business minutes, and personal papers from this era reveals that Quaker support of gay liberation was exercised through experiments in criminal justice reform, challenges to Christian moral codes, and advocacy for change within the Religious Society of Friends. The findings presented in this project seek to broaden our understanding of gay rights history by showing that Quakers played a pivotal role in the emergence and development of the gay rights movement in the United States. / Religion

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Queer artists have engaged archives throughout modern and contemporary American art, but art historical discourse of their work has centered the writing of Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault to theorize these spaces without considering archival scholarship. This text takes up Gabriel Martinez’s Archive series as a case study to critique archival selection theory and better understand how prejudice has affected the preservation of queer folx’s collections. Martinez’s series is situated amongst other Western artworks that center archival records and queer themes throughout the last century. This section places his artwork in dialogue with other artists for whom the archive is the subject of their artwork. The artworks detailed exemplify the multiplicity of ways that queer folx critique and interpret the histories preserved in these institutions. Following this survey of art is an analysis of how archival records are selected for preservation and the inherent subjectivity of this task. Pedagogical writing on archival selection by Frank Boles, Richard Cox, and James O’Toole are consulted to better understand how archivists working in the field are taught to handle this type of work. Most of their writing is focused on traditional archives and fails to articulate the challenges facing counterarchives, spaces formed to compensate for the erasure of queer persons in traditional institutions. This review of archival scholarship ends with a critique of how queer counterarchives have fallen short of their inclusive aims. The final section of this text is dedicated to a close study of Martinez’s Archive series. His photographs document the Harry R. Eberlin photograph collection and the John J. Wilcox, Jr. Archives in Philadelphia. The historical context of the Eberlin collection and the founding of its host repository are presented in conjunction with Archive series because Martinez’s compositions are inseparable from these histories. Philadelphia queer culture in the 1970s and 1980s is revealed through the retelling of these histories and by examining who was visualized in the images themselves. These images of bars and events simultaneously reveal the gender and racial disparity of patronage within these spaces and exemplify long-standing tensions in the city’s queer spaces. Lastly, this text posits a practice called “pseudo-processing” where artists document and preserve facsimiles of archival records to question the divisions of archival labor from that of an artist performing comparable tasks. / Art History

Christian, Philadelphian, and Gay-Affirming Responses to AIDS, 1982-1992" is an analysis of primary source material from Christian congregations and extra-denominational religious groups, particularly with regards to the way these groups used scripture and theological language to construct a counter-narrative to the prevailing discourse that painted AIDS as God's punishment on sinners. These materials show the way these groups represented themselves both within their own communities and outward, providing a textual record of the way leaders and laypersons alike discussed AIDS and its meaning. This work begins by considering the complicated factors at play: the particular history of Philadelphia and its relationship to its gay communities, historical and contemporary attitudes of Christianity toward sin and disease, and the particular biomedical and political realities of AIDS. It then follows the epidemic through several Philadelphian Christian communities from 1982 to 1992, demonstrating changing Christian attitudes toward sickness and sexuality as reflected in the rhetoric from these organizations, as understandings of AIDS went from the apocalyptic to the wearily optimistic. This dissertation demonstrates that while AIDS was never the whole of gay life in the United States, not even during the years it was most frightening and least understood, the crisis it introduced necessitated gay-affirming articulations of Christian theology – ones that persisted even as they became less necessary, as infection demographics shifted. This work's examination of these texts shows how marginalized Christian communities and their allies can use liberative Christian rhetoric to push back against language of oppression supported by the dominant Christian paradigm. / Religion