Women’s subjugation to the objectification of men is a traced theme throughout the history of Western culture. In this thesis presentation, the attributes of the male gaze will be explored via the patriarchal pioneers of literature: Dante to Petrarch to Shakespeare. The solidification of the male gaze takes place during the late middle ages as Dante Alighieri writes an infatuated love for Beatrice throughout La Vita Nuova and Inferno, demonstrating the virgin-whore dichotomy between Francesca. Similarly, Francesco Petrarch’s poetry of Rime Sparse describes the objectification and dismantling of woman for erotic pleasure and patriarchal power. The shift from early to late renaissance displays William Shakespeare’s presentation of women in Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Hamlet as a denunciation of women through the male gaze. These themes of patriarchy developed throughout historic literature will help us analyze media advertisements today as women are silenced, dismembered, and exhibited through the male gaze.

Books shape our definition of the world; including, how we conceive , others, and, for young readers, even ourselves. Hitherto, for neurodivergent people , the lack of appropriate narrative representations in young adult literature disrupts this formative process. Previously, authors included neurodivergent characters only as stock characters possessing little definition aside from their disabilities and having minimal impacts on the plots and other characters within the novels. More recently, however, young adult novels featuring neurodivergent characters have developed into a popular subgenre, including stories of young people with atypical cognition, neurochemistry, or neurodevelopment such as Autism or Down Syndrome. Inspired by the emergence of the neurodiversity movement which seeks to define these variations as neutral and natural, this fiction increasingly provides representation to these previously neglected communities. This study explores the representation of neurodivergent characters within the young adult novels in contrast to the larger genre of young adult literature through the lens of neurodiversity.

Tamora Pierce’s work has been cited by many Young Adult fantasy authors as a major influence in recent years. Despite this, her work remains relatively obscure among librarians and readers of Young Adult literature. This paper examined one of Pierce’s Young Adult fantasy series, Protector of the Small, by comparing the series to existing works of Young Adult fantasy literature commonly accepted as classic or canonical literature. Among the comparative works were titles authored by J. R. R Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, J. K. Rowling, and Philip Pullman. Comparison was character-focused, with emphasis on the representation of parents, other sympathetic adults, peers, and family units. Some comparison was also focused on the representation of antagonists in the selected works. The aim of the comparative analysis was to serve as a guide for librarians, teachers, and readers of Young Adult literature to better understand potential target audiences for the Protector of the Small quartet. It was found that target audiences for the series would likely seek or benefit from the Protector of the Small quartet’s inclusion of supportive parental and mentor figures, strong familial bonds, and supportive and communicative peers. Target audiences would also seek literature with nuanced antagonists capable of character growth. Most prominently, target audiences would seek Young Adult fantasy literature that addresses real-world issues and challenges for young women, including sexism, puberty, and reproductive healthcare.

Of poetry, Lacan remarked in the preface to Seminar XI, “I am not a poet, but a poem. A poem that is being written, even if it looks like a subject.” In understanding the subject as a poem, one begins to appreciate the literary mode of poetry. Traditions set by Judith Butler have inundated the use of a Lacanian analysis in the theoretical lives of transgender subjects. In the use of theoretical arguments that Butler uses the transsexual subject for, such as her essay “Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Transsexuality,” there has been an injustice to transgender poets, in renown and the answers transsexuals have to the problems of materialism within Butler and Lacan. In other words, the real lives of transsexuals’ bodies are proof of the relevance of sex and gender. Jos Charles’ poem “Origin as Wetdream” loudly answers Butler’s apathetic attitude to the relevance of sex in the transsexual’s life. Furthering, this essay aims to examine the attitudes of sex and gender held within gender studies. This essay frames itself within the concept of “egg theory,” an argument held by Grave Lavery in her essay “Egg Theory’s Early Style.” In understanding Charles’ poem, one understands the transsexual subject. Through this understanding, the material of transition can be appreciated.