Yes / Imagine that you’re entering a cave on a sunny, warm summer day. There is a swift, and distinct, change in the temperature as you walk into the darkness – a cold, dampness that cuts through to the bone. The lack of internal light immediately plunges you into darkness as you journey further into the cave, and the inherent stillness and silence means any noise you make is amplified twofold. If the Underworld exists, this is likely where it would be situated. And yet, if you simply turn around to face the entrance of the cave, you are greeted by a completely different setting; you can see the bright sun, the clear blue skies. By walking back to the start, you can already feel the warm air, hear the natural noises that one associates with the outdoors. But stop right in the middle, between the entrance of the cave and its deeper chambers – here, you’re in between what can only be described as two completely different worlds. This is a liminal space – and its where I exist, as a researcher and as a queer, mixed woman.

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This dissertation takes musical theatre seriously as a historiographic practice, and considers six musicals that take the past as their subject matter in order to interrogate how these works craft their historical narratives. While there have been studies of historical drama and performance, musicals have generally been left out of that conversation, despite (or perhaps because of) their immense popularity. This project argues that not only can musicals “do” history, they offer an excellent genre for theorizing what I call “queer historiography.” While sexuality remains one category of analysis, I use “queer” to signify opposition, not simply to heterosexuality, but to heteronormativity, and normativity more broadly. Musicals’ queer historiography, then, is a way of engaging past events that challenges normativity in form as well as content; a way of productively challenging not only what we think we know about the past, but how we come to know it. Each chapter uses a different theoretical lens to guide close readings of a pair of thematically linked musicals. The first chapter considers 1776 (1969) and Assassins (1991, 2004) as challenges to official narratives of United States history. My primary lens in this chapter is form, as I analyze how musicals’ structures influence their queer historiographic potential. Chapter 2 examines two musicals that offer histories of U.S. popular culture, Gypsy (1959) and Hairspray (2002), considering how the placement of divas at the center of each show enables a historiography that is feminist as well as queer, challenging ideas about gender and sexuality while making women central to the histories they represent. In the third chapter I look to two musicals, Falsettos (1992) and Elegies: A Song Cycle (2003), which present histories of trauma while featuring overtly gay, lesbian, and queer characters. I use these two texts to theorize how musicals might not simply present history as it “really” was, but also as it might have been, thereby offering what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick terms a “reparative reading” of history. In examining each of my six case studies, I analyze specific performances as well as written texts whenever possible. / text

My work explores subculture as a form of cultural resistance to the dominant ideology. I'm concerned with the ambiguous relationship we occupy as subjects to the material produced by popular culture, and how this is digested and understood by female viewers and cultural outsiders. The specific temporality of the queer subject is a key theme in my work.

This reception study, drawing on Robert White’s culturalist approach to religious media and Jane Mansbridge’s oppositional consciousness, explores the meaning-making process of Queer Christians in Sweden about Parvez Sharma’s A Jihad for Love. The study argues that against a background where Muslims and Queer Muslims facing multiple forms of othering in Western mainstream media, queer-affirming Muslim alternative media can be a precursor to interfaith encounter and interreligious dialogue between Queer Christians and Queer Muslims. The results show that A Jihad for Love potentially increased the imagination and political interest of Queer Christians in Sweden in Queer Muslim lives. Finally, this study contributes to the reception of queer-affirming Muslim alternative media which has long been neglected and offers interesting insights about Queer Christian conceptualization of freedom, tolerance, secularism, religion and media in Swedish society.   Keywords: A Jihad for Love, religious media, queer affirming alternative Muslim media, Queer Muslims, Queer Christians, Sweden, interfaith dialogue, secularism

The aim of this essay is to discuss some of the shared legacies of oppression between queerness, femininity, and fatness in order to theorize a form of activism that can do justice to these intersecting identities. A key component of this is to discuss the complexities of negotiating the shame and pride that go hand in hand with stigmatized identities, a project recently taken up by queer theorists that has yet to be well represented in fat studies or activist circles. This essay will engage with conversations happening in queer theory and fat studies about shame as it relates to the politics of attachment. I hope to begin a conversation about how to organize effective activist circles that can do justice to queer fat femmes' complex relationships with visibility, embodiment and community building. / text

This paper´s main purpose was to analyse textbooks used in religious studies in Sweden in upper secondary education to see how LGBTQ persons and information about norm breaking sexual identities is emphasized in these textbooks. To obtain that information a context analysis was used and five books were used during this specific analysis.The theoretical foundation of the analysis was based on queer theory and norm critical theory with an focus on norm critical pedagogy which was used to highlight, criticize and understand the previous research that has been done and give wider perspective when it comes to the text in the textbooks.What the analysis shows is that even if there is some information in the textbooks about LGBTQ people there is not enough information to execute a norm critical educational lesson and to achieve the central content of the course Religionskunskap 1 in upper secondary education in Sweden. There are huge varieties of information in the textbooks and usuallythey are under chapters such as ”marriage”, ”sexuality” and often not discussed in the context of religion and only as sexuality as a whole.

This study aims to undertake a queer reading of four Swedish picture books, with the names: Punkpapporna, Kivi och Monsterhund, När mammorna blev kära and Regnbågsbesbisen. Furthermore its purpose is to explore the concept of family, and more specifically the rainbow family. This will be explored in the relations to previous research made in the field of queer kinship, children's literature, representation and silencing. Aditionaly this will be influenced by representational and queer theory. The methodical approach is as mentioned queer reading, but in combination with thematic analysis, where a few themes have been picked out. These themes will help in analyzing the representation of the rainbow family in the chosen books. The research concluded that rainbow families can be portrayed and represented in many different ways and how they are understood is completely dependent on the story in the books but also on the reader.

Syftet med denna uppsats är att fokusera de queera ögonblicken i J.R.R. Tolkiens trilogi The Lord of the Rings för att visa att det queera finns i kulturen på samma sätt som det icke-queera. När är de två hobbitarna Frodos och Sams relation queer? Vad gör den queer? Hur kan vi förstå denna queerhet i termer av homosocialitet och homoerotik? Uppsatsen är inspirerad av Tiina Rosenbergs queera läsningar, jag använder mig dessutom av Adrienne Richs teori om "lesbisk kontinuitet" och Sedgwicks resonemang om manligt homosocialt begär. Jag har kommit fram till att Frodos och Sams relation rör sig mellan mer och mindre queerhet. Då den inte är statisk kan den inte förstås som renodlat homosocial eller homoerotisk. Däremot kan den ses som en del av en manlig samkönad kontinuitet, vilken inkluderar allt ifrån homosocialitet till homoerotik.

This thesis aim was to find the answer the following research question: What do queer gamers think of the game Monster Prom. The material gathered for this thesis was through a participant observation with four people from the LGBTQIA+ community playing the game Monster Prom and a subsequent focus group interview with these people. The material was analysed using Queer Game Studies research. In this paper I came to the conclusion that representation does matter to queer gamers. According to my interviewees, there is a need for representation in games and that it needs to be diverse and made undramatic. The interviewees brought forward how and why this design of an avatar system gives the player freedom, queer possibilities, and being positively received by queer players. The interviewees also brought forward how and when one should/shouldn't write a story surrounding the representation of queer oppression from a queer player´s point of view.