specialcollections@tulane.edu / Memorials, monuments, museums, and public spaces “honor the memory” of people or events that have some claim to that space. In these myths that become spatial in the public realm, who is it that gets remembered? Certainly, these projects are important for the desire to pass along history and offer space to gather and contemplate. However, they are not without myriad problems. Rituals are not solely contemplative practice, they need action to transform. In mourning and memorial, we transform a sometimes painful past into a more positive future. Critique of these projects can only encourage better iterations in the future. This thesis will imagine a space meant to allow its occupants to live with this history with the goal of crafting a future through collaborative praxis. While ritual spaces have a long history and many forms, the museum and archive have evolved radically in their trajectories. Beginning with a temple or government plunder display and moving into the public education centers of contemporary times, museums now occupy both a public and private sphere. These spaces operate by telling stories about the public it seeks to serve and are prime locations to explore queer narratives. Further, the act of living with this history can blur the lines of public and private for the occupants. Through an exploration of what queer modes of display would be from material choice to the intended audience, the space itself can become an active participant in these narratives, bridging time and space towards a more nuanced understanding of queer lives. / 1 / Dana Elliot

The Periscope and the Labyrinth is an investigation into cultural identity, consciousness and landscape rooted in the body’s experience of the city. The modern phenomenon of flânerie is used as a means of examining vari- ous sites of particular interest to queer mythology within New York and Rome via the device of personal ‘derives’ or drifts inspired by a legacy of city writing, whereby the particular relationship between identity, place and space becomes clear. The flâneur has been essential to previous writings on the topic of ‘queer space’ in that he is one who ‘relies on the ambiguities of the modern city, and the uncertainties that linger in the fleeting experi- ence of a backward glance.’ It is these very ambiguities that associate the flâneur as the quintessential ‘cruiser.’ Yet the potential of the flâneur lies in his ‘alchemical’ abilities. A contemporary interpretation of alchemy is used through out the thesis as both a psychological method for understand- ing the ‘union of opposites’, as well as a reading of the parallels between individual and collective identity as they relate to particular sites. These archetypal opposites are typified by the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus; the duality of their characteristics exemplified by the metaphor of the title in which the conscience of the ‘Apollonian eye’ of the flâneur within the labyrinth of the Dionysian underworld’ describing the alchemical teachings which underpin this work.

The Periscope and the Labyrinth is an investigation into cultural identity, consciousness and landscape rooted in the body’s experience of the city. The modern phenomenon of flânerie is used as a means of examining vari- ous sites of particular interest to queer mythology within New York and Rome via the device of personal ‘derives’ or drifts inspired by a legacy of city writing, whereby the particular relationship between identity, place and space becomes clear. The flâneur has been essential to previous writings on the topic of ‘queer space’ in that he is one who ‘relies on the ambiguities of the modern city, and the uncertainties that linger in the fleeting experi- ence of a backward glance.’ It is these very ambiguities that associate the flâneur as the quintessential ‘cruiser.’ Yet the potential of the flâneur lies in his ‘alchemical’ abilities. A contemporary interpretation of alchemy is used through out the thesis as both a psychological method for understand- ing the ‘union of opposites’, as well as a reading of the parallels between individual and collective identity as they relate to particular sites. These archetypal opposites are typified by the Greek gods Apollo and Dionysus; the duality of their characteristics exemplified by the metaphor of the title in which the conscience of the ‘Apollonian eye’ of the flâneur within the labyrinth of the Dionysian underworld’ describing the alchemical teachings which underpin this work.

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Cyberqueer Techno-practices: Digital Space-Making and Networking by Swedish Gay Men     This study aims to highlight intersections of queer experiences and new media, by focusing on the use of digital platforms and communication practices among Swedish gay men. This is being carried out using a netnographic approach including an online survey and in-depth interviews among the target group, as well as field observations on gay catering online forums and GPS application software. Special attention is paid to the blur between online and offline, increasingly underpinned by innovations such as smartphones, tablet computers and GPS techniques, and how it may challenge and reconfigure concepts of public and private in relation to sexuality and sexual identity. Using a rich combination of queer theory and media and communication theory, the study intends to illuminate the underdeveloped potential of cross-fertilization between the fields. The concept of space has a central position, as the cyberqueer practices performed by gay men are argued to produce queer space that extends their social scope in a heteronormative environment. The interviews and the survey indicate that the use of digital media among gay men fulfill group specific purposes, for aspects such as social and sexual networking, as well as senses of community. Further, the possibility to visit digital spaces seems to have a particular significance during “coming-out processes”, since most of the informants have been dealing with their sexual identity and/or practice online, long before doing so offline. This is valid for individuals from both urban and rural areas, as the queer spaces online also are prioritized over offline alternatives when available.

North American building design is predicated on the notion that there are only two sexes, genders, and sexualities. With the former presumed to be the biological determinant of the latter, male and female are constructed as anatomical, behavioural, and aesthetic opposites. Queer theory and gender studies literature, however, articulate embodiments, expressions and desires that are neither binary nor fixed. This design seeks to acknowledge these alternative inhabitations by appropriating an elite Winnipeg building, the Manitoba Club, for use as a gender diverse fitness club. Exploring concepts of the body, queer space, and deconstruction, this practicum design questions the dominance of binary discourses.

In this research I examine the complexity of male sexuality and masculinity among male sex workers in New Orleans. Despite danger to their health and social standing, men engage in risky sexual behavior with other men for both business and pleasure. These behaviors may stem from the thrill of risk itself, or from other causes such as unexplored sexual inhibitions on the part of the male sex workers or their clients. Focusing on male sex workers, this ethnographic study explores why male sex workers engage in work that is high risk and potentially very dangerous. It examines the world of male sex work as one of the few places where men who adopt homosexual identity and those who refuse it are in intimate contact with one another. It offers us the opportunity to address questions about male sexual identity and homosexual desire, while attempting to understand the commodified spatial practices of a sexual culture in New Orleans.

This thesis presents the basic principles of the functioning of the heteronormative order: in what way heterosexuality is constructed as the norm and in what way it is maintained as such. The thesis simultaneously examines the possibilities of disrupting the heteronormative order, creating queer spaces, and defining the term queer and queer politics in the framework of a queer subculture. The aim of the research carried out within the thesis is to contribute to the visibility of queer subculture, present ways in which the term queer is used in queer subculture and show to what degree the examined queer subcultural spaces are created as open spaces and to whom they are accessible. In the Czech Republic the term queer is used as a synonym for LGBT identities or as an umbrella term for LGBTI people and activities. Nevertheless, as follows from the analysis of semi-structured interviews, the term queer can have even other meanings. It can express criticism of heteronormativity, homonormativity, mainstream LGBT politics and culture, and the attempt to overcome the norms connected with gender and sexuality. In this regard, the term queer can refer not only to an identity and also to a political position. The interweaving of queer and feminist theory can be inspiring not only for the development of gender...

Drawing on rigorous foreign, both Western and non-Western, literature, this thesis introduces sexuality and its connected spatial conceptualizations to Czech geography. In the beginning of the theoretical part, I discuss the framework under which geography studies sexuality. Then, I discuss the crucial terminology while pointing out at some changes in it. After understanding some of the major terminological issues, I delve into a description of the multiple and diverse development of sexuality related geographies. Focusing on queer geography, I delineate the queer standpoint and concentrate on understanding the spatial construction of sexuality in space while unveiling the heteronormativity of space. Using the queer approach, I implicitly deconstruct the binary of public and private space by pointing out at its spuriousness regarding the sexuality. I present a queer bar as a typical queer space while revealing the sexual closetedness of LGBTIQ people. Then I introduce the school environment as, for the time being, a typical heteronormative space and institution. In the end of the theoretical part, I discuss the queer practices of destabilizing heteronormativity both at school and in public space. In the empirical part of the thesis, I discuss the methodology of my internet based chain-referral...

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