The main purpose of this thesis is to present and highlight the radical potential in the work of Carson McCullers, primarily through an examination of her representation of young, queer individuals. This thesis argues that McCullers forces her readers to re-think the categories of “child” and “adult” through her creation of ambiguously gendered, sexual child characters.

This book is a guide to bottoming. There are more ways to do it than you might think. Bottoming may be read as passive and intransitive today, but for most of its nearly six hundred years as a verb, "to bottom" has been active and transitive. One goal of this guide is to activate the passive sense of bottoming by connecting it to a wider linguistic history. If the bottom so wishes, their bottoming may be as transitive as bottoming has ever been. A bottom may bottom their top, not merely for their top. The top may be objectified by its want of a bottom. Another proposition: the top, by topping, is bottoming, too. He must be. By outfitting himself with a bottom, he bottoms himself. This guide proposes a marriage of active and passive, bumming and bottoming, sexual and nonsexual bottoms. It embraces the versatility inherent in "bottom" and seeks enlightenment through the vast, ever-expanding network this word has woven through our language. It aims to bottom you, the reader, around its thesis (i.e., its bottom): Everybody bottoms. Or at least, everybody should.

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“‘Freakish Man’: sexual blues, sacred beliefs, and the transformation of Black queer identity, 1870-1959” investigates how queer Black men expressed their gender and sexual identities. It follows how, from the days of Reconstruction to the modern civil rights movement, queer Black men used various aspects of Black culture—particularly the blues, working-class social culture, and charismatic religion—to form identities that departed from dominant Black and white norms. The “freakish man” emerged as queer Black men cultivated legible, subversive gender and sexual identities in sacred and secular spaces of working-class Black culture that prioritized masculine heterosexuality. Though queer Black men were briefly successful in using their status as taboo but enticing social figures to enter the center of Black culture, they were gradually marginalized by the Black community as it moved towards inclusion into mainstream American society.

Abstract This paper begins by introducing the concepts of urban anthropology and poststructuralism that lay a basis for my project and referencing some of the themes that will be explored in further chapters. Chapter I analyzes conceptualizations of Los Angeles in terms of center and edge, and discusses the ways in which Greater Los Angeles can be an interesting site in terms of queer possibilities of built spaces. In Chapter II the focus shifts to Los Angeles freeways, distinguishing them as in-between spaces of the built landscape and examining how they have been conceptualized by prominent scholars and artists. Chapter III then moves to disciplines of philosophy and queer studies in order to “queer” the freeways. It addresses postmodern and poststructuralist discourses surrounding built spaces and the ways they are experienced, and extends discussions of public space versus private space and the ways bodies interact with built spaces. It also introduces the concept of disorientation and how it can be applied to the experience of the freeway. In the conclusion I tie together these theories of space and apply them to my own Fall project, and propose directions for my project in the Spring semester.

While studies of lesbian, gay, and transgender communities and cultural production have dramatically increased, research on bisexuality remains highly undervalued in humanities and social science disciplines. To challenge this lack of scholarship, this doctoral dissertation applies both textual and ethnographic methods to examine bisexual representation in non-realistic or “speculative” narratives and to explore the insider perspectives of bisexual people who are also science fiction fans. The overall trajectory of chapters follows a progression from grounded research and analysis to theory and application. First, I explore bisexual worldviews through ethnographic research in overlapping sexual and fan communities and through textual analysis of a 1980s bisexual fanzine. Next, I establish theoretical and methodological foundations for a new sexual paradigm, called dimensional sexuality, and work to intervene in interpretive methods that may restrict readings of sexuality in cinematic narratives. And finally, I test dimensional sexuality as an interpretive mode by offering dimensional readings of science fiction television and novels. From one direction, the project seeks to understand bisexuality as a position from which to theorize sexual knowledge. A major claim is that bisexual epistemology offers an alternative to dominant monosexual frameworks. Specifically, the multivalent logic of bisexuality refutes the “either-or” structure of heterosexuality and homosexuality. By embracing the logic of “both-and,” bisexuality as a category of knowledge enables the reorganization of sexuality within a non-binary, non-gender based multidimensional framework. From another direction, the project demonstrates the productive textual and social spaces offered by speculative narratives for questioning what we “know” about gender, sex, sexuality, and other intersections of social identities. Science fiction bears a deep structural affinity with the dialectical thinking found in critical theory. By asking “what if” questions that challenge our assumptions about “what is,” non-realistic narratives estrange us from the “known” world, interrogate our assumptions about the world, and make visible ideas and experiences outside of the norms we use to interpret what is “real” in a particular social and historical moment. As such, speculative narratives enable us to imagine sexual and gender possibilities beyond the episteme of the moment.

This thesis addresses reenactment and archival practice in the work of Sharon Hayes, a mid-career multi-media artist renowned for her use of archival documents to pose questions about history, politics, and speech. I do this through analyses of two of Hayes’s projects: the series In the Near Future (2005-2009) and a series of projects the artist refers to as “love addresses.” While these projects appropriate and repeat historical documents, Hayes’s work is especially interesting for the way it emphasizes difference over authenticity and explores the ways meaning shifts across temporal, geographic, and social contexts. In contrast to scholars who argue that Hayes’s practice is nostalgic and serves to decontextualize and depoliticize history, my thesis argues that the pedagogical aspects of Hayes’s work and her performative engagements with historical material are deeply political and contextual. My thesis demonstrates that Hayes’s distinctive contribution is to model historical agency and imagine alternative futures.

The modern gay New Orleans community was born on the neglected streets of the historic French Quarter neighborhood during the 1920s. Despite a century of harassment at the hands of local officials and the police department, this vulnerable community developed strong communal bonds in and around the French Quarter, ultimately transforming it into one of the preeminent gay neighborhoods in the United States. This study examines how a vibrant gay community thrived in the socially conservative South, shifting traditional narratives of twentieth century gay life primarily existing on the East and West Coasts. To survive, gay men and lesbians were forced to create alternative social spaces, often coopting and exploiting the traditions of heteronormative New Orleans culture. Drawing upon archival sources and personal interviews, this dissertation challenges assumptions about the apolitical nature of the gay New Orleans community. Ultimately, this is a story of how a gay community became politically active while navigating the challenges of the socially conservative Deep South.

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Assigned Disaster at Birth is the scifi surrealist autofictitious diary and scrapbook of a queer space alien stuck in a humanoid body, a trans transhuman, written mostly in verse. The space alien speaker of these poems moves through multiple marginalized human identities ultimately remembering it isn't human at all. Through these poems, the speaker forms solidarities with nonhuman kin, reclaiming the memory lost to colonialism and civilization of what it means to be nonhuman and more-than-human. / Master of Fine Arts / Assigned Disaster at Birth is a poetry collection that takes the form of a queer and trans space alien's diary and scrapbook. This queer space alien is stuck in a humanoid body amidst humans who are violent towards the alien and the planet, on a planet that is a capitalist hellscape. As the alien survives physical violence, emotional abuse, alienation, it begins to remember it isn't human at all. In doing so, the alien opens itself up to connection with nonhuman life.