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.

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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.

This study analyzes Virgilio Piñera’s concept of performance in relation to his representation of mass media products and technologies. The central argument is that Piñera’s notion of theatrical representation connects fiction with politics in subversive ways, challenging assumptions of naturalness at different levels, from that of the gendered self, to the family and the nation. To support this argument, the study focuses on Piñera’s representation of a variety of mass media genres as these inspire everyday life performances, mainly in Cuba but also in Argentina. While fictional models and sentimental narratives from the mass media most often convey oppressive conceptions of gender, family, and nation, the author’s representation of the media’s pervasive influence questions and denaturalizes those conceptions. Piñera stresses the disruptive potential of individual performance against the repetitive character of both the mass media industry and the social reenactments of its sentimental myths. His references to mass culture thus destabilize structures of power, including stereotypes of both sexuality and gender. The analysis shows that Piñera’s fictions exhibit important characteristics of queer aesthetics. The study comprises a time span of almost three decades, from the early 1940s to the late 1960s, and focuses on a selection of Piñera’s criticism, drama, poetry, and narrative. Within those texts, special attention is given to references to photography, radio programs, romance novels, movies, and popular music. The organization of Piñera’s texts in this study answers to both thematic and chronological considerations. Chapter 1 outlines the study’s objectives and methodology, also providing a background on critical studies about Piñera. Chapters 2 and 3 deal with plays and short-stories written before the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Chapter 2 examines texts that represent both family and nation in relation to a variety of mass media genres, from Cuban “radionovelas” to Hollywood gangster films. Chapter 3 focuses on two narratives, written in Buenos Aires, that address posing and self-representation in relation to issues of sexuality, masculinity, and power. Chapter 4 deals with a selection of poems written, for the most part, after 1959. In these poems, the literary use of photography stresses theatrical self-representation, often in direct resistance to revolutionary reformulations of masculinity in the figure of the “New Man.” / text

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