My dissertation brings together prose texts and poetry by four writers and poets, who published in German language at the beginning of the twentieth century: Hugo von Hofmannsthal (1874-1929), Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), and Georg Trakl (1887-1914). All four of these writers are concerned with the inadequacy of language and cognition, the so called Sprachkrise at the turn-of-the-century. In their texts, they challenge the ability of language to function as a means of communication, and as a way to express emotions or relate more deeply to the world. While it is widely recognized that this “crisis of identity” in modernist literature has been a crisis of language all along, I argue in my dissertation that the question of language is ultimately also a question of “the animal.” Other scholars have argued for animals’ poetic agency (e.g. Aaron M. Moe; Susan McHugh), or for the conceptual link between the “crisis of language” and the threat to human exceptionalism in the intellectual milieu of the early twentieth century (Kári Driscoll). My dissertation is the first study that explores the interconnection between Sprachkrise, animality, and the phenomenological philosophy of embodiment. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of phenomenology, I illustrate how Hofmannsthal, Kafka, Rilke and Trakl invoke the body as intertwined with animals in complex ways, and employ these animal figures to reconceptualize notions of language and specifically the metaphor. The authors, I argue, engage in a zoopoetic writing, as other forms of life participate as both symbolic and material bodies in the signifying processes. Moreover, I illustrate how their zoopoetic approach involve forms of intimacy and envision figures that fall outside heteronormative sexualities and ontologies, making the case for a queer zoopoetics in Modernist German literature.

This thesis analyzes the “home area” learning center in open-ended preschool classrooms to address the various forms of gendered learning and pedagogy elicited by its presence in geographies of early learning. I argue that the home and block areas spatially and symbolically mimic the traditional division of public and private spheres of sociality characteristic of the patriarchal social order. I suggest that the gendered enactments of space and place in open-ended classrooms function to socialize children into heteronormative forms of sex-role consciousness through what I identify as a spatial pedagogy of domestication. I suggest that this pedagogy is enforced by ideologically haunted landscapes like the domestic landscape of the home area. By outlining critical, feminist, and queer interventions in early learning I suggest that taking a spatial approach provides a more capacious explanatory frame for analyzing how, in a neo-Marxist sense, the ideo-culturally bound relations of production are reproduced through the socializing apparatus of the preschool.

This thesis analyzes the “home area” learning center in open-ended preschool classrooms to address the various forms of gendered learning and pedagogy elicited by its presence in geographies of early learning. I argue that the home and block areas spatially and symbolically mimic the traditional division of public and private spheres of sociality characteristic of the patriarchal social order. I suggest that the gendered enactments of space and place in open-ended classrooms function to socialize children into heteronormative forms of sex-role consciousness through what I identify as a spatial pedagogy of domestication. I suggest that this pedagogy is enforced by ideologically haunted landscapes like the domestic landscape of the home area. By outlining critical, feminist, and queer interventions in early learning I suggest that taking a spatial approach provides a more capacious explanatory frame for analyzing how, in a neo-Marxist sense, the ideo-culturally bound relations of production are reproduced through the socializing apparatus of the preschool.

Being is Becoming: selves are constantly changing, always in process, and never able to arrive at a coherent identity. Contemporary discussions of sexual and gendered identity have replaced the view that heterosexuality is an innate or natural category with views that sexuality is fluid and multiple. Consequently, desire is a creative force in the engendering of sexual subjectivities and new social communities, rather than a negative force that limits gendered development to a heteronormative model. With this in mind, this thesis has three interrelated, yet distinct aims. The first is to explore the concept of sexual subjectivity, asking questions such as do human beings have a knowable sexual identity? And how have Freudian psychoanalysis and Foucauldian poststructuralism contributed to our contemporary understandings of sexuality? My second aim is to clarify Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy of becoming, using the metaphor of the rhizome to link feminist philosophy, queer theory, and subsequent deconstructions of sexual identity. My third project is to identify what is meant by becoming queer, including how it challenges the authority of heteronormative institutions. In order to demonstrate the potentialities of becoming queer, I conduct a case study of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millans performance project Lesbian National Parks and Services. Through their performance art practice, Dempsey and Millan challenge dominant narratives of heterosexuality and fixed gender identity, offering a starting point for discussions of the reciprocity between artistic practice, social movements, and academic discourse. In addition, they demonstrate how queer becomings participate in an ethics of accountability, that is, as materially-situated, localized subjectivities they are able to alter and transform their environments.

What makes identity readable? To answer this question, I examine the constructions of queer, non-German women in three contemporary transnational German films, Aimée und Jaguar, Fremde Haut and Auf der anderen Seite. To become readable, and thus to survive within the socio-political realm of German culture, these protagonists must construct and perform interconnected dimensions of identity— sex, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, language, clothing, and name—that can be located along a hegemonic-defined continuum. But when the characters cannot be read within this framework, they trouble dominant readings and understandings of their positions in this system and disrupt normative conceptions of identity. These threats to the system, however, do not lead to a renegotiation of the protagonists’ identities. Rather, hegemonic German society reacts to the unreadability of these queer figures by violently rejecting them through deportation and/or death.

Being is Becoming: selves are constantly changing, always in process, and never able to arrive at a coherent identity. Contemporary discussions of sexual and gendered identity have replaced the view that heterosexuality is an innate or natural category with views that sexuality is fluid and multiple. Consequently, desire is a creative force in the engendering of sexual subjectivities and new social communities, rather than a negative force that limits gendered development to a heteronormative model. With this in mind, this thesis has three interrelated, yet distinct aims. The first is to explore the concept of sexual subjectivity, asking questions such as do human beings have a knowable sexual identity? And how have Freudian psychoanalysis and Foucauldian poststructuralism contributed to our contemporary understandings of sexuality? My second aim is to clarify Deleuze and Guattaris philosophy of becoming, using the metaphor of the rhizome to link feminist philosophy, queer theory, and subsequent deconstructions of sexual identity. My third project is to identify what is meant by becoming queer, including how it challenges the authority of heteronormative institutions. In order to demonstrate the potentialities of becoming queer, I conduct a case study of Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millans performance project Lesbian National Parks and Services. Through their performance art practice, Dempsey and Millan challenge dominant narratives of heterosexuality and fixed gender identity, offering a starting point for discussions of the reciprocity between artistic practice, social movements, and academic discourse. In addition, they demonstrate how queer becomings participate in an ethics of accountability, that is, as materially-situated, localized subjectivities they are able to alter and transform their environments.

Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act (2009) and the work of LGBTQ activists in the U.S. I argue that the act consolidates the U.S. nation-state’s monopoly on violence by relying on criminal law as a cognitive apparatus and stifles the work of LGBTQ activists and cultural labor to expand or challenge sensibilities regarding violence. I look to the work of trans and queer activists and how they frame “minor” hate crime cases in relationship to space and systems of criminalization. The activism surrounding Sakia Gunn, the New Jersey 7, Chrissy Lee Polis, and CeCe McDonald broaden theoretical account of violence provided by hate crime protections by attending to affect, the body, and space, and make political demands that move beyond criminal law. This thesis attempts to follow those trajectories and provide alternative grammars and methods for addressing violence. / text

The Canadian early childhood landscape is changing substantially, pushing early childhood from a private family responsibility into the greater public policy discourse. New investments in early childhood services, combined with research that defines the importance of early years learning, requires a careful analysis of the professional preparation of early childhood educators. At the same time typical understandings of family and childhood are being challenged through legal and social policy reforms. Although Canadian demographic changes indicate a growing number of queer families with children, the gap in addressing the interests of queer identified parents and their children is exacerbated by the dominance of a heteronormative perspective in early childhood theory, training and practice. My study demonstrates the disparity between the professional preparation of early childhood educators in Ontario and how queer families are understood in the Canadian context. I draw upon queer theory to deconstruct how educators understand child development patterns and family composition including the newly defined family units that can include single or multiple parents of varying sexual identities that may consist of, but are not limited to lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer and trans parents. Using qualitative methods, the research is grounded in data sources including text analysis of key early childhood texts, focus groups with early childhood educators who have graduated from ECE training programs in Ontario during the last decade and interviews with queer parents with young children enrolled in early childhood programs. I argue that the inherent heteronormative discourse of developmentally appropriate practice silences queer in early childhood training and is embedded in foundational approaches including standards of practice, curriculum frameworks and textbooks commonly used in the training of early childhood educators. Notions of diversity, equity and inclusion structure this silencing. My study also found that early childhood educators have a narrow understanding of how queer parents may be similar or different from other parents. Educators have a limited capacity to support and engage with parents that do not fit the dominant framework of family identity. The queer parents’ narratives consistently present subtle forms of homophobia and transphobia through the silencing of their family in their child’s early childhood program. The results of the study provide an opportunity to reimagine the professional training of early childhood educators embedding a much richer theoretical grounding and teaching practice of diversity and difference that includes queer parents and their children.

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Thesis of (Ph.D)--University of Alberta, 2009. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on October 7th, 2009). "Fall, 2009." At head of title: University of Alberta. A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduates Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Department of Sociology, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.