Throughout the first decade of the 2000s, LGBTQ+ visibility has steadily increased in North American popular culture, allowing for not only more LGBTQ+ characters/figures to surface, but also establishing more diverse and nuanced representations and storylines. Bisexuality, while being part of the increasingly popular phrase of inclusivity (LGBTQ+), however, is one sexuality that not only continues to be overlooked within popular culture but that also continues to be represented in limited ways. In this doctoral thesis I examine how bisexual women are represented within mainstream popular culture, in particular on American television, focusing on two, popular programs (The L Word and the Shot At Love series). These texts have been chosen for popularity and visibility in mainstream media and culture, as well as for how bisexual women are unprecedentedly made central to many of the storylines (The L Word) and the series as a whole (Shot At Love). This analysis provides not only a detailed historical account of bisexual visibility but also discusses bisexuality thematically, highlighting commonalities across bisexual representations as well as shared themes between and with other identities. By examining key examples of bisexuality in popular culture from the first decade of the twenty-first century, my research investigates how representations of bisexuality are often portrayed in conversation with hegemonic understandings of gender and sexuality, specifically highlighting the mainstream "gay rights" movement's narrative of "normality" and "just like you" politics. Finally, it is in recognizing how representations of bisexuality are framed by specific reoccurring themes/tropes, as well as how these themes/tropes work together within larger social, cultural, and political climates, that it becomes possible to challenge existing gender and sexuality norms and ideals and create a more nuanced and complex understanding of bisexuality.

Previous discussions of the category of homosexual panic have tended to dismiss it as anachronistic or homophobic. In contrast to these approaches, this thesis takes the term more seriously, arguing for its structural necessity to particular instances of literature, psychiatry and law in the United States. This interdisciplinary endeavor tracks the histories of the term, examining the impact of homosexual panic on contemporary understandings of sexuality, time and personhood. Adopting a Foucauldian framework, the chapters avoid offering a singular definition of homosexual panic in order to articulate the forces that historically make sense of the category. Divided into three sections, each organized around one of the areas in which homosexual panic occurs (literature, psychiatry and law), the thesis returns to the primary texts on homosexual panic, reading them against their source texts and in the context of current approaches to homosexual panic within the field of sexuality studies. In the literature section, I focus on Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's appropriation of the term in Between Men and Epistemology of the Closet, reading this against her sources (both literary and critical) including Henry James' 'The Beast in the Jungle,' Gayle Rubin's 'The Traffic In Women,' James Hogg's Confessions of a Justified Sinner and contemporary uses of Sedgwick's concept in P.J. Smith's Lesbian Panic. The chapters explore the imploded time of homosexual panic to expand upon theorizations of temporality by queer scholars, including Lee Edelman, Judith Halberstam and Elizabeth Freeman. Secondly, the psychiatry section reads the origin of homosexual panic in Edward Kempf's 1920's text Psychopathology in context with its dismissal in 1980's psychiatric articles. Here, the mythologization of Kempf is read as establishing the American Psychiatric Association as coherent. Developing a theory of myth from psychoanalytic theorist, Shoshana Felman, the section creates alternate possible histories of homosexual panic through close readings of parallel concepts like Freud's derealization and Roger Caillois' dark space. Thirdly, the legal section offers close readings of Cynthia Lee's 'The Homosexual Panic Defense' and two court cases, the murder of Matthew Shepard and the trail of John Stephan Parisie, to articulate the components of the Homosexual Panic Defense (HPD). The chapters suggest that arguments against the HPD work by upholding panic-structures of revelation, outing and latency, while failing to address how homosexual panic is prefigured in certain versions of the U.S. Law. These readings show how homosexual panic has become an example of, and strategy for, people living moments 'beside' their literary, psychiatric and legal selves. I call these moments 'paratime', which, I argue, enables new queer theorizations of concepts constituting these fields. By showing how homosexual panic structures queer time in literature, mythology in psychiatry and truth in law, the thesis demonstrates the influence of homosexual panic on the terms placed at the center of each field. The conclusion argues that homosexual panic troubles the centrality of these concepts and, invoking Judith Butler, proposes alternate modes of theorization that enable us to recognize how particular lives continue to be made unlivable.

Through assessing Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus and field, this research project examines how re-sistance can be understood as an embodied experience. Six resistors are asked in semi-structured and dia-logic interviews how they experience resistance to oppression of various forms including patriarchy, co-lonialism, cisheteronormativity, and capitalism. Three main themes emerge from these interviews and in-clude: the construction of a resistant habitus, the occurrence of solidarity through which resistant habitus may mobilize, and the possibility of transforming oppressive fields such as patriarchy into fields of femi-nist resistance. Through instances of increased awareness of one’s social struggle, developments of mo-bile solidarity, and the occupation of oppressive fields in the name of social change, this project posits that habitus are capable of enacting change upon the field. / Graduate

Using in-depth interviews with six participants, this qualitative project examines LGBTQ+ experiences in Conservative Christian communities in British Columbia and Alberta through the lens of queer theory. The research questions guiding this project are: 1) How influential is the role of Christianity in the formation of non-normative genders and sexualities? 2) How do LGBTQ+ individuals understand their LGBTQ+ identity when situated within a traditionally heteronormative religious community? 3) Does there continue to be a code of silence surrounding LGBTQ+ identities within Conservative Christian communities? 4) How do LGBTQ+ individuals deal with the perceived incompatibility between their faith and their sexuality and/or gender? Findings indicate that participants view the silence surrounding LGBTQ+ issues and the subsequent lack of formal support for LGBTQ+ individuals as complicit in perpetuating rhetoric that LGBTQ+ identities are abnormal, sinful, and shameful. The majority of participants did not experience extended internalized conflict between their sexual/gender and religious identities, though they did struggle with trying to integrate their LGBTQ+ identities into their Conservative Christian communities. All participants shifted to a more personalized faith and view Christianity as a resource instead of a requirement, and the majority of participants frame both their gender/sexual identity and religious identity as fluid and liminal, subject to change depending on the context. Recommendations for Conservative Christian communities to better address sexual and gender diversity include exposure, celebration of LGBTQ+ identities, adherence to unconditional love as a core tenet of Christianity, and transparency regarding community stances on LGBTQ+ individuals and issues. / Graduate

As LGBTQ issues come to the forefront of discussion, the acceptance of queer television is becoming more common. However, research has shown that seemingly progressive shows often reinforce dominant ideologies, despite the presence of queer characters or themes. This analysis seeks to understand whether the children's animated series, Steven Universe, is as progressive as reviews would make it seem. Two open-ended research questions are used to explore the constructions of gender and romance in the series. Through the use of queer analysis, this study reveals that the series is indeed queer. The series narrative subverts gender through the deconstruction of societal binaries. Likewise, love is treated inclusively, and is not limited to heterosexual romances. Steven Universe, though not perfect, is an amicable example of how children's cartoons can educate upcoming generations in what it means to defy expectations and go beyond labels.

The years between 1989 and 1993 witnessed a sea change in the fabric of contemporary artistic practice, with a sudden embrace of previously marginalized identities on the part of museums, galleries and other institutions. This dissertation traces how sexuality, race and gender came to be placed at the center of discussions of contemporary art, and examines the ways in which artists responded to the sudden embrace of marginal identities on the part of museums and other art institutions in the early 1990s by harnessing the potential of this newly increased visibility, and also by developing strategies to offset the spectacularization of their identities. In particular, I focus on the collision between this new institutional desire for difference and the emergence of a notion of queerness that is specifically anti-identitarian and thus in conflict with the imperative to produce art about one’s identity. The dissertation is structured around four exhibitions that each played a crucial role in establishing this reorganization of the art world. This sequence of exhibitions narrates the larger structural shift through gradual steps, but each chapter also serves as a case study, since distinct notions of power emerge from the individual exhibitions. Tied into these divergent, sometimes incompatible understandings of power were competing understandings of the ways in which identity could be engaged politically and aesthetically. In particular, I focus on how a melancholic approach to queer subjectivity was materialized in art at the time, on the resurgence of documentary practices, on psychoanalytically inflected artistic interventions into museum spaces, and on the emergence of new forms of artistic critique.

This dissertation traces the literary and cultural phenomenon of “bad readers” across a range of Greek and Latin texts from the late first to late second centuries CE. By jointly engaging the framework of book history with the insights of feminist, queer, critical theory, it offers a methodology for understanding why certain readerly embodiments and modes are stigmatized for deviating from the hegemonic norm, and how the contested space of reading intersects with negotiations of power, embodiment, and identity. I argue that “bad readers” are not “bad” in any inherent or universal sense, but rather that “bad readers” intersect with particular literary, cultural, and ideological agendas. I also show how “bad readers” help illuminate the broader material, social networks that are adumbrated by books as objects in antiquity, thus contributing to recent work that has emphasized the importance of situating “reading” within its ancient, sociocultural context. At the same time, this study lays bare how such work has also tended to leave the question of modern readerly poses and politics to the side. Ultimately, this study shows how literary representations of “bad readers” offer a powerful locus for telling a different story about books and reading in the ancient Mediterranean, as well as a lens for theorizing how certain hermeneutic modes in the discipline today participate in and reproduce hierarchies of power.

Black Queer students in the United States did not ask to be born into a social world where being both Black and Queer are associated with stigma and marginalized oppression they did not contribute or consent to. Acknowledging that too often, the unique needs of and contributions made by Black Queer public middle and high school students in the United States are absent within research, policymaking, and practice, this dissertation seeks to fill a gap in the existing literature by exploring essential characteristics and features of informal educational programs and activities (IEPAs) from the perspective of Black Queer middle and high school students. Informal educational programs and activities are sites of possibility that have a long history in the African American tradition of learning and development. IEPAs are supported by public investments at every level of government. Specifically, this dissertation employs a secondary analysis of GLSEN's 2017 School Climate Survey (School Climate Survey) dataset to examine the relative impact of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and demographic variables on how frequently Black Queer public school students attend informal educational programs and activities. Quantitative analysis is enhanced by interviews with Black Queer public middle and high school graduates, split by gender and program participation. I find that Queer Black youth are more likely to participate in IEPAs when they are older, in urban areas, out to their peers, and in school contexts where they do not feel respected, feel unsafe because of their gender, are subject to policies that preclude bathroom choice, and observe symbols in their schools conveying that they are safe spaces. Some interpersonal and school context factors are significant for trans and non-binary/non-conforming students. I conclude with recommendations for the design of school programs and policies that can enable youth with multiple marginalized identities to thrive.

In previous research biological sex and gender are defined as the same thing, which has lead to a misconception of Gender. However, the notion of stereotypes being connected to a sex is inevitable. While this may not be true in each and every game, drastic underrepresentation becomes a problem. It is a self-perpetuating cycle; designing for a target group that is constructed from a stereotype, that stereotype then dictates the norm for the target group and society adapts to fit that norm. This cycle has to break, as people are not stereotypes. Our hypothesis is that a queer perspective could provide a more nuanced spectrum of gender thus making games more inclusive for a broader audience. We will test this by using a queer theoretical approach to discourse analysis of segments from the game: Dragon Age: Origins ™ (2009). We chose this game for the chance to explore the possibilities for self-expression and sexuality in an environment which allows a more complex relationship between characters.

Frank Norris's novel McTeague can be read as an intense reflection on the limitations of language surrounding fluid sexualities in late-nineteenth century America. Through a queer theoretical lens, I examine the ways in which Norris collapses his characters and narrative in order to demonstrate those limits. Trina and McTeague suffer acutely from their inability to articulate their sexualities, and the narrator of the novel does little to compensate for the characters\' failure to speak. The novel, which is a collection of broken genres, further exposes the fact that various kinds of rigid narrative forms cannot sufficiently frame or articulate fluid sexualities. Through character, narrative, and genre breakdown, Norris reflects how the nineteenth century's lack of language regarding those who occupy a variety of sexualities can tear people and language apart. / Master of Arts