This thesis is a queer theory analysis of the feminist science fiction novel The Kanshou by Sally Miller Gearhart. After exploring both male and female authored science fiction in the literature review, two themes were to be dominant. The goal of this thesis is to answer the questions, can the traditional themes that are prevalent in male authored science fiction and feminist science fiction in representing gender and sexual orientation dichotomies be found in The Kanshou? And does Gearhart challenge these dichotomies by destabilizing them? The analysis found determined that Gearhart's The Kanshou does challenge traditional sociological norms of binary gender identities and sexual orientation the majority of the time.

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Representations of natural disasters in Black Southern literature identify social location as the greatest indicator of risk vulnerability. Moreover, they can expose the precarious subjectivity of the Black female reproductive body, as addressed through characters Lulu in Richard Wright’s “Down by the Riverside,” Janie in Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, and Jesmyn Ward’s Esch in Salvage the Bones. Together, these female characters share a legacy of social marginalization and Black female resistance that is (re)shaped through their experiences with ecological catastrophe. This thesis considers these three texts together as an ongoing testimony and as a means to bear witness to a socio-historical record of disaster oppression and Black female resistance.

Conceived in the wake of a global pandemic and the unanticipated need to create digital theatre, COVEN-19, or Magicks for Unprecdented Times as a devising project consisted of two witchcraft-inspired performances: a fall 2020 Samhain ritual and a spring 2021 Beltane ritual. The company of undergraduate and graduate theatre witches explored decentralized, iterative, slow, caretaking, queer forms of devising over digital platforms. The written portion of this thesis takes the form of a digital tarot blog: 22 (plus a bonus) interconnected essays and spells that interrogate feminist and queer theories as they pertain to the Coven’s devising process. This digital format not only reflects the malleable nature of the creative process, but it is also a kind of praxis that invites the reader to take an active role in meaning-making and resists an objective, singular narrative. Woven through these tarot cards are threads of utopian futurity, situated subjectivities, and anticapitalist temporalities. The essays and spells are primarily in conversation with adrienne maree brown, Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, Jose Estaban Munoz, and Starhawk – engaging with these theorists as thought-ancestors in order to activate rather than regurgitate their knowledges of radical hope and nonlinear process. The tarot deck takes a situated, backwards glance toward these ancestors as it grasps at seemingly impossible utopian horizons of collaboration and creation.

The time of modernity, defined here as 1850-1940, contributed to massive changes in the representation of the feminine in literature. Societal paradigm shifts due to industrialism, advances in science, psychology, and a newfound push for gender equality brought transformation to the Western World. As a result of this, male frustrations revived the ancient trope of the femme fatale, but the modern woman—already hungry for agency, tired of maligned representation in heinous portrayals of skeletons, sirens, and beasts—saw a symbol begging for redemption rather than the intended insult. Women of the nineteenth century infused texture to a two-dimensional accusation that argued the only good female sexuality was one that could be contained. The redemption of the femme fatale is traced in this thesis through Charles Baudelaire’s The Flowers of Evil (1857), Gabrielle D’Annunzio’s The Triumph of Death (1901), and Djuna Barnes’s Nightwood (1936).

This thesis examines ways in which rural mountain women of Andean Peru and southern Appalachia use their lived histories and food knowledge in ways that counter Cartesian epistemologies regarding national and international food systems. Using women’s fiction and cookbooks, this thesis examines how voice and narrative reclaim women’s spaces within food landscapes. Further, this thesis examines women’s non-profits and grassroots organizations to illustrate the ways in which rural mountain women expand upon their lived histories in ways that contribute to tangible solutions to poverty and hunger in rural mountainous communities. The primary objective of this thesis is to recover rural mountain women’s voices in relation to food culture and examine how their food knowledge contributes to improving local food policy and reducing hunger in frontline communities.

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Em meio às mudanças políticas e sociais no Brasil da segunda parte do século XX, Lygia Fagundes Telles começa a se destacar literariamente através de seus romances e coletâneas de contos com caráter intimista. Apesar de não se considerar naquela época uma escritora militante, ela era engajada socialmente e realizava sua crítica de maneira sutil utilizando-se de táticas literárias, como a presença do gênero fantástico. Ela escreve durante uma época de extrema censura e repressão, aonde o conservadorismo impera principalmente nos moldes familiares. A sociedade continha um modelo de como cada homem e mulher deveria agir para se encaixar e ser aceito. A fim de criticar o pensamento da sociedade retrógrada da qual ela fazia parte, Lygia escreve os contos fantásticos: “Venha ver o pôr do sol”, “A caçada”, e “As formigas”. Através de acontecimentos insólitos e aterrorizantes, os personagens enfrentam a realidade acerca de seu gênero e encontram as limitações impostas dos estereótipos mantidos pela sociedade conservadora. Nesses contos, Lygia encontra três possibilidades finais para quem pretende ir contra o tradicional: prisão pessoal, morte lenta ou fuga.

My goal for this thesis is to investigate the concept of (mis)labeling female protagonists in contemporary British fiction as mentally ill—historically labeled as madness—when subjected to traumatic events. The female protagonists in two novels by Sophie Mackintosh, The Water Cure (2018) and Blue Ticket (2020), and Jenni Fagan’s 2012 novel The Panopticon, are raised in environments steeped in trauma and strict, hegemonic structures that actively work to control and mold their identities. In The Panopticon, this system is called “the experiment”; in The Water Cure, it is personified by the character King and those who follow him; and in Blue Ticket, it is the social structure as a whole reflected in the character of Doctor A. To simply label these novels’ woman protagonists as ill would be to ignore that their behavior is not mental illness but in fact rational behavior produced by the traumatic dystopian environments.

Though Sylvia Plath’s poems and novel undergo frequent scholarly research, her short fiction is often overlooked. Plath’s journals influenced her short fiction writing, and her stories reflected Plath’s lived experiences. Plath’s short fiction, like her other works, explore themes of identity and detachment. Each of her protagonists exist in a personal limbo, and they strive to find their identities and to fit the roles in which they occupy. This thesis focuses on “Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom,” stories from Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams, and additional research from scholarly journals and biographies, with comparisons to identity struggles shown in The Bell Jar and The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath. I found the catalysts for their identity crises stem from observations surrounding femininity, societal roles, and psychological wellness. Furthermore, this research shows Plath’s subjective writing habits and highlights her protagonists’ commonalities throughout her writing career.