School counselors need to advocate and act as an ally for all students. Safe Space, a training designed to facilitate competency for working with and serving LGBTQ youth (i.e., LGBTQ competency), has received increased attention in the field of school counseling. However, limited empirical support exists for training interventions such as Safe Space, with only one study to date examining its effectiveness for graduate psychology students (see Finkel, Storaasli, Bandele, & Schaefer, 2003). This study used a randomized pretest-posttest control group design to evaluate and examine the impact of Safe Space training on competency levels of a sample of school counselors/school counselor trainees and to explore the relationship between LGBTQ competency and awareness of sexism and heterosexism.

Citizens' increased access to the internet is transforming political landscapes across the globe. The implications for civil society, culture, religion, governmental legitimacy and accountability are vast. In nations where one does not typically expect "modern" or egalitarian ideals to be prevalent among highly religious and conservative populations, those with motivations to unite around socially and culturally taboo causes are no longer forced to silently acquiesce and accept the status quo. The internet has proven to be an invaluable tool for those aiming to engage in social activism, as it allows citizens in highly oppressive authoritarian regimes to covertly mobilize and coordinate online protest events (such as hashtag campaigns, proclamations via social media, signing of petitions, and even DDoS attacks) without the fear of repression. What catalyzes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) equality movements in authoritarian regimes, specifically with respect to the Middle East and North African region? This thesis argues that gay rights movements are more likely to emerge in politically repressive, more conservative states when new political opportunities--namely access to the internet for purposes of political organization--become available. This master's thesis identifies why LGBTQ movements emerged in Morocco and Algeria, but not in Tunisia until after it underwent democratization. These states will be analyzed in order to gauge the strength of their LGBTQ rights movements and, most importantly, to identify which variables most cogently explain their existence altogether.

In the last forty years, U.S. national and statewide LGBT organizations, in pursuit of "equality" through a limited and focused agenda, have made remarkably swift progress moving that agenda forward. However, their agenda has been frequently criticized as prioritizing the interests of White, middle-class gay men and lesbians and ignoring the needs of other LGBT people. In their shadows have emerged numerous grassroots organizations led by queer people of color, transgender people, and low-income LGBT people. These "queer liberation" groups have often been viewed as the left wing of the GRM, but have not been extensively studied. My research investigated how these grassroots liberation organizations can be understood in relation to the equality movement, and whether they actually comprise a separate movement operating alongside, but in tension with, the mainstream gay rights movement. This research used a qualitative content analysis, grounded in black feminism's framework of intersectionality, queer theory, and social movement theories, to examine eight queer liberation organizations. Data streams included interviews with staff at each organization, organizational videos from each group, and the organizations' mission statements. The study used deductive content analysis, informed by a predetermined categorization matrix drawn from social movement theories, and also featured inductive analysis to expand those categories throughout the analysis. This study's findings indicate that a new social movement - distinct from the mainstream equality organizations - does exist. Using criteria informed by leading social movement theories, findings demonstrate that these organizations cannot be understood as part of the mainstream equality movement but must be considered a separate social movement. This "queer liberation movement" has constituents, goals, strategies, and structures that differ sharply from the mainstream equality organizations. This new movement prioritizes queer people in multiple subordinated identity categories, is concerned with rebuilding institutions and structures, rather than with achieving access to them, and is grounded more in "liberation" or "justice" frameworks than "equality." This new movement does not share the equality organizations' priorities (e.g., marriage) and, instead, pursues a different agenda, include challenging the criminal justice and immigration systems, and strengthening the social safety net. Additionally, the study found that this new movement complicates existing social movement theory. For decades, social movement scholars have documented how the redistributive agenda of the early 20th century class-based social movements has been replaced by the demands for access and recognition put forward by the identity-based movements of the 1960s New Left. While the mainstream equality movement can clearly be characterized as an identity-based social movement, the same is not true of the groups in this study. This queer liberation movement, although centered on identity claims, has goals that are redistributive as well as recognition-based. While the emergence of this distinct social movement is significant on its own, of equal significance is the fact that it represents a new post-structuralist model of social movement. This study presents a "four-domain" framework to explain how this movement exists simultaneously inside and outside of other social movements, as a bridge between them, and as its own movement. Implications for research, practice, and policy in social work and allied fields are presented.

Adaptation Studies suffers from a deficiency in the study of black, brown, yellow, and red adaptive texts, adaptive actors, and their practices. Adaptive Acts intervenes in this Eurocentric discourse as a study of adaptation with a (queer) POC perspective. My dissertation reveals that artists of color (re)create texts via dynamic modes of adaptation such as hyper-literary allusion, the use of meta-narratives as framing devices, and on-site collaborative re-writes that speak to/from specific cultural discourses that Eurocentric models alone cannot account for. I examine multi-ethnic American adaptations to delineate the role of adaptation in the continuance of stories that contest dominant culture from marginalized perspectives. And I offer deep adaptive readings of multi-ethnic adaptations in order to answer questions such as: what happens when adaptations are created to remember, to heal, and to disrupt? How does adaptation, as a centuries-old mode of cultural production, bring to the center the voices of the doubly marginalized, particularly queers of color? The texts I examine as “adaptive acts” are radical, queer, push the boundaries of adaptation, and have not, up to this point, been given the adaptive attention I believe they merit. David Henry Hwang’s 1988 Tony award-winning play, M. Butterfly, is an adaptive critique of the textual history of Butterfly and questions the assumptions of the Orientalism that underpins the story, which causes his play to intersect with Pierre Loti’s 1887 novella, Madame Chrysanthéme, at a point of imperial queerness. Rodney Evans, whose 2004 film, Brother to Brother, is the first full-length film to tell the story of the black queer roots at the genesis of the Harlem Renaissance, uses adaptation as a story(re)telling mode that focalizes the “gay rebel of the Harlem Renaissance,” Richard Bruce Nugent (1906-1987), to Signify on issues of canonization, gate-keeping, mythologizing, and intracultural marginalization. My discussion of Sherman Alexie’s debut film, The Business of Fancydancing, is informed by my own work as an adaptive actor and showcases the power of adaptation in the activation of Native continuance as an inclusive adaptive practice that offers an opportunity for women and queers of color to amend the Spokane/Coeur d'Alene writer-director’s creative authority. Adaptive acts are not only documents, but they document movements, decisions, and sociocultural action. Adaptation Studies must take seriously the power and possibilities of “adaptive acts” and “adaptive actors” from the margins if the field is to expand—adapt—in response to this diversity of adaptive potential.

Working through methods of abstraction and comedic mimicry I choreograph awkwardly balanced sculpture with objects of adornment as a means to defuse personal sensitivities surrounding my experiences of gender, desire, and home. The research that follows is concerned with the adjacent, the in between, above and underneath, because I feel that this kind of looking means that you are, to some degree, aware of what lies at the edges. Maybe this is what Gertrude Stein means to act as though there is no use in a center—because this concerns a way of relating, though there are many things in the room. ‘A spectacle and nothing strange’ is an arrangement of gestures, of made difference, of kinships, of orientations and possible futures, sustained tension, coded adornment, big dyke energy, shifts in hardness, leaning softness, much more than flowers, ...and in any case there is sweetness and some of that.

Same-sex couples are affected by the social and political climates in which they live, as these create the difference between acceptance and legalization, and discrimination and prohibition, of their relationships. This contingence is made increasingly impactful by the privileges and protections afforded to married couples by the federal government; same-sex couples, along with other couples that choose not to, or cannot, marry, are excluded from these benefits. Following the June 26, 2013 ruling that Section Three of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which defined marriage as between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional, same-sex couples were given access to over 1,100 federal protections and benefits and supported legally for the first time. My research explored the lived experiences of same-sex couples following this milestone in order to develop an understanding of the psychological and relational effects of the DOMA repeal on same-sex couples. This understanding may assist therapists working with these couples by increasing comprehension of their context and the effects of the DOMA repeal on their internal and relationship functioning. By understanding these aspects, therapists may work more capably and sensitively with same-sex couples, and be more informed regarding potential problems these clients may bring to therapy. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were employed in order to gather comprehensive data on the topic, utilize the strengths of both methodologies, and enhance the results of each method with the other. A single instrument, an online survey, was utilized. The quantitative paradigm provided numerical data on the experiences of same-sex couples following the DOMA repeal, as well as differences in experiences based on variance in state laws. Under the qualitative paradigm, phenomenological methodology was utilized to explore and convey participants' experience of the repeal in their own words. Responses were collected via survey to allow for more anonymity for participants, as well as a more representative sample of same-sex couples across the country. Qualitative and quantitative questions were included on the survey; responses were analyzed separately, and then merged during interpretation. Implications for clinical practice derived from this study are reviewed, as well as implications for advocacy work and directions for further research. It is hoped that this study will provide a better understanding of same-sex couples' lived experiences following the repeal of DOMA's Section Three, and provide implications for therapists working with these couples.

This thesis is a two-part work. Its components, a written paper and a one-night symposium/film screening event entitled Tennessee Williams: Gender Play in 2015 and Beyond, have been closely coordinated with my dramaturgical research for the February 2015 University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Theater production of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The written inquiry is structured around a chronological, selected American production history of Cat; this history, rendered in a series of three case studies, will (1) synthesize preexisting analyses of Cat’s dramaturgical profile, its impact on American theater, and its position in Williams’s oeuvre; and (2) examine the interplay between this body of scholarship’s primary foci (e.g., gender, sexual identity, and family dysfunction) and the evolving cultural climate in which its subject, Cat, is perennially reinterpreted and restaged. In other words, my thesis reframes Cat as a series of inherently American—and potentially unanswerable—questions posed by Williams to his viewers; it then investigates the artistic and critical responses generated by sixty years of public engagement, or “dialogue,” with those questions. Ultimately, each case study will illustrate my central premise: that the value of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof lies in its ability to resonate, both in production design and reception, with the social, sexual, and domestic challenges of the period in which it is produced.

This thesis investigates the worldview of six rhetors of the far-right using the rhetorical method of fantasy theme analysis. The specific rhetors examined in this study are Peter J. Peters, Dan Gayman, Edward Fields, Fred Phelps, Jeny Falwell, and James Dobson. In order to understand the discourse of the six rhetors, five research questions were developed to guide the study: (1) What are the images portrayed of homosexuals and gay rights advocates in the fantasy themes of the rhetors examined in this study? (2) What are the images portrayed of Christians in the fantasy themes of the rhetors examined in this study? (3) How do the fantasy themes differ in extremity among the rhetors of the far-tight with regard to homosexuality and supporters of gay lights? (4) How do the fantasy themes of the rhetors work together to create a rhetolical vision for the far-light regarding homosexuality? (5) How do the collective fantasy themes of the far-right rhetors potentially influence actions against and aggression towards homosexuals? In order to answer these questions, a fantasy theme analysis was conducted on various artifacts of the six rhetors chosen for examination in this thesis. The analysis indicated that the fantasy themes of the rhetors work together to create a rhetorical vision in which a drama is played out. In this drama, homosexuals and supporters of gay rights are depicted as villains and fundamentalist Christians are characterized as heroes. Through the depictions of these characters and their actions the ultimate ideal of America as a country is provided. This ultimate ideal focuses on a setting where homosexuals do not exist and gay rights is not an issue. Through these fantasy themes the rhetors encourage America's patriots and fundamentalist Christians to remove homosexuals from society. In addition, the collective rhetorical vision of the six rhetors provides motives for aggressive actions against homosexuals, including acts of violence.

During the last two decades, Mainland China has seen a rise in the emergence of homosexually charged themes in popular underground literature via the spread of the “Danmei” novel. Mandarin for “indulge in beauty,” the term refers to works of fiction centering on graphic depictions of same-sex love between two central male characters. By the late nineties, an explosion of online Danmei forums proved to be a powerful tool in circumventing government censors, and authorship (mainly by young heterosexual women) skyrocketed. Xiao Chun’s Collide, first uploaded to the internet in 2006, swept through online message boards and reading forums to become one of the cornerstone pieces of the Danmei genre. Banned for its lascivious homosexual content, its rabid Internet consumption throughout China and Taiwan has contributed to (and, indeed, sheds light on) a wide array of observable changes occurring in the modern Chinese social landscape. This paper begins with a brief explanation of what little is known about the author of Collide, as well as an introduction to the background of the Danmei movement. Following these sections, a discussion of the sociocultural relevance of the Danmei movement will be presented with special attention paid to the significance of female-dominated authorship and readership, to the voyeurism associated with the genre, and to the relationship between Danmei literature and changing attitudes toward homosexuality. The remaining sections will provide notes from the translator and further remarks on Collide. The analysis will conclude with a full translation of the novel.

GAYME is a transmedia story-telling world that I have created to conceptually explore the dynamics of queering game design through the development of varying game prototypes. The final iteration of GAYME is @deadquarewalking'. It is a documentary game and a performance art installation that documents a carless, gay/queer/quare man's journey on Halloween to get to and from one of Orlando's most well-known gay clubs - the Parliament House Resort. "The art of cruising" city streets to seek out queer/quare companionship particularly amongst gay, male culture(s) is well-documented in densely, populated cities like New York, San Francisco and London, but not so much in car-centric, urban environments like Orlando that are less oriented towards pedestrians. Cruising has been and continues to be risky even in pedestrian-friendly cities but in Orlando cruising takes on a whole other dimension of danger. In 2011-2012, The Advocate magazine named Orlando one of the gayest cities in America (Breen, 2012). Transportation for America (2011) also named the Orlando metropolitan region the most dangerous city in the country for pedestrians. Living in Orlando without a car can be deadly as well as a significant barrier to connecting with other people, especially queer/quare people, because of Orlando's car-centric design. In Orlando, cars are sexy. At the same time, the increasing prevalence in gay, male culture(s) of geo-social, mobile phone applications using Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and location aware services, such as Grindr (Grindr, LLC., 2009) and even FourSquare (Crowley and Selvadurai, 2009) and Instagram (Systrom and Krieger, 2010), is shifting the way gay/queer/quare Orlandoans co-create social and sexual networks both online and offline. Urban and sub-urban landscapes have transformed into hybrid "techno-scapes" overlaying "the electronic, the emotional and the social with the geographic and the physical" (Hjorth, 2011). With or without a car, gay men can still geo-socially cruise Orlando's car-centric, street life with mobile devices. As such emerging media has become more pervasive, it has created new opportunities to quarely visualize Orlando's "technoscape" through phone photography and hashtag metadata while also blurring lines between the artist and the curator, the player and the game designer. This project particularly has evolved to employ game design as an exhibition tool for the visualization of geo-social photography through hashtag play. Using hashtags as a game mechanic generates metadata that potentially identifies patterns of play and "ways of seeing" across player experiences as they attempt to make meaning of the images they encounter in the game. @deadquarewalking also demonstrates the potential of game design and geo-social, photo-sharing applications to illuminate new ways of documenting and witnessing the urban landscapes that we both collectively and uniquely inhabit. 'In Irish culture, "quare" can mean "very" or "extremely" or it can be a spelling of the rural or Southern pronunciation of the word "queer." Living in the American Southeast, I personally relate more to the term "quare" versus "queer." Cultural theorist E. Patrick Johnson (2001) also argues for "quareness" as a way to question the subjective bias of whiteness in queer studies that risks discounting the lived experiences and material realities of people of color. Though I do not identify as a person of color and would be categorized as white or European American, "quareness" has an important critical application for considering how Orlando's urban design is intersectionally racialized, gendered and classed.