This thesis examines the role of sex and death in contemporary gay male culture, particularly focusing on issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” practices, specifically bug-chasing. By analyzing relevant literature and public discourse the topic of bug-chasing, or intentional pursuit of HIV sero-conversion, is placed in appropriate context. The work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Leo Bersani is employed in order to frame bug-chasing as a means of radical sexual self-determination which attempts to transcend the bonds of the administered bourgeois self, and ultimately results in an act of will akin to Martin Heidegger’s being-towards-death.

This thesis examines the role of sex and death in contemporary gay male culture, particularly focusing on issues surrounding HIV/AIDS and “safe sex” practices, specifically bug-chasing. By analyzing relevant literature and public discourse the topic of bug-chasing, or intentional pursuit of HIV sero-conversion, is placed in appropriate context. The work of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, and Leo Bersani is employed in order to frame bug-chasing as a means of radical sexual self-determination which attempts to transcend the bonds of the administered bourgeois self, and ultimately results in an act of will akin to Martin Heidegger’s being-towards-death.

This study examined the perceptions of female leaders' qualifications, leadership style, and effectiveness to lead. Eighty-nine leaders were surveyed using the Leader Perception Questionnaire Inventory (LPQ-i) on a four-point Likert scale and four random selected phone interviews. This study focused on several conceptual frameworks: first, role congruity theory which examined the incongruence of female leaders; second, contingency and transformational theory, which focuses on behavior style based on qualifications, leadership styles, and effectiveness of female leader's; and lastly, feminist theory which examined gender related issues of leadership. This study details current and historical context of female leader's influence in the workplace throughout history. This study utilized a (qualitative and quantitative) mixed methods approach to gain a new perspective using a phi and chi test to test the hypotheses. The findings concluded that women are continually disproportionately outnumbered by a large margin of (62%) males and '37%) females in high level leadership positions. Also, the findings concluded that men and women hold similar views of female leadership.

No description available.

Fairy tales’ magic is powerful because it has the potential to enter different cultures at different times. They teleport readers and displace them in alternative realities to shock them with a profoundly different world where there are possibilities they have not seen and impossibilities to be accepted. However, despite the clichéd opening of most fairy tales— “once upon a time”, the lack of a traceable origin and the arbitrariness of the tales’ contextualization, they are not ‘timeless’ or ‘universal’. These tales have a history. They evolve with new plots, characterizations and morals in response to the dominant discourses in different societies. For this reason, Red Riding Hood is not always a helpless prey of the predator Wolf, who can either be swallowed alive or depend on the huntsman who comes to rescue her. In fact, in contemporary re-writings, the heroine appears to be ‘liberated’ from the victim status she attains in the canonical versions of the tale by Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm, as she can now choose to sleep with the Wolf. I believe the evolution of the Red Riding Hood tale shows the changing values and epistemes female readers have been subjected to and internalized over the years in different societies to discipline themselves. As different powers, including the patriarchal, second-wave feminist and postfeminist discourses interfere with the tale, different ‘truths’ have been advocated to construct different images of a ‘proper woman’. The main questions my thesis seeks to answer are: whether women can be liberated from these ‘truths’ and epistemes that subjectify them, how such liberation has been attempted, at what costs, and how successful these attempts have been.

A semester spent studying gender through the eyes of a female Hamlet.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This thesis investigates the representation of asexual individuals in the works of Murata Sayaka, Kawakami Mieko, and Kamatani Yuki, all of whom are contemporary Japanese writers that portray near–suffocating social environments in their depictions of modern-day Japan. Their texts illustrate the augmented demands Japanese society places upon a cross-section of asexual and neurodivergent individuals. Despite the thematic and character–related similarities in their works, I argue that each author presents a unique interpretation of how these asexual individuals interact with—and try to integrate into—wider Japanese society and mainstream culture. Murata's texts demonstrate an unapologetically radical separatism by invoking an idealized queer utopia free from constraining notions of heteronormative sexuality present in Japanese society. In contrast, Kawakami's text suggests a more subtle—yet still subversive—integration of asexuality into society, one where asexual individuals strive for the same rights and privileges as all other citizens but still struggle to obtain acceptance or genuine equality. Kamatani's text, on the other hand, strikes a balance between these notions. Our Dreams at Dusk offers a utopic space for asexual and other queer individuals but does not go as far as suggesting a radical separatism like Murata's texts. Analyzing these texts alongside such seminal Queer Theory texts like Adrienne Rich's "Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence," Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's Epistemology of the Closet, Jack Halberstam's In a Queer Time and Place, and José Esteban Muñoz's Cruising Utopia uncovers the hidden sexualities buried within the texts: Not all asexual characters in the texts are explicitly labeled as such, yet they still occupy closeted lifestyles. This innovative examination of the existence of queer spaces within these works demonstrates the increasing prevalence of the presentation of asexual identities in Japan, allowing for the broader discussion of the invisible queer members of Japanese society.