This thesis contributes with a countryside perspective to queer research by highlighting the countryside as a context where queer lives are lived. In the thesis I problematize the city/countryside divide with a view of the concept of queer as dependent on space and time.  The empirical materials are generated through a workshop on queerness, gathering people living within a countryside context; the materials consist of a discussion and written responses to questions on queerness and the city/countryside binary. Theoretically and methodologically, the thesis is inspired by the notion of agential realism (Barad 2007) and situated knowledge, (Haraway 1988); the use of creative writing, inspired by Richardson (1994 and 2000), has also been central to the development of the thesis. The analysis is carried out within themes focusing on conditions for queerness within city/countryside experienced by people situated in the countryside. The analysis shows how space, time, contexts and intersections are entangled and queering the city/countryside divide.

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The aim of this thesis is to investigate the processes through which mathematical and gendered subjectivity is constituted, reconstituted and maintained in different situations during Early Childhood Teacher Education (ECE). In three research articles it is investigated how student teachers’ subjectivity constitutions are expressed, formulated and reformulated in different discursive and material practices. With the support of feminist poststructural theories, student teachers’ subjectification processes are investigated in relation to the subject of mathematics, gender, different learning and teaching discourses, materials and environments. During the course of the work a theoretical transit is carried out: from Judith Butler’s theories (1990, 1993 and 1997) to Karen Barad’s (2007, 2008) theoretical territory. The empirical data was collected from three cohorts (2005-2007) of a ten-week long mathematics course included in a one-year ECE course called Investigative Pedagogy – Dialogue Reggio Emilia. Examples of the data include memory stories written by student teachers, pedagogical documentation from different mathematics projects, field notes from action research studies in ECE education, survey results and students’ reports. Methodologically, in relation to the first and second articles the thesis works with feminist discourse analysis, deconstructive and performative methodology and in relation to the third article with diffractive and intra-active methodology. The results show examples of how student teachers constitute mathematical subjectivity through complex networks of social relations, learning discourses, gender, material practices, time, space and place. Taking part in alternative, aesthetic interdisciplinary learning practices changes the understanding of student teachers’ mathematical subjectivity, although not always in predictable or uncomplicated ways. In the shift from a discursive and performative way of understanding mathematical subjectivity to an agentic realistic one, the understanding of mathematical subjectivity is widened to include things, materials and environments. This shift implies a decisive meaning for how pedagogical practices can be viewed and, in the long run, how mathematics didactics can be approached for student teachers and young children alike. / At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished  and had a status as follows: Paper 1: In press. Paper 3: Submitted.

During a municipal election in 2010, Canadian citizens used a blog to enact an ad hoc campaign funding disclosure request of all candidates. After the election, the municipality implemented formal legislation requiring campaign funding disclosure on their own website. This thesis is a case study that explores how two technologically mediated transparency practices were constituted within and outside the scope of legislation. I draw on Andrew Pickering's (1995) notion of the mangle of practice and Karen Barad's (2003) concept of intra-action to conceptualize these transparency practices as a mangle of entwining intra-connected phenomena. In my exploration of policy in practice I deconstruct transparency practice through a discussion of how transparency mechanisms and social media characteristics intra-act and transform each other into a practice that supersedes the original intent of the ad hoc request and formal legislation. This research queries assumptions about transparency practices and contributes to establishing an interdisciplinary methodology for policy evaluation in technologically mediated environments. / Graduate / 0617 / paganda@gmail.com

This thesis addresses the rational properties of women’s gender identification and self-representation from political theorist Lois McNay’s generative logics, employing the Praedia of Julia Felix, Pompeii, as a case study. Previous debates rooted in semantics and representationalism have focused on non-elite stereotypes or negative gendered dichotomies fostered by comprehensive views on Roman women’s exclusion from public life. In contrast, this thesis adopts a new materialist approach, specifically drawing on feminist theorist Karen Barad’s agential realist method building on intra-activity in order to shed new light on the well-studied subject of how a non-elite woman was able to carve out an existence for herself in patriarchal ancient Roman society. Whereas past research has labelled non-elite Roman women as both passive and unproductive individuals, the present thesis proposes that agencies functioned as lived experiences which determined individuals’ abilities to actively connect with things and surroundings in different ways. Therefore, in order to analyze the interceding effects of agencies on gender identification and self-representation in connection to the Praedia of Julia Felix I argue that a broader view of performativity, embodying processes and materiality is needed. This view calls for a reconceptualization of relational entanglements in which material and social worlds are seen as mutually interconnected rather than separate entities isolated from the bodies responsible for creating these settings. Presenting the results based on a combined analysis of generative and new materialist models, I suggest that the Praedia of Julia Felix demonstrates a non-elite woman’s active participation in creating personal sustainability. This dynamic interplay between Julia Felix and her social surroundings in worth understanding in detail.

Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes offers a critical and creative intervention into cultural representations of gendered body dissidence in contemporary film. The study argues for the possibility of finding spaces of “disidentification”, so-called “exit scapes” within the films. Exit scapes disrupt the dominant cinematic regime set up for the trans character, which ties them into stories of discrimination, humiliation and violence. In Trans Cinema, for instance films such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Transamerica (2005), Romeos (2011) and Laurence Anyways (2012), scenes of singing, dancing and dreaming allow a different form of engagement with the films. As argued here, they allow a critical re-reading and an affirmative re-imagining of trans embodiment. The aim of this study is to investigate the utopian and hopeful potential within Trans Cinema from a critical transfeminist perspective. While focusing in particular on trans entrants as “spectators” or readers, this study draws on the work of a wide range of feminist and cultural scholars, such as Sara Ahmed, Susan Stryker, José Esteban Muñoz, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. The thesis etches out cinematic spatiotemporalities that unfold possibilities of utopian worlding and trans becoming through a set of conceptual innovations. By utilising a critical approach to audio-visuality and feminist film theory, the thesis re-conceptualises haptic spectatorship theory and its critique in western modernist ocularcentricism through a set of conceptual innovations. The methodological tools developed in this thesis, such as the “entrant”, the “exit scape” and “sensible cinematic intra-activity”, feature here as a multisensorial methodology for transdisciplinary transgender studies and feminist film theory as well as visual culture at large. / Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes är en kritisk och kreativ intervention med fokus på kulturella representationer av kroppar som bryter mot en könsbinär ordning i samtida film. Studien argumenterar för möjligheten att hitta utrymmen för “disidentification”, så kallade “exit scapes” inom filmerna. Exit scapes stör den dominanta filmiska ordning som skapats för transkaraktären, en ordning som är förbunden med berättelser om diskriminering, förödmjukelse och våld. Inom Trans Cinema, i filmer som exempelvis Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Transamerica (2005), Romeos (2011) and Laurence Anyways (2012), öppnar scener med sång, dans och drömmar upp för andra former av engagemang med filmerna. Som det argumenteras för i avhandlingen tillåter dessa ett kritiskt omformulerande av, och ett nytt affirmativt sätt att föreställa sig, transkroppslighet. Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka den utopiska och hoppfulla potential som finns inom transfilm utifrån ett kritiskt transfeministiskt perspektiv. Även om studien främst riktar sig till trans entrants som “åskådare” eller läsare, så har den en bred teoretisk bas hämtad från verk av en lång rad feministiska forskare inom kulturfältet, såsom Sara Ahmed, Susan Stryker, José Esteban Muñoz, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Karen Barad och Donna Haraway. Denna avhandling skissar filmiska spatiotemporaliteter, vilka öppnar för möjligheter av utopiska värdsliga och transsubjektiva tillblivelser genom utvecklandet av olika teoretiska begrepp. Genom ett kritiskt förhållningssätt till audiovisualitet och feministisk filmteori, revideras och omformuleras haptisk åskådarskapsteori och dess kritik i en västerländsk okularcentrism genom olika teoretiska innovationer. De metodologiska verktygen som utvecklas i avhandlingen, såsom “the entrant”, “the exit scape” samt “sensible cinematic intra-activity” utgör här funktionen som multisensorisk metodologi för transdisciplinära transstudier, feministisk filmteori samt för visuell kultur i stort.

Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes offers a critical and creative intervention into cultural representations of gendered body dissidence in contemporary film. The study argues for the possibility of finding spaces of “disidentification”, so-called “exit scapes” within the films. Exit scapes disrupt the dominant cinematic regime set up for the trans character, which ties them into stories of discrimination, humiliation and violence. In Trans Cinema, for instance films such as Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Transamerica (2005), Romeos (2011) and Laurence Anyways (2012), scenes of singing, dancing and dreaming allow a different form of engagement with the films. As argued here, they allow a critical re-reading and an affirmative re-imagining of trans embodiment. The aim of this study is to investigate the utopian and hopeful potential within Trans Cinema from a critical transfeminist perspective. While focusing in particular on trans entrants as “spectators” or readers, this study draws on the work of a wide range of feminist and cultural scholars, such as Sara Ahmed, Susan Stryker, José Esteban Muñoz, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Karen Barad and Donna Haraway. The thesis etches out cinematic spatiotemporalities that unfold possibilities of utopian worlding and trans becoming through a set of conceptual innovations. By utilising a critical approach to audio-visuality and feminist film theory, the thesis re-conceptualises haptic spectatorship theory and its critique in western modernist ocularcentricism through a set of conceptual innovations. The methodological tools developed in this thesis, such as the “entrant”, the “exit scape” and “sensible cinematic intra-activity”, feature here as a multisensorial methodology for transdisciplinary transgender studies and feminist film theory as well as visual culture at large. / Trans Cinema and its Exit Scapes är en kritisk och kreativ intervention med fokus på kulturella representationer av kroppar som bryter mot en könsbinär ordning i samtida film. Studien argumenterar för möjligheten att hitta utrymmen för “disidentification”, så kallade “exit scapes” inom filmerna. Exit scapes stör den dominanta filmiska ordning som skapats för transkaraktären, en ordning som är förbunden med berättelser om diskriminering, förödmjukelse och våld. Inom Trans Cinema, i filmer som exempelvis Hedwig and the Angry Inch (2001), Transamerica (2005), Romeos (2011) and Laurence Anyways (2012), öppnar scener med sång, dans och drömmar upp för andra former av engagemang med filmerna. Som det argumenteras för i avhandlingen tillåter dessa ett kritiskt omformulerande av, och ett nytt affirmativt sätt att föreställa sig, transkroppslighet. Syftet med den här studien är att undersöka den utopiska och hoppfulla potential som finns inom transfilm utifrån ett kritiskt transfeministiskt perspektiv. Även om studien främst riktar sig till trans entrants som “åskådare” eller läsare, så har den en bred teoretisk bas hämtad från verk av en lång rad feministiska forskare inom kulturfältet, såsom Sara Ahmed, Susan Stryker, José Esteban Muñoz, Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Karen Barad och Donna Haraway. Denna avhandling skissar filmiska spatiotemporaliteter, vilka öppnar för möjligheter av utopiska värdsliga och transsubjektiva tillblivelser genom utvecklandet av olika teoretiska begrepp. Genom ett kritiskt förhållningssätt till audiovisualitet och feministisk filmteori, revideras och omformuleras haptisk åskådarskapsteori och dess kritik i en västerländsk okularcentrism genom olika teoretiska innovationer. De metodologiska verktygen som utvecklas i avhandlingen, såsom “the entrant”, “the exit scape” samt “sensible cinematic intra-activity” utgör här funktionen som multisensorisk metodologi för transdisciplinära transstudier, feministisk filmteori samt för visuell kultur i stort.

Using new materialist approaches to intersectional theories of gender/sex –particularly Karen Barad’s ethico-onto-epistemological framework, agential realism– this thesis examines how knowledge about class is produced, through feminist performance art practices. Through this lens I will examine how two pieces of performance art by U.K. based artists, Sophie Lisa Beresford and Catherine Hoffmann, can express novel ways in which class is not simply a system acting upon bodies, but inextricably entwined with, and produced through, bodily matter. Furthermore, this essay discusses the ways in which performance art is uniquely positioned to examine this intra-action between discourse and matter; providing a way to bridge the gaps in the current theoretical discourses and creative practices. Keywords: Feminist performance art, agential realism, intersectionality, class, new materialism, class-drag, performativity, class-passing, intra-activity.

At least half of the art objects in the public trust are currently in need of conservation today. In consideration of this crisis, a posthuman version of art conservation curriculum is proposed to transgress current limitations of the field. Through applying Michel Foucault's genealogy and archaeology to art conservation and its education, Anthropocentric motivations undergirding conservation are revealed. Foucault's death meditation inspires my narrativization of a fire event that incites a re-visioning of my over 25 years of conservation and teaching experience. By re-contextualizing theorist Ted Aoki's works, art conservation curriculum becomes a reflective and affective site for reciprocal healing of self and other, incorporating the lives of conservation students and art objects. Reconsidering art conservation curriculum in light of Aokian notions of curriculum as plan and curriculum as lived, provokes the curricular potentialities of new materialism, along with quantum physics' entanglement, intra-agency and intra-activity for the field. Art conservation and its curriculum are radically reimagined as indwelling between humanist priorities of the Anthropocene and posthumanist possibilities towards more caring, ethical and sustainable futures for both human and nonhumans' coexistence on this planet.