Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (or ‘queer’) youth are increasingly the objects of intense concern for ‘the state’, subjects of – and subject to – a panoply of interventional programs designed to mediate against queer youths’ ‘risk-taking’ behaviors. While the material and structural realities of queer youth’s lives are discursively absent in policy formation, they largely determine policy implementation and significantly shape policy reception, as there is an uneven distribution of state-based queer youth programming in Massachusetts. In the Commonwealth it is primarily rural and working-class communitybased organizations that receive most of the interventional programs, and thus it is working-class and rural queer youth who remain the primary – yet unarticulated - targets of state intervention. This research project is designed as an ethnographic intervention into the discursive absence - yet implicit operationalization - of class and geography in queer youth policy discussions and programming, exploring how working-class rural queer youth experience both their lives writ large as well as the programs designed to ‘help’ them navigate their way to a ‘healthy’ adulthood. Incorporating principles of Participatory Action Research, the research methodology actively involved queer youth who were members of either a communitybased queer youth organization or an education-based Gay Straight Alliance at a local high school, as well as a group of youth conceptualized as ‘policy refusers’ who attended neither organization. As class and geography can significantly shape the kind of engagement and messages that queer youth receive in policy and intervention programs, it may also determine the extent to which they participate in these programs. In exploring queer youths’ experiences with – or resistance to - such programs in a working-class and rural context, the project offers possibilities for understanding queer youth’s subjective realities as well the ways in which policies and programs often fail in attempting to reach such members of this ‘hidden population’. This collaborative project offers grounded insight into how queer youth coming-of-age in the economic and geographic margins of Massachusetts navigate their way to adulthood through, around, or in spite of the state’s programs of support and surveillance.

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This essay will demonstrate how the character Anne from Anne of Green Gables is open to multiple interpretations. I specifically look at the character Anne from the perspective of gender and queer theory. Anne can be read as someone who has both feminine and masculine traits. She is assigned female at birth and lives in the 19th century, in a society where gender norms and normative behavior were strictly defined. During the novel, Anne must learn how to become a “proper girl” by performing gender norms. Her difficulty with this, as well as her expression of desire for other women, allows for queer readings of her character

As a historically and currently marginalized population, members of LGBTQ+ communities have traditionally needed to find one another and build relationships without their queer identities being discovered. This need has resulted in the development of codes and signals used by queer people to identify one another while remaining hidden, causing a unique culture of covert, in-group communication to form. In this study, I explore the modern culture of codes being used by LGBTQ+ communities through 14 interviews with LGBTQ+ people. From these interviews, I developed two broad themes: conveying and concealing identity. When discussing how they convey their identity, participants discuss not only the behaviors they use themselves but also those used by others. Some of these behaviors are general associations they hold between various cultural phenomena and queer identity, but often they are factors that allow them to make inferences about the identities of others despite the simultaneous importance they place on disclosure when it comes to truly knowing another’s queer identity. When on the topic of concealing identity, participants generally focused on themselves, discussing where, why, and how they concealed their identity. From these results, it is clear that developing the ability to convey or conceal one’s identity is an important skill within queer communities, as it allows individuals to live authentically and safely. However, these abilities are not without negative side effects, as the balancing act between conveying and concealing one’s identity requires queer individuals to live in a state of constant identity-based behavioral micro-management. In the end, these behaviors are not just culture – they are a form of survival when it has been, is, and will continue to be dangerous on some level to be queer.

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If one can come out as queer, how does one come out as queer in the Chinese context? More importantly, how exactly does one come out as “Chinese,” especially given the increasingly complex construction and remaking of “Chineseness” across the Taiwan Strait? Building on Hongwei Bao’s concept of the “queer comrade” as an analytical framework that acknowledges the temporal coevality of its circulation across postsocialist China and Taiwan, this comparative study of Zhang Yuan’s East Palace, West Palace and Ang Lee’s Eat Drink Man Woman explores archives of Chineseness and queerness in a transnational context. At the same time, through examining representations of cruising, traditional opera form, tables, kitchens, and food -- I argue that queer identities are not only about private sexual practices, but also about new family formations, political tensions, and intercultural exchanges. I take cues from archival studies to see them as alternative archival practices and subjectivities which channel new pathways to reimagine Queer Sinophone futurities. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

This novel is a family saga that follows Gülsün and her two daughters Sevda and Eda-Eva, who are half-sisters. Gülsün agrees to an arranged marriage with Haydar, a factory worker in Germany, and immigrates from her small village in Turkey to Germany. From this marriage Sevda is born. When she is old enough for kindergarten, Gülsün attends a German language course. She falls in love with the German instructor, Günther, and they begin an affair. Gülsün finds out that she is pregnant and abandons Sevda to live with Günther, who moves them to the outskirts of the city where Haydar cannot find her. Haydar, feeling emasculated and unable to take care of five-year-old Sevda, sends her to his family in Turkey for a couple of years. In a moment of intoxication, Gülsün sets out to reclaim Sevda and to unite her with her half-sister Eda-Eva, who knows nothing about Sevda’s existence. Gülsün, having chosen to follow the riverbank to reach the old apartment where she once lived, falls into the river and drowns. To connect Eda-Eva to her mother’s roots, Günther moves them to the city close to the Turkish community, where she makes friends with Sinem and realizes that she is queer. Years later on a train, Sevda and Eda-Eva meet and become friends, unaware of their connection. As their friendship deepens, the two fall in love. Both girls are desperate to leave their homes (Günther has built a new family for himself, in which Eda-Eva feels like a third wheel. Haydar has remarried a woman from his village back home, who takes out her sadness of infertility on Sevda). Eda-Eva suggests they move to the house in the outskirts, where she used to live with her mother. They arrive at the house that holds Gülsün’s memories in the basement. Lying in bed, the two create a fantasy of a future life together, although the truth becomes more and more undeniable to Sevda.

This manuscript is a collection of short fiction. The stories explore power structures within Asian and gay male communities, blurring the lines between folklore and memoir, intimacy and abuse, passivity and control. They attempt to complicate and subvert my own self-image by engaging friends and family members who have had formative impacts on my life. In reaching for people and places that no longer exist, these stories function as elegies as well as coming-of-age narratives.