The purpose of this thesis is to analyze various texts from Japanese literary history and extract the instances of trans-gender performances from those texts. I define “trans-gender” behaviors as actions that are culturally expected of the gender opposite that of the gender assigned to the performer at birth. In each text, I identify which character or characters perform actions that go against the expectations of the gender they were assigned at birth. I analyze how their performance is portrayed within the narrative, as well as how other characters in the narrative react to their performance. In this way, nuances are extracted that relate to the trope of gender play in these four historical eras. The literary representations of this trans-gender play respond to the needs and values systems of the time periods within which they exist. In the Heian period, this play is caused by external forces and ends due to sexual acts. In the Muromachi period, the character chooses to perform, but eventually revokes the world. By the Edo period, performance is more widely accepted and culturally ingrained because of the availability of spaces where trans-gender performance is allowed. The performers in Edo period literature usually perform in the context of receiving privileges or being allowed into gendered spaces. Finally, In the Meiji period, heteronormative gender roles are strictly enforced, and the literature reflects negative reactions to non-normative behavior. Trans-gender performers in the Meiji period are often punished in the narratives they inhabit.

Germany´s government voted recently on a new legislation on gender recognition, which should replace the Transexuellengesetz. The Selbstbestimmungsgesetz presents a significant shift from the medicalised approach to a self-identification process, which through a more simplified procedures replaces invasive medical examinations. Through a qualitative content analysis and the lens of Judith Butler´s “Gender Trouble”, this research analyses the recent developments to capture progressions and prevailing challenges. The findings demonstrate the significant shift of the new legislation which acknowledges the autonomy and agency of adult individuals to self-determine their gender identity, which also emphasises the evolving acceptance of diverse gender identities. However, the analysis presents limitations where the law lacks clarifications or enforcement mechanisms to ensure legal protection for gender non-conforming people. Especially, aspects regarding a clear non-discrimination law, the inclusion of the house rights, age limits for minors, and more clear recognition of gender identities beyond the binary system are presenting possibilities for mistreatment.

This research employs qualitative methodology to analyze social change in business news articles of The New York Times. A random sample of 127 articles published between 1970 and 2000, discussing advertising news and containing one or more of the terms "Gay", "Lesbian", " Bisexual", "Transexual", "Transgendered" and "Queer" (GLBTQ), were selected. Feminist, Marxist, Postmodern, and critical theory is used to analyze social representation, cultural norms, stereotypes and levels of visibility. The "meta-theoretical" lens applied is a gendered postmodernism grounded in stratification theory that assuages the cultural-based critique of Marxism, overcomes the essentialist limitations of radical feminism, incorporates the pluralism of socialist feminism and delimits the relativist tendencies of a purer postmodernism. Quantitatively, gay men were found to achieve twice as much business news coverage as lesbians. Bisexuals, transsexuals, transgenders and queers were highly invisible. Overall, a change in the representation and depiction of corporate interest in gays and lesbians was manifested. This socio-historical analysis revealed a shift from deviantization and stigmatization of homosexuality to the commodification, and spectacularization of GLBTQs. GLBTQ invisibility is documented and the misconception of gay and lesbian wealth, created by market research, is addressed. Invisibility of GLBTQs is posited to be both an intentional and actively managed form of politics. Furthermore, business news reporting is argued to be less "objective" and more a political, social cultural and political activity where the media itself is a stage for the cultural contestation of social norms. This sociologically informed reading of business news articles details numerous case-specific instances where The New York Times contributed towards the proliferation of norms, values and beliefs characterizing GLBTQs. The New York Times is argued to be a contributor towards the creation of sexuality as a cultural product. Its representations of GLBTQs are seen as one manifestation of an institutionally created understanding of the "culture of homosexuality". / Ph. D.

The purpose of this study is to examine the discourse surrounding sexual assault and policy change in the U.S. military. As rhetoricians continue to embrace public sphere theory, the field has started asking what rhetoric's role is in solving public problems. My research questions were twofold: how do rhetorical processes construct social realities around sexual assault and how have these processes impacted policy change? These questions seek to further examine the rhetorical nature of publics and public spheres, specifically those surrounding the military and its interaction with the civilian public. In order to answer these questions, the case studies herein make use of rhetorical histories, grounded theory, discourse analysis, and public sphere theory. Also integral to these cases is the study of anger as a rhetorical force. The role of anger in this discourse is important, as it informs the narrative that grows out of each case study and it shapes public response to formerly private problems. Rhetoric's intervention in these cases shows the power of policy, language, and the material impact of both. The major guiding principle of my methodology is that institutions are shaped and brought to life through rhetorical processes and that these processes construct social reality inside and out of the institution in question. This dissertation examines public facing documents – memos, press releases, speeches, interviews, and leaked documents – and arranges them chronologically to offer a broader view of the discourse around sexual assault in context. The two case studies examine how the culture reinforced by uniform and fitness policies enact gender-based violence and follow the public responses to these incidents. / Doctor of Philosophy / The rise in high-profile sexual assault cases in the United States has drawn public attention to the high rates of sexual and gender-based violence in some of our most important and visible institutions, including our athletic teams, our universities, and our military. Anger plays a predominant role in the public reaction to each new allegation and it shapes the conversations happening around incidents of gender-based violence as public awareness grows. What impact does public anger have on the discourse surrounding these incidents? This study explores the impact of public anger after two major sexual assault scandals in the U.S. military broke headlines: Tailhook in 1991 and the United States Air Force Academy in 2003. A decade apart, these scandals rocked the nation and its trust in the military; they also triggered rapid policy change and growth regarding women's place in the military and how future incidents would be handled.

This dissertation examines how the human bodymind has been seen as malleable by science, technology, and policy practitioners from the Eugenic era in the United States in the first half of the 20th century, to the future imaginaries of Transhumanists and technology innovators. I critique the main goal of these practitioners – to perfect the human bodymind and through that perfection, perfecting human society – as utopic, impossible, and amoral. I argue instead, that we are intra-dependent – dependent on and through each other and our ecological contexts. I ground this argument both in the lived experience of those whose bodymind arrangements go against our normative expectations – folks like disabled people, queer and transgender people, body modders, and more – and in the philosophical metaphysics of Karen Barad's Agential Realism. I argue that we can only produce a future where bodymind alteration is acceptable if we first value different bodymind arrangements. I argue both that we cannot consider ourselves individuals, separate from the world or each other, and that multiplicity of bodyminds is a generative, heterotopic (neither utopic nor dystopic), force toward which we ought strive through engaging intentionally with each other in care relations. / Doctor of Philosophy / An interdisciplinary examination of how science and technology has made possible bodymind alteration from the eugenics in the early 20th century until today. Particular focus is given to how futures were imagined by different groups (eugenics educators, regenerative medicine scientists, and transhumanists in particular), the practices used to realize these futures, and the ethics around the practices and beliefs that are often taken for granted. I also describe several communities (disabled people, body modders, otherkin, and more) whose bodyminds are decidedly non-normative in order to reveal practices of community, kinship, and resistance to power that illuminate the lived realities of having a different morphology. I argue that these communities reveal ways to value and include morphological difference that might bring about a Morphological Freedom in which we might all thrive.

Most schools are not safe environments for lesbian, gay, and bisexual students or for individuals who are questioning their sexual orientation. Harassment and victimization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and questioning (LGBQ) students is pervasive. The harassment and victimization result in these students having higher rates of absenteeism and lower academic achievements than their peers. To date, most research has focused on primarily high school lesbian, gay, and bisexual students. Very few studies have included students questioning their sexual orientation. This quantitative descriptive study utilized an anonymous survey to gather information about middle school LGBQ students’ experiences with harassment. The study included 208 middle school students. The results were compiled into three groups (lesbian/gay/bisexual, questioning, and straight) and compared. Findings indicated that LGBQ students experience significantly more harassment than straight students and questioning students are more likely to experience victimization that lesbian, gay, bisexual, and straight students. The findings support the need for middle school administrators and staff members to take steps to create more inclusive school climates for LGBQ students.

A growing number of gay and lesbian children attend Catholic schools throughout the United States; and an untold number of gay and lesbian children in Catholic schools are experiencing harassment, violence, and prejudice because of their sexual orientation or gender non-conformity. Whether due to their size, strong sense of community, or making special considerations for vulnerable students, Catholic schools seem to be the best equipped to address these issues, but all of the research points to such schools enacting policies of silence and suppression. This study specifically explores why Catholic teachings on sexuality and social justice have may have been unable to compel Catholic schools to do more to understand and support gay and lesbian children. In addition to looking at traditional Catholic teaching, this project also engages non-traditional approaches to scholarship and theology, with an eye towards creating a new theoretical framework that can serve as the basis of a new pedagogical space within Catholic schools in which gay and lesbian children can affirm both their sexual identity and their Catholic identity.

This qualitative research study examines the use of art therapy as a treatment modality with transgender individuals, as well as provides a brief background into transgender identity, in order to recognize considerations for enhanced care of this population. A semi-structured interview approach was applied with art therapists who have utilized art therapy with transgender clients. This study focuses on areas of identity development, aspects of trauma and transphobia and their effects, treatment approaches, and cultural components to working with transgender individuals. Through this research, a recognition of transgender identity as its own cultural entity was found to be important in providing increased awareness and visibility of transgender treatment concerns.

This thesis is concerned with the two AIDS-era novels of Gary Indiana, a long-neglected yet essential literary figure who, as the critic Christian Lorentzen has argued, “connects the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in ways readers and critics are only beginning to apprehend” (xii). Beginning chronologically with a study of Indiana’s first two novels, Horse Crazy (1989) and Gone Tomorrow (1993), this thesis attempts to realize Lorentzen’s call to action, attending particularly to the ways in which Indiana’s novels write the neoliberal subject. More than exploring life under the AIDS crisis and embodying a radical queer approach to narrative, I contend, through the repurposed frame of noir and thematic explorations of kitsch, the novels of Gary Indiana radically interrogate neoliberal subjectivities, offering a remarkably stark vision of interior lives completely colonized by capitalism, commodified subjects incapable of intimacy.

Throughout my time at UCF, I have committed my studies to better understanding my positionality as someone who both benefits and suffers from systems of oppression. I have dedicated my pedagogy and artistry to questioning how I can apply theatre as a tool to resist these systems through my work, as well as wondering how I may communicate my thoughts and concerns to the colleagues I collaborate with as I am to hold myself accountable for my involvement in works that I recognize as being in need of revision in order to resist systems of oppression. I conceptualize that to resist means to intentionally take accountability for one's implicit biases, in order to actively identify how the work we create may resist those biases rather than uphold the oppressions that supports them. In my thesis, I will reflect on how I have applied feminist and queer theories to my work as a director, playwright, and dramaturg, in order to develop a methodology for fostering resistance in the kind of theatre that I partake in. I ask how applying these theories may help me to expand my understanding of what the shows I participate in can accomplish, and what advice theory has to offer about introducing the concept of resistance to rehearsal spaces. My background as an Egyptian American Muslim cisgendered queer woman influences much of the perspective I bring into rehearsal rooms, production meetings, and to my writing as a poet and a playwright. Therefore, this thesis also aims to examine how my lived experiences intersect with the queer and feminist theories I employ in my theatrical practices. I will do this by sharing details about my upbringing, and including poetry related to multiple themes related to the shows reflected on in the following chapters.