Browsing by Subject "queer"
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Item Queer Utopian Performance at Texas A&M University(2012-07-16) Sayre, DanaThrough a combination of personal interviews and participant-observation in three field sites ? the Tim Miller workshop and performance of October 2010 and the student organizations Cepheid Variable and the GLBT Aggies ? I argue that manifestations of utopian desire and performance circulate within and among marginalized groups on the Texas A&M University campus, undermining the heteronormative and monolithic utopia the university attempts to present. I participated in each night of rehearsal during the Tim Miller workshop, as well as the creation and performance of my own solo autobiographical monologue as a part of the ensemble. My participant-observation in Cepheid Variable and the GLBT Aggies was concurrent, consisting of attendance at both weekly organizational meetings and outside events sponsored by the organizations over two years. I argue that the Tim Miller workshop and performance is best understood by examining the intersection of queer intimacy, utopia, and performance. I argue that processes of connection, sharing, and mutual transformation allowed it to function as an example of queer utopian performance qua performance at Texas A&M. I explore the links between the ?nerd,? ?queer,? and ?family? identities of Cepheid Variable, arguing that the intersection of these identity-markers and the performance practices which reinforce them enable Cepheid Variable to create a utopian space on the Texas A&M campus for those students who do not fit traditional notions of Aggie identity. I explore two Cepheid performance practices: noise-making and storytelling, arguing that they construct, support, and interweave each element of Cepheid identity, allowing the organization to perpetuate and reaffirm its utopian and counterpublic statuses at Texas A&M. I explore what the GLBT Aggies claims to provide in theory, juxtaposed with what it actually accomplishes in practice. I examine a moment of crisis the LGBTQ community at Texas A&M faced in spring 2011. I argue that the utopia the GLBTA promises remains unfulfilled because the marginalization of the LGBTQ community at large leaves diversity within that community unaddressed. I conclude that utopian communities persist if able to adapt, and that the strength of the intimacy built into queer utopias in particular sustains them through time.Item Victorian Queer: Marginality and Money in Nineteenth-Century Literature(2013-05-01) Choi, Jung SunThis dissertation examines how Victorians used the word ?queer? as associated with senses of ?counterfeit? and ?eccentricity? in selected Victorian novels. The word was popularly used, by Victorian writers of both genders and in various and diverse circumstances, to mean the unfamiliar, the unconventional, the incomprehensible, and the non-normal. Unlike the contemporary uses of the word, which are oriented toward a relatively particular meaning, the non-normal sexual, Victorian uses of the word had been fluid, unstable, and indeterminate, yet referring to or associating with the non-normal aspects in things and people. Knowing how the Victorians used the word helps us to understand that a concept of marginality can be extended to the extent of tolerating Otherness in marginalized positions and minority identities. Victorian novels including Mary Elizabeth Braddon?s Aurora Floyd (1863), Wilkie Collins?s Hide and Seek (1854), and Charlotte Bront??s Jane Eyre (1847) demonstrate how the word ?queer? is indeterminately used and also represent how queer marginality is appreciated or rejected, and tolerated or discriminated against. As queerness is defined as the status of counterfeitabilty, a counterpart of authenticity, queer subjects are described to provoke a feeling of repulsion and tend to be criminalized or pathologized. On the other hand, as queerness is defined as the status of eccentricity, queer subjects are sympathized and defended in the narrative. Manifestations of eccentricities in queer subjects are occasionally reprimanded, but admired for queer subjects? uncommon or distinguished individuality. Victorian novels demonstrate that queer marginality can be employed as a self-fashioning identity or social status for any non-normal individual to deal with social pressure of conformity.