Cyberspace and gay rights in a digital China: queer documentary filmmaking under state censorship

Owing to China’s austere censorship regulations on film media, directors of films and documentaries engaging with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender themes have struggled to bring their work to domestic attention. Working outside of the state-funded Chinese film industry has become necessary for these directors to commit their narratives to film, but without approval of China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television, these artists have had little chance of achieving widespread domestic distribution of their work. However, advancements in new media technology and Web 2.0, ranging from digital video formats to Internet-based distribution via social media networks and video-hosting platforms, provide opportunities for Chinese audiences to access films and documentaries dealing with LGBT themes. This empirical study assesses how production, promotion and consumption of queer documentary films are influenced by the development of social media within Chinese cyberspace. Through close readings of microblogs from Sina Weibo this study combines analysis of contemporary research with digital social rights activism to illustrate contemporary discourse regarding film-based LGBT representation in China. Finally, the study comments on the role that documentary filmmaking plays in China’s gay rights movement, and discusses the rewards (and challenges) associated with increased levels of visibility within society

On Directing: Mirror, Mirror

Abstract not available

Haunting and Queerness in Selected Post-2000s African Short Fiction

Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2022.This dissertation discusses post-2000s queer African short fiction in the context of haunting.EnglishMA (English)Unrestricte

The Queer Eternal September: LGBTQ Identity on the Early Internet and Web

This dissertation examines the expression of queer identity and community on the early internet and web, and suggests a methodology for working with archived internet and web sources when exploring the history of marginalized groups. I argue that the explosion of new users which accompanied the popularization of networking technologies between 1983 and 1999 changed and diversified the ways that individuals expressed their own identity, even as these users mediated a codified vocabulary for expressing what it means to be queer. By combining computational methods with traditional close reading, this dissertation suggests a methodology for working with large-scale archived web and internet sources, which can ethically maintain context and significance without losing individual voices. I use a combination of text and network analysis in exploring user interaction and self-narrative within archived internet and web collections. Part one of this dissertation examines the distributed newsgroup service Usenet and the movement of users from one unified “gay and lesbian” newsgroup to hundreds of specialized groups for a multitude of identity categories, including specific sexual orientations and preferences, as well as gender identities. Using text analysis and topic modelling to delve into these large-scale sources, I argue that these archived Usenet materials reveal group tensions, as well as trends in labelling and social organization, during a period when the number of new users and new groups was growing at exponential rates. Part two of this dissertation follows these communities on to a new technology: the web. Faced with a seemingly unlimited platform to gather and communicate, we see user choices constrained by issues of discoverability and monetization, which helped to perpetuate existing queer hegemonies. Through a combination of text analysis and network analysis on large-scale sources like GeoCities.com’s “WestHollywood” community, I examine the implications of the proliferation of an Anglo lexicon for describing queer identity on an increasingly-global stage. This dissertation contributes to the historiography on gay and lesbian history, and suggests methods for researchers engaging with queer and gender theory along with computational methods

Queering in the Years: Gay Visibility in the Irish Media, 1974-2008

This dissertation examines the queer visibility and discourses surrounding that visibility as they have unfolded on Irish television, film and alternative activist media between 1974 and 2008. The thesis argues that LGBT activists originally deployed media visibility for the liberatory potential of advancing LGBT rights. However, mainstream media institutions exploited queer identities for economic purposes; that, coupled with the eruption of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, disrupted the mainstreaming goals of queer visibility. This resulted in queer visibility becoming caught up in a shifting power dynamic, or as this thesis terms it, a tug-of-war, between Ireland’s LGBT community and media institutions. As this thesis will argue, the development of queer Irish media visibility was informed by local activism, legal changes, viral epidemics, international media influences along with the development of Ireland’s media landscape. The thesis traverses time periods, media forms and Queer and Media Studies theoretical frameworks to provide an overview of the dynamic of queer Irish visibility, pursuing connections across current affairs programming, documentary, chat shows, soap opera, television drama, film, magazines and broader print media. The methodology of this thesis is predominantly archival research, textual analysis and semi-structured interviews, a mixed-methods approach that uncovers the relationship between the proliferation of queer visibility and alternative queer media and the processes by which such media are produced. Using these forms and practices, the thesis will explore how varying Irish gay civil rights groups influenced the types of queer media images that manifested on screen and within their alternative media economies; how the changing social, cultural, economic and legal context of the historical period saw the transition of queer visibility from current affairs to narrativised, fictionalised representations and illuminate how queer Irish visibility transformed from localised activism to aspirational attempts of participating in a global media economy

Bi the Wayside?: Shifts in Bisexual Representations in Teen Television

Television can be a reflection of the values we have as a society and its representations can have an impact on the way people, especially youth, shape their identities. This examination of teen-oriented television shows on the CW network looks at bisexual and queer representations and compares them with previous representations. I ground this essay in the youth-oriented television context, the progression of queer television representations, and ideas about media representation in a post-gay era. My assessment of the CW’s bisexual protagonist Clarke Griffin in The 100 and several sexually fluid characters in Legacies help show how the network has evolved in branding itself around diversity of representation, and aiming their content at a socially-liberal target audience. There are several tropes that the network falls into, particularly the death of Lexa in The 100 that sparked a queer/ally social movement characterized by the hashtag #LexaDeservedBetter; these representations have helped inform the TV industry about the stakes of minority representation. My textual analyses find that the queer characters I examine avoid stereotypical coming out narratives and labels of sexual identity, in what I argue is a progressive form of representation. Ultimately, I argue that a larger quantity of queer characters on the CW has resulted in more diverse representations of teen/queer identity

Changing spaces: exploring the role of the internet in supporting non-heterosexual youth aged 18-25 in Ireland

This study used a sequential qualitatively driven design to explore non-heterosexual internet usage among 18-25 year olds in Ireland. Within the last decade there has been a growing body of research focusing on supporting sexual minority youth in Ireland and understanding their experiences, yet little is known about how they use the internet for support. Non-heterosexual youth can use the internet to access narratives and communities which previously would have required physical presence in geographical places. Considering the role that narrative plays within identity formation, the change this spatial shift has brought about in social relations offers the opportunity for a radical reshaping of both the development of identity and the opportunities for new types of identity to occur in places which they would be unlikely to occur in the past. This study has addressed the gap in literature by positioning a phenomenological sense of place at the centre of the analysis. Using a questionnaire with 126 participants along with 8 in depth narrative based interviews, the study found that non-heterosexual youth perceive the internet as highly valued for its supportive role in identity formation as well the ability to redefine norms and authenticate place for those who experience an absence of offline support

Using Writing Studio Pedagogy To Help Students Reclaim Their Disabilities And Sexualities In A High School Writers\u27 Workshop

This dissertation is an exploration into what students stand to gain from being mentored in terms of reclaiming their disabilities and sexualities. Writing studio pedagogy supports the following ideas: an understanding that composition is a social process and, therefore, must take place in a social environment, an acceptance of multiple composing tools, multiple problem-solving strategies, an acceptance that students possess many and different creative thinking processes, an awareness that spatial design matters for successful teaching and learning, and, finally, an understanding of writing as play. My primary research question is how can practicing writing studio pedagogy transform the writing classroom into a space for students who identify as learning-disabled and LGBT to reclaim their disabilities and sexualities? My research project reveals that students who identify as learning-disabled and LGBT can reclaim their disabilities and sexualities when they are empowered, by others and themselves, to relearn their differences into strengths and use those strengths to become agents of social change by means of composing activist texts for their schools and their communities. By becoming agents of social change at school and in their communities, learning-disabled and LGBT students can motivate teachers and peers to unlearn accommodations and stereotypes. I bring a feminist methodology to my dissertation, committing myself to a deep listening of my research participants\u27 personal stories--triumphs and failures--and what Royster and Kirsch call critical imagination to their academic projects that are composed in our writers\u27 workshop. One distinguishing feature of my research project from other research projects about writing studios and about learning disabilities is the grounded theory method that I implement to discover answers to my research question. Grounded theory, with the mantra everything is data , made it possible for me to consider not only the interviews I collected from my two research participants and their academic work but also the memos that I wrote about my interactions and observations with my research participants in our writers\u27 workshop course. Another distinguishing feature of this dissertation is how I contextualize my research project in stories from my life as a learning-disabled, LGBT student and teacher. I weave into the chapters reports from my pediatrician, neurologist, neuropsychiatrist, teachers, and residence counselor, which point to how critical my own successes and failures were to brining this dissertation to fruition. My mother saved eighteen years of documentation on me, and when I asked her why she went to all the trouble to move literally pounds of reports with her from house to house, she replied that she didn\u27t know. She just imagined them to be useful one day. Perhaps the most distinguishing feature of my research project is my focus on secondary students who are both open about their learning disabilities and their sexualities. My research participants are courageous because they came to this research project looking for an opportunity to help make a positive change in how I and my colleagues teach a demographic of student who receives little positive attention in the public schools across the United States. The projects my two research participants compose--a video on being a transgender teenager, a coming out blog on Tumblr, a mural for our classroom, and an invisible theatre project on bullying aimed to engage our school in an important dialogue--highlight their courage to advocate for social change in their lives and at their school and also their strengths as multimodal writers

Just Between Us Girls: Discursive Spaces from America\u27s First Gay Magazine to the World\u27s Last Website for Queer Women, 1947-2019

Just Between Us Girls charts the diffusion of queer theory outside of the academy, using convergence theory to examine communication technologies like periodicals and the Web to argue for a conception of queer theory that includes discourse between queer women about queerness. In making this argument, this project creates a lineage of discursive spaces by, for, and about queer women, putting content from these spaces in conversation with canonical queer theorists like Judith Butler, Eve Sedgwick, and Jack Halberstam. Analyzing and contextualizing discursive spaces like Vice Versa (1947-1948), The Ladder (1956-1972), The Furies (1972-1973), AfterEllen, and Autostraddle demonstrates not only that queer women have depended on communication technologies for identity and community formation long before the Web but also that queer women have historically invested in and theorized concepts significant to queer theory, like coming out, the relationship between gender and sexuality, and heteronormativity