Ancestry

Ancestry websites like 23 and Me or Ancestry.com remove the culture and the meaning behind the concept of ancestry. Ancestry as a concept means looking back at the culture we come from and the ways of life that shaped our ancestors. With queerness, ancestry cannot be traced through bloodlines. It is a passing down of culture through word of mouth. This culture has not been preserved over time but rather erased. This piece is a social commentary on the erased culture of queerness and showing the culture and what has kept it hidden. As someone who identifies as both queer and trans, I wanted to explore my culture and provoke the question of what cultures and ancestries are not told. Minoritized groups and cultures are more susceptible to being erased from history and modern culture. This piece questions why these cultures are erased and what power comes from knowing your culture and history. The poem starts by discussing how queer and trans people are more likely to commit or attempt suicide compared to their straight and cisgender counterparts. The likelihood of suicide increases in queer and trans youth when they are not supported by their parents and/or peers. The poem then moves to talk about queer and trans people in history that have been erased or not acknowledged. The first person mentioned is Bayard Rustin, an openly gay, black man in the era of the Civil Rights Movement. He organized the March on Washington in 1963 and helped organize the Freedom Rides. Since Rustin was gay, other leaders of the Civil Rights Movement had him in the background and doing behind the scenes work. His sexuality was seen as too risky and damaging to the image of the movement. The next person mentioned is Lili Elbe, a trans woman. She successfully received gender confirmation surgery. However, when she got a uterus transplant, she died from complications. The movie The Danish Girl was based on her life. The last person mentioned is Wilmer Broadnax. He was a transman in the early 1900s. He was a gospel singer. The only person who knew he was trans was his brother. When he died, he was outed as trans. This section of the poem ends with talking about how these people were erased. History classes do not mention them. This is what makes queer and trans identities seem like a new thing. There is not a lot of documented history of queer and trans identities. Even less is taught in school. The next section talks about being queer and/or trans in the military. Recently, there has been a transgender military ban. The ban is a slap in the face of trans military members and veterans. They are/have risked their lives for this country. They are being told they are a liability and are not valuable. This section also mentions the earlier policy “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.” This forced queer and trans military members into the closet. If they were out, they could be discharged from the military. This section ends with recognizing the brave queer and/or trans members of the military. The next section of the poem talks about how coming out is a gamble. Queer and/or trans people have a chance of being disowned or kicked out of their families when coming out. They also have a chance of being sent to conversion therapy. One method used in conversion therapy is electroshock. This is an extreme practice and is not often used in modern day. This will show homoerotic images and shock the patient being “treated.” The last section goes back to medieval times. During those times, queer and trans people would be burned at the foot of the stake. They were not considered worthy of burning at the stake. They laid with bundles of sticks, which is where the term “f*gg*t” became associated with queer and trans people. The poem then ends with a reminder that queer and trans history is rooted in death

A Poem For a Small Town Queer Kid

I wrote this piece originally for myself. It was a healing piece about coming to terms with my past and embracing it. Embracing my past is important to me because being discriminated against, being put in violent situations, experiencing microaggressions, and being made to feel like less than a human being has made me stronger. Minoritized people who do social justice work have often experienced some deep trauma. It is important to focus on healing and take care of one’s mental health in order to be able to be activists for social justice. This piece opens with my experiences being outed to my family. It specifically talks about my experience with my dad. The piece then goes into how the experience forced me back into the closet. The next stanza talks about how during that time of my life, I would self-harm as an unhealthy coping mechanism. I would mainly focus on my thighs. I would also engrave words on my legs like “burden,” “f*g,” “worthless,” and other destructive words. It then mentions how I blamed myself for being weak in this situation. Despite the emotional abuse and gaslighting, I survived. Next, the poem goes into how I had suicidal thoughts. The beginning of the stanza touches on my relationship with God at the time. I would pray to be straight or dead in the morning most nights. I thought that I would not have the strength to continue living my life as a queer person. In the poem, I wanted to honor queer and trans youth who had committed suicide. In particular, I wanted to mention Leelah Alcorn. I remember being in high school when she committed suicide. Her story really touched me and has stuck with me. The poem then talks about the afterlife. It challenges the Christian notion of hell and debates if it was as bad as what I was going through. I wanted to explore the idea of “hell on earth” because when I was in that place, I was suffering. It felt like I was in a living hell. I fantasized that death would be nothing, just peace. The next section of the poem is the most important to me. It starts with “But that morning yu woke up.” It shows that I have survived all the bad days and hell that I’ve been through. I have had a 100% survival rate through everything. The section of the poem continues with all the growth and progress that I have accomplished and maintained. It reminds me of the strength I found that I originally didn’t think I had. The ending recognizes that I did not think I would have the strength to live this long. Most importantly, this poem thanks my younger self for having the strength to carry on even when I thought I couldn’t

Analyzing the Georgian Opinion of the Soviet Annexation of Georgia

In this thesis, I have examined the Sovietization of Georgia in the 1920s and analyzed how Georgians perceived Sovietization. Specifically, this thesis explores different opinions on Sovietization through the lens of Georgian nationalists, Georgian cultural literary icons, and the average Georgian. Further, this thesis addresses the interplay of time and Georgian nationalism in understanding Sovietization. The thesis examines how different groups of Georgians related their understanding of Georgian identity to the Soviet understanding of Georgian culture and demonstrates how the disconnect between Soviet and Georgian identity manifests as disapproval of Sovietization and the Soviet Union as a whole as time progresses. Chapter 1 examines how General Kvinitadze and a commission from the Presduma of the Georgian SSR viewed Sovietization, arguing that both opposed Sovietization because they believed that it violated Georgia’s cultural and legal rights. Chapter 2 explores how Georgian cultural literary icons, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Galaktion Tabidze, responded to Sovietization, arguing that both initially saw Sovietization as a positive change for Georgia because it allowed Georgia to have more autonomy. As time progressed, Tabidze started to believe the Sovietization interfered with Georgia’s identity as he directly experienced the Great Terror and saw that the Soviet Union repressed non-Soviet ideas. Chapter 3 examines how proletarian poets viewed Sovietization, in an attempt to gauge how the average Georgian perceived Sovietization. This chapter argues that these poets saw Sovietization as a positive change for Georgia because Sovietization would create a better future and it would allow Georgians to continue to have pride in their country

In Search of “Healthy White:” How Whitening Products are Packaged and what that means for Global, National, and Gender Identities

This interdisciplinary study in South Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, and India compares the origin of products—international and local—and the ways in which product labeling targets gender. I examine (1) the extents to which whitening products result from globalization and from local culture and (2) the ways in which whitening products and skincare at large reinforce traditional roles. This study concludes that whitening products (1) reflect neither globalization nor local culture and instead reflect complex and variable interactions between the two, and contemporary framing of national identity, and (2) enforce similar beauty standards on both men and women, but more heavily on women

The BASIL technique: Bias Adaptive Statistical Inference Learning Agents for Learning from Human Feedback

We introduce a novel approach for learning behaviors using human-provided feedback that is subject to systematic bias. Our method, known as BASIL, models the feedback signal as a combination of a heuristic evaluation of an action\u27s utility and a probabilistically-drawn bias value, characterized by unknown parameters. We present both the general framework for our technique and specific algorithms for biases drawn from a normal distribution. We evaluate our approach across various environments and tasks, comparing it to interactive and non-interactive machine learning methods, including deep learning techniques, using human trainers and a synthetic oracle with feedback distorted to varying degrees. We demonstrate that our algorithm can rapidly learn even in the presence of normally distributed bias, which other methods struggle with, while also exhibiting some resistance to other types of distortion

This story wants to be danced : creative writing, dance, convergence and confluence

I suggest ways the discipline of dance can enrich and challenge the discipline of creative writing. I focus particularly on improvisation in dance, relating this to creative writing pedagogy, classroom structure and activities. Much possibility exists in utilising moments when creative arts disciplines touch. How might creative writers and creative writing courses use such fusions? I draw on material theory and briefly upon transformative and collaborative education theories in my exploration of these ideas.<br /

Romantic Relationships in Mental Illness Young Adult (YA) Novels

In John Green’s 2017 novel Turtles All The Way Down, the protagonist muses, “illness is a story told in the past tense” (85). There is truth to the character’s statement—many illness narratives, both fiction and nonfiction, follow an archetype that positions illness as something that characters can overcome and put behind them, even when the illness is chronic. This project focuses on young adult (YA) novels about mental illness through the lens of romantic relationships and how these relationships disrupt this archetype. This study includes the following six books: The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999) It’s Kind of A Funny Story by Ned Vizzini (2007) Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher (2007) Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson (2009) My Heart and Other Black Holes by Jasmine Warga (2015) Turtles All the Way Down by John Green (2017) Ultimately, this project examines how YA novels in this sub-genre of YA of mental illness depict teenage life. Many YA novels display intention of providing a message to its readers, and it is essential to consider what kind of messages these books actually relay when it comes to mental illness. Some novels depict romantic feelings and mental illnesses as similar factors in teenagers’ lives. This particular narrative can be dangerous because it normalizes mental illness as either an acceptable aspect of or a result of adolescence. Although online conversations about the Netflix series based on Thirteen Reasons Why suggest that it is popular, it is a novel that succumbs to this kind of messaging. However, many novels resist this narrative in various ways. In some, such as It’s Kind of a Funny Story and My Heart and Other Black Holes, the clinicalization of the illness itself helps to separate it from standard teenage experience. In others, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower, Wintergirls, and Turtles All the Way Down, the character’s illness is so impactful that it affects the character’s ability to engage in relationships. The narrative interactions between relationships and mental illness reach a complexity in some novels that has consequence not only for portrayals of mental illness and teenage life, but also for the YA genre, as these novels reflect trends toward more sophisticated topics than those associated with the genre in the past

Bones I Found in the Garden

This collection is a volume of small, intimate moments portrayed in both poetry and prose. Rather than grand, operatic plots telling convoluted stories, this work speaks of the magic in simple things, looking in at personal (and often difficult) moments—the process of finding the beauty in ugly things, finding the crumbs of human emotion that slip through the cracks—lending them the attention they are due but often fail to receive. This collection digs up potsherds of childhood trauma, bones of old romances, and ghosts of things that will never be, all presented to the reader through the lens of fantasy. The collection is broken up into three parts, each with a major theme: The Tanglewood and the Void, pieces that draw from fairy tales, science fiction, and fantasy; The House and Hospital, pieces that focus on identity and processing trauma; and The Garden and the Rain, pieces that focus on interpersonal intimacy and transformation