Abstracts (Descriptions of Presentations)

The Refugee Crisis, Women’s Oppression, and Two Literary Visions of Utopia

According to the most recent UN estimates, 103 million people today are either internally displaced or living as refugees—forced to flee their homes by such existential threats as war, persecution, extreme poverty and the environmental devastation wreaked by climate change.  Those who seek safety and opportunity through migration frequently meet with bureaucratic indifference and xenophobic violence.  Stories of deadly journeys, squalid refugee camps, border walls, travel bans and separated families have become commonplaces of the evening news.  With so much that is frankly dystopian in the contemporary crisis of forced migration, it might seem surprising that literary works devoted to exploring this crisis should also show a marked interest in the idea of utopia.  But perhaps, after all, the intersection of these themes is not so surprising.  As Rebecca Solnit demonstrates in A Paradise Built in Hell, utopian thought and experiment often spring from the urgent needs of the historical moment.  And how better explore the “no place” of utopia than through the loss of place endured by refugees, especially women refugees already marginalized within patriarchal societies?  Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson’s play The Jungle and Mohsin Hamid’s novel Exit West (both published in 2017) have been rightly celebrated as explorations of the contemporary refugee crisis.  What is less obvious, however, is the degree to which these works are also meditations on the possibility and meaning of utopia in a time of mass displacement, resurgent nationalism, and militarized borders.  Both these works, I argue, respond to the current emergency by envisioning a world beyond nation states and exclusive citizenship—a borderless world in which everyone is entitled to move (or stay) where they can be safe and thrive. At the same time, these works present national borders as coextensive with other forms of oppressive division and marginalization, not least the gender divisions that relegate women to second-class citizenship.  “Why is she in my restaurant?” a male refugee asks of a female refugee in Murphy and Robertson’s play.  Centering these women characters, The Jungle and Exit West suggest there is more than one border to dismantle on the way to utopia.

Mother Blame in Haunting of Hill House, Everything Everywhere All At Once & Normal People

In her work around Mother Blame, Scott, “reveals the persistent assumption that mothers make monsters” (2017, p.193). Employing this as the entry point, the paper will examine the ways in which the already functioning patriarchal system in popular culture reinforces the Blame Your Mama trope that subordinates mothers and perpetuates transgenerational trauma. The subordination of mothers is rooted in the belief that women are inferior to men (Lerner, 1987) and that their primary role is to care for children. However, if this conventional role in popular culture is disrupted due to the mother’s professional aspirations, the children often end up traumatized and blame their mothers for it. In addition, the Blame Your Mama trope also finds its roots in the idea of "kin-keeping”, where women are expected to bore the emotional labor of maintaining and strengthening familial ties (Rosenthal, 1985). This expectation often comes at the cost of compromising not only the mother’s own aspirations but also her children’s. By placing blame on mothers, popular culture absolves fathers and other patriarchal structures of responsibility for the problems faced by children (Arendell & Garey, 1999). This furthers the idea that mothers are solely responsible for the well-being of their children and that their worth as individuals is determined by their ability to fulfill this role. This in turn perpetuates the cycle of trauma, as mothers are blamed for the problems faced by their children, who in turn blame their mothers for their own problems. Hence, this paper will critically examine the representation from a feminist perspective and offer three main arguments: Why is popular culture still employing the Blame Your Mother trope, whose identity performance is getting impacted through it and how can this construction of motherhood be absolved? The arguments will be deciphered by analyzing three popular culture texts: Haunting of Hill House, Everything Everywhere All At Once & Normal People.

Queer Craft: Fandom & Queer Community in the Makerspace

Queer fans, even before the recent zeitgeist of positive, nuanced queer representation in mainstream media, have engaged in queering stories and creating positive representation of their own in queer online fan spaces through fanfiction and other community-forming online spaces. This is a well-documented phenomenon; as established by Jamison Warren, fan-queered stories “undermine the existing and problematic representations of television by creating new (imagined) possibilities for the characters,” allowing fans to “generate their own representations, thereby forging new means of developing identity in response to the hegemony of media.” Fan interaction and creation - and particularly with queer participants - allow queer communities to flourish without regard for resistance in the larger media community. In such interactive, imaginative spaces, queer fans both consume and produce in a form of “productive leisure” well-known in video game fan communities (modding for gamers, fanfic, fanart, and canon adjustment elsewhere) (Chia). This kind of uncompensated labor from fans in service of not only the producing industries but also sheerly for fandoms’ or stories’ sakes has been discussed extensively in affective labor literature for its substitution for fanwork makers of financial reward or entrepreneurial growth for “a sense of community and belonging, [...] mainly in online and digital realms” (Marotta) Makerspaces are also well-documented, effective sites of community formation. Makers enter the social patterning and "affective expectation" of such spaces, creating a sense of ingroup and communal belonging even if their interests (or potential fan groups) diverge drastically (Marotta). Affective labor’s close relationship with the “mobilization, performance, and enactment of subjectivities and social relationships” as well as with “affect, work, and identity” mean that fanwork and the kind of making that happens in makerspaces are inherently community-forming (Marotta). In my research, I expand this central principle to discuss queer fanwork, how makerspaces facilitate and concretize this kind of making (and therefore the reimagining inherent to queering heteronormative stories), and the community formation inherent to these processes. I argue that makerspaces extend the online queer fan community, allowing for in-person engagement both in queering extant media and in solidifying those representations by merging the acts of fan consumption and production, providing and making available technological and other creator-based expertise, supporting the creation and sustainment of physical, local queer fan communities.

Chia, Aleena. “Productive Leisure in Post-Fordist Fandom.” Journal of Fandom Studies, vol. 8, no. 1, Mar. 2020, pp. 47–63. EBSCOhost,
https://doi-org.ezproxy.simmons.edu/10.1386/jfs_00009_1.

A New Lair of Vampires: A Dowry of Blood

Dracula, Carmilla and The Vampyre were the original vampire novels that started the trend. This aspect has influenced literature through the centuries, and continues to inspire authors to incorporate these myths and creatures of the night. A Dowry of Blood by S.T Gibson has indoctrinated these creatures and legends into her own adaptation of vampires while involving female sexuality, the violence the characters are coerced into within this found in this family in this polyamory relationship and the authors own choice to change the original story line to adding female agency resulting in the killing of this Dracula variation. In S.T Gibson's work, she changes the perception of vampires, while keeping the common themes and deprivation the original novels began with. This new addition of vampires will change future installations, as Gibson uses her own voice of being a female author who offers their own connections towards their bisexual main character, a lesbian main character, a gay main character, and a polyamorous experience. While the original vampire novels began with The Vampyre by John William Polidori was created in 1819, Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu in 1872, and Dracula by Bram Stoker in 1897, S.T Gibsons novel A Dowry of Blood was self published in January of 2021, and then commercially published back in October of 2022.  Gibson has set a new story and created her own adaptation. And by doing so she has added onto the trend of vampires and vampirism. Gibson changes the perception of female vampires, while incorporating the original themes and trends that Stoker, LeFanu and Polidori started. Changing the perspective to a female vampire who was renamed Constanta by the older unnamed male vampire, who is assumed to be Dracula. Constanta becomes the first of this male vampire's “bride”, when she agreed to have this man help save her life after her home was pillaged. While they remain together, Constanta is dealt an abusive hand as this older vampire abuses his power to kill and ruin many lives, and later to turn two other people to add to his harem; Magdalena and Alexi. A Content warning for the following discussions of; Emotional, verbal, and physical intimate partner abuse, Gaslighting, War, famine, and plague, Blood and gore, Consensual sexual content, Sadomasochism, Self harm, Body horror, Violence and murder, Alcohol use, Depression and mania.

The Sound of Thundra: Marvel’s Answer to Second Wave Feminism?

The Fantastic Four #129 (Dec. 1972) featured an unusual new addition to the series’ pantheon of bad-guys: a strong, striking woman with a purpose. Thundra was oftentimes overwhelming, frequently intimidating, and always interesting. She’s part Ronda Rousey, part quintessential tall supermodel. She could be as frightening as a sudden thunderstorm. And she could bring issues of gender equality to the forefront in a fresh and important way. Well...that last part, maybe not so much. At first glance, there are many echoes of Wonder Woman in Thundra. Both warriors come from a distant matriarchal society. Thundra comes from an Amazonian society in an alternate future of the 23rd Century. In this possible future, Earth—Femizonia— is a world dominated by women.  But when Thundra burst onto the scene, she embodied everything scary, yet interesting about mainstream America’s view of the 1970s Women’s Movement. She was demanding. She was driven and strong. She had “had enough and wasn’t going to take it anymore.” And while Thundra was aggressively confident,she was statuesque and beautiful.  Thundra, the warrior woman from the far-flung future, was full of unrealized potential. And for a woman of the future, as a Marvel heroine she might have simply been before her time.

Evaporated Geographies as Gendered Landscapes: The rebirth of 2000s “girl” games

From the dawn of gaming, those who grew up with it (the 80s onward) developed strong ties to the games they played in adolescence. This intense nostalgia often leads them to search out the games later in life and play them again. For those growing up in the 80s and 90s, games from PacMan to Kings Quest have been recreated in new systems. As more and more games were created, especially in 2000s and the 2010s, a gendered landscape was created. Games everyone plays, or we would consider gender neutral today like Legend of Zelda, were considered for “boys” only, and a whole marketing economy of “girls” games began to form from that idea. “Girls” games covered their own wide swath of subjects, ranging from fashion and cooking, to farming and fairies. It tended not to include violence or action and included role-playing elements and social interaction instead, which caused many to consider them “not real games”, invalidating those who enjoyed them. During this insurgence of games on both sides, digital preservation was on the wayside and many fell into the internet abyss as time and technology moved on. Other authors have discussed the digital preservation of older console games, but a new insurgence of nostalgia has brought a phenomenon of old fans providing the preservation themselves for beloved online games such as Club Penguin. With the still-recent loss of Flash, more eyes are turning their way. Looking back to the idea of the gendered landscape, “boys” games are more likely to be reinstated- Lisa Verbane bemoans how “franchises ‘for girls’ like the Sue or Animal Crossing games” lack the same archival attention. So what can we do to keep these “girl” games alive in the internet memory, especially as more of their players are speaking up about it? Theorist Jon Saklofske proposes that MMOs can be made into museums of memory, a sort of playable wiki, a different take from fully reinstating games (a lengthy and costly process) or emulator sites that compile smaller games on one site.  As someone who was raised as a woman, now identifies as nonbinary, and was an avid player of “girl” games, my goal for this presentation is to investigate how other players of these delegitimized games related to them and strive to preserve them in adulthood, comparing with more mainstream digital preservation strategies, and combine ideas to create new archives of 2000s “girl” gaming.

The Complex Reversal of Gender Norms in Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

Historically speaking, comics and superhero media were created for and marketed towards a male audience. This mindset has been translated into both the MCU and DCEU, which has led to hyper masculine male and passive female characters. Since the 1930’s, superheroes have served as role models for individuals from all walks of life. The ABC series Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (2013-2020), regarded as the first television series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, breaks boundaries with their revolutionary representation of masculinity. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is a sci-fi series rooted in spies and espionage. The most compelling of these characters is the fan-[least] favorite Grant Ward. Agent Ward is first presented as a skilled black-ops specialist with the social skills of a porcupine. Midway through the first season he becomes known as a manipulative, delusional, and fragmented man as well as our favorite S.H.I.E.L.D team's most personal and dangerous adversary. Despite his prickly demeanor, Ward’s core trait of love-sickness remains prevalent; even becoming the cause of his descent. This paper will be discussing the formation and destruction of
Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s most “toxically masculine” antagonist.

Future from the Past: The Reclaim of Lesbian History and Reconstruction of Gender in Sarah Waters' Tipping the Velvet

Despite being widely embraced as a popular genre, historical fictions are often criticized for a lack of authenticity. But the concept of historical authenticity is worth challenging from its root. Given that history is often written predominantly by people in power, rewriting history is especially important for marginalized groups, such as the queer community. Published in 1998, Sarah Waters' "Tipping the Velvet" is a prime example of a work that re-imagines lesbian identity in Victorian England. Through the narration of Nancy's romantic journey, the fiction captures the process of lesbian-identity exploration and outlines a group portrait of the queer community in the Victorian era. This paper aims to analyze how, through the genre of historical fiction, the book redefines historical authenticity, providing lineage and "belongingness" for the queer community, and opening up discussions for the future. From repressed sexual desires in Victorian times to the still-prevalent concept of "gender inversion" in the 1930s to the invention of various labels on gender and sexuality in the 1990s, history leaves non-linear and never-ending questions. By situating the current discourse of queerness in the past, this book provokes modern readers to reflect and evaluate further, and encourages them to see freedom in the future with ambiguities in the past.

Complicating Coming Out on Netflix: Disclosures of Autistic and Queer Identity in Heartbreak High (2022) and Dead End: Paranormal Park

Abstract: In young adult queer stories, an emphasis is often put on ‘coming out’. In fact, Monaghan (2019) suggests that “the common trope of coming out as coming of age sees queer youth coming of age only by coming to terms with their sexuality and/or gender identity and verbally articulating it” (99). However, as queer disabled characters become more prevalent in young adult media, writers have to grapple with how to address identity formation and disclosure when a character has multiple 'invisible' marginalized identities. This paper examines two queer autistic characters from 2022 Netflix original series marketed towards young adults, Norma (Dead End: Paranormal Park) and Quinni (Heartbreak High), to consider how the writers replicate, subvert, and complicate the 'coming out' trope in tackling these characters' queer and autistic identities. In doing so, it asks both whether the 'coming out' trope sufficiently describes autistic stories and what possibilities exist for representations of queer autistic girlhood and coming-of-age beyond this trope.

Constrained by More than Corsets: A Critical Examination of the BBC's Historical Lesbian Dramas

Lesbian period dramas have been a staple of the British Broadcasting Company's catalogue since Tipping the Velvet in 2002. From Daphne to Gentleman Jack, the BBC's historical lesbians often fare better than their contemporaries in both viewership and in avoiding the 'fridging' fate which still plagues queer or female characters on television. With every new drama that premieres, however, comes familiar criticism: complaints that the content shown is too explicitly sexual to be broadcast.There is still some merit to the complaint that 'lesbians are the invisible minorities of British TV drama'. BBC Three - home to a number of shows featuring LGBT+ characters such as Lip Service and In the Flesh - has been an online-only service since 2016 due to budget cuts. While this could be simply due to the channel being aimed towards a younger and more tech-literate generation, it has had the effect of making it a 'genre television' channel, restricting a whole range of queer content to those who possess both technology and a BBC license fee. In light of this, the fact that four period dramas with lesbian protagonists have made it to prime-time slots on the mainstream BBC One is remarkable. Certain similarities between them, however, are illuminating. From blink-and-you-miss-it scenes of explicit lesbian sex to period-typical homophobia and heartbreak, each 'groundbreaking' series seems to break very familiar ground. This paper will explore the influence of the male gaze and Section 28 on the BBC's lesbian historical dramas, criticising recurrent tropes which feel - ironically - outdated.

Stories for Students: Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn in the Classroom

Rudine Sims Bishop’s introduction to the concept of mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors (1990) has since sparked a vital discussion among educators as to the importance of diverse representations in the classroom. As educators have explored ways to diversify literature taught, the conversation has begun to shift towards the possibility of including modern stories alongside the classics we’ve taught for decades. Could Young Adult literature be the solution teachers and students have been looking for? Young Adult fiction typically denotes stories written for audiences ages 12-18 which depict at least one teenage protagonist. This of course affects the novels’ themes and the protagonist’s goals, resulting in a key difference in plot between YA and adult novels. For too long, YA fiction has been pushed to the side with claims that it’s not rigorous or intellectual enough to have merit in an academic setting. Perhaps it’s the protagonist’s young voice, the seemingly juvenile events making up the plot, or the fantastical and melodramatic characteristic of genres such as fantasy causing critics to turn up their noses at these stories. But teachers can no longer allow the potential of YA literature to connect to your young and diverse students to go untapped. In a sea of titles, teachers may feel at a loss when creating curriculum. Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn (2020) is a top-notch example of a diverse story worthy of a platform in the classroom. Not only Legendborn is a quality story, it presents rich depictions of diverse characters led by an inspiring Black female protagonist. Students can learn from Deonn’s artful writing while engaging in critical conversation about American White supremacy and its effects today. Our protagonists’ status as a teenage girl doesn’t prevent us from learning from her; in fact, she has a lot to teach us.

Gender Fluidity in a Victorian Best-Seller:  Richard Marsh’s The Beetle

The blurring of the boundary between defined masculine and feminine roles has been at the core of debates between progressive and conservative cultural impulses for over a century.  When societies fear that they’ve gone too far, that they’ve strayed away from their founding principles, the surest path back relies on reaffirming gender roles.  Richard Marsh’s novel The Beetle was published in 1897—the same year as Dracula—and it outsold Braham Stoker’s best-selling vampire novel at the time.  It was in print until 1960, but it remained sunk in obscurity until a few years ago, when a new edition was published by Broadview Press.  There’s hardly any critical work on this novel, but I hope that changes soon, since this novel is a fantastic exploration of gender, power, and imperialism.  Written in four first-person narratives, much in the style of other early detective novels including Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone and Stoker’s Dracula, the novel centers upon the elusive, shape-shifting and gender-swapping character of the Beetle.  At first the Beetle appears to be horrific, inhuman, and androgynous.  Later it appears as an Egyptian man, then as a woman, and finally as an ageless high priestess of an Egyptian cult which entraps and emasculates English men.  The threat that this gender fluid character poses to English culture is a loss of the ideological boundaries that characters rely upon to center themselves within their society, their nation, and within the broader English Empire.  The men who interact with the Beetle are deeply  perplexed and unsettled by their inability to stabilize the Beetle’s gender into a fixed identity.  And as the Beetle continues to infiltrate English society, the men and women who encounter it gradually lose their certainty regarding their own gender, and thus their position within their culture.  When the Beetle’s infectious gender fluidity begins to transform the main female character, however, the men instinctively recall and reclaim their masculinity in order to restore Victorian womanhood to its accustomed place within the home.  I will base my analysis of the Beetle’s gender fluidity and how it threatens to destabilize English culture on detailed close readings of two or three specific scenes from the novel.

The Feminine Arts of Missal Painting in the 19th Century
 

In this paper I wish to address the gendered aspect of illumination in the 19th century. The art itself was considered a distinctly feminine form of expression, and indeed the activity was greatly encouraged for young, educated women to pursue as both an amateur hobby and means of gainful employment. It should be noted however, that many illuminators and artists were men, such as the well-known artist William Morris. I would like to propose some key differences in the inherent femininity of illumination juxtaposed with the output of male illuminators, lies in its instruction. During the 1860s, a proliferation of manuals and how-to
guides in the art of ‘missal painting’ were sold inexpensively with the dual goal of providing a moral creative activity and teaching employable skills to educated women of the middle and upper classes. This source material differed sharply from the access to real illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages many for educated upper class men, or alternatively historic reproductions in the costlier version of illumination instruction guides. Previous discussions on this popular revival have noted the relative success of women leaving the domestic sphere through the use of illumination to gain modest employment, but what has really struck me is the apparent ‘appropriateness’ of illumination as women’s work with the presence of numerous men in the field as well. Drawing on past scholarship such as Alice Beckwith’s Victorian Bibliomania and the landmark publication by Hindman, Camille, Rowe & Watson, Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age, this paper would look through the reception of popular illuminators of the period, including fine artists, to explore language surrounding gender of the illuminator as embodied by their work.

“Letthers of Thanks from Hell”[1]:  The Autopsy of Jane Doe and Re-examining the Figure of the Witch (Over and Over and Over Again)

The 2016 film The Autopsy of Jane Doe is an unusual sort of supernatural horror film. The “monster” (an unidentified female corpse) spends the bulk of the movie lying passively on an autopsy table—naked, exposed, and eviscerated—while the “heroes” (a father-and-son team of morticians/medical examiners) cut her open and apart in an attempt to collect and document evidence that will enable police to capture her murderer. As the film progresses, however, and the men become trapped in their mortuary/morgue by a violent storm, they simultaneously uncover more inexplicable traces of evidence from the woman’s increasingly mutilated corpse and experience more terrifying phenomena that they ultimately attribute to the (un)dead woman. As all of this takes place, the film employs recognizable tropes of horror and detective genres to encourage viewer identification with the well-meaning but more and more paranoid perspectives of the two men. But this identification is both promoted and undercut through the film’s manipulation of both historical and cultural bodies of knowledge about the Salem Witch Trials and the figure of the witch more generally. Ultimately, through the confusion of “tormentor” and “victim” that the movie both dramatizes and implicates its viewers in, the film critiques the systemic role the witch trials—and the “witch” more generally—play in American history and popular culture.

1 This phrase—eerily appropriate spelling and all—comes from Cotton Mather’s Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions (1689).

“I’m Nobody’s Baby”: Judy Garland and Publicity at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Though the Golden Age of Hollywood is often associated with unrivaled cinematic beauty and artistic achievement, the period was marred by the disconnect between the personas studios crafted for their stars and the actors’ personal struggles. This is best exemplified in the life of Judy Garland, whose career at Metro-Goldywn-Mayer was filled with personal and professional strife. Garland’s image at MGM evolved over her fourteen years with the studio: First, she was presented as the prototypical “girl next door,” everyone’s friend but no one’s love interest. Both on and off screen, MGM made note of Garland’s supposed homeliness which, paired with a drug addiction fueled by the studio, had a disastrous impact on Garland’s sense of self-worth. Over the years, Garland grew into more sophisticated roles, and eventually evolved into a stage and screen icon, though the impact of the “ugly duckling” label she had been given in her youth remained with her throughout her life.  In the course of Garland’s career with the studio, MGM manipulated her image in a variety of ways. After initially molding her into the “girl next door” type, the studio then gave her a “glamor treatment” so that she would resemble its biggest female stars as she transitioned into adult roles.  Throughout her time with MGM, the studio consistently manipulated her physically and psychologically to keep her working and compliant, making sure she presented the image MGM wanted her to convey.  Despite this oppressive control, Garland’s image eventually morphed into that of a show business icon, a persona she cultivated outside of the studio's control. This reclamation of her image did not undo the damage done to her during her time at MGM, but her status as a legend of the stage and the screen remains her most enduring image, over fifty years after her death.

Suede’s Dog Man Star: Queer Futures, Subcultural Relationalities

In the United States in the early 1990s there was an unprecedented rise in queer visibility which provoked heated debates on the future of queer politics. With his essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?”, Leo Bersani launched what is dubbed the “anti-relational turn,” providing grounds for Lee Edelman’s anti-future inquiry. Although this “romance of negativity” provided an eloquent critique of respectability politics and epistemological optimism, it was found insufficient by José Muñoz and Jack Halberstam, who argued that futurity and utopic thinking were inseparable from queerness.  I will articulate this tension between the anti-future and the utopic by examining the English rock band Suede’s Dog Man Star, a 1994 album that actively distanced itself from Britpop, a musical movement driven by social Darwinist and cultural nationalist thoughts. While time and space in Dog Man Star seem to constitute an autoerotic loop free of intersubjective relations, the album’s embeddedness in and reforging of queer cultural histories gesture towards collective utopic potentials. This  queer utopia is by no means a return to the normative relationalities anti-futurity opposes, but rather it suggests new modes of connectivity as enabled by a digitalized, global fanbase.

Taya-Reese Johnson, Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania 

A Fraying Rope: An Analysis of Power Dynamics in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope

In his first Technicolor film, Alfred Hitchcock not only pushed the boundaries of cinematography, but also the censorship guidelines of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The film, Rope, is an adaptation of Patrick Hamilton’s play of the same name, which was based on the 1924 Leopold and Loeb murder case. In which, two homosexual University of Chicago students murdered a fourteen-year-old boy to demonstrate their superior intellect - a justification relating to Nietzsche’s Superman. In Rope, Brandon Shaw and Phillip Granger murder their friend, David, and proceed to throw a dinner party with the deceased’s family, fiancé, former best friend and the boys’ former prep school master, Rupert Cadell, in attendance. As Arthur Laurents, the screenwriter, said, “It dealt with these two homosexual boys and their homosexual teacher … nobody used the word ‘homosexual;’ it was referred to as ‘it’ by Hitch, by the studio, by everyone … just pretended it wasn’t there, but they wanted it there” (qtd. in Billheimer 142). Hitchcock’s powerplay to bring “it” to the forefront brought forth a complex presentation of morals and power dynamics. While the film’s homosexual “subtext” may have been missed in 1948, the tension within Brandon and Phillip’s sadomasochistic relationship is discernible. Viewers are bestowed with the power of knowing that David’s loved ones are partaking in a feast atop his grave. Additionally, as the man who introduced the boys to the Superman, Rupert plays a high-stakes game of cat and mouse to confirm his suspicions and prevent the boys from proving their thesis that the elite are above moral concepts, and as such, can practice murder without consequence. Ultimately, my paper will examine how Hitchcock’s cinematic feat is influential in a socio-historic context and how Hitchcock’s homosexual villains are catalysts for the complex power dynamics presented in the film.

The Un-queering of Scream (2022)

The present paper attempts to investigate the delineation of two female characters in the fifth installment of the Scream franchise by calling attention to their positioning within romantic tropes. I examine how the framing of the horror genre renders characters vulnerable to homo-romantic interpretations due to the exhibition of extreme emotions often necessitated by the genre, thus underscoring the possibility that committing violence may create forbidden intimacy. The paper also strives to blur the distinctions between the homo-social and homo-romantic and claims the film fails to subjugate the queer possibilities rising between the characters. I discuss the case of queer representation in the horror-film series Scream while focusing on the queer possibilities in the fifth installment of the franchise. Although there was an executive decision to eliminate the romantic storyline between two female characters – Tara and Amber, despite this attempt of strategic erasure, Scream (2022), fails to subdue the homoerotic undertones that mark the relationship of the two women. The interactions between the two women demonstrated in their placement in subtle romantic tropes reveals how the moments of emotional distress allow homo-romantic potentiality in the film. As a result, despite the marginal queer representation in horror cinema, the genre also becomes vulnerable to queer readings owing to its own archetypes. This paper also underscores the concept of repressive hypothesis used by Foucault to explain how the repression of sexuality in the Victorian era also engendered the emergence of sexuality. The study applies the concept to the case of Scream (2022) to understand how the elimination of a queer romance between Tara and Amber has antithetically centered the attention of the audience on the duo’s romantic potential. Lastly, I also discuss the ambiguity surrounding same-sex relationships between women that allows Scream to terminate the romantic subplot between Tara and Amber without making any significant alterations to the script containing their canonical romance. Ultimately, the film permits the deconstruction of homosocial ambivalence as it explores homo-romantic and homoerotic possibilities.

We Should Be Worried, Darling: An Analysis of Don’t Worry Darling

The 2022 film Don’t Worry Darling did not come without a fair amount of drama and gossip. While arguments could be made that it either undermined the message or strengthened it, this presentation will be focused on the plot and its implications. At the core, the film is a commentary on incels (or, “involuntary celibate”), the alt-right, fragile masculinity, and feminism.  The way in which these are presented allow an immersive experience that shows just how deep and insidious these groups are. My presentation focuses on the film, and where incels, alt right, and technology meet.

Dress for the Job You Want: Female villains’ costume in genre film and television

Fashion in general, and costumes in particular, are a form of expression, used to communicate what the wearer thinks, feels, and knows about themselves. Fashion and costume also serve as a visual shorthand for how the observer should understand the wearer. In the same way that character archetypes and stereotypes exists in film and television, there are costume tropes on display in the movies and shows we consume, which inform and influence our relationships with the characters onscreen. This paper examines the costumes of female villains in genre film and television, paying close attention to how these women are singled out and identified by the clothes they wear. As audience members, we are conditioned from a young age to identify character types based partly on their dress, and we learn in childhood to associate black clothes with bad girls. Many genre films and TV shows made for more mature audiences reinforce these stereotypes by dressing their female villains in dark costumes. They further expand the villainess’ wardrobe with the inclusion of overtly sexual, tight fitting or revealing clothes, and pants suits. Opportunities to challenge sartorial convention are often overlooked in favour of maintaining culturally agreed upon standards of female dress. Put another way, how the female body is covered reflects her role in society. The question, then, is does she dress like a villain because she is one, or is she a villain because of the way she’s dressed?

Ideology, Insanity, and Intersectionality: Activism as a Touchstone of the Modern Mental
Health Memoir in The Collected Schizophrenias

The mental health memoir has become a defining subset of modern nonfiction. At the heart of this genre are the stories of women’s mental health. This specific subgenre has been gaining popularity since the 1990s, with books like Girl, Interrupted (1993) and Prozac Nation (1994). It has been dominated by the stories of heterosexual able-bodied white women, seldom branching out into the stories of queer women and women of color. In their own right, memoirs like Girl, Interrupted and Prozac Nation have contributed to the feminist literary canon, simply by sharing the real, uncensored stories of women that would generally be discounted due to their author’s mental illness. However, these memoirs and those like them are missing a level of intersectionality. In reading prominent mental health memoirs and general nonfiction, you will find little diversity. Esme Weijun Wang’s 2019 collection of personal essays, The Collected Schizophrenias has added a layer of intersectional activism to the genre, with the representation Wang as a queer chronically ill woman of color brings forth. The Collected Schizophrenias received praise and recognition for its multifaceted nature. In a review for The New Yorker, Anna Altman wrote in regards to Wang, “She is not just a sick woman with stories of illness but a woman with a vibrant mind who can do scientific research and formulate complex cultural criticism, too.” In The Collected Schizophrenias, Wang not only speaks from her experience as someone with schizoaffective disorder but also from her experience with other intersecting identities and experiences. Moreover, she intertwines the stories of other people with mental illness as a form of activism. In this essay, I will highlight and analyze Esme Weijun Wang’s memoir, The Collected Schizophrenias as an important addition to the modern, intersectional feminist mental health memoir.

Cat-Mentors in Sailor Moon, Kiki’s Delivery Service and Puella Magi Madoka Magica

Across cultures, there are tales of magical women with cats as companions. Often these cats play a symbolic role, representing wisdom, strength, bravery, etc. Japanese pop-culture modernizes traditional folklore about these magical beings within the Magical Girl subgenre of anime and manga. As the name implies, anime under the Magical Girl category mainly focus on young girls who possess magical powers. Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese filmmaker, also uses cats as a element in his representations of young girls and their coming of age stories. These cats tend to play the role of a mentor, who helps them discover their powers, control these powers, or to do both. Within these media, cats tend to serve as an engine for discussing wisdom and strength,  and they strive to guide the main characters towards the path that will allow them to fulfill their destiny. They may also provide a parental figure for the young magical girls, helping them get out of trouble and taking care of them when they lack support from family. Through the anime Sailor Moon and Puella Magi Madoka Magica and the Studio Ghibli film “Kiki’s Delivery Service,” I will look into the role of the cat mentor and their connection to young, powerful girls. Within these three media forms, I will examine three types of feline mentors: Luna(Sailor Moon) as the intelligent cat sent from the past, Jiji as the snarky parental figure, and Kyubey as the tricky contract maker. Despite their differences, these cats all play a pivotal role in the character development of magical girls and provide a connection to stories with feminist themes.

A Compassionate Future in Fiction and IRL: A Reflection on Shame and Joy-Centered Writing as a Lens for Self-Reflection, Recovery, and Keeping the Next Generation from Harm 

This paper is an exploration of and reflection on the concept of shame, focusing mostly on queer shame and what that looked like for my peers and I growing up. The conversation continues with the with an exploration of the “I’m not like other girls trope” that dominated the young adult literature genre in the 2010’s, with focus on how it interacted and added to more general sensation of shame. I then go on to address the importance of self-representation and positive representation of marginalized and diverse identities in traditionally published literature and non-traditional texts, and the ways in which books and associated safe spaces like public libraries can create a sense of community, safety, and acceptance. The newer publications addressed in this essay center stories, identities, and experiences that have been traditionally left out of the canon; books I wish I’d had access to growing up. These titles center stories about communities that celebrate queerness and embrace differences, with special focus given to memoirs, children’s books, and middle grade and young adult graphic novels. They are stories that transcend the narrative of queerness defined by its difference from the perceived normal, bypassing the conventions of writing queer trauma, to instead celebrate queer joy. This essay is an exploration of the optimism and hope I have for the children of the present and future; that they won’t struggle to find themselves represented in the books they read; that they won’t struggle to have their identities validated; that, with the influx of literature centering queer joy, we will break the cycle of shame. 

Fantastic Resistance in the Fantasy Novel Elatsoe

Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger, published in 2020 and named one of the 100 best fantasy novels of all time by Time Magazine, features a teenaged sleuth named Ellie, short for Elatsoe, who identifies as Lipan Apache and asexual. The world Ellie inhabits is real and recognizable with its malls, high schools, and Texas highways. The world is also unrecognizable and fantastic with its vampires, monsters, fairies descended from Lord Oberon, and animal spirits, including a recently deceased English springer spaniel named Kirby and an extinct woolly mammoth. In its depiction of a world that is both real and unreal and in its allusion to Lipan Apache traditions, Elatsoe has all the elements of a progressive fantasy novel. Indeed, these very ingredients appear in contributor Joy Sanchez-Taylor’s assessment of the state of the genre. Writing for a 2021 special issue of The Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, Sanchez-Taylor argues that notwithstanding the “reification of white, Eurowestern mythology as the only acceptable foundation for fantasy worlds” (189), new authors are creating nonwestern worlds populated with West-African Orishas, Lipan Apache spirits, and Chinese empires. Such diversification is crucial if the genre of the fantastic has any hope of fostering “alternative thinking and viewing” (83) as Jack Zipes argued in his 2009 article “Why Fantasy Matters Too Much.” But, do asexual protagonists and Lipan Apache animal spirits necessarily lead to alternative thinking? In the case of Elatsoe, the answer is yes because in its world building, it provides a model for resistance which, as Zipes argues, is a necessary ingredient for progressive fiction. Together with a cohort of friends and family, including Jay, her best boy friend who is not a boyfriend, Ellie avenges the wrongful death of her cousin, Trevor. Everyone assumes that Trevor’s death is the result of an automobile accident. However, because Trevor’s spirit has visited Ellie in a dream, she knows an alternative truth which is that a wealthy and powerful doctor killed Trevor in a drunk driving incident. In her quest for justice, Ellie spends the rest of the novel resisting the narratives given to her by various authorities. Recognizing the importance of countering mainstream narratives is a lesson readers would do well to learn from.

The Photography Witch: Michel Tournier’s “Veronica’s Shrouds”

History of photography is primarily a record of male achievements. This masculinization of the profession reflects in fiction, which only rarely features female photographers as literary characters. The few existing portrayals is of a woman photographer, however, create a collective image of person who disturbs order, transgresses the boundaries, and breaks taboos.  While building its argument on the wider background, which includes works of Virginia Woolf, Cynthia Ozick, and E. Annie Proulx, the proposed paper concentrates on Michel Tourner’s short story titled “Veronica’s Shrouds” (1978), which offers a portrayal of a corrupted parasitic photographer who abuses and destroys the body of her model to achieve fame and feed her ambition. While Veronica’s name and her technique of “dermography” imply the biblical allegory, the photographer is also a modern incarnation of Lilith. A woman in a male dominated profession, Veronica yearns for recognition and revenge. She turns her practice into a sacrificial rite, and, with the use of photographic chemicals gradually poisons and eventually kills her model, while transforming his body into a series of photographic images depicted on shrouds. In this act she assumes a role of the succubus, which seduces and dominates her male subject, who is often referred in the story as a sacrificial victim, a child, or a small animal. While Veronica exploits her model by relentlessly using his body both for sex and photography, a young man deteriorates in a way which resembles the slow deaths of the vampires’ victims. His eventual demise coincides with Veronica’s professional success and her demonstration of power when she claims her place among male photographic artists.

Verbally Violent and Scandalously Sexy: Fritzi Ritz, Veronica Lodge, and Lucy van Pelt as Vilified Scolds

“Verbally Violent and Scandalously Sexy: Fritzi Ritz, Veronica Lodge, and Lucy van Pelt as Vilified Scolds” looks at female characters in comics that have influenced readers as well as the media we consume today in a post-modern world. The characters mentioned were written with the intent to be seen as nags, scolds, and shrews. Their feminine ways are vilified and this portrayal of fictional women has reenforced the negative assumptions placed on women in the real world. However—with a change in mindset—Fritzi Ritz, Veronica Lodge, and Lucy van Pelt can be seen as feminist role models instead of cautionary tales. “The Invention of the Scold” by Kim Phillips has provided the lens for this paper. The scold as a trope originates from as early as the 1400s when court legislators began policing the speech of lowborn women. The trope was later used in media like Shakespeare’s play “The Taming of the Shrew” which has inspired several more recent adaptations and parodies. The scold is not just represented in western media, but eastern media like in the manga “Given,” written by Natsuki Kizu, which also vilifies female characters who are loud and speak their mind. This paper suggests that we do not have to continue looking at these characters this way. As repulsive as their behavior is intended to be, they were all written to be people who know what they want, know how to speak up for themselves, and are able to challenge the men in their lives. This is something that feminists have been preaching for decades, and with a change of mindset, these comic book characters can and should be viewed as role models.

How The Last of Us Redefines Gender in a Post-Apocalyptic World

In 2013, Naughty Dog released what would become their most popular video game of all time. A narrative that revolves around an older man and a teenage girl, the two embark on a journey together across the states, learning from one another along the way. In 2023, a decade after the game’s release, a TV adaption premiered on HBO, breaking viewership records and becoming one of the most highly anticipated shows of the year. The Last of Us continues to defy the standards for apocalyptic narrative. Women are portrayed in a post-apocalyptic world as capable, strong and determined. They don’t need a man by their side in order to survive. Fear is embodied by both men and women, not just the latter, humanizing the characters and portraying them just as people and not constrained by their gender. With the dawn of the apocalypse, societal standards are effectively destroyed. There are no longer systems in place to ostracize and silence marginalized groups. At the time The Last of Us takes place, 20 years after the onset of the cordyceps fungus, the world functions under the premise of “every man for themselves”. Our two main characters, Joel and Ellie, embody this concept as they come across different survivors throughout their journey. That is, until it comes to each other. Joel, who had a daughter before the disease took over, is incredibly protective of Ellie. As the plot progresses, however, the relationship between them evolves into one of genuine love and compassion, with Ellie going to great lengths to protect Joel just like he would her. She is portrayed in both the video game and the TV show as someone who can completely take care of herself and others, and doesn’t need Joel or any other man to survive. Ellie and Joel protect each other, displaying a unique portrayal of female characters in apocalyptic narratives. The apocalypse is where traditional gender roles go to die, and Ellie is the explicit depiction of this throughout her journey with Joel. Rather, The Last of Us emphasizes how women are just as capable as men, while also utilizing gender dynamics to strengthen the relationship between the lead characters in order to survive.

Queer Worldbuilding: Imagining a Queer Otherwise through Young Adult, Fantasy LGBTQ Literature

Continuing efforts in Children’s and Young Adult (YA) Literary publishing has seen the proliferation of novels featuring BIPOC and queer characters, allowing more readers to see themselves reflected in the stories they read.  By focusing on a subset of YA fiction, LGBTQ Fantasy Literature, I argue that reading works of fantasy in which queerness is the norm serves as a restorative and reparative space in which LGBTQ youth can look into the ‘mirror’ of a story and see themselves reflected into a different, fantasy, background.  Because Fantasy Literature, and by extension YA LGBTQ Fantasy, is a genre that offers a critique of contemporary systems by isolating problems in a ‘fantastic’ world, I offer queer worldbuilding as a process started by the authors of the YA fantasy, and continued by their readers as they conceptualize queer futurity from the different worlds and systems they encounter. Turning both to reader response theory and queer theory, I argue that this increased representation allows young adults to imagine a queer futurity for themselves rather than accepting the constraints of the world around them.  By looking at these moments of differential representation, in which LGBTQ, YA fantasy literature offers queer kinship networks beyond those that LGBTQ youth may experience in their own lived realities, I argue that these works offer a restorative and reparative space that allows LGBTQ youth to move towards futurity.  Thus, the act of fantasizing in the process of reading these novels unites the fictional with reader’s lived realities and allows for the creation of queer conceptual worlds from which youth can imagine their own queer futurity. 

Gender Fluidity and Rigidity in Peter Pan

The Peter Pan series of plays and novels are commonly recognised as a disguised form of biography of J. M. Barrie. Although the popular bedtime story is believed to be based on childhood adventures, it is essentially about the opposite. The inspiration for the tales of Peter, comes from Barrie’s experience of growing up as a heterosexual male in Edwardian Britain. Barrie’s biography shows his struggles with the scrutiny surrounding his personal life, more specifically, with the focus on his sexuality and sexual orientation. Peter Pan is one of the most eminent examples of a gender-fluid character in literature. In Barrie’s texts, gender roles are challenged as Wendy is brought to Neverland to fulfil a maternal role, paralleling Mrs Darling’s responsibilities at home. However, upon arrival in Neverland, Peter informs her she is now a mother to The Lost Boys, a role Wendy accepts willingly, instinctively. Meanwhile, Peter exhibits many characteristics of a stereotypical male, mirroring the role of Mr Darling in the Darling household as he becomes protector and corrector to the children, all whilst defying the laws of gravity. Though other characters conform to social norms, it is apparent that Peter occupies his own unsteady position in a binary system of gender roles.

Social Constructions of Sexual Orientation and Gender in Uganda

The primary purpose of my presentation is to discuss how the Indigenous society in Uganda construct, maintain and challenge gender and sexuality norms. The cultural norms has played an instrumental role in shaping our perception of how "woman" and "man" have become “subjectified” and “objectified” in Uganda in the last decades. In terms of approach will adopt a variety of theoretical perspectives (but primarily feminist cultural studies) to explore representations of gender and sexuality in Ugandan cultural context. The overall goal of this essay evaluates how scientist and scholars “see” popular culture and also be able to reflect on their own relationship to it. Findings In this presentation, I want to discuss how popular culture, broadly construed, influences how we think about gender differences in our society and especially in Uganda. Implications The passage of the Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA) into law in Uganda in March 2023 increased negative public discourse about LGBTI rights and led to an upturn of incidents of violence and discrimination against LGBTI persons. While the AHA is now a law, same-sex sexual acts remain unlawful and anti-LGBTI rhetoric and discrimination persist. A person who is open about their sexual orientation and/or gender identity and expression may face harassment and discrimination from the state and is likely to experience societal discrimination, including harassment and violence. The accumulation of such treatment by state and non-state actors is likely to be sufficiently serious by its nature and repetition to amount to persecution or serious harm. To say that sex, sexuality, and gender are all socially constructed is not to minimize their social power. These categorical imperatives govern our lives in the most profound and pervasive ways, through the social experiences and social practices of what Dorothy Smith calls the "everyday / every night world" (1990). The paradox of human nature is that it is always a manifestation of cultural meanings, social relationships, and power politics; "not biology, but culture, becomes destiny" (J. Butler 1990, 8). Gendered people emerge not from physiology or sexual orientations but from the exigencies of the social order, mostly from the need for a reliable division of the work of food production and the social (not physical) reproduction of new members.  The moral imperatives of religion and cultural representations guard the boundary lines among genders and ensure that what is demanded, what is permitted, and what is tabooed for the people in each gender is well known and followed by most (c. Davies 1982). Political power, control of scarce resources, and, if necessary, violence uphold the gendered social order in the face of resistance and rebellion. Most people, however, voluntarily go along with their society's prescriptions for those of their gender status, because the norms and expectations get built into their sense of worth and identity as [the way we] think, the way we see and hear and speak, the way we fantasy, and the way we feel.

Babette Cole: Contemporary Fairy Tales with the Gender Roles Reversed

Contemporary fairy tales have begun to reverse the traditional gender roles in order to challenge societal expectations and promote gender equality. By reversing the roles of the hero and the damsel in distress, these stories empower female characters and broaden the range of possibilities for both boys and girls. One of the main reasons for reversing gender roles in contemporary fairy tales is to challenge stereotypes and break away from traditional gender norms. In traditional fairy tales, the hero is typically a male character who rescues the damsel in distress, a female character. This reinforces the stereotype that men are strong and capable while women are weak and in need of rescue. Examining two picture books by Babette Cole, “Princess Smartypants” and “Prince Cinders”, we will show how the stereotypical depictions of the female and male gender are overturned, how the ideology of sexist and biased writing, which prevailed for years in the picture book landscape, is challenged, focusing not only to words but also to images. This study conducts both a narratological and multimodal analysis to examine the portrayal of princess and prince in the stories. The narratological analysis examines the narrative elements and aims to revise traditional stereotypes associated with princess and prince. The multimodal perspective focuses on the analysis of the images of the characters through, for example, their actions and clothing in the selected texts. Through this examination, the study illustrates how current literary trends are being incorporated into children's literature. From our results we conclude that by reversing the roles, contemporary fairytales present female characters as strong and capable, while also showing that men can also be vulnerable and in need of help. Also these books promote gender equality, individuality and self-expression.

Revisiting/Revisioning Octavia Butler’s Kindred for the 21st Century

Science fiction author, Octavia Butler, insisted that—despite its time travel aspect—her 1979 novel, Kindred, was a “grim historical fantasy” which addresses the assumptions late twentieth century Americans had about slavery. She set Kindred’s present day action in 1976, the bicentennial of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, and her novel examines the themes of slavery and freedom, with an emphasis on, to paraphrase Frederick Douglass, how a person is made a slave and how difficult it is for a slave to regain her humanity. In 2022, Obie-award-winning playwright, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, adapted Butler’s Kindred as a television series for FX. The main character, Dana, is still a 26-year-old Black woman trying to make it as a writer, is still called back to her ancestor, Rufus Weylin’s, past whenever his life is threatened, and can still return only when she is so frightened she thinks she is about to die. But Jacobs-Jenkins sets the present day of the story not in 1976, but in 2016, and, likewise, shifts his attention to our society’s more current problems, including substance abuse and White “Karens” who call the police on Black neighbors. As Jacobs-Jenkins notes, Butler “was writing to bring the reader in confrontation with themselves in their own historical context. . .  I wanted to honor that conceptual impulse" (qtd. in George 4). He also changes some aspects of Dana’s relationship with her white significant other, Kevin, whom Jacobs-Jenkins changes from Dana’s successful writer husband to the white struggling musician Dana has just started dating. However, both Butler and Jacobs-Jenkins portray Dana’s struggles in her ancestors’ past and her modern-day present in order to get their audiences to reflect on their own naïve assumptions about race and the impact of our country’s history of slavery.

Queer Television: Censorship, Stereotypes, and No Season 2

There is an underrepresentation of LGBTQ+ characters in media, specifically television.  From the 1930s-1960s, the Motion Picture Production Code (“Hays Code”) was used to censor film, essentially leading to the stifling of any depictions or mentions of queer people. Although the Hays Code has not been used for over fifty years, the lasting effects of censorship are still seen in television today. Queer people have always existed, and it has been an on-going fight to see members of the community fairly represented on the small screen. Even after the Hays Code was put to rest, characters within the LGBTQ+ community were written solely as jokes in television. These kinds of characters, such as ones from Friends, fed into negative stereotypes and promoted homophobia and transphobia, whether it was intended or not. In more recent years, the queer community has seen increased representation, yet it is still a fight to see these stories fully fleshed out or queer characters depicted as “real people.” While there have been some great wins for the community with shows like Heartstopper, many queer shows are cancelled for seemingly no reason other than blatant homophobia, or more specifically, lesbophobia, as shows focused on sapphic relationships are rarer yet more likely to be cancelled despite their high ratings and viewership. Seeing well-rounded characters in television that identify in the same way that you do is extremely important for people to accept themselves and accept each other. Shows such as Will & Grace, Schitt’s Creek, and A League of Their Own are examined here to investigate the history of representation of queer characters in television, as well as the struggle and importance of getting queer dramas renewed for multiple seasons.

Slayers Every One of Us: Podcasts, Community, and the Afterlife of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Almost 20 years after the series finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, there is still an active, avid fan base for the series. Rewatch podcasts such as “Buffering the Vampire Slayer”, “Slayerfest ‘98”, “Still Pretty”, and more revisit the series episode-by-episode. These podcasts and the online fan communities surrounding them continue the conversations started when the series first aired in 1997, addressing issues of gender, sexuality, race, and class with a present–day perspective. In an age of 1 minute videos and 280 character limits, rewatch podcasts provide an essential space for fans to tackle difficult questions and interrogate their favorite media critically, while still celebrating the things they love. In this way, fans can engage in more nuanced, serious conversations than allowed by popular social media platforms like Twitter and TikTok. Furthermore, these spaces allow fans to gather and create meaningful communities both on-and off-line. For example, the “Buffering the Vampire Slayer” patrons-only Facebook group has over 100 sub-groups for members to explore common interests, from location-specific groups for fans in similar geographic areas, to emotional support groups, to groups for different hobbies, religious and spiritual practices, and more. Through interviews with fans, examinations in discussions in online fan communities, and analyses of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the corresponding rewatch podcast
episodes, I examine the role of fan podcasts and fan communities in the ongoing legacy of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Beautiful Ugliness, Learning to Love and Female Empowerment in Howl’s Moving Castle  

Hayao Miyazaki’s Howl’s Moving Castle is considered by many to be one of the greatest animated films ever; it is beautiful and moving both aesthetically and narratively and chock-full of details that warrant rewatching to pick up on. As a children’s movie, its messages regarding self-worth, ability and personal growth are extremely important and deftly conveyed. This paper examines themes of beauty and attractiveness, love and self-acceptance, superficiality and authenticity, and humanity in the Studio Ghibli film Howl’s Moving Castle (2005). Driving messages of the film overall encompass the idea that beauty is not about superficial appearances, and that kindness and caring for other people make you beautiful and give life meaning. Sophie and Howl’s curses parallel each other, and they must experience personal growth and look past appearances to break their curses. Howl learns how to genuinely love over the course of the film by seeing the value in genuine connection and Sophie’s courage and wit over surface-level appearances; Sophie starts to like herself, keeps her gray hair, and demonstrates that age is valuable and useful, and that attractiveness does not denote worth. Particularly for young girls watching this film, there is wholesome and healthy messaging regarding one’s own value as a person, meaning in life outside of romantic prospects, and also about internalized misogyny—not to see other women as competition, but to uplift them as sisters and friends, and to appreciate everyone’s different strengths. Sophie is a powerful, strong woman by the end of the film after having grown past her timid origins. Her journey is positive and empowering female representation and aspects of her story importantly challenge beauty norms and demonstrate the value of having a kind and caring heart. Howl’s Moving Castle emphasizes self-empowerment and perseverance and that appearances are not everything, and can be misleading. Sophie is a champion of her own story, a heroine, a leading woman in the film who carries the narrative along with her passion and spirit.

“beauty and the beast” - Blade Runner and the Gothic Ecofeminist Lens.

Ridley Scott’s cult classic Blade Runner did more than captivate the science fiction world with its post-apocalyptic landscape and gothic overtones at its release in 1982; it was one of the pivotal films in defining the cyberpunk genre. Central to the film’s ethos is its concern with society’s anxieties around death, and personhood. It asks the questions, “Who deserves to be considered a person?” and “What do we do with the fact that death is inevitable?” Charles Crow describes the Gothic as a “literature of borderlands”, and describes the American Gothic as a “counter-narrative, undercutting the celebration of progress, inquiring about its costs and the omissions from the story”. Blade Runner inquires about the cost of destroying the natural world in place of a bleak, fiery hellscape of human-made “progress”. It inquires about the cost of creating humanoid beings that are “more human than human”, while subjecting them to slave labor and systematic slaughter. It embodies the heart of the gothic, which is the “imaginative expression of the fears and forbidden desires of Americans” (Crow).  However, I believe there is a crossover between these strong gothic motifs and the more subtle notes of ecofeminism, which I find to be even more glaring than the more overt themes already mentioned. In fact, I would like to offer an ecofeminist criticism of this gothic film, and explore the intersection between ecofeminism and gothic critical theory in Blade Runner. Estok’s influential argument introduced the term “ecophobia” into the ecocritical conversation, and argued that ecophobia is all about control. There are numerous ecophobic examples in this film: The land has been scrubbed of all natural life except those humans who were too “defective” to leave to the offworld colonies; The few animals present are synthetic, to the point where a snake scale can be identified by its serial number under a microscope; J.F. Sebastian, one employee of the powerful Tyrell corporation, recognizes one of the replicants because, as he says, “you’re so perfect”, implying that the replicants were designed to eliminate the flaws inherent in human bodies. Although the replicants are not considered “human”, I would like to argue that the overt gendering of the replicants’ bodies, from the hypersexualization of Zhora in the strip club to the problematic rape-esque scene between Deckard and Rachael, warrants an ecofeminist criticism as the male-dominated post-apocalyptic world secures and subjugates all feminized beings, including replicants, women, and nature.  My questions as I explore this argument are: In what ways do the film’s gothic elements intersect with ecocriticism and feminism? In what ways does Donna Haraway’s work on posthuman theory, specifically her “Cyborg Manifesto” and Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, intersect or conflict with the work of theorists like Karen Warren to provide a potential ecofeminist criticism of feminized cyborgs in an ecophobic landscape? Crow’s description of Gothic as “literature of borderlands” and Haraway’s description of cyborgs as “boundary creatures” are summed up in Captain Bryant’s assessment of Zhora from the film: “Talk about beauty and the beast. She’s both.”

How Spain Makes Boys: A Dress-Centered Analysis of Masculinity in Queer-Themed Spanish Picture Books

Recent analyses have identified a persistently noncritical perspective toward masculinity in Spanish children’s literature scholarship. In contrast, research in Anglophone contexts has productively nuanced masculine – especially boyhood – identity by exploring the role dress plays in signifying, reinforcing, and deconstructing gender. This talk extends previous Anglophone work to a Spanish context by analyzing dress’s contributions to 21st century, queer-themed Spanish picture books. First, I detail a current project in which I am constructing an archive of these texts and what initial thematic analysis of that archive reveals about how various tropes in queer-themed Spanish picture books have developed over time. I focus especially on tropes surrounding boyhood dress, which has not before been investigated in a specifically Spanish literary context. Using the results of my thematic analysis as well as various theories of dress and cultural objects – moore’s idea of fabulousness, Bernstein’s concept of scriptive things, and Hesselbein’s notion of dressed embodiment, for example – I provide a sample critical reading of one queer-themed Spanish picture book: El niño perfecto. This text has received critical, and often negative, attention since its publication a decade ago, yet the focus has been on its place as an educational tool rather than its contribution to the field of Spanish children’s literature. The work presented in this talk, then, not only responds to calls to critically address masculinity in Spanish picture books but also provides a tool – the archive – to facilitate further research on the subject.

MasculinTV: The Evolution of Masculinity in TV Comedy

Since The Honeymooners and I Love Lucy comedy has been used sociological commentary. The portrayal of masculinity in television comedy has been a hot topic. Masculine figures for decades have been portrayed in stereotypical, heteronormative fashions on television and, typically, when characters venture outside of this masculine mold, they become the butt of the joke. In the early 2000s, ABC's medical comedy Scrubs, created by Bill Lawrence, featured a protagonist, John “JD” Dorian, who is not a typical masculine figure for that time.  JD was depicted listening to “feminine” music and expressing emotional sensitivity that was not seen in the other masculine figures in the series. In the context of the show, JD is consistently maligned and mocked by his coworkers and friends for not fitting into the masculine mold. One of the show's longest running jokes is that JD’s favorite drink is the “girly” Appletini. This femme-bashing is seen in many shows from the decade when their male-presenting characters act in any way seen as slightly feminine. Ten years after the conclusion of Scrubs, Bill Lawrence went on to create Ted Lasso. The show follows the titular Lasso, a former division one college football coach, who moves to London, England to coach a premiere league soccer team. The show is chock full of male presenting characters, but this time around Lawrence avoids demeaning those who don’t fit into the stereotypical masculine mold. The male presenting characters are able to express a range of emotions, and Lawrence even shows Lasso having a panic attack. When the characters express interest in traditionally feminine interests they are not mocked, but rather are celebrated by the show. The show’s most traditionally masculine character, the aggressive former soccer legend Roy Kent, attends a yoga class with a group of sixty-year-old women, and often he watches reality TV and drinks wine with them afterwards. Comparing Ted Lasso to Lawrence's earlier Scrubs illustrates how far the portrayal of masculinity has evolved in television comedy.

In the End, the Witch Always Burns: The Disappointing Arc of Wanda Maximoff 

While the MCU is far from adequate in its representation of women, they seem to attempt to pacify their female audience with the presence of a few strong women.  However, the way that these heroines shape the plots of their movies (or more often, the movies of their male counterparts), falls short of satisfying what female viewers hope to see in the super-human versions of themselves.  In their attempt to win over female audiences, heroines are taking a larger role in Marvel’s blockbusters, such as Endgame, Dr. Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, and Thor: Love and Thunder. With these roles, however, the female characters are often used as convenient plot-devices that ultimately end in them self-sacrificing to save their male counterparts. Perhaps the most troubling of these recent disappointments is the arc of Wanda Maximoff, or Scarlet Witch, as she faces off against Dr. Strange in her pursuit of her imagined children in another universe. Maximoff’s previous MCU appearances show a woman who is strong enough (both physically and emotionally) to destroy the love of her life in an attempt to save humanity and to sacrifice the family of her own creation upon realizing she had enslaved an innocent neighborhood. For Wanda to suddenly become so unhinged that she destroys all defenders of Kamar-Taj and then attempts to murder the mother of her children in front of them seems a stretch that can only be explained by the need for a convenient villain. The most troubling issue is the perversion of the sentiments of motherhood and the stigmas surrounding infertility. While representation is a start, Marvel now needs to work toward female characters with depth and independent storylines of their own. 

What Queer Teeth You Have! : Subverting Traditional Fairy Tales by Centering Non-normative Queer Identities

This paper will examine the rewriting of traditional fairy tale texts and legends into contemporary dark fairy tale/horror novels.  Particularly examining young adult novels House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland, a retelling of the folklore surrounding changelings, and What Big Teeth by Rose Szabo, a retelling of elements in Little Red Riding Hood, this paper will look at how centering non-normative queer identity in these texts subverts the original moralistic messaging of the formative fairy tales.  By retelling the fairy tales in a horror framework, characters are allowed to experience fear, and this acts as a catalyst to disturb deeply held, unexamined truths regarding their identities.  The use of liminality in horror novels allows for these characters to experience the same liminality in themselves, examining parts of their identity that may go against what they’ve always been told, and parts of their identity that they may not have words for.  The usage of fairy tales for passing along societally accepted morals is then subverted in these contemporary re-tellings, as we examine that what society deems as “monstrous” and “unacceptable,” in this case, queer identity, is in fact more of a reflection on the monstrosity and unacceptability of these societies themselves.  In examining the progression of the original fairy tales to these re-tellings, we can see how the dark fantasy/horror novel is a uniquely appropriate vehicle for non-normative identity exploration.  Due to larger societal constructs, in the formative works of these tales, non-normative identities are seen as frightful, so it is only through this same fear that these identities can be explored and examined fully in contemporary novels.

Move over Barbie, I’m Making My Own Doll: Subversive Play with Digital Dolls

Doll dress-up is imbued with a powerful image of girlhood and femininity. While doll dress-up may be an imaginative space for play, it is denounced as a tool to inculcate white, heterosexual patriarchal standards of normative femininity in young girls. Even though Mattel’s Barbie and American Girl seek to share positive stories and representation of girls and young women, these toy lines still face criticism. However, the belief that doll dress-up is only a form of socialization simplifies and reduces the ways in which this type of play is transformative to players and transformed by players.  With the advent of digital games and the internet, dress-up has moved online eliminating barriers and giving doll dress-up space to evolve. Online dress-up games went from click-and-drag items on a pre-made doll, to doll makers with customizable skin tones, hair colors, etc. Currently, websites like DollDivine and AzaleaDolls offer a large, diverse library of free doll-creator games. Online doll creators and dress-up has evolved into a transformative genre allowing players to create and play doll dress-up outside dominant societal beliefs about doll dress-up and who doll dress-up is for. While there is little scholarship on the transformative play and practice of digital dolls, much of the play resembles the subversive and transformational aspects that draw readers to fan fiction (Busse, 2017). Fannish activities like fan fiction are subversive and transformational reworkings of source texts (Jenkins, 1992; Bacon-Smith, 1992). Moreover, these online doll creators operate within a gift economy, much like fan fiction (Hellekson, 2009, 2015). Drawing from expansive fan studies and video game scholarship including the work of Henry Jenkins, Amanda Cote, and Kristina Busse, this paper will demonstrate the transformative and innovative ways online doll dress-up subverts mainstream icons and plays with the image of normativity.

The Silencing of Tarzan Kishori: The Case of Non-Normative Gender Expression in Gujarati Children's Literature

Through the case-study of children's literature in Gujarati language, this paper shows how the publishing industry and literary canons silence texts that challenge the status quo, subtly and strategically rather than by imposing taboos, bans and censorship controls. By adopting the book history approach, the paper studies the creation, dissemination and reception of one such silenced text ”Tarzan Kishori" (1957) by a prolific Gujarati author Harish Nayak. This text attempts to undo the focus on the male character and hegemonic masculinity by centralizing a female character and feminine virtues in an adventure narrative even before such awareness was ushered into Indian children's literature in English through Keshav Shanker Pillai' s Sujata and the Wild Elephant in 1965. The paper argues that while conventionally gendered texts by the same author such as Tillu Bhillu Na Parakramo, Sarhad Na Shurviro, Harish Nayak ni Vigyan Shreni, Detective Dattu ni Rahasyakatha Sreni, were  heard repeatedly through multiple reprints, anthologizing, indexing in the bibliographical listings and historical accounts, because "Tarzan Kishori" attempts a feminist revision, the market forces manipulated its availability and accessibility and critical fraternity eschewed its presence, thereby silencing it. The paper ends with a discussion of how unlike "Tarzan Kishori" which gives into the silencing, Anjali Khandwala's Lilo Chokro (1986) resurrects itself through translation and makes itself heard. 

The Critical Study of 19th Century Horror Literature in the High School Classroom

High school students are natural academics. They want to make connections to the literature in their lives, apply provocative lenses to texts, and they even want to outdo anyone who seems smarter than them. When I was given the opportunity to teach the British literature course offered by my public school, I was determined to capitalize on those impulses to engage students in a study of Victorian literature. In my 12th grade British literature course, I have built the curriculum around the figure of the monstrous woman. We begin with Macbeth to learn how the “fiend-like queen” was “unsexed” and “filled with direst cruelty,” but that’s a mere precursor. By centering the course on “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti, Carmilla by Sheridan LeFanu, and Dracula by Bram Stoker, students engage in an extended inquiry that explores the power dynamics in the angel in the house/fallen woman archetype, the utilitarian epistemology of the heroine of Carmilla, and the memory held in community fluids in Dracula. Though these ideas may strike us as inextricably linked to the ivory tower of high scholarship, they bring a high level of engagement and thoughtful discourse to the secondary classroom. 

Viola’s Soliloquy: An Examination of Twelfth Night Adaptations as Transgender Representation

Shakespeare’s the Twelfth Night has been regarded as many things; a comedy of errors, a delve into gender power dynamics, and an exploration of sexuality. Within the adaptations of the play, each of these themes have been recreated or played with. The relationships Cesario holds with Duke Orsino and Olivia, create a variety of opportunities of interpretation as time goes on and understanding of queer theory evolves. In the 2006 film She's the Man, Cesario is using her disguise as a means to an end and relies on comedy to make it clear to the audience that she is heterosexual. In the 2001 Disney original, Motorcrossed, the lines are more blurred. Cesario doesn't mind the physical transformation, and enjoys the new respect and relationships she is able to craft from it, even if she does revert back to her 'original' identity at the conclusion. However, in Shaina Taub's 2018 musical Twelfth Night, Cesario clearly finds relief and kinship with her new identity, and does not relinquish it at the conclusion of the play, even after the truth comes out. The adaptations allow Cesario to change over time. The research, on the other hand, seems to stay the same. Academics as far back as 1997 to present day, such as Casey Charles, Elizabeth Klett and Laurie E. Osborne, have focused on the female homosexual relationships or the female identity of Shakespeare’s characters. While the expression of queer female relationships are notable, I believe that the adaptations, especially Motorcrossed and Shaina Taub’s Twelfth Night musical tie much more strongly with transgender identities. In this paper I will explore the transition of Cesario’s implied identity as nonbinary or as a transgender man within adaptations of Twelfth Night.

The Writing of Desire: Love, Death, and Gender in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body and Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre

This essay investigates the relationship between queerness, the writing of love, and alternative futures that queer relationships bring about in Jeanette Winterson’s Written on the Body and Qiu Miaojin’s Last Words from Montmartre. Using embodiment, queer, and affect theories, I analyze the ways in which Winterson’s and Qiu’s narrators, one genderless and the other androgynous, reinvent their identities and the notions of love through language. Taking Written on the Body as the first case study, I will follow the narrator’s quest for a singular expression of love. Because of his/her unconventional identity, he/she not only resists the banality of love but also traditional love speech, a declaration that is reduced to a mere citation. In the face of absence and death, he/she conceives a language that celebrates an idiosyncratic intimacy. In doing so, he/she reclaims the dying beloved’s body and reimagines a future where liberation from language and the placid waters of domesticity is possible. I then move on to Last Words from Montmartre, paying special attention to the narrator’s self-authorship. An aspiring artist, she sustains her life through writing. In composing a collection of letters addressed to her lover, she at first attempts to eternalize her lost love. However, as I will demonstrate, in the process of writing, she finds a path to herself, which is lost to her painful breakup. For her, the final destination of the reclamation of self and love lies in death. This paradox exemplifies her ideal of love as a consummate way of living, a necessary sacrifice.  In the last sections of my essay, I engage in a comparative reading of the two works. The two narrators’ respective experiences and endings interrogate and challenge the preexisting frameworks of gender, love, and death. Assuming a degendered subjectivity, they reject the arbitrary prescription of the gender binary, excavating new expressions of love and ways of loving.