Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Queering our conclusions: Understanding measurement's influence on queer criminological research(2024) Raskauskas, Jessica; Stewart, Robert; Criminology and Criminal Justice; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)To effectively understand how people end up in prison, criminologists need to understand who is in prison; especially given the novelty of the concept, queer criminology has yet to standardize a definition of “queer," “LGBT,” etc. In leaving these definitions up to researchers, there is no consensus on how much of the prison population is queer and, consequently, to what degree, if at all, queer individuals are differently represented in the prison system. Based on a review of the literature, and simple quantitative models, this study attempts to understand the definitions and conclusions in existing literature, to standardize how criminologists measure “queer,” and to understand to what extent, if any, this population is differently represented in prison.Item MY TRANS.PARENT WOMB: QUANTUM PLAY, ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AND ASEXUAL REGENERATION FROM WITHIN THE US WAR MACHINE(2024) Leizman, Danielle; Collis, Shannon; Art; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)"FROM BENEATH" is a multimedia art installation which offers an immersive experience through three distinct works that act as “wombs.” The work aims to redefine conventional ideas of reproduction and futurity by transforming the gallery space into a realm of sensory exploration and non-linear time. Utilizing devices such as optical illusion, tactile sound, AI generation, and re-animation of archival media, the work advocates for embodiment as a catalyst for a queer navigational strategy which the artist defines as “quantum play.”Item How to Leave Your Life Behind: Stories(2024) Daschle, Edward Sebastian; Mitchell, Emily; Creative Writing; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The stories in this collection, How to Leave Your Life Behind: Stories, feature characters seeking purpose and authenticity as they navigate queer worlds and queer identities. In the titular story, you learn how to disappear into a new life through the process of jumping off a building, a magical escape from a dull life that creates complications for international and personal relations. In “Thistle Land,” an old woman seeks to return to the portal fantasy world she explored in her childhood while navigating the emotional baggage of her mother and daughter who respectively saw her and see her as failing their high intellectual standards. And in “Who I Am Dead,” a dead boy making an existence for himself in the afterlife seeks to discover who he was when he was alive, and what knowledge of this past life might offer him, if anything. These stories alongside three others match purpose with aimlessness, authenticity with conflicting identities, and fantasy with reality. Throughout the collection, there is trauma and pain, but always with the acknowledgement that what they are experiencing is not all there was, is, or will be.Item ACTS OF QUEER RESILIENCE: TRAUMA AS IDENTITY AND AGENCY IN LGBTQ POLITICAL ASYLUM(2022) Perez, Christopher J; Sies, Mary; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution is the impetus for asylum seekers to flee their home countries and seek protection elsewhere. Much of the scholarly literature and published legal cases correlate persecution with trauma and approach traumatic events of asylum seekers as always living with barriers or as a “victim.” Additionally, while there is extensive research and scholarly work on LGBTQ immigrants, there is little work specifically on LGBTQ asylum seekers, which suggests these stories matter and have value but often go unheard. Whose stories are told, heard, and valued with immigrants, and specifically asylum seekers? And, what are the risks or advantages of telling stories? For asylum seekers, making a credible case of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution places their trauma in an exchange of capital that advances neoliberal governmentality in the U.S. The nation-state benefits when resourceful “victims” of persecution ask for protection. Neoliberal governmentality can be traced to Michel Foucault’s notion of “biopower” where the body is viewed as a laboring machine, disciplining the body to optimize its capabilities and extort its forces. Biopower is literally having power over other bodies in “an explosion of numerous and diverse techniques for achieving the subjugations of bodies and the control of populations.” Although neoliberal governmentality is a necessary component in discussions of political asylum, its reductionist aim leaves little room for agency for asylum seekers or those with asylum status. How might political asylees use their identities and trauma to subvert neoliberal governmentality? I argue that LGBTQ asylum seekers use their own tactics and techniques in an “art” of self-determination or what I call queer resilience to navigate and negotiate systems and structures of power. While there is no doubt that trauma exists for asylum seekers, using trauma to categorize asylum seekers as lacking, weak, defective, or even victims is a reductionist approach in understanding asylum seekers’ identities and agency. Trauma is operational in how one negotiates structures and systems of power, different spaces, building networks, and obtaining resources. Trauma offers both a useful entry into the legal aspects of political asylum processes and also advances discussions of subjectivity and epistemology. Using narrative analysis, grounded theory, poststructuralist theory, and queer theory, this dissertation unpacks the creative agency of LGBTQ asylum seekers as they make sense of their lives, form their identities, navigate spaces, and negotiate systems of power to “queer” political asylum processes. More specifically, using interviews and examining published cases and other published archival materials, this dissertation details the story of a gay man from a Latin American country who successfully gained asylum in the U.S. and how his asylum process, his trauma, and his racial, gendered, and sexual identities contributed to his agency, which subverts political asylum and offers new ways to consider the operation of biopower, governmentality, and self-determination.Item RESPONSIVE WILD: REDISCOVERING, REDEFINING, AND REALIGNING(2021) harris, kristina aurelia; Davis, Crystal U.; Dance; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The central question of, what is womanhood? anchors this work. Within that wondering and examination is research into feminism, in conversation with rock and roll and 1980s MTV, gender studies, queer studies, and dance studies. The interrogation of MTV as a superstructure for notions of White femininity operates as a site of exploration for the White heterosexual male gaze. This extends into a rediscovery of rock and roll history, and the Black and Queer women (also considered by this work as ‘original’ feminists) who laid a foundation for rock and roll’s future. Through choreographic practice and Queer methodology, questions of womanhood and femininity, Queerness, and feminism, are explored through movement. Memory, lived bodily experiences, community, and the sensations and desires connected to them, are centered in this creative process. Queer and feminist writers accompany this journey; rock and roll functions as a canvas for the exploration of ferocious and mammoth movement; metaphors of physics facilitate the choreographic research into identity as it shifts and navigates fluidity and transformation. Each of these ideas swirl, collide, and manifest through choreographed movement and writing; leading to a new and realigned question: What is Queer Womanhood?Item Odd Characters: Queer Lives in Nineteenth-Century Baltimore(2020) SCHMITT, KATHRYN; Lyons, Clare; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Queer history in Baltimore began long before the twentieth century. People who diverged from societal norms of gender and sexuality were always present in Baltimore’s history, and they can be seen through media representations and popular press of the time period. Even when representation of queerness in media was less common, stories of people who diverged from gender and sexual norms were still distributed to the public. Media representations provided inspiration and information to people who did not have access to a group of like-minded people through a distinct subculture. Queer Baltimoreans drew from media representations, early stages of a developing subculture, or their own personal thoughts and feelings to inform their gender and sexual identities. Despite the legal and social measures restricting these people from living their lives as freely as they might wish, they still found individualized ways to live life outside of gender and sexual norms.Item Change Is Sound: Resistance and Activism in Queer Latinx Punk Rock(2019) Dowman, Sarah; Long, Ryan; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Change Is Sound explores the roles punk ethos, discourses, and collectivism play in creating resistant practices within queer US Latinx punk communities since the 1970s. My research engages critically with the fields of contemporary Latinx cultural studies and hemispheric queer studies to elucidate new perspectives on the emerging critical category of Latinx, to challenge stagnant narratives of resistance and activism in queer communities of color in the US, and to provide a framework for how resistant practices are being defined and constructed in the present. Furthermore, my study decenters the “white riot” narrative of punk that excludes and erases diversity by categorizing the subculture as a straight, white, male, suburban, middle-class, youth phenomenon. My study achieves this decentering by focusing on intersectional, transnational, and transgenerational subjectivities represented by the contributions of queer Latinx punk artists. By diversifying the perspectives and experiences represented and highlighting how these artists forge connections to larger histories of resistant practices in queer communities of color in the US and transnationally, I demonstrate how underrepresented populations expand punk’s emancipatory potential. Specifically, my research shows how resistant practices such as performative and activist interventions and the creation of online collective revisionist writings present a foundation from which queer Latinx and other marginalized communities negotiate power, hegemony, and resistance within the contemporary context of precarity and oppression under neoliberalism and capitalist globalization.Item The Family Sadness(2019) Fruchter, Temima Sarah; Fuentes, Gabrielle L; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The Family Sadness is a novel-in-progress that spans four generations of women in one Eastern European Jewish family and engages the idea of a speculative queer lineage. The story zigzags geographically and temporally, moving from Poland in the 1920’s to Brooklyn in the 1950’s, to Maryland in the 1980’s, and finally to contemporary Warsaw. The characters communicate across space and time, and their stories are woven through a body of invented Jewish folklore that collages age-old Jewish folk tropes with a contemporary queer sensibility. The narration of this book is polyphonic – humans and other creatures, animate and inanimate, contemporaries and time-travelers all participate in building this universe. Shiva, the youngest in this lineage, travels to Warsaw amidst ancestral refractions. This is, in part, a story about how stories are made. About how what feels impossible is sometimes truest, and about what is visible when we start to pay attention.Item "Barbarous Berlin": Narratives of Queerness, Space, Survival, and Memory in a Liminal City(2018) Joyner, Raleigh; Baer, Hester; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)The intent of my work is to explore the relationships between history, space, community, and movement in and through the city of Berlin throughout the last century. I trace common threads of liminality, memory, survival, and the relationships between the urban space and the individual over a 100-year period. The three periods that I particularly focus on are the Weimar era (1919-1933), the division of Germany and Berlin (1961-1989), and the reestablishment of Germany as a united country (1990-present).Item Evidence of Being: Urban Black Gay Men's Literature and Culture, 1978-1995(2014) Bost, Darius; Hanhardt, Christina B; Williams-Forson, Psyche; American Studies; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation is an interdisciplinary study of black gay men's literary and cultural production and activism emerging at the height of the AIDS epidemic in the United States, focusing in particular on cultural formations in Washington, DC, and New York City. Through an exploration of the work of black gay male writers and activists from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s, I argue that recognizing the centrality of trauma and violence in black communities means accounting for its debilitating effects, alongside its productivity in areas such as cultural and aesthetic production, identity-formation, community building, and political mobilization. Though black gay men's identities were heavily under siege during this historical moment, I show how they used literary and cultural forms such as poetry, performance, novels, magazines, anthologies, and journals to imagine richer subjective and social lives. This project makes three key interventions in the existing scholarship in African American studies, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Queer Studies, and Trauma Studies 1) this project recovers a marginalized period in U.S. histories of race and sexuality, in particular the renaissance of black gay literary and cultural production and activism from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s 2) the project examines how black gay men have used literary and cultural production to assert more complex narratives of racial, gender, and sexual selfhood 3) it explores how historical trauma has functioned as both a violently coercive, as well as a culturally and politically productive force in black gay lives. The project focuses on cultural movement activities in two cities, Washington, DC, and New York City, to offer a more broad, comparative perspective on urban black gay subcultural life. The first section on Washington, DC, explores the work of DC-based writer and activist Essex Hemphill, and the black LGBT-themed magazine, Blacklight. The second section on New York City looks at black gay writer's group, Other Countries Collective, and writer and scholar Melvin Dixon's novel, Vanishing Rooms. I include individual black gay voices in my study, positioning these voices alongside larger structural transformations taking place in cities during this moment. I also foreground the efforts of self and social transformation that emerged through black gay collectivities.