"Get Dressed Up For The End Of The World!": The Reinvention of the Elder Goth Subculture During a Time of Crisis

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dc.contributor.advisorCorbin Sies, Maryen_US
dc.contributor.authorBush, Leah J.en_US
dc.contributor.departmentAmerican Studiesen_US
dc.contributor.publisherDigital Repository at the University of Marylanden_US
dc.contributor.publisherUniversity of Maryland (College Park, Md.)en_US
dc.date.accessioned2024-09-23T05:38:07Z
dc.date.available2024-09-23T05:38:07Z
dc.date.issued2024en_US
dc.description.abstractThis dissertation is an ethnographic examination of relationships between subcultural identity and Gothic social worlds in the Elder Goth subculture in Baltimore, Maryland and Washington, D.C. Formed in Britain in the late 1970s, the Goth subculture is characterized by a distinct morbid aesthetic and an overwhelming emphasis on the color black. The subculture retains a relatively high number of Elder Goths who participate in the subculture beyond their youth. This interdisciplinary project draws from the lifespan perspective of age studies and aspects of performance studies and queer utopian theory. Individual identities and Gothic communities are built and sustained through subculturally specific fashion and embodied practices at nightclubs, outdoor gatherings, and the phenomenon of virtual streaming dance nights which emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project also considers how meaning is made in subcultural places. Elder Goths draw on the subculture’s embrace of dichotomies in life, commitment to adaptation, and deepen their investment with the subculture at transitional points in their lives. Subculture is thus a fluid process of worldmaking which unfolds over the life course. This dissertation underscores the power of agency in making new and better worlds.en_US
dc.identifierhttps://doi.org/10.13016/h9l9-bisy
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/33284
dc.language.isoenen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAmerican studiesen_US
dc.subject.pqcontrolledAgingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledagingen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledBaltimoreen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledethnographyen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledgothen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledidentityen_US
dc.subject.pquncontrolledsubcultureen_US
dc.title"Get Dressed Up For The End Of The World!": The Reinvention of the Elder Goth Subculture During a Time of Crisisen_US
dc.typeDissertationen_US

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