Browsing by Subject "LGBT"

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    Camp Identities: Conrad Salinger and the Aesthetics of MGM Musicals
    (2014) Pysnik, Stephen

    This dissertation seeks to position the music of American arranger-orchestrator-composer Conrad Salinger (1901-62) as one of the key factors in creating the larger camp aesthetic movement in MGM film musicals of the 1940s and 1950s. The investigation primarily examines Salinger's arranging and orchestrating practices in transcriptions and conductor's scores of musical numbers from MGM films, though some scores from Broadway shows are also considered. Additionally, Salinger's style is frequently compared to other arrangers, so as to establish the unique qualities of his music that set it apart from his contemporaries from both a technical and an aesthetic standpoint and that made it desirable as an object of imitation. By inquiring into his musical practices' relationship to his subjectivity as a gay person in the era of "the closet," this analysis both proposes and confirms Salinger's importance to the MGM camp aesthetic. With the concept of "musical camp" thus established, the dissertation subsequently demonstrates its capacity to produce new readings of the politics of national belonging and gender that manifest in various musical numbers.

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    Gender Relations in Chinese Comrade Literature: Redefining Heterosexual and Homosexual Identity as Essentially the Same yet Radically Different
    (2012-08-20) Leng, Rachel
    Throughout the twentieth century, homosexuality has been and remains a highly sensitive and controversial topic in China where homosexual people were actively persecuted under Communist rule. It was not until the advent of the Internet in the mid-1990s that Comrade Literature (同志文学 tongzhi wenxue), an indigenous genre characterized by fictions of homosexuality, came into existence in China. Comrade Literature swiftly became popular as a medium for modern Chinese homosexual people (tongzhi) to express powerful emotions and protest the dominant heterosexual standard. This paper will discuss Beijing Story (1996) and The Illusive Mind (2003), two texts that have appealed to a large number of readers under the genre of “Comrade Novels.” Both fictions share a common characteristic in that they portray ambiguous relationships between and identities of characters to destabilize the dichotomous homo/hetero paradigm of sexuality in Chinese society. These Comrade novels comment on issues of sexuality and repressive social practices in two distinct but interrelated ways: as a plea for others to understand that homoerotic desire is essentially the same as heteroerotic desire, but also as an affirmation of the legitimacy of homosexual relations as radically different and even more ideal than dominant heterosexual practices in Chinese society. By examining the sexual and emotional attachment of the male protagonist to his male and female subjects of desire in these Comrade texts, I will explore how these differing viewpoints simultaneously coexist yet contest each other. I posit that it is possible to borrow from Western queer theory to understand the emergence and logic of Comrade Literature in China, demonstrating that queer texts converge across national and cultural borders in the way they challenge the dominant heteronormative categorical order of sexual hierarchy. Nonetheless, Comrade novels still exhibit divergence from texts produced in the Euro-American milieu to address dilemmas specific to tongzhi in China’s sociopolitical environment.
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    No Longer Male and Female: Ancient Christian Voices Illuminating Gender Beyond the Binary
    (2023) Brown, William F

    As faith communities engage in conversations about the meaning and significance of gender, many people have begun exploring the concept of gender beyond a fixed binary of male and female. These conversations can be challenging, raising complicated questions and employing unfamiliar concepts. This thesis seeks to engage the conversation about gender by attending to voices found in the biblical tradition, discovering a resource for better understanding the contemporary questions that have been posed. Although some may argue that the Bible endorses a strict, male-female binary, a close examination reveals that the Bible paints a much more complex picture of gender and its significance. This thesis will explore gender from several angles, discovering biblical and theological resources for a more expansive conception of gender beyond the binary. Written from a perspective that supports the full inclusion and embrace of transgender and nonbinary people in Christian churches, this thesis seeks to highlight ways that the Bible can be a useful tool for understanding gender in a way that is more nuanced and ultimately more faithful to the beautiful complexity of God’s creation.