Browsing by Subject "Queer Studies"

Now showing 1 - 3 of 3
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    Compassion, Community, Capital, and Crisis: Neoliberalism and the Non-Profitization of Queer Social Movements
    (2014-11) Beam, Myrl
    This dissertation examines the expansion of the non-profit system in the US and its impact on the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) social movement. In 1960 there were 3,000 501c non-profits in the US. By 2000, that number had leapt to 1,569,572. By 2011, total assets held by non-profits grew to $6.3 trillion, increasing by 106% in the past decade, far outpacing both state and business sector growth. One feature of this explosion has been the literal incorporation of social movements into non-profits. This dissertation analyzes this proliferation, exploring non-profits as key sites from which to understand contemporary capitalism and the changing role of social movements in it. The growth of the non-profit system coincides with and illustrates a profound shift in how the material needs of people living in poverty are - or are not - met. It offers a window into the demise of the social welfare state in the US and the rise of neoliberalism: the dominant political economic framework in the US that champions privatization, deregulation, and so-called "free" enterprise. Under this system, key social welfare provisions have been transferred from the state onto the non-profit sector, and consequently, more people must rely on non-profits in order to meet their most basic needs. This dissertation examines the impact of "non-profitization" on LGBT social movements. In the context of the shifts detailed above, the modern LGBT movement has taken its present shape: a vast network of community centers, rights organizations, social service agencies, and other non-profits explicitly working in and for LGBT communities. This new array of institutions reflects a profound change in LGBT movement politics, from a critique of sexual norms and state regulation that reflected the radical politics of the 1960s and 1970s, to a fairly limited push for formal legal inclusion. Compassion, Community, Capital, and Crisis connects the rise of assimilationist queer politics focused on formal legal equality to the institutional location from which that politics is articulated: LGBT non-profits. The institutional form of queer social movements, I argue, structures the politics articulated from within them.
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    Queer Refugeeism: Constructions of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Hmong Diaspora
    (2017-08) Pha, Kong Pheng
    Queer Refugeeism examines how the “refugee” figure relates to Hmong American racial, gendered, and sexual formation, belonging, and politics in the U.S. Examining various discourses around gender and sexuality such as rape, abusive transnational marriages, polygamy, and underage marriages, Part I crafts out ideological formations of race, gender, and sexuality in Hmong American communities. Queer Refugeeism uses texts such as newspaper documents, Hmong American ethnic cultural productions, and legislative bills to explicate a discourse of hyperheterosexuality that renders Hmong American culture and Hmong Americans as racially, gendered, and sexually deviant subjects. Part II turns to the material as I weave in youth narratives and community activism with secondary sources to expound how queer Hmong American youths are intertwined within dominant and Hmong American cultural discourses regarding race, gender, and sexuality. I argue against essentialist framinings of culture that posit Hmong Americans as perpetual refugees incompatible with queer modernity while showcasing how queer Hmong American youths are remaking culture and belonging on their own terms. Overall, Queer Refugeeism tackles how race, gender, and sexuality are integral to Hmong American refugee and queer youth belonging within the U.S.
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    The Queer Threat: National Security, Sexuality, and Activism In South Korea
    (2018-06) Gitzen, Timothy
    This dissertation is about the recent neoliberal, bottom-up practices of “national security” in South Korea, where citizens interpret their daily lives through the language and discourse of national security and contribute to the production of threats. I demonstrate how national security threats also emerge from within the nation-state, often in the margins and treated as national others. The experiences of gender and sexual minorities represent the complexities of these margins, national othering, and internal threats. Focusing on what I call the queer threat, I argue that the relationship between the nation and security is changing to account for emerging margins and Others in the nation. This change results not only in shifting practices and discourses of national security, but ultimately marks modes of governance that take aim at the queer threat. Specifically, the Korean state and anti-LGBT protesters bring gender and sexual minorities into unexpected relations with “threat figures,” including North Korea, Muslims, and viruses. The amalgamation of such threat figures produces unintended relations of national security, themselves queer productions, that come to form new matricies of social relations and meanings that disrupt enforcement of national security law. I argue the queer threat is dangerous because it is a threat to the nation and a threat to the institution, logics, and practices of national security.