English Language and Literature
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/9876
2024-02-26T07:31:11ZThe Intimate Fandoms of Men’s Hockey Real Person Fanfiction
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/20232
The Intimate Fandoms of Men’s Hockey Real Person Fanfiction
Vist, Mari Elise
Using queer phenomenology, rhetorical genre theory, and fanfiction written about National Hockey League (NHL) athletes, this dissertation develops the concept of intimate publics of fandom: small, reciprocal and protective groups of fans who write to and for each other to assuage desires otherwise unmet by public fandom. Historically, fan scholars convincingly argued for the literary and social value of the political and interpretive work of slash fandoms that write fanfiction where two otherwise straight male characters are reimagined in a queer relationship. In this way, slash is seen as a powerful, subversive fandom that poaches material from texts that uphold oppressive norms. However, most of the slash studied has been based on fictional characters, because Real Person Fanfiction (RPF) or RPF slash is frequently seen as immoral and shameful by both fans and fan scholars. Even though RPF slash is common in many fandoms, such as boy band fandom (e.g. Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson from One Direction), or actors who are popular slash pairings (e.g. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman who play Sherlock and Watson in BBC’s Sherlock), RPF slash has not received the same scholarly attention as slash based on fictional characters. In this dissertation, I argue that this gap exists in part because of fan studies’ attachment to the metaphor of poaching to empower slash-fans as subversive interpreters, which would make RPF slash an infringement on a real person’s autonomy. Understanding that some fandoms function as intimate publics, however, makes it possible to see some RPF slash not as a subversive interpretation, but as a shelter from public fandom.
To develop the framework of intimate publics of fandom, I use my experience as a hockey fan as the case for this dissertation. Through Men’s Hockey RPF, I find queer joy and community that is absent to me in the traditional, public spaces of hockey fandom. I trace this journey through 5 chapters, each addressing a different facet of intimate publics of fandom. Chapter 1 develops squatting as an alternative metaphor to poaching and argues that, where poaching comes from the antagonistic mode of suspicious reading common in literary studies, squatting comes from reparative modes of reading which do not require a hostile relationship between reader and text. Chapter 2 uses feminist literary theories and rhetorical genre theory to define intimate fandoms through hockey’s public fandom in Canada. Building on those first two chapters, the next three chapters offer close readings of my own intimate fandoms to test the usefulness of the framework. Chapter 3 demonstrates that understanding Hockey RPF slash as an intimate fandom allows us to see how fans use Hockey RPF as a shelter from the relation of cruel optimism to the NHL. Chapter 4 argues that the framework of intimate fandoms makes it more possible to see the ways in which even fanfiction that seems subversive may still uphold other norms, such as the white supremacy of hockey. Chapter 5 tests the limits of intimate fandoms by reading fanfiction that makes erotic monsters out of NHL athletes to argue that intimate fandoms help us better understand the desires that create ‘creepy’ slash. I close the dissertation with a short conclusion that reflects on the end of my attachment to hockey, and how the framework of intimate publics allows me to trace the shift in desires that move me into new intimate fandoms.
2024-01-15T00:00:00ZRepresentational Queerness Within Marvel’s Loki: Liminality through Identity, Genre, and Medium
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/20202
Representational Queerness Within Marvel’s Loki: Liminality through Identity, Genre, and Medium
Smith, Jay
Loki, a prominent Norse god and more recently prominent Marvel character, is entwined with an understanding of liminal queerness. Part of the broader notion of liminal queerness is its relationship to questions of identity and the self. This paper explores two divergent texts, 2014-2015’s Loki: Agent of Asgard and 2021’s Loki streaming series, that take that concept in different directions, creating a broader understanding of liminal queerness and its place in narrative spaces. The broader natures of the respective texts’ narrative, medium, and genre elements all frame and modify discussions of liminality and queerness around a given text. This modulation around the theme between two texts helps build a more complete image of how liminal queerness is entwined with Loki and what that means for liminally queer identities in broader structures.
2024-01-02T00:00:00ZCognitive Constellations: Neurodivergent Aesthetics in 20th Century Experimental Poetries
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/20185
Cognitive Constellations: Neurodivergent Aesthetics in 20th Century Experimental Poetries
Watts, Hannah
“Inaccessible” is a term shared by both Critical Disability Studies (CDS) and literary criticism, although this term means different things to each discipline. For CDS, an inaccessible space is one that prevents physically or cognitively disabled people from fully participating as valued members of society. For literary scholars, “inaccessible” refers to strategies used by authors to estrange readers. Inaccessible techniques necessitate strenuous close reading, and may either in- crease or decrease the absorption and investment a reader experiences. Inaccessible strategies are often present in texts labelled “experimental” or “conceptual.” However, some of the techniques modern and post-modern authors use in order to estrange readers mimic or perform disabled pat- terns, practices, and aesthetics. Ironically, the cultural value assigned to famous inaccessible texts often separates poetic techniques from disabled people’s embodied experiences; scholars may praise representations or metaphors of disability while rejecting disabled perspectives as valuable critical lenses for reading literature. In this way, inaccessible texts may also become inaccessible literary spaces that perpetuate ableist academic systems. For example, even if a literary scholar identifies as neurodivergent (a person with a cognitive disability) they are still expected to write in neurotypical forms, and interpret literature using neurotypical methodologies: they still must “access” ability to be academically successful. This project joins interdisciplinary scholarship that refuses to categorize CDS and English Literature as discrete areas of study, but suggests that physically and cognitively disabled aesthetics illustrate important reading values. This is especially true for scholarship that already acknowledges the presence of disability in inaccessible poetic texts without naming or engaging with disabled perspectives. This dissertation tracks some of the ways that readers have reacted to disability aesthetics in experimental texts like James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons, and Hannah Weiner’s Code Poems. It traces how ableism, specifically ideas associated with the pseudoscience of eugenics, is connected to “inaccessible” labels bestowed on these texts. This project then offers readers creative interpretive modes that will help them engage with and explore disabled aesthetics in the text instead of dismissing such poems as too difficult, or diagnosing them as symptomatic of a disabled writer and therefore not worth reading. This dissertation is also written using the form of my own neurodivergent expressive practice, ADHD, as one example of how literary scholarship might encourage scholars to celebrate their neurotype instead of leaving it behind in favour of the exceptional level of ability expected in academic spaces.
2023-12-19T00:00:00ZSounds of the Land of Promise: Listening to Ralph Ellison’s Metaphors of Memory in Invisible Man
http://hdl.handle.net/10012/20034
Sounds of the Land of Promise: Listening to Ralph Ellison’s Metaphors of Memory in Invisible Man
Rowland, Samuel
This project studies Ralph Ellison’s incorporation of sonic memory, soundscapes (sonic environments), and music into his novel Invisible Man (1952). The central focus of this dissertation is the influence of the sonic on Ellison’s work, beyond his interest in jazz. This project argues that Ellison’s work incorporates his memories of sound and music as well as the sonic imagery and philosophies of the sonic he draws from his literary influences, namely T.S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Fyodor Dostoevsky. I approach Invisible Man as a semi-autobiographical text, which I argue transfigures Ellison’s own sonic experiences into fiction. I draw on Ellison’s essays, interviews, and letters, as well as the two major biographies on Ellison, Lawrence Jackson’s Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius (2002) and Arnold Rampersad’s Ralph Ellison: A Biography (2007), in order to contextualize the sonic elements and metaphors of memory that Ellison integrates into the soundscapes of Invisible Man.
This project argues that Ellison is an “earwitness” who draws on the sonic in his work in order to emphasize the significance of listening as well as draw attention to overlooked African-American soundscapes. Carolyn Birdsall elaborates on the term “earwitness” as follows: “In 1977, Raymond Murray Schafer defined the earwitness as an author who lived in the historical past, and who can be trusted ‘when writing about sounds directly experienced and intimately known’ (1994 [1977], p. 6). Schafer’s understanding of the earwitness endorses the authority of literary texts for conveying an authentic experience of historical sounds” (169). Essentially, Ellison and his novel’s narrator are concerned with both the intimacy of listening and the critical consideration of the psychological and personal impact of diverse and unique sound memories and soundscapes.
I employ a variety of approaches in my study of Ellison’s use of the sonic in his work – including history, autobiography, analysis, and compositional method – in order to contextualize the nuances of sonic experience that inform Ellison’s writing. I begin this project with a study of the historical context that informs Ellison’s work, and then I gradually introduce analytical perspectives of the sonic as the dissertation progresses. I scaffold this project in this way in order to foreground the historical, contextual, and subjective uniqueness of listening before I apply scholarly approaches and analysis of the sonic to Ellison’s work later in the dissertation. Chapters One and Two are history-based, as I provide historical context on Harlem’s soundscapes and Ellison’s education at the Tuskegee Institute. Chapters Three and Four are analytical approaches to Ellison’s use of the sonic which build on the background information I provide in Chapters One and Two. Chapter Five blends sonic analysis, autobiographical and historical context, and compositional method in order to demonstrate the breadth of Ellison’s nuanced integration of the sonic into his writing.
2023-10-12T00:00:00Z