CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020
| Author | Edwards, Jennifer Catherine |
|---|---|
| Title | Queer(ing) Community: Queer Community, Spatiality, and Temporality in Madison, WI |
| Summary | This thesis is a blended ethnographic analysis of the queer nightlife scene in Madison, Wisconsin USA, focused specifically on queer pop-up events. These events began in reaction to a homonormative and exclusionary permanent gay nightlife scene. I begin by providing background about Madison, its queer subculture, and the racial and class dynamics within the city. In the first chapter, I address the complications of defining queerness and community in both academic and organizing work, engaging in theoretical understandings of both terms, as well as incorporating the definitions and understandings of research participants. I use discourse analysis to parse the descriptions of several queer pop-up events in Madison and the political engagements of both permanent gay bars and Queer Pressure, a significant queer pop-up event series. In the second chapter, I begin with an analysis of the notion of the sacred within th scene, then move to engage with Jack Halberstam’s concepts of queer temporality and spatiality to consider the implications and possibilites of pop-up and queer takeover style events, in part by reflecting on sets, the spaces the parties take place in, and the transient nature of event series and Madison queers. In the third chapter, I take up the question of queer politics and intersectionality by reading Micheal Warner’s definition of queer politics alongside Lisa Duggan’s conception of the homonormative, and reflect on the resonances of intersectionality and crip theory within these frameworks. I then discuss the homonormative politics of the Madison LGBTQ+ community, and contrast them with an analysis of Queer Pressure’s political commitments. The final section of this chapter is a case study of the No Cops at Pride movement, reactions to and consequences of its engagement with radical queer politics, and a brief analysis of the resonance of this movement in 2018 with the racial justice mass movement of 2020. Ultimately, I do not strive to make any overarching conclusions with this thesis, but rather to take seriously and consider deeply a particular moment in time in the place that I consider home, and to gesture towards a more complex engagement with the queer spaces that exists in between the rural and the urban in the United States. |
| Supervisor | Timár, Eszter |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2020/edwards_jennifer.pdf |
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