Speculative Formations: Queer and Trans Communities in the Long Twentieth Century

Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Schoppelrei, Elizabeth Mae
- Graduate Program:
- Comparative Literature
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 07, 2023
- Committee Members:
- Magali Armillas-Tiseyra, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Hil Malatino, Major Field Member
Daniel Purdy, Minor & Outside Field Member
Jonathan Eburne, Major Field Member
Janet Lyon, Outside Unit Member
Tracy Rutler, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Charlotte Eubanks, Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- Transgender
Queer
Community building
Literature
Poetry
Science Fiction
Speculative Fiction
Speculative Formations
German queer culture
transgender poetry
transvestites
kinship
Black feminist thought
queer ecologies - Abstract:
- How do queer and trans communities span time through the textual? How do we recognize and enter into conversation with communities of the past? What new or speculative ways of caring for and establishing solidarities among persons with shared marginalities might we imagine? The literary work of reaching out to, caring for, or advocating for those who fall outside of normative power rests upon naming, labels, and levels of legibility. In this way, locating queer and trans folks of the past, or crafting an imagined future where nonnormative bodies and species can thrive, is speculative. My research traces the literary impulse to connect with other queer and trans persons through poetry, science and speculative fiction, novels, and comics, with attention to traditions in the U.S., Western Europe, and Germany. In this dissertation, I examine the role of literature in the formation of queer and trans communities and solidarities by following the reworking of taxonomizing language throughout the long twentieth century to present day. I argue that the literary deployment of taxonomies fundamentally shifts their meaning and the social uptake of these labels in ways that call attention to the failure of taxonomies and to the communities and potential solidarities that spring forth from this failure. Literature shows how categories, while holding legal, political, and social power, are porous and cannot completely contain or describe lived experience. Thus, the literary reworking of labels and taxonomies renders such categories more capacious. Engaging with and contributing to gender studies, trans studies, queer studies, literary studies, comics studies, German studies, and fat studies this dissertation focuses on moments when lived experience and relationality escape appellation and expand the possibilities of community, kinship, and solidarity. This interdisciplinary approach, combined with archival research and textual and visual analysis, shows how the unmaking and remaking of taxonomies through literature is fundamental to the work of speculative community formation—of finding, providing for, and knowing queerness and other queer/trans persons.