Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2013, Spanish and Portuguese

Gay Chicano authors have been criticized for not forming the same type of strong literary identity and community as their Chicana feminist counterparts, a counterpublic that has given voice not only to themselves as authors, but also to countless readers who see themselves reflected in their texts. One of the strengths of the Chicana feminist movement is that they have not only produced their own works, but have made sense of them as well, creating a female-to-female tradition that was previously lacking. Instead of merely reiterating that gay Chicano authors have not formed this community and common identity, this dissertation instead turns the conversation toward the reader. Specifically, I move from how authors make sense of their texts and form community, to how readers may make sense of texts, and finally, to how readers form community. I limit this conversation to three authors in particular—Alex Espinoza, Rigoberto Gonzalez, and Manuel Munoz—whom I label the second generation of gay Chicano writers. In Gonzalez, I combine the cognitive study of empathy and sympathy to examine how he constructs affective planes that pull the reader into feeling for and with the characters that he draws. I also further elaborate on what the real world consequences of this affective union—existing between character and audience—may be. In Munoz, I consider how, through the destabilization of the narrator position, the author constructs storyworlds that first pull the reader in, and then push them out of the narrative in a search for closure. Here, I theorize that he forces the reader to mind read his narrators in order to discern their true intentions. In Espinoza, I explore the typification of Latino/a literature in the marketplace and how it has become tied to magical realism. Here, I posit that Espinoza has created a magic realized novel, one that presents itself as something magical realist, but systemically discredits the notion of magic throughout the work. I use co (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Ignacio Corona (Advisor); Frederick Aldama (Committee Member); Fernando Unzueta (Committee Member) Subjects: American Literature; Glbt Studies; Hispanic American Studies; Literature; Rhetoric; Web Studies

Artium Baccalaureus (AB), Ohio University, 2017, English

Though some critics have often approached science fiction derisively, dismissing the genre as escapist, idealistic, or too depressing, many others have instead embraced its capacity to enable “thought experiments” about the future, about science and technology, and even about what it means to be human (Le Guin xiv). Ursula K. Le Guin, who is both an author and critic of science fiction, famously suggested that though these thought experiments are indeed extrapolative, “science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive” (xiv). Despite its strange tropes of aliens, spaceships, distant planets, robots, and apocalypses, the worlds constructed in science fiction reflect the world around us, and reveal some things about our existing sociocultural structures that we might not have noticed otherwise. Consequently, works of science fiction have the unsettling effect of “defamiliariz[ing] certain taken-for granted aspects of ordinary human reality” (Hollinger 129). In other words, science fiction has a habit of making the strange familiar, and the familiar strange. In this way, the themes of science fiction often overlap with the endeavors of feminist, gender, and queer theory: questioning identity categories, challenging the conventions of gender and sexuality, and calling attention to inequality. As Brian Attebery argues in Gender and Science Fiction, “both gender codes and the specialized vocabulary and narrative techniques of science fiction frequently fulfill the social function of marking boundaries” (3). Both feminism and sf “mark” normative boundaries, making them visible in order to upend them. Veronica Hollinger, a renowned feminist sf critic, takes the position that “analogous to feminist reading, feminist sf is not simply about women [...] it is a potent tool for feminist imaginative projects that are the necessary first steps in undertaking the cultural and social transformations that are the aims of the feminist political enterprise” (Hollinger 128). T (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Nicole Reynolds Dr. (Advisor); Joseph McLaughlin Dr. (Other) Subjects: American Literature; American Studies; Gender Studies