Revisioning Popular Narratives of Trans Lives, 1952–1976

<p>This dissertation calls for a reconsideration of popular narratives and visual media created by or written about trans people in the United States prior to Stonewall. Grounded in research conducted at the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria, the ONE Archives at the University of Southern California, the Jean-Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies at the University of Minnesota, and the Transgender Collection at Yale University, “Revisioning” argues that the texts that trans readers collected, exchanged within communities, and engaged with in their own writing and scrapbooking are essential to the historicization of trans identity at midcentury. By extending the trans canon to include pulp and erotic novels and periodicals like Virginia Prince’s magazine <em>Transvestia,</em> which have often been overlooked in trans scholarship because of their status as “low” art or their failure to adhere to current gender and sexual politics, this dissertation illuminates new trans literary lineages and expands critical discussion of the trans identities and experiences that circulated in this period. Further, by analyzing the texts themselves, rather than attending only to the titles or the circumstances of their publication, this dissertation aims to complicate our understanding of the plots and possibilities available to trans people at as they encountered new categories of identity and imagined ways to write new futures.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2020

Author dc:creator

• Moore, Melina A

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Nancy K. Miller

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Carrie Hintz
• Paisley Currah

• American Popular Culture
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
• Other Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
• transgender studies
• lesbian and gay studies
• lesbian pulp
• pulp novels
• Ann Bannon
• Transvestia

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3695

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-4739