Term of Award
Fall 2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Education in Curriculum Studies (Ed.D.)
Document Type and Release Option
Dissertation (restricted to Georgia Southern)
Copyright Statement / License for Reuse
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Department
Department of Curriculum, Foundations, and Reading
Committee Chair
Marla Morris
Committee Member 1
Ming Fang He
Committee Member 2
Daniel Chapman
Committee Member 3
Laura Rychly
Abstract
This dissertation explores queer theory (de Lauretis, 1991; Jagose, 1996; Hall & Jagose, 2013; McCann & Monaghan, 2020) and critical youth studies (Best, 2007; Ibrahim & Steinberg, 2014) in the context of curriculum theory. Using this throughline, I engage with the method of bricolage to probe how popular cultures created for youth consumers by adults construct and represent queerness within a curriculum of gender and sexuality. By exploring and analyzing topics such as historical formations of youth, the teen film, European streaming teen television, and youth participatory cultures through the lens of queer studies, critical youth studies, cultural studies, and curriculum theory, I uncover the cultural anxieties adults have around youth gender and sexuality and how these anxieties produce a curriculum of gender and sexuality in teen media that reproduces hegemonic notions of gender and sexuality for the youth audience. I argue, however, that queer youth do not consume this curriculum uncomplicatedly, but instead use it to create their own curriculums, which I term the DIY curriculum of gender and sexuality, seen most clearly in online participatory cultures. Throughout, I aim to create a new way of looking at queer youth, influenced by queer theory and critical youth studies, which allows them to be active participants in the unfolding of their own histories and the creation of media messages about them.
Recommended Citation
Weeks, Thomas C., "Articulating Adolescence: A Cultural Study of Queer Youth and Visual Media" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2842.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/etd/2842
Research Data and Supplementary Material
No
