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Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0352-6852
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
English
Year Degree Awarded
2020
Month Degree Awarded
September
First Advisor
Rebecca Dingo
Second Advisor
Asha Nadkarni
Third Advisor
Julio Capó
Subject Categories
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
Abstract
“Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles” combines historiography and queer rhetorical analysis to examine the ways that discourse circulated and rhetorically educated audiences and readers about homosexuality in post-war Los Angeles, California (and the wider United States), a time and place that was influenced by dominant discourses around censorship, morality, and nationalism. I examine historical documents, such as newspaper articles, song lyrics, films and plays, and magazine articles, and I put these in conversation with multiple texts by one woman: Lisa Ben. Ben is a figurehead in this dissertation because she endeavored to rhetorically reeducate readers and audiences about the sexological and homophobic discourses that circulated in her lifetime (1921-2015). By arguing that Ben performs queer rhetorical reeducation through generating and circulating texts that both critique and disrupt dominant discourses around “the homosexual,” my dissertation engages queer rhetorical analysis to extend feminist recovery efforts and thus reads Ben’s writing as a move to rhetorically educate readers in the context of strict rules for discourse circulation about sexuality. I argue that Lisa Ben interrupts the dissemination of dominant discourses about homosexuality by circulating alternative texts that expose and critique power within discourses about normality and abnormality, offering a queer alternative to such messages, and putting that alternative into circulation. Finally, I extend this queer rhetorical reeducation to today, imagining how I and other queer historians, rhetorical scholars, and creatives may carry the torch of queer rhetorical reeducation in the future by historicizing Lisa Ben and her rhetorical contributions.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/17889913
Recommended Citation
Litterer, Katelyn S., "Lisa Ben and Queer Rhetorical Reeducation in Post-war Los Angeles" (2020). Doctoral Dissertations. 2048.
https://doi.org/10.7275/17889913
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2048
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