First Advisor

Maude Hines

Date of Award

5-26-2018

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in English and University Honors

Department

English

Subjects

James Baldwin (1924-1987). Another country, Sexual minorities -- Identity, Heterosexism, Queer theory

DOI

10.15760/honors.629

Abstract

James Baldwin’s Another Country (1962) offers a unique stance of how identity formation occurs as queer individuals interact with heteronormative spaces they inhabit. In this Honor’s Thesis, I am to detail how Baldwin’s novel bridges the interdisciplinary gap between Literature and Queer Theory when concerned with queer identity. Heteronormative culture aims to suppress queer ideology to maintain its own superiority, ultimately exhibiting how spaces created with a strict alliance to norms positions a barrier that queer individuals must encounter and resist, functioning as the entrance of queer space. While interacting with the boundaries of normative culture and space, the implications of how queer space functions not only within the confines of a novel but also within social categorizations complicates the notion of how queerness functions to subvert ordinariness. Another Country positions individuals struggling to create unique individualized spaces, in which normative culture can be challenged and forced to exhibit an elasticity that is contradictory to its assumed rigidity.

Rights

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/25496

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