Queer modes of survival: a cultural analysis of responses to gender, sexual, and racial marginalization in California’s Central Valley

The field of Women's and Gender Studies has largely oriented itself toward the geographies and socialities of large metropolitan cities. In contrast, "Queer Modes of Survival: A Cultural Analysis of Responses to Gender, Sexual, and Racial Marginalization in California’s Central Valley" seeks to reorient the field to the theory and praxis that can be gleaned from a focus on overlooked rural regions like the Central Valley of California. I reveal how the particularities of life in the heart of U.S. agribusiness both marks marginalized communities for early death, but also how those communities come up against the limits placed upon them. I argue that the relationship between the space of the Central Valley, the people who live there, and the imaginary of the space creates social and geographic isolation resulting in people of the Central Valley not being meaningfully tied to existing modes of survival, and thus they create their own queer modes of survival.To tell this story about survival in an overlooked region, I use a multi-method approach combining archival, autobiographical, film theory, and literary methodologies to analyze oral histories, personal memory, ephemera, a film, a play, and a novel. The result is a new account of the places the field of Women's and Gender Studies can and should look for theory about surviving a world facing environmental change, infrastructural neglect, and economic decline. I conclude that having the field of Women's and Gender Studies contend with overlooked regions forces us to rethink what counts as survival, meaningful life, and requisite theory.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference