Seven Stars Storying Sources by

Monster Culture (Seven Theses)

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 18:55:16 UTC

An essay analyzing the structure of what makes a monster. Each of the seven points looks at monsters from a different angle (e.g. "The Monster's Body is a Cultural Body," "Fear of the Monster Is Really a Kind of Desire"). This is written with fiction/legends/myths in mind, however it bears a lot of similarity to the process of Othering, as well as draws on noted theorists such as Foucault and Butler.

The Transgender Turn

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 19:10:10 UTC

An essay reexamining a record documenting an encounter between a transgender woman and cisgender man in the 1300s from a pointedly transgender point of view. It's focus is on giving the transgender woman, Eleanor Rykener, the voice she'd been denied. It lays out the idea of a "Transgender Turn" in cultural studies as the arrival of transgender scholars to fields long denied to them.

Gender Trouble

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 19:14:17 UTC

(focus is on (pdf) pages 14-18, 51-61, 70-76). Judith Butler's book on gender and identity. This introduces the concept of gender as a performance that is taught through culture.

History of Sexuality: ch 4 Deployment of Sexuality

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 19:16:54 UTC

Michel Foucault's study of the structure of sexuality. He paints a complicated and nuanced view of the ways in which power effects the manifestation of sexuality (and gender).

All The Ways To Be - Interview

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 19:19:43 UTC

An interview between two queer authors of color, wherein they discuss some of the intersecting intricacies that come with their overlapping identities. "Often we see queerness as a deprivation, but when I look at my life, I saw that queerness demanded an alternative innovation from me, I had to make alternative routes. It made me curious, it made me ask this is not enough for me because there's nothing here for me." - Ocean Vuong

The Second Sex

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 20:27:39 UTC

Excerpts from The Second Sex, a book by Simone de Beauvoir on the social construction of "woman" as a category. It includes the much cited quote "One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman."

Interfacing Cultural Rhetorics: A History and a Call

danielfetherling — 2025-03-02 23:21:53 UTC

This essay is split into three parts: a history of cultural rhetorics, a defining and engaging with the idea of interfaces between culture and rhetoric, and the layout of the authors' works with cultural rhetorics. The section on interfaces is the one of interest to this project. It breaks down the always-already intertwinedness of culture and rhetorics.