Emergent queer patterns: Publication, conversation, and representation

This project uses both established and novel approaches to collect and analyze data around the usage of the term queer as well as conceptualizations that include queer theory, methodology, rhetoric, embodiment, and representation within and around rhetoric and writing studies. There is a heavy emphasis on emergent patterns and disruptions of ideas within data sets collected in three distinct ways: from article analysis found in rhetoric and composition journals; with semi-structured interviews of rhetoric and composition scholars that work with the aforementioned queer concepts; and through visual rhetoric applied to imagery found in the card game Magic: The Gathering around embodied representation of the LGBTQ+ community. An autoethnographic thread runs throughout the dissertation in order to ethically engage with the various research subjects as a member of each community in question. Results from each chapter feed into the construction of the next as this research finds patterns in publication, then addresses and disrupts some of those same patterns through the interview work and applies key emergent points to the visual representations produced and used in a billion-dollar game. Findings from this research vary and include patterns on normalized conceptualizations of queer, antinormative disruption of accepted ideas, and readability of non-normative and LGBTQ+ bodies being linked to danger and related imagery being segregated in multiple ways.