title: Crossing borders and borderlands: Childhood's secret undergrounds

authors: Arndt, Sonja Kathrina

subjects: Family & Relationships

abstract: This chapter examines childhood undergrounds as subversive spaces that respond to children’s borderlands and border crossings. Centred on a tale of two childhoods, it analyses children's secret coping practices within very different socio-political contexts and realities. One story is of a boy growing up in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, and his relationship to the borderlands between his country and Austria. The other is about a girl born into a German community in Australia, and her linguistic and cultural border crossings. The impact of their borders and border crossing strategies are theorised in relation to children’s ideological settings and forming subjectivities, to offer fresh understandings of childhood border experiences.

text: Crossing borders and borderlands: Childhood's secret undergrounds This chapter examines childhood undergrounds as subversive spaces that respond to children’s borderlands and border crossings. Centred on a tale of two childhoods, it analyses children's secret coping practices within very different socio-political contexts and realities. One story is of a boy growing up in communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s and 1980s, and his relationship to the borderlands between his country and Austria. The other is about a girl born into a German community in Australia, and her linguistic and cultural border crossings. The impact of their borders and border crossing strategies are theorised in relation to children’s ideological settings and forming subjectivities, to offer fresh understandings of childhood border experiences.

year: 2014

title: 'You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever': Sapphic desire, vampires, and constructing kinship

authors: Theunisz, Marie

subjects: vampire

abstract: This thesis explores the figure of the sapphic vampire in Carmilla (1872) by J. Sheridan Le
Fanu, The Blood of the Vampire (1897) by Florence Marryat, The Gilda Stories (1991) by
Jewelle Gomez, and Fledgling (2005) by Octavia Butler. I argue that these texts present the
sapphic vampire as the embodiment of the death drive and display ambiguous familial/sexual
relationships in order to challenge heteronormative constructs of family. I utilise Lee
Edelman’s arguments from No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive to analyse
vampiric, queer kinship as a future that does not focus on the child, and Kath Weston’s
Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship to unpack the concept of the chosen family
and its value for queer people who desire kin, examining the way familial structures are
broken down and biological ties rendered secondary to chosen ones. In Chapter One I analyse
the scenes in which the vampire feeds, unpacking the use of breastfeeding imagery to show
the tension between maternal roles and sapphic relationships inherent in the texts. I show how

the narratives respond to idea of love and lust, as well as their troubled relationship with post-
menopausal women. Chapter Two considers how, lacking a biological family of her own, the

sapphic vampire creates familial bonds through recruitment or reproduction. Given the
correlation these texts create between queerness and vampirism, I argue that the family
building within these narratives presents alternatives to heteronormative constructs of
kinship. Throughout I compare the contemporary texts to their Victorian counterparts, tracing
the ways in which the depictions of queer kinship that the Victorian texts had to eradicate
could be celebrated in those of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. I will explain
the significance of what has or has not changed, and how this affects or is representative of
shifts in attitude towards queer people and the families that they choose. This thesis
demonstrates the power of the desire that the literary sapphic vampire feels, and the value of
the family she chooses.

text: 'You are mine, you shall be mine, you and I are one for ever': Sapphic desire, vampires, and constructing kinship This thesis explores the figure of the sapphic vampire in Carmilla (1872) by J. Sheridan Le
Fanu, The Blood of the Vampire (1897) by Florence Marryat, The Gilda Stories (1991) by
Jewelle Gomez, and Fledgling (2005) by Octavia Butler. I argue that these texts present the
sapphic vampire as the embodiment of the death drive and display ambiguous familial/sexual
relationships in order to challenge heteronormative constructs of family. I utilise Lee
Edelman’s arguments from No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive to analyse
vampiric, queer kinship as a future that does not focus on the child, and Kath Weston’s
Families We Choose: Lesbians, Gays, Kinship to unpack the concept of the chosen family
and its value for queer people who desire kin, examining the way familial structures are
broken down and biological ties rendered secondary to chosen ones. In Chapter One I analyse
the scenes in which the vampire feeds, unpacking the use of breastfeeding imagery to show
the tension between maternal roles and sapphic relationships inherent in the texts. I show how

the narratives respond to idea of love and lust, as well as their troubled relationship with post-
menopausal women. Chapter Two considers how, lacking a biological family of her own, the

sapphic vampire creates familial bonds through recruitment or reproduction. Given the
correlation these texts create between queerness and vampirism, I argue that the family
building within these narratives presents alternatives to heteronormative constructs of
kinship. Throughout I compare the contemporary texts to their Victorian counterparts, tracing
the ways in which the depictions of queer kinship that the Victorian texts had to eradicate
could be celebrated in those of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. I will explain
the significance of what has or has not changed, and how this affects or is representative of
shifts in attitude towards queer people and the families that they choose. This thesis
demonstrates the power of the desire that the literary sapphic vampire feels, and the value of
the family she chooses.

year: 2024

title: The Māori female - her body, spirituality, sacredness and mana : a space within spaces

authors: August, Wikitoria

subjects: Body image in women

abstract: This thesis is an exploration of bodily rituals, practices and cultural spaces of the female Māori body. Critical social theories and Kaupapa Māori research paradigms are combined to disrupt and challenge hegemonic Western knowledges. Qualitative methods - interviews, focus groups and autobiographical experience - are used to understand bodily practices that pertain to being Māori and female. There are three points to my discussion. I argue first, that the embodied relationship between Māori women and urupā and food gathering spaces rests on notions of Papatūānuku and female reproduction. During menstruation or pregnancy most women are restricted from urupā. Many participants, however, view this tikanga positively and describe it as making them feel special. Second, I examine the ways in which Māori female bodies are colonised and positioned between Western patriarchal and traditional ways of being. Due to various reasons surrounding colonisation, there are gaps in younger generations' Māori knowledge and this has led to tensions about which space to occupy. Finally, I discuss mana and conclude by asserting that the Māori female body has not lost individual mana, despite the efforts of colonisation to take mana away from Māori women. Throughout this research I offer cultural perspectives in order to prompt new ways of thinking about the Māori female body. 

The views expressed in this thesis are not the views of all Māori. Practices, tikanga and knowledges vary between different iwi, hapū and rohe.

text: The Māori female - her body, spirituality, sacredness and mana : a space within spaces This thesis is an exploration of bodily rituals, practices and cultural spaces of the female Māori body. Critical social theories and Kaupapa Māori research paradigms are combined to disrupt and challenge hegemonic Western knowledges. Qualitative methods - interviews, focus groups and autobiographical experience - are used to understand bodily practices that pertain to being Māori and female. There are three points to my discussion. I argue first, that the embodied relationship between Māori women and urupā and food gathering spaces rests on notions of Papatūānuku and female reproduction. During menstruation or pregnancy most women are restricted from urupā. Many participants, however, view this tikanga positively and describe it as making them feel special. Second, I examine the ways in which Māori female bodies are colonised and positioned between Western patriarchal and traditional ways of being. Due to various reasons surrounding colonisation, there are gaps in younger generations' Māori knowledge and this has led to tensions about which space to occupy. Finally, I discuss mana and conclude by asserting that the Māori female body has not lost individual mana, despite the efforts of colonisation to take mana away from Māori women. Throughout this research I offer cultural perspectives in order to prompt new ways of thinking about the Māori female body. 

The views expressed in this thesis are not the views of all Māori. Practices, tikanga and knowledges vary between different iwi, hapū and rohe.

year: 2004