• About
    • Login
    View Item 
    •   Institutional Repository Home
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Institutional Repository Home
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of Institutional RepositoryCommunities & CollectionsBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartmentThis CollectionBy Issue DateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsDepartment

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    The Invisible Presence of Trans- Bodies: Unpacking Regimes of Visibility and Visuality Through Tom Cho’s Look Who’s Morphing

    Baumkel, Max Rose
    : https://etd.library.vanderbilt.edu/etd-11182015-103552
    http://hdl.handle.net/1803/14601
    : 2015-11-20

    Abstract

    This thesis argues that the ways in which trans-ness functions within telemediated spaces disrupts the conventions of new media studies that would assert reality is established primarily through visual engagement. In Tom Cho’s collection of short stories, Look Who’s Morphing, the reader is confronted with characters and situations that are transgender, transcultural, and transhuman. By presenting characters who embody multiple forms of trans-ness and who cross the boundaries between fictional stories, play with the uneasy distinction between narrative self and self in the world, and move between the biological and technological, Cho pushes the reader to confront the body’s mutability. Given the ways in which the characters in Cho’s work destabilize our realities, I argue that they work as well against commonly held assumptions about bodily authenticity and integrity. I suggest finally that due to the persistent shifts, crosses, and changes that Cho’s characters undergo both within and between stories, we are forced to imagine these characters without reference to regimes of visibility.
    Show full item record

    Files in this item

    Icon
    Name:
    Baumkel.pdf
    Size:
    374.7Kb
    Format:
    PDF
    View/Open

    This item appears in the following collection(s):

    • Electronic Theses and Dissertations

    Connect with Vanderbilt Libraries

    Your Vanderbilt

    • Alumni
    • Current Students
    • Faculty & Staff
    • International Students
    • Media
    • Parents & Family
    • Prospective Students
    • Researchers
    • Sports Fans
    • Visitors & Neighbors

    Support the Jean and Alexander Heard Libraries

    Support the Library...Give Now

    Gifts to the Libraries support the learning and research needs of the entire Vanderbilt community. Learn more about giving to the Libraries.

    Become a Friend of the Libraries

    Quick Links

    • Hours
    • About
    • Employment
    • Staff Directory
    • Accessibility Services
    • Contact
    • Vanderbilt Home
    • Privacy Policy