Date of Award

Spring 2026

Document Type

Thesis (Master's)

Department or Program

Master of Arts in Liberal Studies

First Advisor

Kristin O'Rourke

Second Advisor

Michael Chaney

Third Advisor

Donald Pease

Abstract

This is a thesis in two parts. Its goal is to provoke the intersection of superhero comics and transgender studies in order to interrogate the parallels between those two identities and explore ways in which pairing them together can strengthen each other narratively and academically. Rather than seeking an answer to a question, the project as a whole serves as a way of communicating trans internalities from a transfeminine perspective in a format that brings the issues to the forefront of the narrative in an in-depth and entertaining way. The result is hopefully a coherent artistic work that achieves those goals. The main body of the work is a set of ten comic book issues meant to be read as disjointed installments pulled from various points in a larger series that follows a transfeminine character trying to maintain a superheroic identity in a system that dehumanizes her. It utilizes the artistic language of superhero comics to explore the challenges, contradictions, and connections that commonly present in both superhero stories and trans lives. To produce the work, supplementing a long history of comic readership and scriptwriting training, extensive comic book texts were consulted as well as papers on transgender studies, novels in the niche subgenre of "transgender realism," and works on comic book theory both practical and analytical. The additional part of the thesis is an introductory essay explaining the ways in which those sources influenced the creative work and explaining the cultural and social phenomena in comics and transness that are present in the text.

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