Browsing by Subject "Queer"

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    Regime, reputation and resilience: the queer experience of Cape Town's single-sex schools
    (2025) Cassells, Kirstin; Bennett, Jane
    The following research paper explores the experiences of self-identified queer past pupils of single-sex schools in Cape Town, South Africa. The intention of the study was to gain insights into the implicit and explicit psycho-social and systematic control felt by student bodies in highly-traditional school spaces, through the specific lens of queer students and their navigations of such spaces. The theoretical frameworks of Bourdieu's Social Reproduction Theory, the hidden curriculum, Freire's Critical Consciousness and hook's Engaged Pedagogy provide the theoretical foundation, in addition to Butler's Gendered Performativity. Research findings revealed the strict school environment, moulding an idealised archetype expected of the students, which aligned closely with heteronormative, middle-class, whiteness. This archetype was upheld through the hierarchy of academic excellence, internalised compliance, and strict boundaries of acceptable behaviour that were maintained through discipline and reward practices. Within this strict environment, queer students and educators were located through the accounts provided by participants. Their resilience, navigation and endurance of the school space are central to this dissertation. This study provides a clear example of Bourdieu's Social Reproduction Theory and the hidden curriculum at work in the school environment. The impact of pervasive heteronormative white hegemony, the remaining legacy of the white-dominated Apartheid system and the conservative societal expectations of gender performativity are revealed to have an ever-present role in the experience of single-sex schools in Cape Town.
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    The vampire inside my camera: an exhumation of gender, monstrosity and queer worldmaking through photography and video
    (2025) Carosin, Gem; Josephy, Svea; Huigen-Conradie, Stephane; Brundrit, Jean
    Gem Carosin's MFA project The Vampire inside my Camera: an exhumation of gender, monstrosity and queer worldmaking through photography and video uses the vampire character as metaphor investigating shame and desire through a queer lens. Examining how the vampire has taken shape in the public imagination, this text discusses folktales, art- historical and literary influences. Through a historical revisionist approach, monstrosity and the example of the vampire are parallelled to the negative assumptions about queer lives. By recontextualising the compositions and lighting of paintings, Gem draws the past into the present. Temporality, chronopolitics and the disruptive capacity of the undead immortal are of interest to Gem as they explore the limits of heteronormative structures of time-keeping. They break down how and why queer people may use troubled temporality and fluid depictions of gender to imagine utopian futures and queer worlds. This is pinpointed in the horror genre of film and various contemporary artforms that displace linearity. Gem's photography and video art portrays them as the monstrous vampire character, positioning their project as specific to them and their orientation to the world. Using their queer chosen family as photographic subjects, Gem explores what it means to be a monster among monsters in a safe-haven of eternal night. This body of work emphasises the importance of storytelling and imagining in creating queer spaces. Prioritising humour, joy and pleasure in their video work highlights how queer history is often defined by queer suffering. Gem hopes that their photographs will reach other queer individuals and provide comfort and kinship.