DOI

https://doi.org/10.25772/88TX-P707

Defense Date

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

English

First Advisor

Adin Lears

Second Advisor

Jennifer Rhee

Third Advisor

Rachel Gevlin

Fourth Advisor

Frankie Mastrangelo

Abstract

Despite the global pendulum swing of gender trouble marked by the United States’ President’s declaration that there are only two sexes, activists have been rejecting assimilation (ie. defining equality as gay marriage or queer people in the military) within queer studies long before 2025. In the first half of the 20th century, a journal by the name of Urania (1916-1940), privately published and circulated to their home base in the United Kingdom and beyond, five editors (Esther Roper, Eva Gore-Booth, Jessey Wade, Dorothy Cornish, and Irene Clyde/Thomas Baty), challenged the gender binary and the resulting assumptions of heterosexual marriage. This thesis examines queer utopias in the juxtaposition of Urania’s politics against the backdrop of the rising biomedical model and sexological ideas, as well as first-wave feminism, in the early 1900s and interwar period. The editors rejected marriage and procreation via the elevation of celibacy, asexuality, and spinsterhood. In Urania’s heteroglossic form, I locate the collage-like impulse of José Muñoz’s methodology of “cruising” that moves from concrete prescriptions to affective yearning, always searching for pockets of queer utopianism. This includes the work of ace theorists redefining social relations beyond compulsory sexuality, Asexual Erotics by Ela Przybylo in particular. My thesis invites readers to turn to the journal Urania as an offering of community activism and a form of queer affection, the desire for friendships and care networks, but also for nurturing our relationship to dreaming for another world as an entity worthy of energy.

Rights

© The Author

Is Part Of

VCU University Archives

Is Part Of

VCU Theses and Dissertations

Date of Submission

4-23-2025

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