Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study will show that the elimination of the straight ticket voting option is likely to affect weak partisans the most, as they will become more likely to engage in down-ballot abstention.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: Relationships, particularly friendships, usually start unexpectedly; therefore, they have the quality to shock, surprise, change, and transform individuals. The goal of this paper is to present segments from an unconventional relationship to examine friendship between men -- particularly a self-identified gay man and a self-identified straight man. In doing this, I theorize the complex relationship between straight and queer men and among queer men through personal narratives and autoethnographic writing. In addition, I also discuss potential influence of cultural differences in these relationships and how this plays into relational expectations, identity cues, and heteronormative assumptions and embodiment. Thus, I intend to theorize how the notion of “straight“ troubles “queer,” while “queer bodies” deconstruct and reconstruct the notion of “straight.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: One of the surprise hits of last year’s television season, Bravo’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, garnered much popular and critical acclaim. The series celebrates the sophisticated tastes and make-over prowess of a quintet of self-identified gay men: the Fab Five. From a queer theory perspective, there is much to celebrate about Queer Eye’s openly gay stars and their easy fraternization with straight men. Still, there are reasons for critical concern. We interrogate the series as an expression of the strategic rhetoric of straightness that hides and supports the very heteronormative order it seems to challenge. We argue that, as such, the series functions as a mediated ritual of rebellion in which gays are given temporary license to tame, touch, and tease heterosexual men, violating norms governing appropriate male behavior. And yet, even while this popular culture text challenges heteronormative hegemony, ultimately, we contend, Queer Eye strategically serves to domesticate queers and contain queer sexuality.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Much has been made of developing process-tracing as a qualitative method, useful for case study research. But while a good deal of though has been put into developing a rationale for the process-tracing method – answering the question of why this is an appropriate method – less emphasis has been placed on how best to write up a case using this method. Proponents of the process-tracing method, which is at its core a narrative, have largely been agnostic about the demands that process-tracing makes on narrative style. I attempt to fill this gap by thinking about case-study narratives in the context of narratological theories. In doing so, I am driven by two questions: 1) To what extent (if at all) can narrative prose be considered separable from and secondary to the process tracing method?, and; 2) If method and prose are bound together in process-tracing, then what demands does process-tracing make on our prose? In answering these questions, I come to argue that process-tracing does require the adoption of a specific narrative voice, one that is identical to the voice used in Victorian literature, specifically the voice of the narrator in George Eliot's novel "Middlemarch." After explaining why the Victorian style is particularly suited to process-tracing, I then unearth the assumptions embedded in this narrative style to suggest that the adoption of this narrative style is neither coincidental to nor a consequence of the method, but that method and writing are inextricably linked. I conclude with some practical tips for writing process-tracing, and some observations on how this focus on narrative may provide an opportunity for engagement between “mainstream” and postmodern “interpretivist” practitioners of qualitative methodologies.