Alexandria Digital Research Library

What is Queer About Teenage Pregnancy? : Race, Temporality and (Un)Happiness in Milwaukee's Prevention Campaign 2006-2015

Author:
Tanner, Laura Christine
Degree Grantor:
University of California, Santa Barbara. Feminist Studies
Degree Supervisor:
Barbara Tomlinson and Laury Oaks
Place of Publication:
[Santa Barbara, Calif.]
Publisher:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Creation Date:
2015
Issued Date:
2015
Topics:
LGBTQ studies, Gender studies, and Womens studies
Keywords:
Abjection
Race
Queer
Teenage Pregnancy
Temporality
Sexuality
Genres:
Online resources and Dissertations, Academic
Dissertation:
M.A.--University of California, Santa Barbara, 2015
Description:

This project analyzes teenage pregnancy prevention media campaigns sponsored by Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 2006-2015. Constructing teenage pregnancy as a serious social problem, the Milwaukee campaigns use raced, classed, heteronormative, violent rhetoric to abject teenage mothers and instruct the public in how to feel about them and their offspring: disgusted and angry. I argue that teenage pregnancy prevention campaigns constitute a form of biopower, which influences all teenage women to construct their sexual subjectivity and behavior in relation to what I call "the straight path" and the "path to happiness." I demonstrate that teenage mothers are positioned as queer in their relation to power, through their engagement in sexual activity deemed unnatural, useless, and dangerous to society, and through their reproduction, which is decoupled from reproductive futurity and is positioned as (re)producing failed citizen subjects.

Physical Description:
1 online resource (66 pages)
Format:
Text
Collection(s):
UCSB electronic theses and dissertations
ARK:
ark:/48907/f3222rzh
ISBN:
9781339084862
Catalog System Number:
990045716200203776
Rights:
Inc.icon only.dark In Copyright
Copyright Holder:
Laura Tanner
File Description
Access: Public access
Tanner_ucsb_0035N_12583.pdf pdf (Portable Document Format)