Date of Award
Winter 12-11-2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
English
First Advisor
Myron Yeager
Second Advisor
Justine Van Meter
Third Advisor
Brian Glaser
Abstract
In his works such as Andre’s Mother; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; and Love! Valour! Compassion!, playwright Terrence McNally utilizes categorically gay themes such as homophobia and living with HIV and AIDS in a time when little was understood about the illnesses. For these reasons, McNally critics customarily analyze McNally’s plays with a queer theory lens. This work examines those same topics and others, but with a critical disability lens. Inspired by Robert McRuer’s analytical partnership of queer, AIDS, and disabilities studies, this work assesses McNally’s use of various types of languages and finds the figures who are characteristically presented as the contrast to normalcy are in fact normalized and hegemonized.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Burnstine, Alexa. Terrence McNally’s Universalizing Model: The Role of Disability in Andre’s Mother; Lips Together, Teeth Apart; and Love! Valour! Compassion!. 2019. Chapman University, MA Thesis. Chapman University Digital Commons, https://doi.org/10.36837/chapman.000099