Governing Pet Love: 'Crazy Cat Ladies,' Cultural Discourse, and the Spatial Logics of Inter-Species Intimacies
| dc.contributor.advisor | Brown, Michael | en_US |
| dc.contributor.author | McKeithen, William Leighton | en_US |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2014-10-13T19:56:26Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2014-10-13T19:56:26Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2014-10-13 | |
| dc.date.submitted | 2014 | en_US |
| dc.description | Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2014 | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | Pet animals in the United States have been increasingly incorporated into relationships and spaces of intimacy. As a result, an intense set of discourses has emerged to delineate and govern what modes of interspecies intimacy are `normal' or `inappropriate.' The widely known stereotype of the `crazy cat lady' - often described as a reclusive, lonely, and single white woman locked away in a tiny house full of cats - represents a flashpoint in this system of governance. This thesis explores the normative discourses and daily resistances that envelop women who live with cats. I argue that the `crazy cat lady' serves to delimit the available possibilities for `proper' gendered, sexualized, classed, and raced subjectivity. In turn, these norms govern the possibilities for interspecies relationships between humans and pet animals, perpetuating and privileging some forms of intimacy - heterosexual interhuman love, marriage, and motherhood - while disparaging and neglecting queer modes of pet love. | en_US |
| dc.embargo.terms | Open Access | en_US |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | en_US |
| dc.identifier.other | McKeithen_washington_0250O_13437.pdf | en_US |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/1773/26273 | |
| dc.language.iso | en_US | en_US |
| dc.rights | Copyright is held by the individual authors. | en_US |
| dc.subject | Animal studies; Companion species; Cultural studies; Discourse analysis; Feminist geography; Queer ecology | en_US |
| dc.subject.other | Geography | en_US |
| dc.subject.other | GLBT studies | en_US |
| dc.subject.other | American studies | en_US |
| dc.subject.other | geography | en_US |
| dc.title | Governing Pet Love: 'Crazy Cat Ladies,' Cultural Discourse, and the Spatial Logics of Inter-Species Intimacies | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
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