Graduation Term
Fall 2025
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Department of English: English Studies
Committee Chair
Ricardo Cortez Cruz
Committee Member
Rachel Gramer
Committee Member
Ela Przybylo
Abstract
This dissertation is an exploration of the ability of experimental queer writing to grow and transform expressions of mothering and care. The moves made here—both in the scholarship and anchor texts examined herein and in my own contributions to this effort—work to dethatch those toxic dominating narratives on motherhood, enforced and reinforced by our current Western society and culture, that contaminate and restrict our constructions of what it means to be and do mother. The collective work of experimental queer writers makes possible more nuanced, realistic, messy, complex, varied, embodied, liberating, and literally and figuratively dirty renditions of mothering and care. The ultimate goal of this dissertation is to articulate this effort and advocate for its enactment as resistance, revolution, and transformation. After identifying experimental writing and the practice of queering as the roots of my endeavors, I explore the discourses surrounding motherhood, analyze examples of experimental queer writing that center mothering and care, apply this growing conceptualization of care to my pedagogy, and then contribute my own shoots of experimental queer writing.
Access Type
Dissertation-Open Access
Recommended Citation
Koenig, Charley, "At the Mercy of All Things: Nurturing Experimental Queer Writing on Embodied Mothering" (2025). Theses and Dissertations. 2228.
https://ir.library.illinoisstate.edu/etd/2228
Included in
Creative Writing Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons, Queer Studies Commons