Masters Thesis

Not a San Francisco unicorn: visibility and resistance in America's "gay capital"

San Francisco has a well-established reputation as a "gay capital" or "queer homeland." Performances from the multidisciplinary performance project Still Here San Francisco complicate and add nuance to this reputation by showcasing the work of LGBTQ artists raised in San Francisco. My thesis provides a content analysis of Still Here videos found online. My analysis highlights the following themes from the videos: memorializing loss, experiences navigating identity, family histories, critical responses to displacement and gentrification, and the significance of the phrase "still here." In performing their memories of San Francisco, Still Here artists provide examples of what Margot Weiss refers to as the city's "complicated and contradictory queerness." I draw connections between the work of Still Here artists and other writings on imaginaries and displacement; especially connecting Weiss' critique of San Francisco's neoliberalism with Still Here artists' descriptions of a city rejecting the people who built it.

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