Alicia Luguri

Date of Award

1-1-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Myhill, Nova

Area of Concentration

British and American Literature

Abstract

In this thesis I examine controversies surrounding Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, while exploring select events of book censorship, theft, and destruction, and how these activities have been employed to specifically target queer, trans, Jewish, and other marginalized communities. I trace the intertwined histories of pornography and the comics medium, and the ways in which this connection has shaped and influenced public opinion, legislation, and the genesis and implementation of the restrictive 1954 Comics Code. Additionally, I argue that as a part of Bechdel’s and Kobabe’s reaction to the heteronormative, homophobic and transphobic threats and pressures queer works have experienced over time (and the censorship and queer erasure that has occurred) both authors exhibit a preoccupation with documenting the importance of works of literature in their personal development, and generating and enshrining lists of meaningful queer works in their own graphic novel memoirs as an act of cultural legacy, heritage transmission, and resistance. Or This thesis is about queers, trans people, gender, Nazis, book burning, moral panics, censorship, Magnus Hirshfeld, pornography, Dr. Helen J. Fagin, Gone With the Wind and what it means to read, the Well of Nastiness, Harry Donenfeld, Detective Comics, Superman, Joe Shuster and Jerry Siegel, Horror Comics, Nights of Horror, juvenile delinquents, Dr. Frederic Wertham, The 1954 Comics Code, Fun Home, Gender Queer, queer bibliography, the Phantasma, classroom libraries, Ron DeSantis, what it’s like to be erased, and also how people fight back…so why not read it already?

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