English, Department of
Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research
First Advisor
Gabrielle Owen
Committee Members
James Brunton, Stacey Waite
Date of this Version
8-2025
Document Type
Thesis
Citation
A thesis presented to the faculty of the Graduate College at the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree of Master of Arts
Major: English
Under the supervision of Professor Gabrielle Owen
Lincoln, Nebraska, August 2025
Abstract
In response to a critique of hope put forth by queer theorist Jack Halberstam, this thesis is a reassessment of what makes us capable of response—to “stay with the trouble,” in the words of Donna Haraway—in the face of overwhelming collapse. If not hope, then what? This thesis explores a number of questions about hope and its absence, opposites, and various deployments: is hope always an effective tool for survival? Does hopelessness always spell doom? Are hope and its apparent opposites necessarily incompatible? And if there is no hope, how do we keep going?—how do we survive? I explore these questions by bringing together scholarship, theory, and writing about hope from diverse disciplines and genres, including queer theory, Black studies, childhood studies, disability studies, human ecology, activism, and memoir. Drawing from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's reparative reading, Audre Lorde's view of difference as a source of creative energy, Karen Barad's theory of agential realism, and Gabrielle Owen’s concept of ethical relationality, among others, I offer the term agential hope to describe agency—hopeful or not—that becomes available to us through the entanglement and intra-action of hope, hopelessness, our selves, and the phenomena we encounter.
Advisor: Gabrielle Owen
Included in
Critical and Cultural Studies Commons, Feminist Philosophy Commons, Queer Studies Commons, Sociology of Culture Commons, Women's Studies Commons
Comments
Copyright 2025, Erin Kay Chambers. Used by permission