Graduation Year

2026

Document Type

Open Access Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

Anthropology

Second Department

Media Studies

Reader 1

Lara Deeb

Reader 2

Carlin Wing

Terms of Use & License Information

Terms of Use for work posted in Scholarship@Claremont.

Rights Information

© 2026 Frances B Currie

Abstract

This thesis examines how queer individuals in Los Angeles perceive, inhabit, and reshape their experiences in queer cultural spaces. Through this project, I trace the evolution of queer nightlife in Los Angeles (from early gay counterspaces, through the collectivist politics of the Queer Nation, to post-gay assimilation and contemporary “inclusive” queer nightlife) in order to examine how queer space has been shaped and reshaped by a recurring tension between the utopian promise of universality and inclusion and the material realities of exclusion. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, queer theory, and approaches to memory and the archive, I argue that queer nightlife in Los Angeles functions as a living site where political imaginaries of queerness are not only articulated, but felt, contested, and unevenly inhabited. As lesbian bars disappear, gay bars proliferate, and queer parties and events rise in popularity, young queer people (especially non-men and non-cis men) seek and move through nightlife spaces structured by inherited histories of belonging and loss, engaging memory, critique, and nostalgia as tools for navigating the present and imagining queer futures that both revive and challenge earlier visions of collective queer life.

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