Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

6-2026

Document Type

Master's Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Program

Liberal Studies

Advisor

Leah Anderst

Subject Categories

Other Film and Media Studies | Queer Studies

Keywords

transgender theory, cyborg theory, film studies, science fiction, cybernetics

Abstract

This thesis aims to define the trans-cyber genre within cinema. By looking retroactively at a selection of nine films made across various decades and countries, this genre connects these films through their visualization and thematization of both trans and cyber embodiments, whereby the trans-cyber being emerges. Before the cinematic analysis and explanation of the three generic conventions selected for this thesis – transformation of body/gender; altered reality, memory, and temporality; and, radical death – the two intertwining theoretical frameworks will be established. This includes a brief summary of applicable transgender theory, and an introduction to cyborg theory (using Donna Haraway’s “A Cyborg Manifesto”). In this thesis, I suggest that embodied gender can be thought of as a form of circuitry ascribed to the body through gender norms, which can be transformed from a “closed” circuit to an “open” one through transgender individuals’ refusal to embody or perform.

While discussions of transgender cinema and its relation to the body (and embodied gender) are not new, there is a gap that the trans-cyber genre seeks to fill. By establishing the possibilities for the generic bounds of trans-cyber cinema, I assert that this sub-genre of science-fiction films complicates what it means to “embody” a physical, human, and gendered body in the information era. This will be useful for scholars in understanding how transgender bodies have been placed between science and nature in anti-trans rhetoric, and how a refusal to engage with these binaries can open up new potentialities for the human body as the borders between human and technology continue to morph.

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