ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Included below are a list of people with whom I consulted (in some fashion!) for this project-- whether for (grounding) in-person brainstorming, (such generative) interviews, or our (delightful) workshops and (replenishing) weekly talks in class.
front and (metaphorical) center: T Hetzel;
not pictured (but dearly missed):
​
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beresford, Matthew. The White Devil : The Werewolf in European Culture. Reaktion Books, 2013.
3.5/5 stars -- This book is a (mostly) linear chronological account of werewolves as they appeared in historic texts, recorded sightings, artistic representations, and more. While helpful for gathering a wide variety of werewolf-related primary sources, the book itself suffers from sometimes illogical or anachronistic comparisons (i.e. quoting Shakespeare for the purpose of making a tenuous connection between kind of unrelated stuff from centuries before).
Gibson, Lindsay C. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents : How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents. 1st ed., New Harbinger Publications, 2015.
4/5 stars -- This book is a great introduction to thinking about lifelong behavioral patterns in the context of family dynamics and the roles we're all "supposed" to play within them. It breaks down the rationalizing and psychological processing that goes into the making of painful familial messes-- in particular, the loneliness and unequal division of (emotional) labor that having emotionally neglectful or immature parents causes. It's geared most towards "internalizers," or people whose self-reflective manner of coping represents half of a binary that Gibson proposes makes up humankind's (emotional) processing styles. The other are "externalizers,"or the more emotionally immature. (In practice, people lean towards one type but will invariably and inevitably in life be put in situations in which they behaved in a "mixed" style.)
Spicer, Atticus JJ. Collected Writings, Handwritten Journals. 2013-2024.
Holy shit, I'm realizing that I've been writing consistently for the last eleven years of my life and I'm only 22. That's half of my life!
Pictured (pixelated) to the right are three of the aforementioned journals, my first ever is the red one. It's fake leather, bought on clearance by Gama. Ava had a green one, if I'm not mistaken. The first sentence I wrote? "I've decided to keep you because you are soon to be my last piece of sanity." Little did I know that not only would it be my only piece of sanity, it helped me retain my humanity and spirit in my most desperate moments as a child. I had no outlet for so long, but writing could be it, was it for me. A paper doesn't manipulate or use you and I craved that type of interaction. Rereading my child self's perspective, noting the patterns with the bittersweet benefits of hindsight? Borderline excruciating, but I am so grateful I had the presence of mind then to keep a record. Not only did it keep me sane then but keeps me sane now by proving that all that I lived was-is real.
Date ranges of journals:
May 29th, 2013 - October 15th, 2014 [red journal]
October 16th, 2014 - March 13th, 2015 [gold journal]
March 19th, 2015 - July 20th, 2021 [blue journal, inconsistent and
unfinished]
September 29th, 2022 - February 10th, 2023 [black journal,
inconsistent and unfinished]
​
Not pictured:
January 11th, 2024 - April 3rd, 2024 [Sweetland notebook given to us
by T on the first day of capstone; finished, all 120 pages]
Pérez Velázquez, José L ; Galán, Roberto F. “Information Gain in the Brain’s Resting State: A New Perspective on Autism.” Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, vol. 7, Switzerland: Frontiers Research Foundation, 2013, pp. 37–37, doi:10.3389/fninf.2013.00037.
This article is what it describes itself as-- a new perspective on autism. But "new" is relative, and it might be worth pointing out that this piece comes from a small study conducted in the early 2010s, when I myself was only a child (I was eleven when they published this.) What I appreciate about this is its interest in understanding autism and other types of neurodivergence through brain activity/patterns, which is what a neurotype is-- a brain acting by and through its pathways and repeat idiosyncratic patterns. Often, the language we use to discuss autism is less in terms of legitimate brain "function" and more from a socially-determined, culturally-popular understanding of "functionality" and "appropriate" behavior. In my view, this research serves as something as a corrective for the "function/ality" conversation; it asks "but what is an autistic brain actually doing?" and discovers (in preliminary findings) that an autistic brain is creating a lot and processing more on average than the neurotypical brain.
Price, Devon. Unmasking Autism : Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity. New York : Harmony Books, 2022.
4.25/5 stars -- This book is a very popular and accessible account of what it's like to grow up and enter adulthood as an undiagnosed, high "masking" autistic individual. It describes how one might develop complex roles or an exhausting persona in place of cultivating their own personality; as an autistic person with unmet support needs, they are incapable of healthily addressing the developmental delays and differences between them, their peers, and the world at large. While most do so unconsciously as a means of (social) survival, masking has serious impacts on one's health and wellbeing. Just as with allistic people, living inauthentically can wear autistic people down overtime, leading to debilitating shutdown, burnout, or regression. It's also just massively unfair to have to mask who you are as a human purely for the comfort of normies, so.
Priest, Hannah. She-Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves. Manchester University Press, 2018.
4/5 stars -- This collection features an impressive lineup of writers, all tackling the history of the female werewolf as a cultural figure throughout various media representations. But really, what this essay series is about is the way female werewolf-hood and all its variants signal a monstrous femininity. For my purposes, the she-wolf as an icon helps me understand my transmasculinity as another being, another something who's always felt like its flavor of femininity's got fangs.
Whitney, Emerson. Heaven. 2020.
3.5/5 stars -- A lyrical memoir chock full of queerness, abstract theory, unstable relationships, and trauma from experiencing gendered violence. Should be totally my shit, right? Nah, man.
I think the writing is strong, mostly precise, and direct; I value how it doesn't flinch in spite of its sometimes graphic moments. As someone who lived a somewhat parallel life (different time periods, different circumstances), I just don't think I needed this story. Its entrance into my life was appreciated (thanks EEL!) and its timing uncanny given this project. But, I think I prefer my own versions of the volatilities described or hinted at in this book.
Yergeau, Remi M. Authoring Autism : On Rhetoric and Neurological Queerness. Duke University Press, 2017.
4.5/5 stars -- There's a reason this title won the 2017 Modern Language Association First Book Price, the 2019 CCCC Lavender Rhetorics Book Award for Excellence in Queer Scholarship, and the 2019 Rhetoric Society of America Book Award. This book is magnificent and sincerely a powerhouse; it was so rich in layered meanings, meticulous analysis, and relatable lived experience that it hurt my brain to read (non-derogatory). It is a somewhat dense text, but I have faith that my somewhat bumpy first read-through will translate to an even more enlightening reread now that these brilliant seeds have been sown in my head. I feel smarter for reading this and being in the way-too-brief conversation Remi and I had about some ideas I (greedily) wanted more of their perspective on (we only got through my notes to like page 14).
