Semester of Graduation

Spring 2026

Degree

Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Department

Graphic Design

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

Gender, a social construct, exists on a spectrum that is shaped by social, cultural, and embodied experience. Edges That Touch examines the instability of gender through the lens of combat sports, focusing on the way the hypermasculine environment abstracts femme identities. Informed by my lived experience, the work investigates the paradox in which empowerment and alienation coexist and destabilizes gender binaries.

Edges That Touch uses experimental graphic design processes and mixed media to recreate the psychological landscape and emotional realities that I navigated as a cisgender woman in the world of combat sports. I use visual techniques that obscure legibility and oscillate between moments of control and chaos to convey the conflicting nature of being perceived as both too much and not enough. Using graphic design as a tool for abstraction and relying on frameworks of visual communication, the work creates a space that renders visible the sensory, contradictory, and disorienting experiences embedded within gendered environments. The goal of this thesis is to cultivate an environment where viewers confront their subconscious biases of gender and clarify the ways in which gender is constructed, challenged, and renegotiated.

Grounded in ongoing discourse on gender and sports, this thesis contributes to the conversation by interrogating internal biases and exposing the ways the boundaries of gender remain continually in flux. Additionally, Edges That Touch addresses broader systems that have created the framework for Western societal understandings of gender.

Date

3-24-2026

Committee Chair

Andrew Shurtz

LSU Acknowledgement

1

LSU Accessibility Acknowledgment

1

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