Maximum gaga with a critical introduction on Gurlesque poetics

The Gurlesque describes an emerging field of female poets and who, taking a page form the burlesque, perform their femininity in a campy or overtly mocking way. Their work assaults the norms of acceptable female behavior by irreverently deploying gender stereotypes to subversive ends. The critical portion of this dissertation outlines several theoretical tangents germane to Gurlesque poetics:, namely burlesque and camp, girly kitsch, and the female grotesque; the poetry manuscript that follows, Maximum Gaga, is a prime example of the latter.