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Full text release has been delayed at the author's request until December 17, 2028

ETD Abstract Container

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Performing the Racialized, Gendered “Other”: White Womanhood, Gender Non-Conformity, and “Transracial” Identities

Van, Anne Yung
http://orcid.org/0009-0003-1690-4004
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1692625516310776

Abstract Details

2023, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies.
Although “transracialism” became a trending topic within the last decade, there is a lack of scholarship on the subject. Both public and current academic discourses on “transracialism” discuss the possibilities of racial fluidity in correspondence with transgender scholarship and experiences. This analogous approach contributes to a conceptual collapse of race and gender, and thus this dissertation argues that careful attention must be paid to how race and gender are mobilized and operated both separately and intersectionally through an interrogation of whiteness. This dissertation examines a notable pattern of white women and gender non-conforming people racially self-identifying as non-white through three prominent case studies of Rachel Dolezal, Oli London, and Jessica Krug. In consideration of the people harmed by Dolezal, London, and Krug, this dissertation traces how whiteness prioritizes and maintains its status as the peak of racial hierarchies in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Dolezal, the first person to claim “transracial” as an identity outside of adoption, manipulates racial, gendered authenticity to position herself outside of normative whiteness while remaining complicit in white supremacy. London, who identified as both “transracial” and genderqueer, actively argued race and gender to be equivalent social constructs. Krug, who did not identify as “transracial,” demonstrates how social justice organizing rhetoric can be used to police and exclude people of color from conceptualizing terms of liberation and justice for their communities.
Treva Lindsey (Advisor)
Guisela Latorre (Committee Member)
Jian Chen (Committee Member)
Mytheli Sreenivas (Committee Member)
178 p.
American Studies; Asian American Studies; Asian Studies; Black Studies; Ethnic Studies; Gender Studies; Womens Studies
transracialism; transracial; race; gender; racial identity; gender identity; transgender; Rachel Dolezal; Oli London; Jessica Krug; whiteness

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Van, A. Y. (2023). Performing the Racialized, Gendered “Other”: White Womanhood, Gender Non-Conformity, and “Transracial” Identities [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1692625516310776

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Van, Anne. Performing the Racialized, Gendered “Other”: White Womanhood, Gender Non-Conformity, and “Transracial” Identities. 2023. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1692625516310776.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Van, Anne. "Performing the Racialized, Gendered “Other”: White Womanhood, Gender Non-Conformity, and “Transracial” Identities." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2023. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1692625516310776

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1692625516310776
© 2023, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.