Research and Teaching Interests: Gender, Race, Sexuality, Deviance, Intersectionality, Qualitative Methodology, Formal Theory Construction
Dissertation Title: “And now I have male privilege:” Transgender Accounts of the Gaining, Losing, and Maintaining of Privilege
Dissertation Committee: Eviatar Zerubavel (Chair), Kristen Springer, Norah MacKendrick, Asia Friedman (University of Delaware), Wayne Brekhus (University of Missouri)
In my dissertation I challenge the oversimplification of gender-based advantage by arguing that while all men do benefit from some degree of male privilege, men also experience male privilege differently depending on their social positionality. To demonstrate this I use an interdisciplinary lens to analyze data that I collected from both transgender women and men--individuals who have experience being treated as both men and women--to confirm the following: 1) Privilege can be gained, maintained, and lost; 2) The degree of male privilege one benefits from is dependent on visible or assumable characteristics that conflict with or enhance Western hegemonic masculinity; 3) Domination operates both internally (men have privilege relative to other men) and externally (privilege relative to other genders). This research informs debates around multiple masculinities and privileged embodiments, while also advancing knowledge within subfields of gender, race, sexuality, inequality, and sociology as a whole.
