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Dissertation Information for Amanda Lock Swarr

NAME:
- Amanda Lock Swarr

DEGREE:
- Ph.D.

DISCIPLINE:
- Women's Studies

SCHOOL:
- University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (USA) (2003)

ADVISORS:
- Amy Kaminsky
- Richa Nagar

COMMITTEE MEMBERS:
- Naomi Scheman
- Kathy Barlow
- Janet Spector
- Allen Isaacman

MPACT Status: Fully Complete

Title: South African transgendered subjectivities: Exploring the boundaries of sex, gender, and race

Abstract: This dissertation interrogates the man/woman binary through an analysis of South African transgenderism. I argue that apartheid relied not only on racial discrimination but on an interrelated system of sex/gender repression, perhaps most remarkable in contradictions of the medical, legal, and social treatment of those who are transgendered and/or fall between sexed and gendered categories, including transsexuals, butch lesbians, drag performers, and those who defy these labels. Under apartheid, some transgendered South Africans were subjected to forced and botched medical treatment, legal exclusion, and community ostracism, while others received state-funded medical procedures and legal support. Grounding these explorations in sixteen months of fieldwork and interdisciplinary methods of life history collection, interviewing, and participant observation, I explicate the contradictions and constancies of apartheid and the transition to democracy. South African transgendered people were not simply victims of apartheid; their life histories speak to the ways that the borders of race and sex/gender have been both violently policed and subverted. Modeling intersectional analyses, this dissertation intervenes into feminist theory, medical history, and African Studies by drawing on personal narratives to illuminate how multiple sexes and genders are co-produced with social categories, history, and location.

MPACT Scores for Amanda Lock Swarr

A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2008-03-24 10:19:56

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