Alumni
Department of Linguistics

Graduated with MA 2015
Currently in the PhD program, Department of Anthropology, University of California Los Angeles

As an MA student in the Department of Linguistics at CU- Boulder, I completed two major CLASP-related projects. During the 2013-2014 school year I wrote a paper in which I analyze portions of Rachel Jeantel’s cross-examination in the 2013 Florida v. George Zimmerman trial. In the article, I draw upon transcriptions from the trial to examine ways in which Zimmerman’s defense team used Jeantel’s witness testimony to construct Trayvon Martin as having “reverse-racist”, violent, feelings toward white people and, consequentially toward George Zimmerman. In my second year I completed an MA thesis in which I identify and analyze a sociolinguistic phenomenon called Mock White Girl. In the thesis I analyze the linguistic, embodied, and social practices that constitute the mock performances, as well as the ways in which middle-class whiteness is indexed and reproduced as hegemonic norm in representations of contemporary girlhood in the United States. As a PhD student at UCLA I plan to conduct ethnographic research regarding “adult” ideologies of “types” of girlhood, particularly as they relate to implementations of social control, surveillance, and punishment in schools.