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" White College Women, Race, and Place Matters: "
Guida, Tonia Floramaria
Solorzano, Daniel G
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Latin Dissertation
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| Language of Document
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English
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| Record Number
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904013
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TL9f93b9fc
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| Main Entry
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Guida, Tonia Floramaria
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| Title & Author
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White College Women, Race, and Place Matters:\ Guida, Tonia FloramariaSolorzano, Daniel G
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| College
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UCLA
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| Date
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2020
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| student score
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2020
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| Abstract
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Research in the field of critical whiteness studies in higher education has often been normed around white college men and white college students at large. Thus, white supremacy has been examined through a masculinist or gender-neutral lens. The lack of a gendered lens in the critical whiteness studies higher education literature and the ways in which we associate white supremacy with masculinity has contributed to allowing white cisgendered women who use whiteness to their own gains less visible. If we do not begin to connect white undergraduate women’s experiences and perception of whiteness to the systemic forms of whiteness in higher education contexts, we will continue to allow interrogations of white womanhood to remain insidious and in turn harder to disrupt and challenge. Thus, the purpose of this research is to examine and theorize about whiteness, gender, and the lived environment for white undergraduate women at UCLA. Drawing on critical whiteness and critical race studies concepts, I explore how 11 UCLA white undergraduate women understand their whiteness and perceive their campus environment through 31 60-minute interviews featuring photo elicitation and walking interviews. This study uses UCLA as one illustrative case to theorize more broadly about transferable trends and patterns related to how whiteness manifests across the higher education landscape. In this study, I found that white undergraduate women interpret whiteness in their own lives through three themes: a) understanding whiteness through one-up one-down social identities, including socioeconomic status and gender, b) utilizing white ignorance and white complicity, and c) upholding racism through color-evasiveness and racial victimization. Additionally, the three findings which pertain to how white undergraduate women perceive their campus environment include: a) race was visible for participants in subenvironments where predominantly People of Color frequented, b) participants were able to feel like white women everywhere on campus, and c) participants were both aware and unaware of how they were taking up space at UCLA. This study provides new theoretical contributions to understanding the complexity of whiteness and womanhood for college students and provides groundbreaking methods by operationalizing critical whiteness concepts in data collection to theorize around race, gender, and the lived environment in higher education. Additionally, this study provides implications for policy and practice in the field of higher education to ensure we are challenging whiteness and womanhood.
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Solorzano, Daniel G
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UCLA
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