Date of Award
2012
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Women's Studies and Gender Studies
Abstract
Transgender has been silenced, exiled, forgotten, erased, ignored, maltreated, killed, and ultimately, in a major theme of this research project, excluded from histories. Yet, like women, African-Americans, and gay men and lesbians before them, transgender and their allies are working toward inclusion and independence. History, it seems, can no longer ignore them. One of the surest ways to "prove" a history is to have the original items of that history in an archives. So, what representation do we find among various United States' archives concerning transgender people? Unfortunately, like with many other marginalized groups, much work has to be investigated and accomplished.
Therefore, the purpose of this research is to discuss and analyze the barriers and structures that have resulted in the voids of transgender people in archival history in the United States. More specifically, using the Women and Leadership Archives of Loyola University Chicago as a framework, what course(s) of action and awareness might it take to increase and secure transgender people's voices and experiences in these dominant spaces? "When an individual's experience does not fit into the binary and deviates from the norm, the individual is criticized, not the system," Lori Girshik sadly admits. In this research, the system(s) is (are) under scrutiny.
Recommended Citation
Main, Jeremy Curtis, "(Women's) Archival Spaces and Trans Voices? A (Re)search and Proposal" (2012). Master's Theses. 725.
https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_theses/725
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Copyright Statement
Copyright © 2012 Jeremy Curtis Main
