Kristen Schilt
Assistant Professor
Office: Social Sciences 320
Phone: 773-702-7753
Email: kschilt@uchicago.edu
Professor Schilt’s research interests include gender, sexualities, culture, and ethnographic research methods. She is currently working on a comparative study of the workplace experiences of transgender men in California and Texas. Drawing on in-depth interviews, ethnographic observation, and questionnaire data, she shows how the experiences of transmen can challenge cultural schemas about innate gender differences used to justify the workplace gender gap. As men at work, transmen generally are treated with greater respect, and receive more reward for their work than when they worked as women – even when they remain in the same jobs. These experiences show that boundaries between men and women are flexible – transmen move from women to men at work – at the same time they are stable – notions about men and women’s natural differences remain unchanged. That these boundaries can be renegotiated with no change in power relations between men and women accounts for the persistence of gender inequality.
Professor Schilt is currently working on several other projects, including a longitudinal, NSF-funded study of how gender impacts the graduate school experience. Using a small, liberal arts college as a case study, this project tracks the first year cohort in the Humanities, the Social Sciences, Engineering, and Science/Mathematics over five years with both quantitative survey data and qualitative interviews.
Journals
Professor Schilt is currently on the board of Gender & Society.
Research Interests
Gender, Sexualities, Culture, Workplace Studies.
Selected Publications
"Teaching Transgender Issues." Tre Wentley, Kristen Schilt, Elroi Windsor, and Elizabeth Lucal. Forthcoming 2008 in Teaching Sociology.
"Access Denied." With Christine Williams. Forthcoming 2008 in Men and Masculinities.
"The Unfinished Business of Sexuality: Comment on Andersen." Gender & Society 22 (1) 2008: 109-114.
"Do Gender Transitions Make Gender Trouble?" with Catherine Connell. Gender, Work, & Organization. November 14 (6) 2007, 596 - 618
"Just One of the Guys?: How Transmen Make Gender Visible in the Workplace." Gender & Society. 20 (4) 2006, 465-490.
"Is She Man Enough? Female Masculinity on The L Word." In Reading the L Word: Outing Contemporary Television. Ed. Kim Akass and Janet McCabe. New York: Palgrove, 2006: 153-179. (Co-authored with Candace Moore).
"Riot Grrrl Is: Contestations over Meaning in a Music Scene." In Music Scenes: Local, Translocal and Virtual. Ed. Andy Bennett and Richard Peterson. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt Press. 2004. p. 115-130.
"‘I'll Resist with Every Inch and Every Breath': Girls and Zine-Making as a Form of Resistance." Youth and Society. 35 (1) 2003, 71-97.
