This study explores young women's experiences "coming out" in high school. I find that across race and class backgrounds, young women in high school are increasingly coming to articulate their sexuality as fluid rather than with more conventional stable identity categories such as "lesbian." Based on 79 ethnographic interviews with women who came to see themselves as non-heterosexual in high school, I find 46 (58%) identify themselves as fluid/pansexual/queer or without a label, 7 (9%) identify as bisexual, 15 (19%) identify as lesbian but also somewhat fluid, and 11 (14%) identify as strictly lesbian. I find the use of "fluid" (and related synonyms) as a label is more than a shift in language; women who come to see themselves as fluid have markedly different experiences coming out in high school than do women who identify as lesbian. Young women in high school who identify as fluid and those who identify as lesbian have a similar process in coming to recognize their romantic and sexual attractions, and yet those who identify as lesbian are far more likely to feel stigmatized from their peers because of their sexual orientation.

This study expands the scope of trans* studies by examining how trans* identity continues to impact life long after the intense changes of initial social and medical transition have subsided. While a growing body of interdisciplinary literature explores trans* identity development and early medical transition, less information is available from either the academic or popular press about the life-long consequences and challenges of a trans* identity. Drawing on thirty semi-structured interviews, I contribute a much-needed theoretically grounded empirical case study that builds upon earlier research by using a life course perspective and employing concepts from identity theory and an intersectional analysis. I find that significant challenges remain in areas including family, dating, work, healthcare, eldercare, and end-of-life decisions. Furthermore, the challenges trans* people face and the resources they have for managing those challenges are powerfully shaped by the embodied capital they possess and simultaneously held identities such as race, ethnicity, class, sex, and gender.

This work brings constitutional studies and social movement studies together in an empirical and theoretical analysis of the relationship between constitutional change and democratization. I ask how these fields can help us explain what can be done, what democrats can do, and what democrats should do to constitutionalize democracy and democratize constitutions. I present my findings from a crossnational analysis of constitutional change and democracy (1946-2012), showing that higher rates of amendment produce greater democratization. I draw lessons from U.S. history about how human rights and democratization can be secured through movements for constitutional reform. And I examine the current trajectories of democrats in the United States, looking back to the Seattle Uprising of 1999 and three contemporaneous “movement turns” – anarchist, democratic, and global – as well as more recent developments relevant to evaluating possibilities for constitutional democratization in the U.S.A.. Each of these studies contributes to an ongoing project exploring the dynamics of constitutional revolutions and the practice of revolutionary constitutionalism.

This dissertation examines the multi-level processes contributing to the organization and experience of sexual life at two four-year universities in the United States, the University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania. Informed by and responsive to macro-level theories of sexuality and the literature on collegiate hookup culture, this study adopts a unique angle of approach to the study of campus sexual life, applying sexual markets theory to illustrate how a university’s institutional history, structural and cultural features collectively contribute to the development of multiple, highly organized venues coordinating the student search for sexual partners.

Combining archival research on both institutions with in-depth qualitative interviews with fifty-four undergraduate women – twenty-seven at each school – I trace the genesis and experience of three types of campus sexual markets: party markets, student of color markets and queer student markets. I argue the genesis of each market type is rooted in the dual process of organized student action and institutional change. Sexual markets are both constructed by the collective actions of its members and constrained by the structural and cultural conditions of the university environment. This tension, I argue, informs how women experience the search for sexual partners on their respective campuses, and within different market types.

Rooted in the 18th century, when higher education was largely limited to the nation’s wealthy, White male elite, the party sexual market is the largest sexual market at each institution, sustained by its wealthy student populations and organized around sociality, drinking and sexual partnership. As sites primarily controlled by White men, women on both campuses describe the importance of hegemonic feminine beauty, and its association with Whiteness, for unfettered access to parties. The organizing principles of both student of color and queer student sexual markets at UCSB and Penn, while principally designed to provide safe, supportive spaces for these populations, nevertheless reflect the omnipotence of White heteronormativity as these student populations negotiate different market environments and make sexual decisions. These demographic and cultural facets of both Penn’s and UCSB’s campuses were of consequence for how women negotiated the campus writ large, as well as how they came to understand their relationship to student of color and/or queer student communities, respectively. This study’s examination of the sexual partnering strategies and approaches of women of color and queer women identifies the power of a racial and/or queer “authenticity work” for determining membership in minority student communities, with subsequent impacts on the search for sexual partners on each campus. The complex set of processes determining women’s engagement with particular sexual markets reveal how the sexual lives of undergraduate women are doubly informed by the institutional environments they occupy and by their multiple, intersecting identities.

Social movements can be understood through their use of collective action frames, construction of collective identities, and deployment of emotions. To operationalize this theory, abduction is a framework that is suited for multi-method investigations in order to respond to research questions that include elements of both quantitative and qualitative sensibilities. In this dissertation, I focus on the implications of sampling itself, bridging abduction and grounded theory to offer the notion of computationally assisted theoretical sampling, consisting of: (1) familiarization, (2) categorization, (3) comparison, and (4) refinement. Two discrete case studies using this framework were completed to demonstrate the utility of this approach. The first examines the ways in which a conservative countermovement formed a public identity against feminism centering Alt-Right leader, Milo Yiannopoulos. Within the balance of emotionally polarized content, negative claims of identity (i.e., hatred) consolidated the self-presentation of supporters. The second case study investigated how the 2017 Women’s Marches launched a platform of resistance under the Trump administration. As an initiator movement, the frames used to articulate the Women’s Marches emphasized recruitment, including (1) amplifying tensions in response to emergent threats, (2) sustaining action through an enduring opposition, and (3) launching activists into new types of action. The findings from this project can inform future research in the realm of social movements, social media studies, and methodology.

In November of 2008, as progressives celebrated the historic election of President Barack Obama, LGBT people and their allies watched in shock and disappointment as California voters passed Proposition 8, a Constitutional Amendment that revoked the rights of same-sex couples to marry. In the following days, people demonstrated their anger, shock, disappointment, and sadness at the Initiative’s passage by joining marches, candlelight vigils and rallies. Many activists engaged in a period of sustained mobilization, gathering to debate the reasons for the loss and future goals and strategy. As a result, activists developed new movement infrastructures, constructed new collective action frames about same-sex marriage, and innovated new strategies and tactics for disseminating those messages. In this dissertation, I examine this period of mass mobilization as a case of reactive mobilization, or mobilization precipitated by the loss of power and status (Tilly 1978). The study draws on qualitative data, including semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 47 key informants, participant observations, and an archive of documents about the movement to construct a history of the California marriage equality movement. I argue that the passage of Proposition 8 posed a serious threat to the legal and socio-cultural status of LGBT Californians and was a moral shock that compelled people to mobilize. The data suggests that a key feature of the post-8 reactive mobilization was that activists’ emotional responses sustained their activism beyond the immediate protests and influenced how they organized. As they expressed their shock, anger, and indignation at the California “yes” voters, activists also expressed their anger with a No on 8 campaign from which they felt excluded. Activists framed the loss as the result of the campaign’s structural composition and hierarchical leadership structure that excluded the perspectives of grassroots activists and, in particular, activists within rural communities and communities of color. As a result, many activists emphasized building organizations that utilized new tactics, and that organized in communities of color, rural communities, and communities with little existing marriage equality infrastructure. Moreover, activists were critical of the No on 8 campaign’s messaging which excluded images of and messages about same-sex couples and their families. Therefore, activists responded by emphasizing a right to love frame that drew on the shared cultural understandings of marriage as a universal legal and cultural rite and innovated tactics that required the conscious deployment of identity to communicate that frame to the public. These tactics included using digital technology to project images and stories about their families’ everyday lives, adapting existing tactics to teach one another to construct persuasive personal stories, and by utilizing traditional campaign tactics, such as canvassing neighborhoods, to educate voters through conversations that emphasized the voters’ experiences and perceptions of marriage and same-sex couples and families. This dissertation expands the literature on the marriage equality movement and contributes to the social movement literature more generally by examining the roles of threat and emotions for mobilization.

A large scale multi-campus movement against sexual violence emerged in the early 2010s across the United States as a result of changes in gender relations and cultural, social, and political shifts since the 1970s. Gendered and political opportunity structures helped launch this successful movement, but they developed distinctly at the local level. Local contextual factors in the immediate environment of activists constrained or facilitated the broader opportunity structures that enabled this movement. My research examines these factors through the student movement against sexual violence on two University of California (UC) campuses, Berkeley and Santa Barbara, and provides an in-depth analysis of the activists campaigns that developed on each campus and the local factors that influenced them. UC Berkeley and UC Santa Barbara have the highest reported rates of sexual violence in the UC system, strong anti-sexual violence activist campaigns within the last five years, and a long history of student activism, but they have differed widely in terms of tactics and how sexual violence is framed. I address the following research questions: why and how did students mobilize a movement against sexual violence on UC campuses in the 2010s?; what factors influenced the students’ tactical repertoire and demands?; and what conditions prevented or facilitated the growth of activism against sexual violence on these campuses?

Utilizing qualitative methods, including participant observation, semi-structured in-depth interviews, and archival research, I examine the local and institutional factors that affected various aspects of the campus movement including timing, tactical repertoire, and trajectory. For UC Berkeley, the involvement of student organizations, the school’s prestige, and ties to a larger network comprised of survivor activists from colleges and universities across the country were critical in the development of the movement there. At UC Santa Barbara, the school’s party culture and violent local events mobilized students, but they also diverted attention from issues of sexual violence to broader issues of safety. This had a deterring effect on the movement. The tactics used by students varied and were influenced by when in the cycle of protest the movements developed, the mass media, institutional factors, and the racial and class background of activists. UC Berkeley activist leaders came from more privileged backgrounds and their connections to activists from other schools affected their use of more conventional tactics including Title IX complaints and lawsuits. UC Santa Barbara student leaders were mostly working-class women of color who did not have the resources and social and cultural capital to pursue some of the conventional tactics UC Berkeley students used. Instead, they relied on nonviolent direct action to push the university to address sexual violence.

Although there were key differences across both campuses, emotional labor was key to the emergence of the movement on both campuses. The examination of activist campaigns and efforts showed the invisible emotional labor student activists engaged in and the consequences it had for the movement. Survivor activists disclosed their experiences of sexual assault and mistreatment by their universities through different tactics, but they had the similar effect of evoking collective trauma resonance, or the empathy and emotional connection shared among people who have gone through similar traumatic experiences, among other students. The emotional unpaid labor or managing their emotions while helping survivors of sexual violence took a toll on the activists themselves and the movement.

This research is an investigation into how queer students at the University of California, Santa Barbara constructed and reinforced solidarity among variously identified members of the queer community. More specifically, this research examines the significance of inclusion as a core ideological component of queer group and social identities on this campus and the racialized frames through which students conceived of inclusive queer politics. I incorporate social movement theories of collective identity, social psychological structural identity theories, and critical race theories to examine how students whose multiple sexual, racial, and gender identities were submerged within the broad category of the "queer community" engaged in identity verification among their peers. Through interviews with 53 queer students and over 100 hours of participant observation at community events, I examined the identity-based processes that students used to define and enact queerness at the individual and group levels, and found that white normative standards pervaded queer ideologies and practices in this site. Commitment to inclusion was a central component of queer identity among students but the methods of inclusion valued and promoted in this community often resulted in the re-marginalization of queer of color students for whom a queer person of color (QPOC) identity marked them as a distinct subset of the queer student population. This research contributes to our understanding of identity processes and conflict within diverse social movements through incorporation of social movement, structural identity, and critical race theories to understand the complex identity-based investments of individuals who are members of diverse social justice communities. With special attention to students' articulations of diversity, inclusion, and solidarity this research also provides an empirical study of how identity management processes can reinforce structural inequalities and how those processes reproduce white-hegemonic norms that impact people through their everyday interactions.