Doctoral Candidate in History and Women and Gender Studies
She/her/hers
About
Alex Burnett (she/hers) is a Ph.D. student in the joint History and Women’s & Gender Studies program, a 2021-2022 Fellow in the Program in Race, Law, and History, and a 2022-2023 Graduate Student Research Fellow with the Eisenberg Institute for Historical Studies. She is a social and political historian of the twentieth century United States, who studies transgender history, carceral studies, the history of sexuality, urban history, and the history of racial capitalism. Her award-winning undergraduate thesis, “Fighting Homophobia During The War on Crime: The Rise of Pro-Gay, Pro-Police Liberalism in Los Angeles,” examined battles over policing and gentrification within 1970’s LGBTQ social movements. Alex’s writing has appeared in The F Word: Contemporary UK Feminism and the Journal of the History of Sexuality. Outside of the classroom, she is a steward with the Graduate Employees’ Organization (GEO), a board member of the Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender History (CLGBTH), and a graduate researcher with the Carceral State Project.
Her dissertation will examine how racialized and gendered regimes of policing, labor exploitation, and property ownership shaped the governance of gender transgression and the rise of trans politics in twentieth century U.S. cities.
