A punk rock singer and `zine publisher as a teenager, Kristen Schilt turned her first-hand experience as a Riot Grrrl into an academic agenda during her undergraduate and master's degree studies at the University of Texas (UT). Much of that work has been published since she arrived at UCLA for doctoral studies in the Sociology Department's gender program, but her research has taken a new turn. Her dissertation will look at how men and women who are transitioning to the other gender cope with related workplace issues.

Doing an internship at the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) to learn ethnographic methodology, Kristen found that a transsexual on the staff was mentioned frequently during her interviews. Some talked about problems changing pronouns from he/his to she/her, while others found they could "no longer think of that person as a woman." More and more people are transitioning from gender to gender openly these days, Kristen says: "It really challenges how people understand gender."

Using contacts with various transsexual organizations in Los Angeles, Kristen hopes to explore the experiences of both transsexuals and their colleagues in different kinds of workplaces, including gender-segregated environments. "I like this project because I think it has a lot of policy implications," says Kristen, who hopes her findings might help transsexuals make the transition more comfortably and effectively.

Ruth Milkman, Kristen's adviser, says her project is "a pathbreaking one, exploring a line of inquiry that no one else has yet excavated systematically. Her dissertation will not only illuminate the dynamics of transsexuals' 'crossing' in the workplace, but also deepen our theoretical understanding of gender relations more broadly."

As she begins her dissertation research, Kristen has completed the qualifying exams in both ethnography and gender, a task that "at the time seemed insurmountable." The exams consisted of three 15-page essays that had to be written in five days. The topics were drawn from a core list of required readings in addition to books in her selected subareas of adolescence and female friendships. Kristen proposed some essay topics and got them back—revised—from faculty: the missing feminist revolution in sociology, the pros and cons of single-sex schools, and the distinguishing qualities of women's friendships.

The latter subject drew on research for her senior honors thesis, comparing relationships among Riot Grrrls with the romantic friendships of women in Victorian England. Riot Grrrls was the name the media gave to a very loose organization of young women and girls which developed out of the punk music scene into a nationwide 'zine and music movement with a feminist philosophy.

The most obvious similarity between the two kinds of women's relationships, separated by a century of sweeping social and cultural changes, was their base in correspondence, Kristen says. While the Riot Grrrls sent highly personal and political homemade 'zines to each other, the Victorian women shared their diaries. In both instances, Kristen found that women experienced "very close relationships where they offered each other a lot of support" with friends they rarely or never met face to face. Also, "both groups felt isolated in their daily lives," Kristen says, the Victorian women often taken far from their childhood homes for arranged marriages, the Riot Grrrls, some just 12 or 13, often "contained in their homes without a lot of options."

A year after graduating from UT, Kristen was "more a punk rocker than a graduate student" when a professor and mentor, Christine Williams, encouraged her to resume her studies. Professor Williams not only "believed in me," Kristen says, she also was intrigued by the academic possibilities of the Riot Grrrls. For her master's thesis, Kristen tracked down and interviewed 7 of the 12 women who formed the original core of the Riot Grrrls about the 10 years after the movement began. Some of the women were still making feminist music, films, or 'zines; girls who had been in high school when they became Riot Grrrls had studied feminist politics and women's studies. All told, there was "a high level of involvement in political action," Kristen says.

With master's degree in hand, Kristen decided it was time to leave Austin. One motivation was to find out what being a graduate student was really like. At UT, she "was kind of the baby" when she began her graduate studies. She already knew her fellow graduate students—they had been teaching assistants in her undergraduate classes—and she arrived with a mentor in place. Kristen wanted "to see what it was like to start from scratch," and graduate students at UCLA had good things to say about the program here.

Kristen hasn't been disappointed. The ethnography program is very strong, and the student working group on gender brings to campus professors whose work she admires. "They give a lecture, we have dinner with them, they meet with graduate students—it's an amazing experience," she says. While absorbed in coursework, she's reviewed and revised papers from her UT days, which are only now being published. "I've become a much better editor," she says. "I've learned how to be critical of my own work."

Although she still sings occasionally with an Austin-based band, Kristen hopes to find an academic job that will combine her love of teaching with ongoing research. And real-world impact, she adds: "I don't want my research to just be in a book that sits on a shelf."

Published in Fall 2002, Graduate Quarterly