ACPA-College Student Educators International Announces Marylu McEwen Dissertation of the Year Award Recipient – Dr. Z. Nicolazzo

We are excited to announce this year’s recipient and extend our congratulations to Dr. Nicolazzo! Dr. Nicolazzo’s dissertation is titled, "Just Go In Looking Good": The Resilience, Resistance, And Kinship-Building Of Trans* College Students”. Hir dissertation was completed at Miami University-Ohio, under the direction of Dr. Elisa Abes.  Hir dissertation abstract provides a brief overview of the research. 

Despite the growing emergence of literature and scholarship on trans* people, the lives of trans* college students have received little attention. Moreover, of the small amount of scholarship on trans* collegians, much of it is based in deficit models and rhetoric and is drawn from broader LGBTQ participant pools. Dr. Nicolazzo’s study addressed the aforementioned issues by inquiring into the resilience and strategies trans* students used to successfully navigate their gender-dichotomous college environments.

Informed by critical and trans*-specific theoretical perspectives, ze used a collaborative ethnographic methodology and a poststructural analytical framework to proliferate possible understandings for how trans* collegians remained resilient and successful in an environment that was not built with them in mind. Ze conducted 18 months of fieldwork with a diverse group of nine trans* participants and  explored the way gender operated at City University (CU, a pseudonym). Due to the cultural manifestations of gender at CU, participants were influenced by the twin realities of what Dr. Nicolazzo refers to as the "gender binary discourse" and "compulsory heterogenderism" at CU.  Ze also explored with participants how they created, developed, and maintained connections with students, faculty, and staff of all genders, using these networks, which were termed "kinship networks," to enhance their resilience and success.

Hir dissertation study has implications for how educators understand and work in collegiate environments steeped in binary understandings of gender and highlighted the importance of developing kinship networks that supersede the physical boundaries of a college campus. The dissertation concludes with participants giving their own recommendations for faculty, staff, and students.

Dr. Nicolazzo says, “I am deeply honored and humbled to receive this award.  More than anything, I am happy for the participants with whom I did this work.  Their voices, resilience, and beauty continue to be life-affirming for me.  I am thrilled that this award will bring more people into contact with these participants, as what they share truly has the ability to alter the way we think about gender on college campuses in profoundly liberatory ways.”

Dr. Nicolazzo is currently serving as Assistant Professor, Adult & Higher Education and Faculty Associate, Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Northern Illinois University. A brief ACPA Video on Demand overview of Dr. Nicolazzo’s work will be available before the end of the year, and ze will present an educational session at the ACPA Annual Convention in Montreal.

Eligible dissertations must have met all requirements of the applicant's institution and have been signed off by the applicant's dissertation committee between April 1, 2014 and July 1, 2015.  The deadline for submissions for the 2016 Convention was July 15, 2015.  Additional information on the selection process can be found here.  Please direct questions to Dr. Diane Cooper at dlcooper@uga.edu.