Narratives of Exclusion: Gender, Sex, Islamophobia, and Violence in American Political Discourse

<p>This dissertation interrogates the pervasive deployment of Islamophobic rhetoric within U.S. political, cultural, and media discourses, especially when those discourses concern issues related to gender, sex, and sexuality. I ask why anxieties around gender, sex, and sexuality are negotiated through denigrations of Islam. I argue that the use of Islamophobic rhetoric in such discourses intersects with and buttresses other systems of power and oppression such as misogyny, homophobia, racism, and xenophobia. I examine case studies such as the use of the analogy “the gay jihad” by conservative political actors attempting to pathologize gay rights activism, invocations of “the Taliban” and “Sharia” by liberal critics of reproductive restrictions, and media attempts to Islamicize instances of mass casualty violence. In each of these case studies, Islam functions as a stable signifier of violence, repression, and extremism employed to define and regulate discursive boundaries around morality, modernity, and national belonging. My analysis of each of my three case studies reveals that culture wars around religious liberty, reproductive control, immigration, and gun violence serve as extensions of imperialism and white Christian nationalism. At the end of this work, I propose a framework for ameliorating such discursive violence. I advocate an epistemological restructuring that centers intersectionality and relationality and refuses the reinscription of religious and cultural difference.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Cultural Studies, PhD

Level thesis:degree_level

Restricted to Claremont Colleges Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

School of Arts and Humanities

Year dc:date.available

2025

Author dc:creator

• Boles, Kirsten Erin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Ruqayya Khan
• Eve Oishi

• Christian nationalism
• Mass casualty violence
• Islamophobic rhetoric
• Liberal critics
• Immigration
• Religion

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/1040

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarship.claremont.edu:cgu_etd-2062