A Discursive Examination of Gendered Whiteness: White womanhood, white supremacy and the colonial site of the university

This thesis examines the role of ruling class white womanhood at historically white universities in the South. I analyze how this identity is instrumental in maintaining political, economic, and social structures of patriarchal white supremacy at the institution. To interrogate this subject, I ask: how does owning class white womanhood serve patriarchal white supremacist state institutional power at historically white universities in the South? I ground this question’s importance in historical geographies of white women spreading white supremacist violence through the realm of education. I look at histories of imperial settler colonial white women schoolteachers, the United Daughter of the Confederacy’s (UDC) campaigns in schools, pro-segregationist white woman who fought to keep schools segregated, the weaponization of white womanhood’s “sanctity” in the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, and a short history of the university’s foundation and reliance on white supremacy for its sustenance and continued existence. I focus my research on ex-chancellor Carol Folt who served as a university leader from 2013-2019 as a case study. I do a discursive analysis of chancellor Carol Folt’s messages and speeches to the public found in archival data. Analysis of Folt’s language demonstrates persisting key characteristics of white womanhood’s violence throughout history in education. Two key ways in which such violence is enacted is through: (1) saviorisim in university diversity initiatives without changing structurally racist conditions of the institution, and (2) manipulation of loving and caring language centered around safety that evades responsibility to making anti-racist structural change. This analysis offers insight into the violent and oppressive ways white women continue to enact and uphold structural and interpersonal white supremacy through the realm of education.Bachelor of Art