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Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of liberalism within the United States. More specifically, it looks at the ways in which liberalism is kept within academia and the ways it acts to construct and neutralize whiteness. Taking cues from Aisha M. Beliso-De Jesús in her essay Confounded Identities: A Meditation on Race, Feminism, and Religious Studies in Times of White Supremacy, this paper uses a religious studies methodology to deconstruct the structures and effects of liberalism. By framing liberalism as a religion and analysing it through this lens, Gaughran-Bedell seeks to deconstruct the secular bias that often applies to liberalism. If we look at liberalism as a practice learned within specific communities, rather than a moral stance that is accessible to all, we can deconstruct the ways in which this liberalism is learned, how it is constructed as universal truth, and the effects of this construction.

Author Biography

Adelaide Gaughran-Bedell (she/her/hers) is originally from Brooklyn, NY, although she is currently living in St. Paul, MN. She is a graduating senior at Macalester college: an American studies major with a minor in English. She has either too few or too many plans for the future (it seems to vary day by day). Today, she is hoping only to end up somewhere a bit warmer than here.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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