The British Journal of Sociology
Aging in Nationhood
Everyday Nationalism and Belonging among Seniors in Old-Age Homes in Québec
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Peer-Reviewed Articles
Gender & Society
‘I Would Have Given Them a Piece of My Mind’
Spatialized Feelings and Emotion Work Among Racialized Muslim Women in Québec
Winner of the 2025 Sally Hacker Graduate Student Paper Award Honorable Mention, Sex & Gender Section, American Sociological Association
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Ethnic and Racial Studies
Challenging the Legitimacy of Exclusion
Muslim Women and Social Boundaries in Different Headscarf Policy Contexts
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In-progress
Divorcing the Catholic Church: Catholicism, Secularism, and White Feminism Across the Life Course among Senior Women in Québec
Senior women’s life course experiences provide a unique vantage point to study the history of secular politics in Québec. Based on 15 life history interviews with Francophone and Catholic senior women and 5 interviews with their kin, I argue that the secularization of Québec society in the 1960s—shaped by the second-wave feminist movement—created new forms of agency for white Catholic women as they aged. While they grew up under strong Catholic influence, with pressure to marry young and have children, secularization in mid-life offered greater freedom through access to divorce, contraception, and sexual autonomy. In late life, these women began using laïcité—an exclusionary brand of Québec secularism—as a tool to enforce the cultural assimilation of racialized minorities (whose presence became more pronounced with declining birth rates and increased immigration). By developing a typology of secularism, I show how senior women move from cultural and symbolic bearers of the nation to active protectors of it. They draw on nativist, prejudice, liberal feminist, and neutral conceptions of laïcité, with varying racialized and settler logics employed, to police racialized religious minorities’ belonging to Québec nationhood. In doing so, Québec secularism—once progressive—takes on the contours of a racial project rooted in white feminism, which aging white Catholic women benefit from.
In Preparation
Non-peer reviewed articles
Sociology of Race and Ethnicity
Book Review:
Conditional Belonging: The Racialization of Iranians in the Wake of Anti-Muslim Politics
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