hi <3

i’m a linguist researching queer and trans language. i’m a graduate student at uc santa barbara, where i’m a member of the trans research in linguistics lab (trill) under dr. lal zimman, and the computational psycholinguistics of listening and speaking (cpls) lab under dr. simon todd. i’m also a drag queen based in santa barbara, which is becoming increasingly less and less separate from my life as a researcher.

my research program broadly examines how queer and especially trans people are represented in and through language, with the goal of using queer and trans frameworks to improve our understanding of langauge and social meaning in general. my dissertation research examines how and why linguists statistically analyze gender in the way they do, and aims to develop novel empirically-grounded, trans-affirming methods. my M.A. research looked at the english second-person pronouns you guys and y’all. i also study perceptions of gender, sexuality, and the voice, and sometimes i write about popular media (especially reality tv).

you can read more about my research and teaching below.

if you want to connect with me you can always shoot me an email

thanks for visiting my little page 👾💕

research

below are little blurbs and citations for my current/ongoing research projects! i’ve linked materials that are already publicly available online, but i am also (usually) happy to share slides if you send me an email. all of these projects are still developing, so i hope to have more to share as time goes on!

quantifying sex and gender in linguistics

My in-progress dissertation work aims to address three core questions:

How and why do linguists operationalize sex and gender for research purposes?
How and why do typical methods misrepresent and misgender trans people?
How can we do better on both ethical and empirical grounds?

This project grew out of a long collaboration with Lal Zimman, Montreal Benesch, and Marina Zhukova. Along the way we’ve put out work that I’m really excited about, as well as projects that will be coming out soon. Stay tuned to see it all come together!

Forthcoming	Participant-driven methods for operationalizing gender: Emic, ethical, and empirical approaches Lal Zimman, Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch, and Marina Zhukova	Language in Society
Forthcoming	Representing gender identification in a trans corpus: Umbrella terms, comprehensive categories, and trans self-definition	Penn Working Papers in Linguistics Selected papers from NWAV 53
2024	Current norms and best practices for collecting and representing sex/gender in linguistics: Towards ethical and inclusive methodologies Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch, Marina Zhukova, and Lal Zimman [doi.org/10.3765/plsa.v9i1.5668]	Proceedings of the Linguistic Society of America (PLSA)
January 2024	The gender question: Current best practices for asking about sex/gender in linguistic research Organized session Cooper Bedin, Montreal Benesch, Kirby Conrod, Marina Zhukova, and Lal Zimman [bit.ly/LSA2024GenderQuestionMaterials]	2024 Linguistic Society of American (LSA) Annual Meeting Sheraton New York Times Square

you guys and y’all

my m.a. thesis work looks at attitudes towards the english second-person plural constructions you guys and y’all, and how these attitudes are impacted by ideologies about race, place, and gender. i’m especially interested in how metalinguistic discourse and sociopolitical ideologies shape language, and i think you guys and y’all are a great lens into these phenomena because they implicate many politicized issues around language, identity, and power (e.g. gender-inclusive language, lingusitic appropriation, and linguistic stigma). in addition to the thesis, i’ve written a more informal piece about this work for the linguistic society of america (lsa)’s committee on lgbtq+[z] issues (cozil) 2024 pride month blog series.

March 2025	"A tale of two pronouns": Race, place, gender, and the indexical tangle of you guys and y'all Committee chair: Lal Zimman, Ph.D. Committee members: Mary Bucholtz, Ph.D.; Simon Todd, Ph.D. [proquest.com/docview/3198955787]	Department of Linguistics UC Santa Barbara
2024	You guys, y'all, and queer and trans language [lsadc.org/af_membercommittee.asp?committeeid=14&sp=40]	Committee on LGBTQ+[Z] Issues in Linguistics (COZIL) Linguistic Society of America (LSA)

perceptual sociophonetics

for my b.a. honors thesis, i ran an experiment looking at what acoustic properties of a person’s voice can contribute to making a person “sound gay.” while there has been extensive research in this area already, results across different studies are often inconsistent and difficult to replicate, suggesting that this phenomenon is highly variable and complex. to that end, more recently i’ve been interested in applying cognitive and computational models to this phenomenon, with the hopes that cognitively-informed models will offer more explanatory power. i’m especially interested in the role that variation in listener perception might play in this phenomenon.

i presented a poster and wrote a proceedings paper for the international congress of phonetic sciences (icphs), applying exemplar theory and modeling to this phenomenon. additionally, i have presented another analysis at the variation and language processing (valp) conference where i used heirarchical clustering to look at listener variation.

i also presented on this work as part of ucsb’s grad slam, which is a competition in which graduate students create three-minute public-facing presentations about their research. my talk was the runner-up in the humanities and fine arts division, and is available to watch online! (password: GradSlam2024)

June 2024	Variation and perception of queer speech: A hierarchical clustering approach	Variation and Language Processing (VALP) 6 Universidade de Vigo
March 2024	Runner-up - Grad Slam, Humanities & Fine Arts Division Presentation title: "Perception and Queer Speech: Beyond the 'Gay Accent'" [vimeo.com/924279645] (password: GradSlam2024)	Graduate Division UC Santa Barbara
2023	Towards a model of the listener in perception of queer speech [internationalphoneticassociation.org/icphs-proceedings/ICPhS2023/full_papers/399.pdf]	Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS)

teaching

at uc santa barbara

at ucsb i have taught across a range of areas including phonetics, sociocultural linguistics, computational linguistics, syntax, and communication sciences and disorders. i have taught as an instructor of record for two classes: linguistics 180: language, race and ethnicity and linguistics 127: psychology of language. my approach to teaching is grounded in principles of equity and accessibility that i developed while teaching at uc berkeley, prior to coming to ucsb.

at uc berkeley

cs 61a

as an undergraduate student i taught extensively in uc berkeley’s computer science department, mainly focused on the course computer science 61a: the structure and interpretation of computer programs. cs 61a is the first prerequisite course for students interested in the major, so it’s nominally an introductory course, although the speed and intensity of the material makes it inordinately challenging for students who do not already have experience programming. i got involved with teaching because of what an obstacle the course was - especially for students of marginalized backgrounds, disabled students, and students with extenuating life circustances. my hope was to contribute (at least in a small way) to making the course more accessible. notably, cs 61a is one of the (if not the) largest in-person courses in the united states, enrolling approximately 2000 students in fall semesters, 1500 in spring semesters, and 300–700 in summer sessions. this means that working for the course not only involved teaching, but also working with the (custom) software infrastucture used to manage a course of this scale.

i taught cs 61a 9 semesters, including summers: 1 as an academic intern (unpaid), 2 as a course tutor, 3 as a teaching assistant, 2 as a head teaching assistant, and 1 as an instructor. my proudest contribution to the course was developing accessibility infrastructure for the course - especially regarding assignment extensions, for which there was no infrastructure before. i also taught special sections for students enrolled in berkeley’s cs scholars program, which is a program aimed at helping first-generation college students pursue computer science degrees. i lastly contributed in smaller ways to the course’s content generation and grading software.

i received extremely positive feedback that my contributions to the course made it more accessible for students who otherwise would have had difficulty managing the workload, and i received an outstanting graduate student instructor award in my last year. i still feel that the course had a long way to go at the time i graduated.

computer science mentors

in addition to my involvement as a teaching assistant, i was also a part of computer science mentors (csm), a student-run teaching organization offering small-group tutoring to students enrolled in lower-divison computer science classes. csm is one of the (if not the) largest such organizations in the united states, involving approximately 300 mentors and 1500 students each semester. csm is able to work at such scale because of its organizational structure, where senior mentors lead “families” of junior mentors to help them develop teaching skills. csm would consistently receive feedback from the department that we made up a crucial part of its teaching infrastucture by supporting students who did not have prior programming experience and training mentors who would then become undergraduate teaching assistants.

i was involved with csm for 6 semesters, over which i taught 5 small-group sections for 2 classes: computer science 61a and electrical engineering 16a (berkeley’s introductory electrical engineering course). in fall 2021 i taught csm’s first lgbtq+ affinity section, intended for students for whom there were otherwise not any designated spaces in the department. this was an expansion of csm’s existing affinity sections for women, and csm now offers many such affinity sections to students of all kinds of identities.

i was also involved in csm’s executive board as socials chair, external vice president, and president over various semesters.

drag

i perform around california’s central coast as jaundice joplin (she/her). the best information about my life as jaundice is on my [instagram](](https://www.instagram.com/missjaundicej/). i help run a drag club at ucsb as well as a local drag show in downtown santa barbara that has been featured in the local news! this past summer i was crowned santa barbara’s current reigning royalty of pride, a title that i have the honor of holding until july 2027.

August 2026	Meta censors accounts of Santa Barbara drag queens, ICE Observers: BARBARA’s Instagram account deactivated, SBResiste’s ability to live stream revoked after unspecified violations By Christina McDermott [independent.com/2026/08/12/meta-censors-accounts-of-santa-barbara-drag-queens-ice-observers/]	Santa Barbara Independent Santa Barbara, CA
June 2026	Behind the scenes with the queens of BARBARA: Santa Barbara drag queens talk supporting queer arts and hosting their own local show By Maya Johnson [independent.com/multimedia/behind-the-scenes-with-the-queens-of-barbara/]	Santa Barbara Independent Santa Barbara, CA
June 2026	Celebrating the queens and kings of Santa Barbara: From wildcat to EOS to trivia nights, here’s the tea on the drag scene By Christina McDermott [independent.com/2026/06/03/celebrating-the-queens-and-kings-of-santa-barbara/]	Santa Barbara Independent Santa Barbara, CA
November 2025	The queens of BARBARA: Monthly drag show at EOS lounge is a silly, sexy good time By Christina McDermott [independent.com/2025/11/11/the-queens-of-barbara/]	Santa Barbara Independent Santa Barbara, CA