NCA Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award
For the Dissertation, “Modular Whiteness: A rhetorical analysis of racial anxiety and the imageboard vernacular of 4chan’s /pol/” completed at the University of Pittsburgh.
Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, Dr. E Chebrolu’s dissertation, "Modular Whiteness," offers a sophisticated and provocative account of the emergence of white nationalist rhetoric on the imageboard 4chan. The dissertation brilliantly illustrates how digital posting habits on the far-right platform managed white racial anxiety and stoked fantastical enjoyment of racial crises. Fearlessly descending into the digital mirror world, this project sheds light on how the seething undercurrents of white nationalist fantasies register with broader political anxieties of white racial replacement, making Dr. Chebrolu especially deserving of this year’s Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award.