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M. Hadassah Ward (they/she) is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Communication at the 91���Ҹ� 91���Ҹ�. Their dissertation project, “TRANScending Family,” explores how transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) people manage tensions between gender identity and religious morality with talk. By holding a series of focus groups designed to feel like queer brunch events, this study aims to prompt open, free-flowing discussion among TGNC people who grew up in similarly religious families. The analysis of these audio-recorded interactions will aim to understand how interlocutors use membership categorization talk practices to build identities, draw on various discursive resources, and make sense of a wide range of gendered, religious, and familial experiences and dilemmas.��

Further, this project highlights how family, religion, and trans identities are intertwined for many TGNC people and how various discursive strategies provide a tool for reconciling, sensemaking, and reconceptualizing oneself within an in-community talk space. Findings will contribute to gaps in language & social interaction (LSI), family communication, religious studies, trans linguistics, queer theory, and trans studies scholarship. This project will also discuss how LSI approaches can uniquely answer interdisciplinary scholars’ calls to attend to the double bound (Anzaldúa,1991) nature of identity categories. Ultimately, this project centers trans talk exploration by TGNC researchers by hosting an in-community space to collaboratively discuss the reality of experiencing the intersection between religion, family, and transness.