This thesis project centers on the use of pedagogy and education as forms of social protest during the Chicana/o Movement. Following Chicana/o Movement historiography, this project seeks to explore and explain the events behind the establishment and demise of Juárez-Lincoln University in Austin, Texas. Using this institution as the primary focus, the history of the Chicana/o Movement will be examined using the lens of liberation pedagogy to explore how and why an institution such as Juárez-Lincoln University is missing from the larger historical narrative. Placing Juárez- Lincoln University into the context of the Chicana/o Movement will then provide a space for examining the use of education and radical pedagogies as a form of social protest equal to the more visible and studied La Raza Unida Party. This study will serve an introduction to the complex history of education as activism during the Chicana/o Movement. / text

Supervisors: Luis Urrieta and Noah De Lissovoy This qualitative and sociohistorical study examines the lives and experiences of Chicana/o educators in Texas and the ideological and political discourses of equity and social justice that they draw from to shape their practice in three educational sites: the Llano Grande Center (LGC), Red Salmon Arts/Resistencia Bookstore (RSA), and the Advanced Seminar in Chicana/o Research (ASCR). I document their work based on the oral narratives of fifteen educators, site document analysis, and ethnographic work I conducted as observant participant associated with these organizations. This project extends recent scholarship that links critical pedagogy, social and cultural theories of identity formation and new social movement scholarship to understand the multiple cultural, social and political dimensions of activist education. My principal findings indicate new senses of individual and collective identity practice, reframed critical and culturally relevant pedagogies, and a reconceptualization of indigenous discourse and practice. These findings have important implications for activists, educators and researchers by rearticulating scholar activist work in new more emancipatory ways that considers place-based models of critical and cultural relevant teaching and learning and more radically democratic research practices. / text