An under representation of Latino/as in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) still persists. In Rising Above the Gathering Storm , the National Academies sounded an alarm in response to data indicating a "troubling decline" in the number of U.S. citizens trained to become scientists and engineers at a time when the number of technical jobs is outpacing the rate of the U.S. workforce. The shrinking technical talent pipeline threatens the country's future in technology innovation, energy alternatives, national security, and education. This study purported to contextualize resilience and discern the cultural capital and persistence behaviors of STEM Latino/a students succeeding in two adverse environments--higher education and science and engineering. Through a critical race perspective the student cuentos were thematically analyzed. Student narratives were then triangulated with the narrative of the researcher--a Mexican American, first-generation college student, who pursued a life science bachelor's degree through the two institutions in this study. The theoretical framework was guided by Critical Race Theory, Resiliency, Persistence Theory, and Social Construction of Technology. The study consisted of a pilot survey and narrative inquiry. The survey contained pilot questions on the use and perception of information technologies in STEM education. The narrative inquiry was guided by critical race that enabled both positionality and storytelling through narratives and counter-narratives. Twenty-two Latino/a graduating seniors majoring in the biological sciences or engineering/engineering technology at a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and a Predominantly-White Institution (PWI) in Texas were recruited. The narratives of these students were collected through one-time, semi-structured interviews during the last semester of their studies. Results from the study indicate that these Latino/a STEM students are conscious of their ethnicity; however, they are not critically conscious of the master narrative of what it means to be a Latino/a in a STEM discipline. These students have bought into the master narrative of colorblind science and engineering. The students understood that to succeed in STEM, they had to survive based on their proficiency with institutional norms, practices and cultures and then maintain a sense of self through a respect for their Latino culture.

Nationally, the outlook for African Americans in K-12 education is dismal. While gains are being made, African Americans still lag behind their White peers. The latest reports by the National Center for Education Statistics (2009) show a 31 point gap between 8th grade African Americans and Whites in mathematics. While statistics such as these are in abundance, there are few accounts of stories of success (Berry, 2005; Jett, 2009; Stinson, 2004). Studies directly related to the role of socio-emotional interpersonal relationships and the means by which African American high school students negotiated that space in terms of successful math performance were significantly limited. The purpose of this study was to explore the nature of socio-emotional factors in peer relationships between school friends and discover the ways in which students negotiated academic success through these relationships. The following research questions guided the study: How do academically successful African American high school students negotiate academic success in mathematics classrooms using peer relationships? What are the socio-emotional factors contributing to the academic success of these students in mathematics? How do students perceive the nature of socio-emotional relationships with peers that contribute to their academic success in mathematics? Using the lens of Critical Race Theory (CRT), this ethnographic study explored how African-American high school students constructed and appropriated socio-emotional relationships to support their academic success. Through the use of purposive sampling, four African-American high school students were observed in an AP Calculus AB course and interviewed over a seven month period at a high school in a southeastern state. The data collected were crystallized using researcher memos and the collection of artifacts. Data was analyzed using five coding techniques: structural, in vivo, subcoding, eclectic, and axial. The study found seven themes related to socio-emotional factors and perceptions about how the characters negotiated academic success in mathematics classes using peer relationships: 1) selective narrowing of social interaction, 2) interpersonal relationships affect academic identity and behaviors, 3) interpersonal engagement, 4) pursuit of emotionally gratifying interactions, 5) satisfaction of emotional needs through social networks, 6) effect of collaborative learning, and 7) illusion of control.

This dissertation brings together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives born of the fields of disability studies, critical race theory, cultural studies and queer and feminist studies to analyze the social significance and productive effects of cultural representations of autism. Specifically, this work addresses contemporary enactments of autism advocacy as found in the mass media, education literature and policy as well as in fundraising campaigns. In response to a global/izing economy that privileges the fast, efficient exchange of information and knowledge, I attend to how autism appears in the field of autism advocacy as an abbreviation; its multiple meaning distilled down to a series of ‘red flags’ in awareness campaigns, bulleted ‘facts’ in information pamphlets, statistics in policy reports. I analyze the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and trace their continuities so as to make legible an underlying logic: a powerful and ubiquitous logic that casts autism as a pathological threat to normative life, and advocacy as that which must eliminate this threat, thus, limiting the role of the ‘good’ autism advocate to one positioned ‘against’ autism. This dissertation shows how dominant, contemporary discourses of autism advocacy that narrate autism as some ‘thing’ to be ‘fought’, ‘combated’, or ‘warred against’ function to shape ‘life’ as conditional and cast autism as (one of) its condition(s). As autism is discursively and ideologically made separate from the vital category of life itself, and as bodies and minds of living people are relentlessly divided up into vital and non-vital parts, individual and collective life ‘with’ (the condition of) autism becomes life that is conceptualized as ‘almost living’ or ‘mostly dead’. I demonstrate how such an understanding of the conditionality of life is a necessary pre-condition for normative acts of violence – violence enacted in the name of securing the norm and violence that is normalized as necessary.

This dissertation brings together a variety of interpretive theoretical perspectives born of the fields of disability studies, critical race theory, cultural studies and queer and feminist studies to analyze the social significance and productive effects of cultural representations of autism. Specifically, this work addresses contemporary enactments of autism advocacy as found in the mass media, education literature and policy as well as in fundraising campaigns. In response to a global/izing economy that privileges the fast, efficient exchange of information and knowledge, I attend to how autism appears in the field of autism advocacy as an abbreviation; its multiple meaning distilled down to a series of ‘red flags’ in awareness campaigns, bulleted ‘facts’ in information pamphlets, statistics in policy reports. I analyze the relationships between these fragmentary enactments of autism and trace their continuities so as to make legible an underlying logic: a powerful and ubiquitous logic that casts autism as a pathological threat to normative life, and advocacy as that which must eliminate this threat, thus, limiting the role of the ‘good’ autism advocate to one positioned ‘against’ autism. This dissertation shows how dominant, contemporary discourses of autism advocacy that narrate autism as some ‘thing’ to be ‘fought’, ‘combated’, or ‘warred against’ function to shape ‘life’ as conditional and cast autism as (one of) its condition(s). As autism is discursively and ideologically made separate from the vital category of life itself, and as bodies and minds of living people are relentlessly divided up into vital and non-vital parts, individual and collective life ‘with’ (the condition of) autism becomes life that is conceptualized as ‘almost living’ or ‘mostly dead’. I demonstrate how such an understanding of the conditionality of life is a necessary pre-condition for normative acts of violence – violence enacted in the name of securing the norm and violence that is normalized as necessary.

On July 19, 2010, conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart posted a story on his website claiming USDA worker Shirley Sherrod was racist in her work with farmers. The edited video included with the story as proof, showed Sherrod speaking at an NAACP banquet. Sherrod was subsequently vilified in the media and fired from her job, only to be exonerated and rehired later that week. Although the media claims their routine writing and reporting practices (such as newsworthiness, source selection, objectivity, and perpetual news cycle) make the industry better, researchers have shown that these practices lead to the use of shortcuts and stereotypes. This is especially detrimental to Black women because of the double-dose of stereotyping they are subject to when they are portrayed in the media. The purpose of this study was to understand how media practices influenced the framing of race and gender in the media coverage of Sherrod. In order to integrate key elements of critical theory (i.e. activism, intersectionality, speaking position, subjectivity) I chose a mixed-methods approach for my framing analysis. This included open-ended reading of the news stories, constant comparative analysis of possible frames, quantitative coding sheet, analysis of statistics in SPSS, and inclusion of qualitative examples. I analyzed a total of 93 news articles from 12 news sources for this study. Most of the news stories came from newer, online publications (n=67, 72.0%) and over half came from new sources with a liberal philosophy (n=47, 50.5%). I found three frames that were used to describe Sherrod in terms of race and gender: victim, good woman, and above her place. I also found that these frames were closely aligned with news values that help determine a story’s newsworthiness. I found seven sources were used repetitively and selectively associated with the frames. I also found differences in frames by news source type and philosophy. Finally, I found that the frames followed an identifiable news cycle. The results of this study show that the media do indeed utilize negative stereotypes of Black women in their products and that media’s use of routine writing and reporting practices exacerbate this problem.

Building on Victor Villanueva and Malea Powell's research in rhetoric and writing, in my dissertation I assert that the hierarchical construction of knowledges within literatures and rhetorics has traditionally been utilized to oppress the bodies, histories, and voices of color within both disciplines. I ask that we interrogate the ways in which divisions between communities of color have been rhetorically instated and use the space created by these rifts to build alliances and communities. Centralizing my discourse within Indigenous and Chicana feminist practices, in Chapter I, I define rhetorical borders and illustrate how we can create alliances and provide the methodology for engaging the underlying rhetorics within interdisciplinary works. Practicing this methodology, in Chapter II, I utilize trickster rhetorics in my reading of Wendy Rose's The Halfbreed Chronicles to illustrate how an alliance between rhetorics and literatures facilitates an alternate reading to emerge that defies a colonial gaze and to illustrate how this methodology could be applied to other texts. In Chapter III, I juxtapose Leslie Marmon Silko's rhetorical storytelling structure exemplified in "A Geronimo Story" with Henry David Thoreau's "The Allegash and East Branch" to demonstrate how characters defy their hyperrealist constructions by enacting rhetorics of survivance to both protect people and knowledges and still have their stories heard. In Chapter IV, I argue that while initially the language barrier functions as a rhetorical border that defies history's colonial imposition in Tino Villanueva's Cronica de Mis Anos Peores, he ultimately utilizes it to both recover his childhood, memory and history, and also to create alliances with other native Spanish speakers whose own experiences will facilitate the understanding of the language used. In Chapter V, I argue that the pedagogical implications of bringing together works of literatures and rhetorics into the writing classroom will dramatically impact students' relationship to writing, storytelling, and meaning-making. My dissertation contributes significantly to both disciplines of Rhetoric & Composition and Literatures of Color by redefining the tools and rules by which we can engage a text. Additionally, my dissertation demonstrates that only through mutual use of rhetorical and literary approaches, through an interdisciplinary alliance, can we truly hear all stories.

Like many institutions of high education throughout the United States, the University of North Texas requires all students to pass introductory United States History courses. While the purpose of these courses should be to create a population well versed in U.S. history and sociopolitical and economic context, the foundational textbooks utilized in these courses promote American exceptionalism and U.S. supremacy. Their omission of the complex and controversial history of the United States creates a false master narrative based on an idealized version of U.S. history. Even textbooks that include diversity continue to uphold a progressive master narrative that ignores issues of systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. My theoretical analysis of the required textbooks, Exploring American Histories: A Survey with Sources, is applicable to all introductory U.S. history textbooks. Decolonialism, critical race, and intersectional feminism are theoretical lenses that disentangle and highlight otherwise invisible aspects of American exceptionalism and the serious consequences of the subjugation of subaltern historical narratives. This thesis applies theory with examples of how textbooks or supplemental teaching can expose foundational oppression, violence, and discrimination to teach students critical thinking and help them see connections between the past and their present.

abstract: Although racial minorities are heavily represented in student bodies throughout the United States, school administrators who work with minority children have been overwhelmingly White. Previous research by race scholars has demonstrated that systems of racial dominance in the larger society are often replicated in schools. However, the role of White school administrators in perpetuating or disrupting racism has not been documented. This study examined the racial attitudes and resulting professional practices of White school administrators who worked in a unique environment. These administrators lived and practiced their profession in towns that lay just outside the borders of the Navajo Nation, a large Indian reservation in the Four Corners region of Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Termed border towns, these communities were populated by a large majority of Native Americans, with a heavy representation of Hispanics. This placed White school administrators in the uncommon position of living and working in a place where they were a numeric minority, while simultaneously representing the majority culture in the United States. Twelve White border town administrators in four different communities agreed to participate in the interview study, conducted over a two-month period in 2010 and 2011. Using a semi-structured interview format, the researcher gathered data on participants' racial attitudes and analyzed responses to find common themes. Common responses among the interviewees indicated that there were clear racial hierarchies within border town schools and that these hierarchies were sometimes atypical of those found in mainstream American society. These racial hierarchies were characterized by a dichotomy of Native American students based on residence in town or on the reservation, as well as deferential treatment of White administrators by Native American constituents. The intersectionality of race and socioeconomic class was a key finding of the study, with implications for school administrators' professional actions. Racial attitudes also impacted White border town administrators' actions and sometimes reinforced institutionally racist practices. Finally, results of the study supported several established models of race relations and White identity formation. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ed.D. Educational Administration and Supervision 2011

abstract: In this study, I examined how African American students in a church youth group constructed ethnic and spiritual identities as they engaged with community literacy practices. Arizona's small, scattered population of African Americans is reflected within participants' multi-ethnic schools where they describe feelings of being almost invisible to school agents and peers. Listening to students, I came to deeply understand how they struggled with cultural isolation and racial discrimination. The growing tensions with state immigration reform only magnified those feelings as participants perceived the ban on ethnic studies to be another attempt to exclude them from school curriculums. By using utilizing four identity types, I gained greater insights into participants' negotiation of ethnicity and spirituality. Drawing from critical race theory, I utilized counter-storytelling to not only recapture participants' experiences with social injustice, but also to illustrate how the youth group empowers the students to become activists. Resisting the paralyzing effects of racial stereotypes, participants emerged as essayists, artists, orators, and spoken word poets. / Dissertation/Thesis / Ph.D. Curriculum and Instruction 2011

Unlike many Black-specific disciplines in the academy (Black psychology, Black history, etc), Black philosophy never completely forged a unique conceptual framework separate from American and Continental intellectual traditions. Instead the field has continued to define its validity by the extent that Black authors extend the thought of white philosophers towards race. This epistemic convergence, or the extent to which Black theory converges with established white philosophical traditions, and hence white racial sensibilities, continues to misguide many of the current philosophical systems of Africana thought. Because this practice is so dominate, it has made current scholarship in African American and Africana thought derelict, in the sense that all investigations into Blackness are normatively, hence ideologically driven, and not culturally relevant to the actual lives of Africana people. Because whites are able to connect their work in traditional philosophy to studies of race under the misnomer of "critical race theory," these white associations with Black philosophy have given the illusion that integration and multicultural exchanges in Africana philosophy contribute to the restructuring of the discipline of philosophy and psychical changes in whites. Unfortunately this is merely wishful thinking that fails to consider the empirical research that confirms the undeniable failure of integration. This inability by Blacks to accept and explore racism without the illusion of racial coexistence in America makes current approaches to Black philosophy irrelevant to the present day struggles that Blacks find themselves burdened by in the American context. This dissertation however argues that the acceptance of the racial realist perspective, which accepts the permanence of racism, allows Blacks to "conceptually disengage" the triumphalism of the integrationist myth and explore the world without the illusion of anthropological parity. This lacuna in the European narration of liberal democracy's vision of equality spurs the culturalogical turn in Critical Race Theory, and introduces the philosophical insights of Derrick Bell and Paul Robeson as guiding voices towards the silencing of the idealist trends in contemporary studies of racism.