abstract: Privilege is unearned advantages, access, and power reserved for a select group of people. Those that benefit from privilege manifest their power consciously and sub-consciously so as to maintain their exclusive control of the opportunities privilege affords them. The reach and power of one’s privilege rises and falls as the different social identities that one possesses intersect. Ultimately, if a society built on justice and equity is to be achieved, those with privilege must take tangible steps to acknowledge their privilege and work to end the unequal advantages and oppression that are created in order to perpetuate privilege. This thesis unpacks privilege through an autoethnographic examination of the author’s history. Through the use of creative nonfiction, personal stories become launching points to explore characteristics of privilege manifest in the author’s life which are emblematic of larger social groups that share many of the author’s social identities. The following characteristics of privilege are explored: merit, oppression, normalization, economic value, neutrality, blindness, and silence. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Justice Studies 2015

abstract: This dissertation is a visual and narrative-based autoethnography that narrates the lived educational experiences of the author from preschool through doctoral studies. The text portrays a story that explores issues of power, identity, and pedagogy in education. Told in narrative form, this project utilizes visual data, thematic coding, layering, and writing as a method of inquiry to investigate and more fully understand injustices found in the American education system. Findings show how the author’s identities of student, teacher, and researcher influence and impact one another, and lead to the development of a future vision of self. By examining the author’s roles as a student, teacher, and researcher this study centers on conflicts and inconsistencies that arise at the intersections of self, community, institutions, and society. Included in the narrative’s analysis are issues related to positionality, visions of success, empowerment, resistance, neoliberalism, colonialism, psychological distance, and ideological purpose in teaching. The narrative concludes with the development of a personal vision of purposeful, empowering, liberating, and transformative pedagogy. This study contributes its voice to conversations about inequity and inequality in education by asking the reader to examine conflicts, ask new questions, and critically engage with the dialogic text. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Educational Leadership and Policy Studies 2016

A autoetnografia tem sido utilizada em pesquisas em musicologia e, especialmente, em etnomusicologia, na busca de formas contemporâneas de aproximação entre a experiência artística e as exigências acadêmicas. Este trabalho apresenta uma autoetnografia em diálogo com os artistas que se juntaram a nós, o que permitiu a descrição de quatorze anos de existência do NUO-Opera. Portanto, o objetivo desta investigação é narrar, contextualizar e situar nos campos das artes (teatro, música, dança e performance) e sociedades (contexto político, econômico e social em que vivemos) o que me levou a construir uma proposta de criação e produção artística em ópera na cidade onde nasci, cresci e onde escolhi ser artista. Esta narrativa foi destinada não apenas a uma visão geral do trabalho realizado pela NUO, mas, tomando-o como eixo, proporcionou a identificação de questões retóricas ao longo das descrições que, por sua vez, nos levaram a dialogar com historiadores e diretores que escreveram sobre o conceito e o significado da ópera. Esses processos reflexivos nos levam a acreditar que a existência de uma casa-teatro e que o fazer ópera em uma perspectiva transdisciplinar permite a realização de um percurso singular no campo das artes e especialmente da ópera. A ideia da ópera como gênero transdisciplinar surge em nossas escolhas artísticas, mas também é apresentada nas descrições de pesquisas e no fazer de artistas que têm concebido e proposto espetáculos e performances operísticas ao longo do tempo. Ao final nós podemos conceber que a ópera não é apenas a adição ou a sobreposição de outras práticas artísticas, mas transita entre elas e isso está de acordo com nossas escolhas e propostas artísticas no NUO-Opera Laboratório. / Autoethnography has been used in research in musicology and, especially, in ethnomusicology, in the search for contemporary forms of approximation between the artistic experience and the academic exigences. This work presents an autoethnography in dialogue with the artists who were join with us, what allowed the description of fourteen years of NUO-Opera Laboratory. Therefore, the objective of this investigation is to narrate, contextualizing and situating in the fields of the arts (theater, music, dance and performance) and societies (the political, economic and social context in which we live) what led me to build a proposal of creation and artistic production in opera in the city where I was born, grew up and where I chose to be an artist. This narrative was intended not only to give an overview of the work carried out by the NUO but, taking it as axis, it was possible to identify rhetorical questions throughout the descriptions that led us to dialogue with historians and directors who wrote about the concept and the meaning of opera. This, in turn, leads us to believe that the existence of a house-theater and to do opera in a transdisciplinary perspective allows the realization of a singular course in the field of the arts, and especially of the opera. The idea of opera as a transdisciplinary genre emerge in our artistic choices, but also it are presented in the descriptions of researches and artists that conceives and stages the operatic spectacle over time. In this way, we can conceive that opera is not only the addition or the overlapping of other artistic practices, but it transits between them and that this is in line with our choices and artistic proposals at the NUO-Opera Laboratory.

The blurred lines between the domains of art, education and art education create tensions that impact how art educators negotiate their identities (Baxter, Ortega López, Serig & Sullivan, 2008) within themselves and through a myriad of complex relationships with society and the natural world. I reflect upon the profound transformations of my theoretical and methodological framework of pedagogy emerging from my academic, artistic and professional experiences, particularly my exposure to twentieth century philosophy, post-modernism, critical pedagogy, democratic education, feminist theory and queer studies, each through the lens of social justice. I draw from the ideas of thinkers—Goodman, Lorde, Deleuze, Freire and Zolla, amongst many—who, in one way or another, embraced an integrative dialectic of difference rather than fearing or rejecting conflict, opposites and contradictions. In the twenty-first century, this exploration of the interspace has resulted in arts-based theoretical and methodological approaches to inquiry (Rolling, 2013) such as studio art as research practice (Sullivan, 2004), a/r/tography (Springgay, Irwin & Kind, 2005), and productive ambiguity (Shipe, 2015). This thesis is an arts-based autoethnography, intended to embody the dual nature of the identities and practices of artists/teachers through the creation of an artistic product. Carolyn Ellis and Arthur P. Bochner pointed to the three axes of autoethnography: the self (auto), culture (ethno) and the research process (graphy); modes of autoethnography fall along different places within these continua (Ellis & Bochner, 2000). While I place the strongest focus on my experience and culture, I also stress the relevance and rigor of the research process. Drawing inspiration from the amazing work of Nick Sousanis and Rachel Branham, I include extensive notes and references at the end of the thesis. The prologue is formatted as an illustrated novel—a blueprint for a full graphic novel version of this thesis. The rest of the manuscript is a literary autoethnography, by which I assume the identity of an autobiographical writer foremost.

This autoethnographic study focuses on changing identity after experiencing a rare disease. The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which identity shifts during an after a rare illness. Three research questions guided this study: How and in what ways has my identity as a teacher shifted as a result of my experience with major illness? How and in what ways have other aspects of my identity shifted as a result of my illness? How can the writing of my autoethnography influence the healing process and my understanding of identity? The participant/researcher of this study was hospitalized with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, and subsequently lost her position as a high school teacher and was forced to find a position at a new school. Using Gee’s (2000/2001) concept of identity as an analytic lens, the researcher developed a narrative of her journey from illness back into the classroom. After analysis, she identified a transition from a traditional, knowledge-giver teacher role to the role of teacher as a facilitator. Another finding was the role confidence played in the recovery process. The researcher then offers suggestions for further research regarding teachers who return to the classroom after illness.

Sometimes when a person who has been diagnosed with cancer finds out that his or her cancer returned and continuously has to go for surgeries, treatments, regular follow-ups, and continued overtime to deal with the same life-threatening illness, he or she can actually feel frozen due to feeling depressed and anxious in not knowing how to move forward with life. Dance is a metaphor used in this study to move forward. Psychotherapy can offer major benefits to help cancer patients cope with the depression, anxiety, stress, and other emotional reactions that often accompany a cancer diagnosis (Stuyck, 2008). Many studies have explored the benefit of psychotherapy for cancer patients, but little is known about the personal narratives of cancer patients who sought individual therapy to talk about their experience with cancer. The purpose of this study is to explore, through autoethnographic inquiry, what role dance plays in the process of seeking individual therapy. It also explores the impact of facing cultural biases that exist in the Haitian culture about mental health. Finally, this study explores what role psychotherapy played in my reflective therapeutic journal that I wrote while in therapy. This autoethnography was written from a first-person perspective, thus giving readers the chance to enter into the researcher’s world. This study brings a social constructionist and systemic understanding to the experience of being a Haitian Marriage and Family Therapist cancer patient who sought individual therapy and became transformed by accepting my therapist’s invitation to dance with cancer. Additionally, this study examines my unique position as a Marriage and Family Therapist to receive therapy.

Through six months of ethnographic and autoethnographic fieldwork, which included participant observation and ten individual semi-structured interviews, I sought to determine how dominant discourses in dance, especially those pertaining to professionalism, ability, validity, and legitimacy, are circulated in and through training, and how we as dancers responded to these discourses. Following the stand alone thesis format, this thesis is comprised of two publishable papers. The first is an ethnography of one integrated dance company’s members’ experience with negotiating space for alternative forms of dance in contemporary dance. The second is an autoethnographic piece of writing where I show the challenges of resisting dominant discourses of validity and legitimacy in both qualitative research as well as contemporary dance. Together, these papers form a thesis that strengthens our scholarly understanding of the discourses and associated tensions at work in participating in and writing about integrated dance.

This autoethnographic account explores my experiences of healing with my daughter and two sons after childhood cancer. My goal was to understand the disconnect between my experiences of persisting fear, grief and trauma and the contradictory messages we encountered during treatment that urged us to resume our ‘normal lives’ at the end of treatment. In analyzing my story, juxtaposed with other anthropologists’ narratives of their journey through cancer and beyond, I realized that my experiences were mediated by prevalent war metaphors in illness; the pervasive social and medical messages and expectations of restitution; as well as narrow biomedical un- derstandings of illness and healing. I offer up my story with the intention of bridging the divide between patients, their family, and medical professionals.

This thesis challenges common assumptions of trans moving images by applying theories of identification to an autoethnographic close reading of three specific texts – Hedwig and The Angry Inch (John Cameron Mitchell, 2001), Dallas Buyers Club (Jean- Marc Vallée, 2013) and Transparent (Jill Soloway, 2014) - considered by both mainstream and queer audiences to feature transgender characters and experiences. This thesis, while limited to the author’s experience as a trans woman, attempts to advance the argument that identification with trans moving images may change with one’s transition and require a reassessing of “what is trans” along with resituating the trans spectator from “object of the gaze” to “bearer of the look” (Mulvey, 1975).

This study presents the concept of the pedagogy of the game-master. Written from a bricolage of autoethnographic perspectives, a fractured narrative was (de)composed out of the author’s dual experiences as educator and game-master of fantasy tabletop-role-playing games. The narrative seeks to evoke the blurred boundaries of what it means to occupy each role, dwelling between fantasies, (teaching) realities, and player/person/persona identities (Waskul & Lust, 2004), constructing and remaining in the middle of a bridged pedagogy which spans education and tabletop role-playing. From the narrative, the latter section of this manuscript presents a discussion of how the liminal duties of the game-master might help draw educators to and beyond the boundaries of what is possible in education.