My thesis discusses the ways in which Sandra Cisneros makes historical claims from a Chicana perspective by telling fictional family stories in Caramelo. Not only have Chicanas traditionally been marginalized ethnically by the Anglo mainstream, they have also suffered disenfranchisement as women in their own male-dominated cultural community. Both elements have contributed to the cultural silencing of Chicanas outside of domestic spaces, and particularly in historical discourse. Cisneros introduces storytelling as a means of empowering Chicanas through language that allows them to speak historically and still signify culturally. By telling stories from the site of the family, she ingeniously utilizes a culturally allotted authority over the domestic sphere to branch out and discuss historical issues as they inform the lives of her Chicana narrator's family members. Thus, she succeeds in breaking the traditions of her culture that would silence Chicanas while allowing them to maintain their cultural identities. Presenting her historical assertions through fiction allows Cisneros to avoid the pitfalls of post-Enlightenment epistemological modes in historical discourse, introduce new perspectives on historical events, and invite historical discussion rather than shutting it off. Because all historical accounts are narratives that have been constructed by biased individuals, history and story are essentially the same. Cisneros calls attention to this concept as she conflates history and story in her novel. Empirically minded historians of the past insisted on one true version of history and thus ignored "other" viewpoints. Fiction creates a new space for discussion that does not disregard alternative viewpoints because it does not pretend to be fact. In addition, Cisneros employs an abundance of Chicano pop cultural references in Caramelo to create a cultural mythology for the Chicano community. Chicanos are alienated by the mainstream cultures on both sides of the border, and thus they generally feel culturally invalidated. By invoking pop cultural forms, primarily the telenovela, Cisneros fosters collectivity among Chicanos who can all relate to the signs of pop culture, which makes itself available to everyone regardless of class, race, gender, or geographic position. She asserts new views of history through the lens of pop culture, and strengthens the ability of Chicanos to enter historical discourse by strengthening cultural cohesiveness. Cisneros is helping to redefine American literature by calling attention to at least one of the marginal voices that are rapidly becoming the center in the United States.

Representations of Chicana bodies in dominant popular culture have historically been contested by Chicana feminists’ own self-representations through art and literature. However, few works examine representations of fat Chicana bodies in literature by Chicana feminists. Through a literary analysis of The Panza Monologues and Real Women Have Curves, as well as an artistic analysis of Laura Aguilar’s photography and through the lenses of Chicanx, queer, and fat studies, my research bridges a gap between Chicana feminist work and fat studies. It looks at how fatness is constructed through the self-representation of women’s bodies. Ultimately, I argue that these art objects are sites of fat Chicana artivism—activism through the use of art—that call for body liberation, respond to the “normative body” required by a colonial legacy of symbolic and physical violence against Chicanx women, and pave the way for further creative artistic and literary work centered on fat Chicanxs to be done.

Carlos Morton is a prominent Chicano playwright that has contributed greatly to Chicano theatre, creatively and academically, since in 1970s. This thesis offers a feminist analysis of the gender representation in three of his works: Lilith (1977), La Malinche (1984), and Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda (1992). The female characters in these three plays possess a unique agency that allows them to challenge oppressive patriarchal standards imposed on their gender identity. The second chapter explores Morton's Lilith, a play based on a Jewish creation myth. In the play, Lilith possesses agency of her gender identity and forms a bond with Eve to fight the patriarchal gender norms used to restrict women in Chicano culture. La Malinche is an adaptation of Eurpides's Medea set in post-Conquest New Spain. Chapter three focuses on the agency displayed by La Malinche through her indigenous roots to fight for her own form of motherhood and freedom from patriarchy. The final play analyzed in this thesis is Dreaming on a Sunday in the Alameda, a dream-like play that is based on Diego Rivera's mural by the same name. Several female characters in the play demonstrate agency through their androgynous sexual identities as they unite to resist male character's sexualized perceptions and expectations of females within Mexican and Chicano culture.

This thesis discusses the relationship between space (physical and figurative) and sovereign power, with respect to the history of the United States' immigration and boundary policy. It examines spatial organization as a social product, and simultaneously a producer of mainstream associations of illegal activity at the border with Mexico. It begins with a brief introduction to a spatially informed analytical framework, a history of relevant United States' immigration policy. The paper then uses newspaper coverage from the 1970s and 1980s to examine the local and national rise of xenophobia in the United States, and the normalization of boundary control and associated illegality. The socio-spatial evaluation of federal policy and public sentiment culminates with a discussion of the border policies developed by the United States Border Patrol in the early 1990s. The strategy introduced focused on preventing immigration by deterring migrants from the attempt. This plan was necessarily spatial in nature as it sought to displace migrants from ideal crossing spaces to sites vulnerable to capture by the Border Patrol. Ultimately, the history of the United States boundary with Mexico demonstrates the power of controlling a territory, and controlling a social narrative.

Young women in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico are coming of age in an era of feminicides, drug wars, impunity, and fear. This ethnographic study examines the ways in which Preparatoria Altavista, a public high school, in one of the most marginalized areas of Juárez, attempts to empower subaltern young women through its critical and social justice philosophy of education. The study draws from critical pedagogy, socio-cultural theory, and feminist scholarship to offer a unique analysis of how hegemonic ideas are resisted and/or inscribed pedagogically, politically, and institutionally at Altavista. Secondly, the study examines how the school’s constructions of democratic and social justice education interact with the current dystopic context of Juárez and discourses about Juárez women to provide a framework with which a group of young women author their identities and practice forms of resistance. The ethnographic fieldwork took place in the 2009-2010 academic year. The methods included unstructured ethnographic interviews with teachers, administrators, and numerous students, as well as semi-structured interviews and an auto-photography technique with nine girls. The study identifies three interrelated aspects that characterize the transformative pedagogy of Preparatoria Altavista: freedom and autonomy, authentic caring relationships, and the cultivation of critical discourse and activism. Together, these core values promote the school’s ultimate goal for its students – autogestión, or the ability to self-author empowered identities; read their world; and initiate and develop socially transformative projects. Considering the school’s context, as well as the many challenges inherent in the dystopic Juárez of today, the study also identifies a typology of four different paths to the girls’ identity and agency development: the Redirectors, the Reinventors, the Redefiners, and the Refugees. This typology is based on various ways and degrees to which the young women in this study authored the self as they negotiated the messages from the multiple figured worlds that they inhabit. The study seeks to counter sensationalist, criminalizing, and dooming narratives about Juárez youth, as well as stereotypical and objectifying depictions of Juárez women by offering a nuanced analysis of their experiences, perspectives, identities, and forms of agency. The study also seeks to offer a language of possibility and hope for urban schools and contexts of civil unrest through critical pedagogy. / text

Youth of color are routinely dehumanized and treated as objects both in schools and in society. The “banking method” approach to teaching and stringent zero tolerance policies that are prevalent in low-income schools predominantly populated by youth of color serve to push youth out of school and pull them into the school-to-prison pipeline. When students do not meet their school’s standards, the institutional gaze is fixed disapprovingly on the child and the family. The history of segregation and institutionalized oppression that led to a legacy of inadequate and culturally irrelevant schooling and a poor quality of life for communities of color is erased. For the children who grow up in such environments, a historical silence makes it difficult if not impossible to make sense of their present-day conditions and the changes they are witnessing in their communities. People Organized in the Defense of Earth and her Resources (PODER) is an organization that focuses on issues of environmental, economic, and social justice, and strives to facilitate youth empowerment through their Young Scholars for Justice (YSJ) summer program. The youth of color in the program are positioned as knowledgeable researchers and historical actors in their community. The Chicana feminist epistemology of PODER’s staff members creates a nurturing and family-like environment for the youth, which has a significant impact on the females, and enables youth to utilize personal experiences to develop a structural analysis of oppression. As youth acquire a historical conocimiento of East Austin, they also learn about organized resistance to oppression vis-à-vis environmental justice campaigns. In doing so, a spiritual activism blossoms in the youth that is born from their wounds of oppression and rooted in a cultural and historical awareness of their community. The youth engage in a cycle of praxis as their spiritual activism mobilizes them against injustices and ushers in their transformation into subjects. Through participant observation and interviews, I weave together a critical case study of the YSJ program that is informed by the metamorphosis I experienced after participating in the program. / text

The recent attacks on ethnic studies programs both in Arizona with house bill 2281 and locally at the University of Central Texas serve as an urgent call to address how ethnic studies programs impact the educational trajectories of students. Additionally, research done on ethnic studies programs has largely focused on high school programs, overlooking programs in higher education. Therefore, this study addresses the following question: In what ways does being a Mexican American Studies major influence the experiences of Latinas at a predominately White institution (PWI)? Using Chicana feminist thought and Yosso’s (2005) community cultural wealth model as theoretical perspectives this study seeks to; 1) understand an educational approach (ethnic studies) that has shown success with students of color, 2) fill in the gap in the literature of ethnic studies programs in higher education, and 3) look at the gendered experience of Latinas at PWIs. Through a thematic analysis of six in depth interviews and a focus group conducted with six Latina undergraduates the author finds that Mexican American Studies represents a site or process of reclaiming and redefining. Four major themes are identified and discussed; reclaiming knowledge, the self, and space(s) and redefining la mujer. The findings suggest that there is a relationship between student retention and ethnic studies programs, adding epistemic and mestiza capital to Yosso’s community cultural wealth model, and using ethnic studies programs as models of how to best support students of color at PWIs. The author concludes with the suggestion that more research is needed on the experiences of other undergraduate students (White, African American, men, etc.) that are ethnic studies majors in order to further understand the impact, importance, and wealth of potential in these programs. / text

This work explores soundscape and histories of sound technologies as they relate to the formation of subjectivity. It proposes voice as a cultural practice and a means for theorizing one’s own subjectivity. What is modernity in sonic terms? What does it mean to listen deeply in an industrialized society? What does it mean to be a socialized listener, a revolutionized listener? How might voice be taken as an avatar of the self? How does the auditory realm allow for embodied theorizing that responds to systems of power and oppressed subjectivities?

As intolerance against Mexican Americans and Mexican migrants persists in the United States-- apparent in the passage of Arizona State Bill 1070, Arizona House Bill 2281, and multiple English-only laws-- Chicanas and Mexicanas continue to resist by sustaining relationships and knowledge through storytelling. This dissertation employs a floating borderlands framework to explore how Chicanas and Mexicanas in the United States-Mexico borderlands use storytelling in oral and written traditions to keep cultural and regional knowledge. Floating borderlands is an interdisciplinary framework that reveals survivance, that is, survival as an act of resistance, through cultural maintenance, agency, and creativity in lived experiences. Drawing upon concepts and research from disciplines that include Mexican American Studies, American Indian Studies, Gender and Women's Studies, and Education, floating borderlands reveals how storytelling helps Chicanas and Mexicanas maintain an understanding of home and homelands that facilitates resistance to obstacles such as racial and gender discrimination and challenges to their right to be in these spaces. This dissertation acknowledges multiple forms of knowledge keeping by Chicanas and Mexicanas throughout the last two centuries; recognizes intersectionality; and complicates or creates multiple layers in narratives of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. This project is directly informed by narratives of Chicana and Mexicana life in the borderlands. It centers oral and written traditions, including my original poetry. Key words: Chicanas, Mexicanas, border, borderlands, floating borderlands, survivance, oral traditions, written traditions, home, homelands, migration, identity, cultural maintenance, poetry, story.

In 1968 the Los Angeles community witnessed the up rise of thousands of Chicano students when they walked out of their high school on an early morning in March. The purpose of this study was to further understand the 1968 student walkouts as presented by student participants. The study was carried out as a phenomenological study and used a Critical Race Theory (CRT) framework to interpret the students' interpretation of the Walkouts.