Discourses of adolescence/ts that reduce teenagers to impulsive, hormonal, incomplete adults are pervasive, and affect the way that adolescence/ts is regarded in institutional spaces like schools. However, scholars in Critical Youth Studies (CYS) reject these determinations in favor of a vision of adolescence as a social construct; a construct that has changed throughout time and does not accurately reflect the lived experiences of diverse youth. This study considers the way in which these discourses are mobilized and circulating in one English Language Arts (ELA) classroom and, specifically, through the study of literature. Grounded in empirical scholarship that approaches classroom literature pedagogy and response through a sociocultural lens, and in theoretical scholarship in Critical Youth Studies (CYS) and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), the purpose of this qualitative inquiry is to observe student response to young adult literature (YAL) in one ELA classroom in order to locate discourses of adolescence that are mobilized and circulating as students comprehend, analyze and interpret texts.

Unaccompanied youth are migrant children who travel by themselves to the United States, mostly from Central America and Mexico. Since 2014, more than 200,000 unaccompanied youth have entered the United States, with approximately 28,000 residing in Los Angeles, California (U.S. Customs and Border Protection [CBP], CBP 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). Hundreds of these young migrants have enrolled in public schools (Pierce, 2016). Schools seek adequate and effective ways to support these students’ complex needs and aspirations. Within the body of research about this sub-group of immigrants there is a significant absence of the voices of unaccompanied youth themselves, which results in limited knowledge and uninformed school policy responses. This study employed Critical Race Theory (CRT) as a theoretical framework and Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) as a methodology to foreground youth agency in capturing counter-narratives that accurately depict the school experiences of unaccompanied youth who find themselves at the intersection of race, gender, immigration status, migration, and class. The questions guiding this study were: How do unaccompanied youth, in the role of youth co-researchers describe, experience, and make meaning of educación at a justice-focused high school in Los Angeles? and (b) How can the epistemology of unaccompanied youth inform practices and policies, to ensure a socially-just education, against the backdrop of an anti-immigrant climate? YPAR is built on the idea that young people have the capacity to conduct research, generate new knowledge, and create transformational social change. This research study built on the epistemology of unaccompanied youth to inform and generate affirming and emancipatory educational practices with youth as agents of knowledge creation. This study provides the field with first-hand information that can be shared in the educational community. Abstract (Spanish) Los jóvenes no acompañados son niños migrantes que viajan solos a los Estados Unidos, principalmente desde Centroamérica y México. Desde 2014, más de 200,000 jóvenes no acompañados han ingresado a los Estados Unidos, y aproximadamente 28,000 residen en Los Ángeles, California (U.S. Customs and Border Protection [CBP], CBP 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021a, 2021b). Cientos de estos jóvenes migrantes se han matriculado en escuelas públicas (Pierce, 2016). Las escuelas buscan formas adecuadas y efectivas de apoyar las complejas necesidades y aspiraciones de estos estudiantes. Dentro del cuerpo de investigación sobre este sub-grupo de inmigrantes hay una ausencia significativa de las voces de los propios jóvenes no acompañados, lo que da como resultado un conocimiento limitado y respuestas políticas escolares desinformadas. Este estudio empleó la Teoría Crítica de la Raza (CRT) como marco teórico y la Investigación de Acción Participativa Juvenil (YPAR) como una metodología para poner en primer plano la agencia juvenil en la captura de contra-narrativas que representan con precisión las experiencias escolares de los jóvenes no acompañados que se encuentran en la intersección de la raza, género, estatus migratorio, migración y clase. Las preguntas que guiaron este estudio fueron: ¿Cómo los jóvenes no acompañados, en el papel de co-investigadores jóvenes, describen, experimentan y dan sentido a la educación en una escuela secundaria centrada en la justicia social en Los Ángeles? y (b) ¿Cómo puede la epistemología de los jóvenes no acompañados informar prácticas y políticas para garantizar una educación socialmente justa, en el contexto de un clima anti-inmigrante? YPAR se basa en la idea de que los jóvenes tienen la capacidad de realizar investigaciones, generar nuevos conocimientos y generar un cambio social transformador. Esta investigación se basó en la epistemología de los jóvenes no acompañados para informar y generar prácticas educativas afirmativas y emancipadoras con los jóvenes como agentes de creación de conocimiento. Este estudio proporciona al campo información de primera mano que se puede compartir en la comunidad educativa.

With the ultimate goal of illustrating the ways that queer youth employ change and act as agents of self-representation, this project examines the relationship between the It Gets Better Project, a queer adult project focused upon ‘bettering‘ the lives of their younger generation, and the Make it Better Project created in response by queer youth. This thesis addresses the following questions: How do adult conceptualizations of queer youth as vulnerable victims operate within discourses that employ queer youth as agents of change? In what ways do queer youth grapple with such conceptualizations? Furthermore, how might queer youth actively resist adult narratives of risk, vulnerability, and surveillance? Seeking to not only examine the ways in which queer youth negotiate adult narratives of adolescent risk and vulnerability, this project is organized to highlight the ways in which queer youth understand and experience their own representational and performative narratives, particularly when performed in response to adult narratives. In examination of the “It Gets Better: Dan and Terry” (2010a) and “It Gets Better: President Barack Obama” (2010c) vlogs of the It Gets Better Project, this thesis seeks to uncover the ways that assimilationist goals of inclusion, tolerance, and equality impact the intelligibility of queer youth. As a means for which to explore the possible resistance employed to counter such silencing mechanisms, the examination turns to three youth-produced vlogs of the Make it Better Project. An additional intent of the focus on the “LGBTQ Youth Speak Out”, “Make it Better Project” and “Make it Better Project - You Can Make it Better Now!” vlogs is to construct a space to analyze the complex and fluid dynamics of queer youth communities. With focus given to the various mechanisms employed by the adult and youth performers of these particular vlog-narratives, this project constructs an interdisciplinary framework of new social movement theory, new online media studies, queer theory, quare (queer of color) studies, feminist sociolinguistics, and critical youth studies as a means to position queer youth voices at the forefront of discussion. With the goal of continuing research that represents queer youth as agents of their own experiences, bodies, lives, and identities, it is my hope that the framework provided by this examination will inspire future work that highlights and centers the voices of queer youth. / text