Digital Commons Network^™

Going Beyond The Margins: Photographs By Ming Smith, Isis A. Serna

Art & Art History ETDs

Ming Smith is a photographer who has been creating images since the early 1970s and trained with the artist collective Kamoinge Workshop. Throughout most of her career, Smith has been marginalized by art historians, critics, and museum curators. Since the early 2000s, Smith has only been included in museum exhibitions highlighting African-American female artists from 1960 to the present. Before this surge of interest in her work, the art world ignored and silenced her. However, Smith’s creative process allowed her to see and experience going beyond the struggle by being consistent in her strategy to do what she wanted on …

The Gutiérrez-Hubbell Estate: A Census Study Of Intergenerational Intersections Of A Family And Their Servants, Samuel E. Sisneros

University Libraries & Learning Sciences Faculty and Staff Publications

Census study and chronological narrative about the intersectionality of Indian servants and their enslavers in New Mexico, 1850-1940.

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling Of Transnational Insurgencies In 1960-70s Us And Mexico, Tania Libertad Balderas

English Language and Literature ETDs

Resistance Narratives: Storytelling of Transnational Insurgencies in 1960-70s US and Mexico emphasizes how the narratives from the Mexican Insurgency, the American Indian Movement (AIM), and the leftist faction of the Chicana/o Movement in the 1960s and 1970s articulate intersecting notions of resistance, liberation, and transnational solidarity. The comparative analysis of the testimonial novel Las mujeres del alba (2019) by Chihuahuan novelist Carlos Montemayor, the autobiographies Lakota Woman (1991) and Ohitika Woman (1993) by Sičháŋǧu Lakȟóta writer and AIM militant Mary Brave Bird (formerly Crow Dog), and the memoirs and plays by the San Diego-based group Teatro de las Chicanas, collected …

“That Felt Weird”: International Graduate Students’ Emerging Critical Awareness Of Their Experiences With Microaggression, Romaisha Rahman

Language, Literacy, and Sociocultural Studies ETDs

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to uncover and understand international graduate students’ experiences with microaggressions that stem from native speaker fallacy; microaggressions are the subtle discriminatory behaviors executed toward marginalized groups and native speaker fallacy is the false belief that only some “native” English speakers are effective teachers and users of the language. Put simply, this research aimed at unveiling the subtle language-based discriminations that international graduate students experience in their day-to-day lives in U.S. educational settings. To collect data for the study, the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was utilized. CIT is a method that allows the …

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …

The Intersection Of Racism And Ableism In Disability Support Services, Carrie E. Mulderink

Communication ETDs

The websites of disability resource centers at six universities are used in a discourse analysis to forefront ways in which the Whiteness of disability is upheld. The main research question, built using a DisCrit (Disability/Critical Race theory) lens, is: how do the institutional discourses of disability resource centers reproduce or challenge particular identities for college students with disabilities? The research sub-question explored in this dissertation that built off of this wider scope is: how are the politics of intersectionality addressed in such discourses? Then, in the second analysis chapter, two more analytical categories are discussed that were generated from my …

How South Asian Activists Queer The Model Minority Myth: A Critical Oral History Project, Noorie Baig

Communication ETDs

The model minority myth (MMM) is predicated on stereotypical perceptions of Asian Americans as subservient high-achievers who comply with the ideologies of meritocracy, whiteness, and capitalism. However, South Asian American (SAA) activists and community organisers, the focus of this study, are working to confront and abolish racist, heterosexist, and other exclusionary injustices, policies, and practices. This dissertation seeks to understand the historical influences of the MMM, the challenges SAA activists and organisers face, and the communication strategies they use to negotiate the MMM through their activism. Oral history methods and critical thematic analysis are used to elicit and analyse personal …

Nuevomexicana/O Identity Affirmations Through Chicana And Chicano Muralism, Howard E. Griego

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

This research spotlights Nuevomexicana/o identity as expressed in murals produced by New Mexican artists during the Chicana and Chicano Mural Movement of the 1970s. Extant research focuses on Chicana/o murals in other regions mainly in California and Texas, and New Mexico has been understudied in the literature. This study analyzes murals and interviews with New Mexico artists to explore how these artists portrayed their identity and conveyed their social and political expression through their thematic content. A dialectical analysis was conducted using a mixed method approach. A statistical analysis determined the frequency and distribution of distinct themes. The findings showed …

The Bluff And Blanding Fights: Race, Religion, And Settler Colonialism In Progressive-Era America, Reilly Ben Hatch

History ETDs

This project uses the Bluff War of 1915 and the Posey War of 1923—both of which took place in southeastern Utah—to look at the complex relationship between race, religion, and culture in American Indian policy at the beginning of the twentieth century. It shows how White Mesa Utes, local Mormon settlers, the federal government, and Progressive activists used the conflicts to argue the place of Indians in a “frontier-less” America. It also examines the complex relationship between Mormons and Indians and draws conclusions on how that relationship was influenced by an American government which sought to assimilate “others” into the …

Student Voice And Choice: Factors Influencing Student Participation In Secondary Arts Classes In An Urban Public School District, Alan D. Lambert Ed. D.

Teacher Education, Educational Leadership & Policy ETDs

The purpose of this study was to capture the student voice regarding the value, importance, and relevance of visual and performing arts education in public schools. The host institution for the study was an urban school district in the southern central United States serving 75,000 students, with 55% students identified as Hispanic, and 52% of students experiencing poverty. Graduating seniors responded via questionnaires with forced choice and open-ended items regarding several topics, including what they do in their free time, how they perceive the value of arts classes at school, access to arts classes and the match of their interests …

(Un)Matched: Racialized Narratives Of U.S.-Based Japanese Men, Masculinity, And Heterosexuality In Online Dating Apps, Keisuke Kimura

Communication ETDs

In this study, I documented and examined U.S.-based Japanese men’s narratives about their day-to-day experiences in and across online dating contexts. Through the analysis of narratives, I critiqued how multilayered differences (i.e., race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and more) working with dominant social structures affect their everyday experiences within the spectrum of power, privilege, and marginalization in the transnational space. Specifically, the overarching purposes and goals of this study were to better understand U.S.-based Japanese men’s online dating experiences and to critique the relationalities of how Japanese men’s narratives (i.e., micro-level context) and their beliefs/attitudes within and between cultural communities …

"Do You Know The Way To San Jose?" Ethnic Mexicans, Urbanism, Culture, And Politics In Emerging Silicon Valley, 1940-1980, Alexandro J. Jara

History ETDs

My dissertation explores the Latino experience in Santa Clara County, especially in San Jose. The area, located in Northern California’s Bay Area, is nestled just south of the more popular cities of Oakland and San Francisco, nearly five hundred miles from the U.S.-Mexico border. My examination of the social, cultural, and political activities of Latinos in San Jose provides insight into the community development of ethnic Mexicans away from traditional sites of study in places like Tucson, San Antonio, and Los Angeles. I argue that beginning at mid-century, Latinos moved into the downtown area and helped prevent nearby neighborhoods from …

More Than The Defiant Few: Lost Womanhood And Necro Women Dismantling Nineteenth-Century Gender Ideologies, Vicki Vanbrocklin

English Language and Literature ETDs

Too many scholars still rely on adjectives such as deviant, unruly, dangerous, and wild to describe women who interrogate rigid forms of womanhood, especially women of color. My project intervenes in nineteenth-century womanhood discussions, which have traditionally solidified three main categories: Republican, True, and New Womanhood. Between True Womanhood in the mid-nineteenth century and the late nineteenth-century concept of New Womanhood lies an overlooked category aptly understood as Lost Womanhood. I focus on newspaper archives, archival research, and imaginative literature to find “lost” women who critiqued a patriarchal system that thrives on women living in a status akin to being …

Alternative Chicanx Educational Activism In The U.S. Southwest, 1935–1975, Moises Santos

History ETDs

This project studies the use of independent newspapers, community theater, and independent Chicana/o colleges by activists to educate their community. Geographically, this study is placed in the Southwest states of New Mexico, Texas, and California. Using the theoretical frameworks of Southwest Borderlands Studies and Critical Race Theory in Education, this project contextualizes the historical racial power dynamics of U.S. takeover in the Southwest region that influence oppressive educational practices, and the challenge to those institutions by the alternative educational activism among Chicanx communities.

Activists employed ingenuity to provide educational materials to their communities when they needed them the most. These …

Intersectionality, Relational Positionality, And The Lived Experiences Of Inequality: Contextualizing Intergenerational Opioid Use And The Constrained Choices Of Indigenous, Latina, And White Women Caregivers In Rural New Mexico, Carmela M. Roybal

Sociology ETDs

Opioid addiction is a serious and persistent global health issue. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that between 1999 and 2016, more than 630,000 people in the United States died of an overdose of a prescription opioid or illicit drug (CDC 2018). Extant research has suggested that for nearly a century, New Mexico has experienced some of the highest rates of prescription and illicit opioid death in the nation (Goldstein and Herrera, 1995; Landon, 2003; Shah et al., 2008). I examined intergenerational opioid dependence through the lived experience of women caregivers of opioid-addicted family members. Data …

Epistemologías Muertas, Luis Oswaldo Esparza

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

No abstract provided.

The. Broken. Gay. Chicanx. Grind., Damon R. Carbajal

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

No abstract provided.

Intersextional Pride, Damon R. Carbajal

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

This poem is one of a trio of poems published in this volume titled, “at the interSEXtion of being GAY and CHICANX: Un Trío de Poemas,” that dive into what it means growing up as a gay, Chicanx light-skinned in the current times post the moviemento and through the strides of the queer liberation movement. The poems explore many facets of living at this intersection including, but not limited to, toxic masculinities, queerphobia, mental health, sexual assault, pride, etc. The poems also explore the notion of what it means to be mestiza as Mexicano and White and how this further …

White On The Outside | Brown On The Inside, Damon R. Carbajal

Chamisa: A Journal of Literary, Performance, and Visual Arts of the Greater Southwest

This poem is one of a trio of poems published in this volume titled, “at the interSEXtion of being GAY and CHICANX: Un Trío de Poemas,” that dive into what it means growing up as a gay, Chicanx light-skinned in the current times post the moviemento and through the strides of the queer liberation movement. The poems explore many facets of living at this intersection including, but not limited to, toxic masculinities, queerphobia, mental health, sexual assault, pride, etc. The poems also explore the notion of what it means to be mestiza as Mexicano and White and how this further …

Mental Health, School Climate, And The Resilience Of Lgbtqia+ Mexican/X Youth, Damon R. Carbajal

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

Mental health and school climate are two critical components of youth experience and are cardinal components of creating and ensuring equitable education and spaces for youth. LGBTQIA+ Mexican/x youth are highly affected by these two entities as part of their lived realities, being multiply marginalized persons in the U.S. educational system. Thus, to best understand how these entities play into the LGBTQIA+ Mexican/x youth experience, this study utilizes a social sciences testimonio comprised of one-on-one semi-structured interviews, demographic surveys, and a focus group. Through this three-prong approach, I analyze the lived realities of LGBTQIA+ Mexican/x youth, the traumas of discrimination, …

Voices Through The Streets Of The South Valley: Stories Of Querencia Lost And Reclaimed, Esther Garcia

Chicana and Chicano Studies ETDs

The South Valley is a rural community within the urban boundaries of the City of

Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is predominantly populated by minorities from diverse ethnicities and linked to the City of Albuquerque through limited access thoroughfares. The South Valley, composed of inhabitants who have lived in the area for generations, also includes returnees or those who are new to the valley. On any given day, within these neighborhoods, economic and social problems manifest themselves on the streets and threaten to deteriorate the seams of the community. Nevertheless, given the prevalent socio-economic challenges, South Valley residents appear to demonstrate …

The Covid Ceiling: Super-Moms Are Struggling, Verónica Gonzales-Zamora

Faculty Scholarship

COVID Ceiling is the unique combination of identity, discipline, and academic work requirements with care crisis and public health crisis that is contributing to the current and soon larger wave of mental health crises.

Ibram X. Kendi's How To Be An Antiracist, Quatez Scott

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

This book review of Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist (2019) addresses the importance of exploring race relations in the U.S. from a framework that focuses on racial policies. Commonly referred to as “systemic racism” and “institutional racism”, racist policies maintain racial inequities. Antiracists aim to eliminate those racial policies. Kendi’s ability to address these issues head on with deeply researched historical narratives brings light to the ways racial policies are reinforced, which reproduce racist ideas. This book drives straight to the heart of racial challenges and takes a new approach at examining how and why humans should …

Isaac Gottesman's The Critical Turn In Education: From Marxist Critique To Poststructuralist Feminism To Critical Theories Of Race, Aaron A. Baker

Intersections: Critical Issues in Education

Isaac Gottesman's historiography, The Critical Turn in Education: From Marxist Critique to Poststructuralist Feminism to Critical Theories of Race, aspires to Illuminate the historical context in which critical educational theory evolved. To his credit, he seems to achieve that goal, and more: he establishes that the relationship between the history of critical educational theory and society’s reliance on education is a key to social justice. This book review, describes and evaluates each chapter of Gottesman's text, focusing on his successes and challenges.

Imperial Myths, Abject Devotion: Mapping Affect In New Mexican Visual Culture And Discourse, N. C. Lira-Pérez

American Studies ETDs

New Mexican visual art and culture, as molded by state-sanctioned endeavors, is often casted in order to conceal the tension, conflict, and violence of settler colonialism and imperialism. Widely known myths of empire, such as the Tricultural myth, create a visualizing enterprise through which settler colonial logics transit and create political material reality. This thesis explores the following questions: How do New Mexican Hispanos and queer Chicanxs position themselves in relation to the logics of settler colonialism and empire? How are they positioned in relation to settler colonialism and empire? On the one hand, I argue that the state of …

Healing Through The Photographic Murals Of James "Chip" "Jetsonorama" Thomas, Mandolen Sanchez

Art & Art History ETDs

James “Chip” “Jetsonorama” Thomas is an Indian Health Services physician who moved to the Navajo Nation in 1987. Although he is not culturally Native American, Thomas depicts Navajo in large-scale black and white photographic murals. His work has been discussed in online articles and books about street art in terms of their relationship to street art, specifically the art of JR, as well as their role as activist art on the Navajo Nation. There has been a lack of substantial research, though, into the way in which his photographic murals respond to or engage with nineteenth and twentieth-century photographs of …

La Llorona In Nuevomexicana Poetic Narratives: Reflections On Writing And Memory, Sutherland Jaramillo

Spanish and Portuguese ETDs

This paper focuses on poetic narratives that consider the folklore figure of La Llorona. I argue that contemporary nuevomexicana poets are responding to regional narratives as a way of challenging traditional structures of the lore and female archetypes to reclaim the identity and voice of the figure of La Llorona. Through literature that considers structure and archetype of the lore, Chicana feminist theory, and spectral theory, this essay surveys a selection of poems: “La Llorona Speaks” (2018) by Mercedez Holtry, “Una Carta de Amor de la Llorona” (2011) by Jessica Helen Lopez and “La Llorona” (2018) by Joanna Vidaurre-Trujillo. Through …

Remixing The Archives: Indigenous Interpretations Of History And The Future, Marcella Ernest

American Studies ETDs

This dissertation examines how Native art makes critical interventions that are aesthetically and intellectually arranged with the intention of displacing the master narratives. The project tracks how film and photography—historically used by non-Native people as a tool of colonialism—are being reclaimed by the visual and sonic scholarship of contemporary Native artists. The project shows how multidisciplinary artists use technology to remix audiovisual archives from a specific time in American history: portrait photography and ethnographic filmmaking at the turn of the twentieth century, Hollywood’s frontier representations of Indianness in twentieth-century motion pictures, social guidance classroom films from the 1950s, and digital …

Civil Rights In Living Color, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

This Article will examine how American civil rights law has treated “color” discrimination and differentiated it from “race” discrimination. It is a comprehensive analysis of the changing legal meaning of “color” discrimination throughout American history. The Article will cover views of “color” in the antebellum era, Reconstruction laws, early equal protection cases, the U.S. Census, modern civil rights statutes, and in People v. Bridgeforth—a landmark 2016 ruling by the New York Court of Appeals. First, the Article will lay out the complex relationship between race and color and discuss the phenomenon of colorism—oppression based on skin color—as differentiated from …

Kamala Harris And The Complexity Of Racial Identity Politics, Vinay Harpalani

Faculty Scholarship

Vinay Harpalani reviews Kamala Harris' run as Democratic nominee for President, contrasting her challenges with Barak Obama's campaign to show how racial identity politics are complicated and constantly evolving as well as the intersectional, or multifaceted, issues Kamala faced during her candidacy.