Social Justice Commons^™

Misinformation Machine, Jan A. Wozniak

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

No abstract provided.

Book Review: A Literacy Coach’S Playbook: Building A Winning Team To Improve Student Achievement, Kirsten Burke Smith

The Language and Literacy Spectrum

This scholarly book review of A Literacy Coach’s Playbook: Building a Winning Team to Improve Student Achievement (Brieske-Ulenski & Kelley, 2025) provides a detailed overview of a new clinical model of literacy coaching. The proposed approach, a Clinical Literacy Coaching Framework (CLCF), draws upon a medical model to build Literacy Leadership Teams (LLT) to improve data-informed and culturally-sustaining instruction.

From Peril To Perseverance: Dr. Arthur C. Parker And The Seneca Arts Project, Brennan Ciccolone

Binghamton University Undergraduate Journal

Like many Native people, the Haudenosaunee were subjected to culturcide and assimilation using residential schools like the Thomas Indian School in the late 19th and early 20th century. During this time, in 1925, the Seneca archaeologist Dr. Arthur C. Parker was hired as the director of the Rochester Museum and Science Center. Parker used his museum position to uplift and preserve Haudenosaunee arts and culture. This paper focuses on his Seneca Arts Project (1935-1941), which gathered art and artifacts from both ancient and contemporary Haudenosaunee members. This project explores how Parker’s work was used to help revitalize and honor Native …

[2026 Honorable Mention] Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary, Daylyn R. Reese

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

This research offers unique insights into the creation and development of the Chumash Heritage National Marine Sanctuary (N.M.S.) with a focus on indigenous populations’ roles (primarily Chumash and Costanoan). In this episode, I analyze what makes this NMS different from every NMS precluding it, how it recognizes a new goal in conservation (thrivability), and the areas in which improvements still must be made to authentically include and honor indigenous voices.

Wrack Lines Spring-Summer 2026 Volume Number 1, Margaret Cozens, Johann Heupel, Owen Placido, Paul Salopek, Judy Benson

Wrack Lines

“Building community around the places we love,” is the theme of the Spring-Summer 2026 issue of Wrack Lines magazine. Learn about the work of the Six Lakes Park coalition in Hamden, Riverfront Recapture in Hartford, MyCoast in southeastern Connecticut and the statewide land conservation conference. Additional stories tell about the artistry and mission of photographer-videographer Tomas Koeck, and National Geographic explorer Paul Salopek, who is traveling the world on foot.

Social Innovation In The Peacebuilding Sector, Michelle Helman, Phd, Katherine Ronderos, Mariafernanda Burgos-Ariza

Peace and Conflict Studies

Social innovation is an expanding practice in the peacebuilding sector. In this article, three peace scholar-practitioners reflect on our experiences as peacebuilders and consider the utility, tensions, and possibilities for peace and social innovation in theory and in practice. We draw insights gleaned through a focus group workshop with peacebuilding colleagues and highlight three case study examples from Colombia, the Philippines, and Kenya, each demonstrating the challenges and opportunities of social innovation in the peace sector. In doing so, we offer a reimagining of- and recommended action steps to engage innovation through a collaborative, feminist design approach. This article contributes …

Teaching Peace Where Borders Divide: Interdisciplinary Praxis In A Criminal Justice Program, Lucas Espinoza

Peace and Conflict Studies

This article describes a criminal justice senior-level undergraduate course, CRIJ 4350: Peace, Nonviolence, & Justice, at a Hispanic-serving institution known as the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, in the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. The course centers five key frameworks: critical pedagogy, intersectionality, decolonial theory, restorative and transformative justice, and trauma-informed care, as this course departs from carceral models of justice education. Grounded in theory, literature, and research from criminal justice, criminology, peace and conflict studies, sociology, political science, ethics/philosophy, social justice, human rights, and critical pedagogy, the course centers student reflection from course evaluations, relationships, and experiences of a faculty member. …

[2026 Winner] Seed Sovereignty Through The Lens Of Decolonization, Lily A. Marx

Ethnic Studies Research Paper Award

This paper explores the movement of seed sovereignty, a contemporary movement stemming from the history of theft, appropriation, and forced assimilation endured by indigenous peoples. This movement recognizes that consumers alone cannot mend the damage being done to our food systems, but instead encourages communities to take political action by saving seeds and rebuilding connections with the land.

Her Fire This Time: Black Women Faculty And The Liberatory Pedagogy That Can't Wait, R. Danielle Scott, Andi Toliver-Smith, Nailah Smith

The Journal of Advancing Education Practice

The purpose of this paper is to document the experiences of Black women faculty sustaining culturally responsive, justice-oriented, liberatory pedagogy in the current sociopolitical climate of higher education. In the context of coordinated attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion infrastructure, the erasure of culturally responsive accreditation standards in Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences (SLHS), and the unwritten expectation that Black women faculty absorb the weight of equity work that institutions have abandoned, this paper examines the sustaining forces that keep liberatory teaching aflame. Drawing on critical autoethnography and reflective practice, three Black women, two faculty members and one doctoral student …

Physical Therapists' Perspectives Of Implicit Racial And Ethnic Biases And The Influence On Physical Therapy Practice, Michael Blizniak, Mary Shotwell, Cheryl Kerfeld, Shanda Gore

Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice

Problem: Physical therapy (PT) outcome disparities exist among racial and ethnic minority groups in the United States. Implicit racial and ethnic biases (IREBs) may contribute to these inequities. Understanding IREBs within PT practice is crucial for addressing disparities and helping physical therapists comply with the American Physical Therapy Association Code of Ethics Principles. Purpose: This study examines the role of IREBs in PT by exploring physical therapists' awareness of them and their potential influence on PT practice. Methods: A virtual explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed, integrating quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews. Fifty-one United States physical therapists participated in the …

Kitchen Table Press: A Case Study Of Regression To The Neoliberal Mean, Alaina Disalvo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the idealistic founding of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press in 1980 and its slow downfall, culminating in the cession of ownership of the Press to a university in 1992. It traces the ideological development of Kitchen Table Press’s key founders, Barbara Smith and Audre Lorde, and their respective relationships to the ideologies of other renowned feminist figures of the era, specifically June Jordan and Adrienne Rich. It examines the history of the Press through historical, intersectional, affective, and socialist lenses. This thesis argues that neoliberal pressures can bend even the most radical organizations away from their …

Pedagogy Of Care: Exploring Climate Justice Frameworks In Cuny Undergraduate Courses, Ismerlyn Gonzalez

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Climate justice centers the human rights of communities most impacted by the climate crisis rather than solely focusing on the scientific aspects of environmental challenges and disasters. Higher education institutions play a key role in advancing climate justice education, but research shows that frameworks are not consistently defined across institutions. The IRB-approved study that produced the findings in this capstone sought to explore how climate justice frameworks are implemented at the CUNY undergraduate level and learn more about the instructors delivering these courses. From February to April 2026, instructors from different CUNY undergraduate campuses were surveyed, interviewed, and asked to …

Exploring Minor Feelings: Asian And Asian American’S Racialized Emotions, Identity, And Mental Health Amidst Covid-19, Kristina Mirasol Arevalo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the central role of racialized emotions in shaping how Asians/Asian Americans (A/AA) experience, interpret, and respond to racism, yet these emotional processes remain underexamined in psychological research. Rather than treating emotions as outcomes of discrimination, this dissertation conceptualizes racialized emotions as dynamic processes through which structural racism is experienced, interpreted, and embodied in everyday life. This framework positions racialized emotions as a key mechanism linking racialized social contexts to identity development and mental health. Across three studies using qualitative and quantitative methods, I examine how racialized emotions shape racial meaning-making, ethnic-racial identity, and psychological well-being among …

Can Chinatown Speak? Mapping Hauntings, Dispossessions, And Diasporic Lifeworlds In Boston’S Chinatown, Lin Lin

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

Boston's Chinatown has persisted despite highway construction, urban renewal, and institutional expansion that destroyed much of the neighborhood. This thesis asks how residents have shaped and inhabited that space and whose contributions have been forgotten in the process. Through entangling frameworks from Geography and Asian American Studies, the thesis approaches Boston's Chinatown through walking, archiving, and counter-mapping. The first chapter reads the streets as a layered record of historical ruptures, which leads to a dichotomy of presence and absence. The second chapter then examines the archives of the 1993 Parcel C struggle. It creates an original counter-archive, titled the "Collection …

Diverse Families Navigating Mental Health At The Pediatrician’S Office: A Mixed Methods Exploration Of The Interplay Of Stress, Culture, And Child Mental Health In The Primary Care Setting, Sara B. Budowsky

Dissertations

Low-income and ethnic minority youth experience high psychiatric need but persistently low participation in traditional mental health care. General pediatricians are often the first and only healthcare providers with whom many families engage around their child’s emotional and behavioral development. Using both quantitative analysis of retrospective secondary data and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) of in-depth interviews with diverse caregivers, this project explored influencers of child mental health and family utilization of pediatric primary-care-based mental health services in the context of a uniquely multicultural clinic serving a predominantly Medicaid population. Three key findings include: 1) Caregiver Stress was a highly significant, …

Policing Sex Trafficking: 'They’Re Never Taught, You Know', Anila S. Duro

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Research shows that victims of sex trafficking are most likely to first come in contact with the police (Baldwin et al, 2011; Twigg, 2017) and at times police have not been able to categorize cases of prostitution as trafficking even when trafficking elements were very clear (Dank et al, 2017; Dempsey, 2017; Farrell & Cronin, 2015). Despite the legal definition of trafficking, the terms prostitution, sex work, and sex trafficking are sometimes used interchangeably by law enforcement, whereas at other times, these words refer to different sets of circumstances and have different criminalization outcomes.  Research in this area is limited …

Investigating Potential Bias In Public Acceptance Of Restorative Justice: The Influence Of Situational And Offender Characteristics, Kiara Haynes

Student Theses

Restorative Justice has been an emerging justice mechanism in the U.S. since the 1970s that advocates are working to expand more widely throughout the justice system. Due to victims and the broader community of the offender being an integral part of the Restorative Justice process, it is critical to consider the general public's support of this novel justice mechanism, as well as the influence that social biases among the public may have on the experience of defendants going through the system. The study conducted examined the effect that social biases toward an offender's personal characteristics have on attitudes and opinions …

Centring Girls In Water Justice Research And Social Movements, Cecilia Chitukula, Wrigley, Julie Nyanjom, Naomi Joy Godden

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Scholars and activists focused on water justice in the Global South are increasingly embracing collaborative methods. These methods include community-centred research, public engagement in water management, and participatory interventions aimed at addressing the crisis of fresh and clean water access in both urban and rural localities. This represents a shift from state-led water management that is top-down, technocentric, and privatised, towards just and equitable water solutions which are informed by the needs of community members. In patriarchal societies of the Global South, girls are disproportionately affected by the water crisis, as they are tasked with water searching and fetching responsibilities …

Psychological Architecture: Evaluating The "Greenhouse Model" As A Structural Standard For Lgbtq+ Well-Being, Ava Lee

University Honors Theses

Traditional LGBTQ+ mental health frameworks often conceptualize psychological safety as a matter of individual endurance. This paper critiques this focus on adaptive resilience, which systematically shifts responsibility from institutions to individuals. To counter this, the study introduces "Psychological Architecture," a framework viewing social environments as constructed infrastructures that can either support or undermine queer well-being. The model contrasts performative "Glasshouses," which prioritize visibility over safety, with engineered "Greenhouses" that nurture sustainable safety through three sequential pillars: Authentic Representation (walls), Emotional Validation (insulation), and Vocal Activism (ventilation).

Grounded in the findings of a 2024 qualitative pilot study of a queer roller …

Who Keeps Us Safe? Youth Resistance And Security Regimes At The Neoliberal University, Arwen Hansell

University Honors Theses

In a political climate shaped by surveillance, labor precarity, policing, and immigration enforcement, questions of (in)security increasingly organize everyday life. Governments justify security measures through the language of public safety, even as many people experience insecurity surrounding housing, healthcare, employment, and the future itself. Although critical security studies have examined policing, militarism, and surveillance extensively, youth are often overlooked as political actors despite their central role in social movements. This study addresses that gap by focusing on student labor organizers and activists navigating (in)security. Using collaborative ethnography, I conducted fieldwork at protests, labor organizing meetings, workshops, and demonstrations connected to …