The qualitative case study exposed the permanence of racism beginning in the antebellum public schools of Nashville and continued in the current actions in the Tennessee legislature with the expulsion of two Black male legislators. Critical race theory is used as the main descriptor for the actions of White politicians and legislators in Tennessee…

This study examined one instance of College Republicans sharing harmful rhetoric that aligns with the white power movement (WPM). Through a restorative justice (RJ) framework, the College Republican's rhetoric was found to be harmful to the University of Maine community. In this study, the University of Maine relied exclusively on legal approaches…

Muslim women are portrayed with a dichotomous image: on one side, as the victims of the patriarchal Muslim men and, on the other, as the violent associates of the Muslim terrorist (Maruoka, 2008). The act of head covering, the most visible Muslim-identified marker, has thus assumed an outsized space in research of Muslim women. However, while…

Myanmar has been undertaking education reforms since 2012. Tensions have arisen between central-level policymakers and teachers' union leaders regarding the implementation of some reforms. While this give-and-take between policymakers and teacher activists has been reported somewhat in the news media, the academic literature on these developments…

In this project, I examine the emotional and lived experiences of women of color (WOC) graduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and how they embody and negotiate racism, classism, and sexism in academia, particularly in White, men-dominated STEM spaces. I utilize critical race theory and intersectionality to…

This study seeks to provide administrators and faculty with a better grasp of the dynamics of the Campus Speech Wars (CSW) so they may develop civic education strategies that more thoroughly address the problem of campus conflicts over freedom of expression. I employ a feminist theoretical perspective to critique a commonly accepted narrative…

This dissertation examines the writings and experiences of five Indian international students in the United States during late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By drawing attention to these students, I attend to the ways in which notions of freedom, progress, and inclusivity associated with American higher education, and liberalism more…

This study presents a critical policy analysis of California's Assembly Bill 329 (AB 329) regarding inclusive sex education, coupled with a series of coding phases of relevant data. AB 329, enacted in 2015, mandates comprehensive sexual health education in California schools, aiming to address the needs of diverse student populations, including…

The current study examines gender representations in Dummett et al. (2016) EFL textbook, Keynote, at Middle Eastern University in the Middle East. Keynote is an EFL textbook that is used to teach students in English for Business I and English for Business II courses. The study followed Fairclough's (1989, 1995, 2001, 2015) three-dimensional models…

In this dissertation, I conceptualize a rhetorical and linguistic analysis of politics from a decolonial framework (Mignolo, 2011; Smith, 2012). My analysis draws on classical rhetoric (Aristotle, 2007), cultural rhetoric (Mao, 2014; Powell, et al., 2014; Yankah, 1995), and linguistics (Chilton, 2004) to reveal the different ways ideological and…

Taking a critical archival studies approach, this dissertation engages critical discourse analysis as a means of analyzing the analogous treatment and representation of political dissidents from the civil war and alleged gang members in post-conflict El Salvador through the medium of human rights documentation. By analyzing a cross section of…

The public education system in the U.S. has been under assault with the latest neoliberal education reforms. Those reforms are characterized by their antidemocratic and homogenizing assessment system, which reinforces a banking model of education. Such model goes against teachers and teaching, linguistic and cultural diversity and bilingual…

This dissertation is a qualitative practitioner research study in which I explore how my students and I engage in critical literacy using sociopolitical Articles of the Week (AoWs). Critical literacy is the ability to read, write, and speak about texts in a reflective manner to better understand power, inequality, and injustice that prevails in…

Dual language (DL) is an increasingly popular bilingual education model, touted for its promise to mitigate the historical achievement gap of the growing Latinx population while also teaching Spanish to English speakers. While DL programs may alleviate Latinxs' educational disparities in some cases, recent scholarship has noted a paradox: in other…

The main goal of this study was to expand understanding of a Korean-American community's cultural identities through storytelling and artmaking, which was conceptualized as "Visual Storying" in this study. Ethnic minority students in the United States often experience confusion or conflict between American and their heritage cultures.…