This dissertation considers the social, political, legal, cultural, historical, temporal, and other contextual forces concerning educational access for young people experiencing forms of state custody and surveillance at the intersections of multiple identity markers and inquires into efforts to resist injustices. It also explores educational…

As researchers strive to work toward equity in education, attention to how teachers and teacher educators develop asset-based perspectives and what role power plays in this process has become a focus in teacher education (Carter Andrews et al., 2019; Philip, 2019; Souto-Manning & Martell, 2019). Within science teacher education, researchers…

There has been a convergence of economic, epistemological, social, and communicative trends over recent decades that shape the ways scholars communicate within their fields, across fields with other academics, and with non-academic entities in industry, government, and the lay public. Consequently, scholars must not only convince those controlling…

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…

One of the most challenging questions in ecumenical liturgical theology is how the relationship between the eucharistic bread and wine and Jesus Christ's body and blood can be appropriately described. In this dissertation, I take a new approach to this longstanding issue by drawing upon the field of cognitive linguistics. Based on this field, I…

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…

Writing Studies has flourished as a field in Latin America during the last two decades. Its development has been fostered by an exponential growth of college enrollments and processes of expansion and democratization of the educational offer in the region. The renewed attention received by higher education writing has fueled new research efforts…

Anecdotal evidence suggests interdisciplinary ideas receive significant, positive press. The prevailing commentary details the promises and theoretical benefits of interdisciplinarity, yet countervailing viewpoints are noticeably absent from the conversation in major media sources. Moreover, there is a lack of empirical data exploring the values…

According to critical disability studies scholars, disablism may be the fundamental system of unearned advantaging and disadvantaging upon which all other notions of difference-as-deviance are constructed. If so, a deeply critical and intersectional investigation of enabled privilege/disablism prepares a grounding from which seeds of novel and…

The fundamental purpose of "Theoretical Communities of Praxis: The University Writing Center as Cultural Contact Zone" is to investigate the situatedness of Writing Center Studies, defining it as an autonomous (sub)discipline and interdisciplinary contact zone within the larger discipline of Rhetoric and Composition. In order to meet…

American society is currently experiencing a surging interest in contemplative practices. The secularization and professionalization of contemplative practices can be seen in the adoption of mindfulness-based approaches in sectors as wide-ranging as technology, nonprofit, and higher education. Amongst all these fields, institutions of higher…

This dissertation examines how women in the Muslim Student Association (MSA) at the University of Colorado at Boulder respond to the negative stereotypes of Islam and Muslims that have proliferated since 9/11. The media's positioning of Muslim women as "backwards" and "un-American" compels MSA women to construct an extensive…

This dissertation critically examines mental illness discourses through the intersecting disciplinary lenses of art education and disability studies. Research from multiple disciplines is compared and theorized to uncover the ways in which discourses, or language systems, have oppressively constructed and represented "mental illness." To establish…

Living inside built environments--infrastructure--it is easy to take for granted the things that we do not need to engage, but are at work behind the scenes nonetheless. Well-designed systems become invisible, but to engage them, how do we know which perspectives, objects, and relationships are useful? I examine the University of Michigan Digital…

Disproportionality, the over- or underrepresentation of a particular group compared to its presence in a population, in special education is a long-standing issue (Dunn, 1968; U.S. Department of Education, 2006; Waitoller, Artiles, & Cheney, 2010). Some scholars have proposed group or universal screening for emotional and behavioral risk in…