In this paper, I start from a posthumanist understanding of subjectivity to stress how our ways of relating do not follow from previously formed intentions but emerge in assemblages. The fact that we hold certain theoretical ascriptions does not assure that we will relate in ways that are consistent with them. We might intend to embrace…

This paper aims to foreground the persistent ethical conundrums within the process of engaging children labeled with intellectual disabilities in the research process. I consider what happens when researchers are embedded within and committed to sustaining relationships with disabled children? I explore the possibilities of the enactment of…

To teach about race is to recognize how there are communities whose worlds are shaped by violence, death, and resurrection, such as Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Emmett Till, George Floyd, and the many unnamed. Resurrection invokes the zombie figure. Zombies are iconic, and as implemented in an interdisciplinary course, a means to foster…

We collected narratives from five undergraduates who identified as either in the process of or had formerly transitioned from one gender to another while enrolled in a postsecondary institution. We used a narrative life story protocol to explore the greater context of participants as individuals. Participant stories focused on: the importance of…

Inspired by the Indigenous framework of Thrivance and grounded in a Critical Sisterhood Praxis, this duoethnography maps our journey (re)membering and (re)claiming communal practices of "fictive kinship" and "chosen family." We offer what we've affectionately coined as our "Comadre Story"--the story of how we became…

This article explores the methodological and ethical challenges of doing qualitative fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Drawing on a long-term project conducted in China, I discuss how my interaction with the participants was mediated by the pervasive state power. This phenomenon adds a new layer to the question "can the subaltern…

Researcher positionality is widely accepted as a phenomenon to be understood and used to strengthen the qualitative research process. However, consideration of white researchers' positionality has largely centered on situations in which they are "outsider" researchers in spaces that do not reflect their own racial identities. To build…

Centering the research process on building, rebuilding, and maintaining relationships, this multi-vocal article highlights the need to revisit practice. We consider research conducted in a city where all public schools are charter schools and discuss tensions between the implementation of our research approach and the university as we trouble the…

In this essay, I draw on two black theorists of whiteness--W.E.B. Du Bois and the Reverend Thandeka--to examine how white supremacy and white racial identities emerge from and are fortified in the relations of "white people to other white people." I use stories told by two white people from a rural, white farming community in…

The purpose of this theoretical paper is to provide a praxis oriented example of a qualitative methodology called portraiture for environmental justice and critical environmental education. The five essential elements for a portraiture study are context, voice, relationship, emergent themes, and aesthetic whole. Context is the frame, thus…

The constant dehumanization of Black fathers and boys in the media, education, politics, pop culture, and society is traumatic. Deficit perspectives and a racialized political climate often negatively portray the moral, familial, and relational practices that Black fathers and boys engage in with their family members in their homes. Using…

This article conceptualizes "possibilities" as a challenge to the ways that Black boys are constructed and arrested through their engagement in educational spaces. Critical race scholars have deployed counter-stories to disrupt deficit framing of Black boys by discussing their possibilities, promise, and potential. Similarly, we weave…

We draw on our lived experiences as faculty of communication studies from Asia, living and working in the United States, to explore how U.S. higher education constituted our identity as linguistic minorities. We also draw on tenets of collaborative autoethnography, producing insight on three levels of linguistic discrimination against non-standard…

In this paper, we argue that love is not only compatible with validity in social inquiry but is an essential part of it. The work of coming to know others is similar to the work of emotional relationship, and the two overlap. In the ethnographic tradition, validity, or trustworthiness in research is established through practices like transparency…

This article focuses on the process of establishing, defining, and making sense of relationships with undocumented college students as co-researchers in participatory action research (PAR). Using memos and narratives with thick descriptions of critical moments that emerged during a qualitative higher education PAR study, the author examines the…