During the interwar period, California's labor-intensive agriculture transitioned from reliance on diverse immigrants to preference for Mexicans. Political movements to restrict immigration, the Great Depression, and labor unrest compelled farm employers to search for labor that could be used flexibly and deported easily. To achieve this…

In nearly 40 years of legislative advocacy, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)--a free-market, limited-government group now drawing intense scrutiny for its support of a controversial self-defense law--has had a significant influence on K-12 education through its model legislation and work with state lawmakers to promote such…

The importance of alternative forms of information is undeniable in a democratic society. Yet mass media often ignore important issues as well as grassroots struggles and victories. Over the past two decades, citizens of one small Canadian town have initiated a documentary film festival as a means to learn about diverse problems and/or share…

Like many others seeking to make room for alternative voices in the narrow canon of CYC theory and practice, our work is steeped in theoretical and activist perspectives on colonialism, neoliberalism, normativity, social power, and social change. This critical, multidisciplinary lens is too often cast outside the realm of authentic CYC. In this…

This dissertation is a historical biography on the life, suffrage and educational contributions of Mary Carroll Craig Bradford, a wife, mother, suffragist, teacher and educational administrator in the state of Colorado. The purpose of this dissertation was to find out exactly what Bradford's contributions were to her state. The initial observation…

This article describes the current lives of the Chinese leaders of 1989. Wang Dan, an active organizer year before the demonstrations and quickly became a leader in the square, has completed a Ph.D. in Chinese history at Harvard University last year and is now on a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Oxford. Wu'er Kaixi, who took a…

The rise of new social movements has produced an emerging discourse on activist scholarship. There is considerable ambiguity about what the term means. In this article I draw on my work as a trade unionist, political activist, and activist lawyer in Mumbai, and later as a social justice activist in New Zealand to reflect on the meaning of activist…

This dissertation uses theoretical explorations and participant conversations to consider the constitutive possibilities of ethnographic writing that works between students, faculty, and communities and uses those possibilities to describe the philosophy and key elements of an ethnographic composition pedagogy. The project begins with an…

This dissertation provides insight into students' and alumnae's experiences during the transition and legal proceedings as their former college for women transitioned to coeducation. Previous research on the transition of single-sex colleges to coeducation has primarily examined the process from an organizational perspective. This study focuses on…

Russlynn Ali, Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education, is charged with enforcing a wide range of education equity laws. Ali was a passionate activist in California helping champion educational equity for minorities. Today, as Ali approaches her third year working as assistant secretary for civil rights, she says she has…

Why do some social movement leaders work harder than others? And, how does gender affect the patterns we uncover? Utilizing historical case study evidence of local chapters in the emerging movement opposing drinking and driving we are able to develop and test theoretical expectations about predictors of weekly effort among MADD and RID leaders.…

This article has three primary goals centring on a re-examination of the research frameworks we use for understanding the politics of social movements. First, I detail the ideological and methodological deficiencies of the old social movement/new social movement framework. Second, I highlight the positive contributions of research that favoured or…

In fall 2009, this author participated in mass protests in California against tuition increases, furloughs, state budget cuts, and mass layoffs of schoolteachers, faculty members, and other public-sector workers. He states that what was so inspiring about these demonstrations was their formation of a new model of coalition politics. Taking the…

Examining Malcolm Browne's photograph of the burning monk as well as appropriations of it by the Ministers' Vietnam Committee, I argue that self-immolation is a powerful rhetorical act that utilizes self-inflicted violence as a means of performing a visual embodiment of violence done by an "other." I assert that the power and resonance…

Paulo Freire's pedagogy was developed in reaction to the state of "periphery" of illiterate farmers in Brazil and Chile. However, his thinking, which illuminated capitalism's oppressive nature in the classrooms, was enthusiastically accepted in the "centre" and he became a global point of reference for social action. In this…