This dissertation explores contemplative practices such as mindfulness, meditation, compassionate listening, and journaling as a means to self-awareness, self-compassion, and empathy for self and others. Women's and Gender Studies (WGS) and social justice classrooms and pedagogy include difficult conversations on social justice topics such as…

Antiracism and feminism are interrelated projects, and this research concerns the complex roles that White women play in their histories, development, advocacy, and fissures, specifically in the academy--a unique, contradictory place. This dissertation documents my co-inquiries with eight of my Sugarhill College colleagues--White women faculty…

Teacher education is an entry point for education reform where candidates can learn how school can become a site for reinforcing norms that harm minoritized students, and also as a place of possibility, where ideologies are expanded to embrace possibility and exploration. This project investigates the use of critical, queer, and anti-oppressive…

The historic Highlander Folk School has recently been recovered as a unique model of rhetorical education that significantly impacted labor organizing and civil rights work in the United States. While scholarship and mainstream publications consistently celebrate the folk school as a gender inclusive, racial sanctuary, this dissertation reorients…

This is a narrative inquiry study that presented types of women's activism during and after the conflict in Aceh, Indonesia (1976-2005). The study sought to explain how divergent women's activism becomes possible against the backdrop of this conflict and how the establishment of peace alters the patterns of their activism. Women's activism here…

In recent years, there has been an increasing focus on preparing educators to teach for social justice. Black teachers have been highlighted for their historical and present work with black students, eliminating educational inequities seemingly through their race consciousness and activism. The literature on black teachers has treated them as a…

This study explored how Black men make sense of the masculine aspect of their identity and adult development juxtaposed with the ideology of leadership within the realms of a Black, Greek-letter fraternity on a predominantly White college campus in the South. Historically, administrators of colleges and universities have accepted those who…

This study investigates how female student members in campus organizations for women of color discuss black self-identification and their understandings of race, ethnicity, and gender. Through qualitative research and a framework that employs postpositivist realism and intersectionality, the study examines how the women's interpretations of their…

African American women maintain distinctive social locations at the intersection of race, gender, and class (Crenshaw, 1991; Collins, 1986; 2000; Wing, 2003). However, their voices, interpretation of experiences, and concern with the use of formal education as a mechanism for racial uplift have not been priorities in feminist movements (hooks,…

This study explores the lived experiences of six African American female administrators in Missouri public higher educational institutions. The Black Feminist Thought theory as espoused by Patricia Collins is the framework with which this research examines their leadership. The conceptual lens of race, gender, and class offers an opportunity to…

College students have been socialized within a patriarchal, male dominated system and have accumulated many life experiences prior to arriving on campus. These experiences could present challenges in communication, may limit the students' ability to develop intimate and meaningful relationships with others, and create struggles during and after…

Schools contribute heavily to the feelings of isolation and stigmatization that many gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth experience. Research demonstrates that the climate of US middle and high schools are generally unsupportive and unsafe for many of these youth who are often susceptible to harassment, discrimination, and other negative events,…