In this article the author discusses Foucault's heterotopia analytic and applies it to a film analysis of Quinceañera. Engaging in feminist and critical media scholarship, the author outlines U.S. discourses on girlhood and their collusion with patriarchal and heteronormative discourses on Latino cultural nationalism in the regulation, control,…

Thinking of identity as a multi-dimensional process through which individuals actively experience and create the self-definition of themselves, this dissertation examines the multiple dimensions of identity that undergraduate college students consider when making meaning of their lives inside and outside of the classroom. Only recently have…

Focusing on Jaime Hernandez's "Locas: The Maggie and Hopey Stories," part of the "Love and Rockets" comic series, I argue that the graphic landscape of this understudied comic offers an illustration of the theories of space in relation to race, gender, and sexuality that have been critical to understandings of Chicana…

This study, focused on five transgender and gay youth of color from San Francisco, explored how family problems, poverty, homophobia, and transphobia propelled them into homelessness and made gay-friendly spaces and resources especially meaningful to them. These young people describe seeking support in San Francisco's well-known gay enclave, the…

This article uses a feminist framework to explore embodied aging by analyzing indepth formal interviews with 57 men and women in their 60s, 70s and 80s. Emphasizing intersectionality, I focus on the interpretations and strategies these men and women use to make sense of their aging bodies. Their aging corporeal experiences allow me to examine…

In this study, we examine how broad heteronormative discourses circulate, become embodied within, negotiated by, and potentially resisted within a university, a college of education, and educators themselves. We pay special attention to how heteronormative discourses at Southwestern University (SWU) impact the various roles this college of…

Three hundred twenty-six undergraduates who participated in a diversity-based course or voluntary intergroup dialogues completed a written questionnaire about their attitudes toward and comfort with people who are African American, Asian American, First Nation, Latina/o, white, and lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB). Secondary analysis of…

This article explores shame issues for Latino children who have been sexually abused and their families. Latino cultural concerns around shame that are associated with sexual abuse include: attributions for the abuse, fatalism, virginity, sexual taboos, predictions of a shameful future, revictimization, machismo, and fears of homosexuality for boy…

This article describes the author's concerns, as a brand new teacher, about competence and failure which manifested themselves in a focus on the body. It discusses the effects of diversity among teachers and students. While the author's fears corresponded to the situation, given that she would be subject to the specific and often intense gaze of…