This thesis thinks through the ways in which Black and Native storying offer epistemological interventions on neoliberal formations of multiracial identity. I argue that Black and Native storytelling methods and methodologies facilitate rethinking and re/unlearning relationships to the racial and ethnic categories of mixed-race, biracial, and multiracial, as well as...
This dissertation is a memoria histórica of the Guatemalan Civil War that centers queer and trans Maya people in its imaginings. Using Maya backstrap weaving practices, “constellating” as defined by the Cultural Rhetorics Theory Lab, and ghost stories as a Maya-centered queer/trans rhetorical methodology, I argue for a shift from...
Epidemiological research on HIV/AIDS seeks to determine at-risk populations not reached by current care. In the forty years since the AIDS epidemic began, transgender people were only recently deemed “at-risk” by the CDC and more action was taken to study them. Most current research centers on transgender women, with transgender...
This work examines the decolonial potential of queer and Two-Spirit Indigenous storytelling by telling stories using graphic novel chapters, literary analysis, and graphic analysis. I explore the importance of stories in defining us as individuals, as peoples, and as humans. As a mixed-race Indigenous (unregistered Cherokee) transwoman, I engage with...
Indigenous and Latinx communities have always used storytelling to pass along ancestral histories and memories, whether it be through the act of speaking, performing or other types of artwork. This thesis examines the ways that queer Latinx artists are retelling the stories that have been mistold to erase, repress and...
This thesis explores the gendered histories of slavery through the concept of haunting in two neo-slave narrative novels: Toni Morrison’s A Mercy and Octavia Butler’s Kindred. I offer readings of these texts through slavery’s geographic and temporal implications, in order to argue that the logics of antiblackness remain a fundamental...
Stories of the Guatemalan Civil War, which lasted from 1960 until 1996, have often focused on only encapsulating the violence indigenous people experienced at the hands of the Guatemalan government and military. Although these stories contributed to the many civil rights organizing and calls for justice that followed, these types...
This thesis describes how heteropatriarchal, settler colonialism impacted Indigenous communities' systems in power and control, particularly with the American Indian Movement during the 1960s-1970s. Further, the gendered divides this created within the American Indian Movement are described. The murder of Anna Mae Aquash is revisited as an act of gendered...
Gender has been the subject of study in engineering education and science social research for decades. However, little attention has been given to transgender and gender nonconforming (TGNC) experiences or perspectives. The role of cisgender or gender conforming status has not been investigated nor considered in prevailing frameworks of gender...