Theses and Dissertations

Date of Award

12-1-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (EdD)

Department

Curriculum & Instruction

First Advisor

Angela Chapman

Second Advisor

Uma Ganesan

Third Advisor

Ana Carolina Diaz Beltran

Abstract

This dissertation employs solo autoethnography and counter-storytelling to examine how intersecting identities, queer, neurodivergent, bilingual, and fronterizo, shape lived experiences within U.S. educational spaces along the Texas–Mexico border. Grounded in Critical Race Theory as a historical foundation and guided by the braiding logic of Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), the study integrates Latino Critical Race Theory (LatCrit), Disability Critical Race Studies (DisCrit), and Queer Theory to analyze how race, language, ability, and sexuality converge within systems of schooling.

Using memory-work, poetic autoethnography, and narrative vignettes as primary data, the dissertation traces how educational institutions discipline identity through racio-linguistic policing, behavioral surveillance, and heteronormative norms. Through a recursive process of vignette construction, thematic synthesis, and critical reflection, the findings reveal three interwoven themes: masking as survival, belonging as conditional, and resistance as reclamation. Across the narratives, masking emerges as embodied labor required to navigate misrecognition and surveillance; belonging is shown to be contingent upon the suppression or management of difference; and resistance takes shape through quiet acts of refusal, counter-spaces, and relational practices that allow identity to persist without apology.

Rather than treating oppression as singular or additive, this study conceptualizes power as braided across race, language, disability, and queerness, demonstrating how these forces converge on the body in rural borderland schooling contexts. The analysis positions experiential knowledge and counter-story as legitimate sites of theory-building and advances autoethnography as a rigorous, justice-oriented methodology. Implications emphasize the importance of recognizing and protecting counter-spaces within schools as essential infrastructures for regulation, belonging, and resistance among underrepresented students and educators.

By weaving narrative, theory, and practice, this dissertation illustrates how personal counter-stories can disrupt dominant educational narratives and reimagine more humane possibilities for teaching, learning, and belonging in borderland contexts.

Comments

Copyright 2025 Alexander Hernandez. All Rights Reserved. https://proquest.com/docview/3290523430

Download

Share

COinS