Chicanas/os in Contested Spaces: Communal Forms of Resistance and the Creation of Underground Calmecacs

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on how Chicana/o graduate students negotiate the need to feel connected to family, community and cultural ties while engaging in research and writing that acknowledges the contributions of all of their sources of knowledge—including those outside of the academy. This research is important because it offers critical interventions into how to improve equity and diversity for students of color and their communities in the university setting and also pushes the field of feminist studies by centering theories that embrace corporeal and material realities as central to feminist political ideology by insisting, as women of color feminists have, that family, community and culture cannot be separated from educational and academic spaces. It also introduces the concept of an Underground Calmecac Resistance as a means for survival for Chicana/o graduate students. This research is carried out through interviews, questionnaires, experiential knowledge and by highlighting the significance of mainstream (im)migration narratives and language for Chicana/Chicano graduate students while using work by key theorists, Gloria Anzaldúa, Cherríe Moraga, and bell hooks.