Faculty Directory

Summary of Expertise

Homeless youth

LGBTQ Youth

Critical ethnography

Social and cultural analysis

Cultural Studies and Education

Foundations of Education

Feminist Methodologies

Interviewing Youth

U.S. Third World Feminist Pedagogies

Research Interests

U.S. Third World and Decolonial Feminisms
Testimonio
Schools and LGBTQ youth
Digital Queer Youth
Homeless youth
Youth and Violence
Latinos in the Education Pipeline
Violence against LGBTQ Communities

Biography, Education and Training

My research focuses on youth resistance, pedagogy, and testimonial narratives in urban educational spaces, with particular attention paid to the life experiences of LGBTQ street youth. I am also engaged in the conversation of how we represent youth of color in educational research, where deficit and other culture of poverty models often divest youth and their communities of agency or naturalize discourses of criminalization and poverty. It is through ethnography where I am able to engage and extend the work of US third world feminists in the spaces where multiple, oppositional and the often contradictory experiences of LGBTQ street youth intersect and overlap, where it is not a singular experience with race or homophobia that young people are experiencing, but often an interlocking and intersecting system of power that defines their reality. Much of my research focuses on these intersections, and is my attempt to theorize the often violent experiences of simultaneous, differential oppressions in pedagogical and curricular research and in my rethinking of resistance and agency.

My new project looks at violence in and outside of the schoolyard for LGBTQI youth. I am also interested in the acquisition of digital literacies with street youth and other non-dominant youth communities and developing feminist models of coalition with pre-service teacher credential students.

Honors, Awards and Grants

2018 The Golden Apple Award, Social Sciences Division

2012 Antonia I. Castaneda Prize, National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (Best New Article)

2012 Article of the Year, Queer Studies Special Interest Group, AERA

Cornell University Provost’s Academic Diversity Postdoctoral Fellowship, 2006-2008

Selected Publications

• Reading This Bridge Called My Back for Pedagogies of Coalition, Remediation, and a Razor’s Edge. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 32 (2), 136-150, 2019.
• LGBTQ Street Youth Talk Back: A Meditation on Resistance and Witnessing. QSE: The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 24(5), 547-558. 2014.
• Notes on Immigration, Youth and Ethnographic Silence: Stories of LGBTQ Migrant Youth. Theory into Practice, v. 47, no. 1, 2008.
• The locker room : Eroticism and exoticism in a polyphonic text. QSE: The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education Volume 11, Issue 1, 137-153, 1998
• Toward an epistemology of a brown body. QSE: The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, v. 14, n. 5, 657-669, 2001.
• Cruz, C. and McLaren, P. (2004). Queer bodies and configurations: Toward a pedagogy of the body. In McLaren, P. (editor) Red Seminars: Radical Excursions into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy. Creskill, New Jersey: Hampton Press.
• LGBTQ Street Youth Doing Resistance in Infrapolitical Worlds
• LGBTQ Youth of Color Video making as Radical Curriculum: A Brother Mourning His Brother and a Theory in the Flesh

Selected Presentations

National Summit on 2SLGBTQ Curriculum: Participant, RISE Summit on 2SLGBTQ-Inclusive Teacher Education, Vancouver, British Columbia, 2019.

School of Education Colloquium Presentation: Thinking Infrapolitics in the Lives of Queer Street Youth. Colloquium Lecture for the Graduate School of Education, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 2019.

George Jones & Velma Rife Jones Endowed Lecture : Against Deficit: The Resistance Socialities of LGBTQ Homeless Youth. Talk at the College of Education, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 2019.

Invited Talk: Thinking Youth Infrapolitics. Latinx Research Center, UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA. 2019.

Invited Talk: Thinking with Queer and Trans-Youth about Resistant Socialities and the Infrapolitics of the Street, Graduate School of Education, Stanford University. 2018.

Paper Presentation: Bridge as a Primer: A Decolonial Feminist Politics of Being “With You.” Toward Decolonial Feminisms: A Conference Inspired by the Work of Maria Lugones, Penn State University, State College, PA. 2018.

Presidential Symposium: Thinking Plurality and Pedagogy with the “World”-Traveling of Queer Youth of Color. AERA, New York City, 2018.

Symposium: The Digital Practices of Mobility, Safety and Surveillance of Queer Street Youth. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. 2017.

Colgate University Annual Race and Education Lecture: Notes Toward A Pedagogy of This Bridge Called My Back, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY. 2016.

Paper Presentation: LGBTQ Youth Talk Back: Thinking about Resistance in Tight Spaces, National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA., 2015.

Paper Presentation: Moving U.S. Third World Feminism Forward: The Struggle of New Teachers in a Pedagogy of Coalition. American Educational Studies Association Annual Meeting, Toronto, CA, November 2, 2014.

Roundtable Discussion: Continuing the conversation: Doing LGBTQI and ally work in the Ph.D. program and beyond. Invited Talk at the American Educational Research Association Meeting Graduate Student Council Chair Fireside Chat, April 28, San Francisco, CA. 

Teaching Interests

Qualitative Methodologies

Emancipatory Pedagogies

Resistance Theory

School-to-Prison Pipelines

Latinos and Education

LGBTQ issues in Schools

Feminist of Color and Decolonial Methodologies

Race and Social Inequality

Social and Cultural Theory in Education