Semester

Spring

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Type

PhD

College

College of Creative Arts

Department

Curriculum & Instruction/Literacy Studies

Committee Chair

Erin McHenry-Sorber

Committee Co-Chair

Nathan Sorber

Committee Member

Daniel Renfrew

Committee Member

Cris Mayo

Abstract

This qualitative phenomenological study explores the experiences of eight undergraduate Latinas in a Predominantly White Institution in the Appalachian region using Gloria Anzaldúa’s insights on Borderlands and Mestiza consciousness. A vast majority of the studies focused on the Latinx college student population that takes place in states and tertiary institutions with a dense concentration of Latinx population, leaving rural areas—especially the Appalachian region— unexplored. There is, as well, a scarcity of studies in research focused on four-year-degree-granting institutions in which Latinx are highly underrepresented. A substantial number of studies continue presenting Latinx students as a homogenous group despite their heterogeneity in terms of acculturation and assimilation levels, language(s) fluency and use, race, Hispanic background, and socioeconomic status, to name a few. Particularly, the educational experience of Latinas has been framed under educational deficits and cultural stereotypes.

To counteract this view, the theories and praxis developed by Chicana scholars provide a new lens that emphasizes the singularity of the Latina student in an educational system which oppresses her. Anzaldúa’s (1987) idea of borderlands explains the physical and metaphorical spaces that Latinas navigate to construct their identity along the Mexico-U.S. border. She overturned the pejorative connotations of the term mestiza to posit a history of resistance “by developing a tolerance for contradictions, a tolerance for ambiguity” (p. 77). This study transposes these ideas of identity, consciousness, and borders to the Appalachian Mountains to explore how the spaces of a college campus constitute invitations or barriers to trespass borders, promote self-reflection, and create new realities through experiences. Using deep interviews and informal pláticas, this study explores how the participants perceive their college experiences, and more specifically, how their identity as Latinas informed such experiences.

The participants shared experiences of microaggressions, isolation, and loneliness, both at individual and institutional level, and both outside and within the Latinx community. The study found intense reflections on the mental, emotional, and spiritual paralysis that implies finding their sense of belonging on campus. The study deepened what the students understood about a Latina identity and an Appalachian identity. Finally, the study used Anzaldúa’s path of conocimiento to analyze the mental and emotional journey in which the students tried to make sense of their experiences and emerge with a new consciousness of their identities—one that is flexible, resistant, and solidary—in the Appalachian borderlands.

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