InterActions: UCLA Journal of Education and Information Studies

This article explores the findings of a qualitative study conducted to better understand how students who identify as members of the LGBT* community and as people of color describe the ways in which student affairs professionals can meet their needs for persistence through college. This study also sought to assess how the students’ perception of the race, gender identity, and sexual orientation of the student affairs professionals impacted the degree to which the students felt their needs were being met. Using a hypothesis coding structure, the researcher explored whether students would describe their needs being met through practices of transgressive teaching, a style of engaged pedagogy described in the seminal text Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom by bell hooks. This article will also make recommendations for future research and for student affairs practice.

This study bridges scholarship on the topic of racial microaggressions and conceptions of body size in relation to gender by focusing on the lived experiences of Black fat women as they navigate academic settings. Previous literature on body size rarely accounts for how other social identities such as race, class, ability, and sexuality impact the particular manifestations of discrimination that is experienced. Further, literature on the experiences of marginalization due to body size primarily focuses on perceptions of health and beauty. Informed by Critical Race Theory, Black Feminism, and Fat Studies the narratives of three Black women who have completed their bachelor’s degree were captured through counterstorytelling, a methodology born out of Critical Race Theory to purposefully center the experiences of People of Color and directly challenge dominant and oppressive ideologies. This study presents the possibilities of how this reality represents a necessary facet of marginalization that should be further examined to deepen our awareness of the heterogeneity of Black people.

This paper considers the impact of language on literacy and learning within the contexts of linguistic theory, language acquisition theory, and social cognition as having a causal relationship with low achievement in reading, writing, and speaking Standard American English.  In expanding the concept of literacy, this paper is premised on the notion that African-Americans, who exhibit difficulty learning to read, write, and speak Standard American English, qualify as English Language Learners in the United States. As such, these individuals are entitled to the same considerations as other English Language Learners. Drawing on the 1996 Oakland Resolution on Ebonics and tracing the events that followed its passing, this research aims to provide librarians and library and information science (LIS) educators a contextual framework of African-American students that will be useful in building the unique skills, knowledge, and abilities that today’s librarians need – if they are to effectively provide the cutting-edge library services this country’s growing number of distinctly urban environments require.

This project draws from our work investigating the state of collected data on policeofficer-involved homicides (POIH) in Los Angeles County and using action research to involvecommunity members in understanding and deploying data in new and meaningful ways. In thispaper, we develop the conceptual bounds for a project that addresses the reports our team hasencountered detailing police harassment of students and faculty at UCLA. A common thread inthese reports is that individuals wish to share their experiences with police harassment at UCLA,but feel they have few spaces to voice their concerns or channel them into productive tools forchange. This paper reviews literature in fields of critical legal storytelling, as well as informationand archival studies’ practices of data management for social justice to conceptualize a projectthat will tackle the issue of police harassment at UCLA through the creation of a mobileapplication for reporting such incidents. We draw from this literature to develop a reporting toolthat that is easily accessible, understood, and utilized by people on the UCLA campus, and thatallows for the collection and dissemination of these narratives detailing such incidents as a wayto meaningfully channel such expressions to shape discourse in a way that mobilizes positivechange.

Kirschenbaum, Matthew G., Track Changes: a literary history of the word processor. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016. ISBN 978-0-674-41707-6