Off-campus UMass Amherst users: To download campus access dissertations, please use the following link to log into our proxy server with your UMass Amherst user name and password.
Non-UMass Amherst users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this dissertation through interlibrary loan.
Dissertations that have an embargo placed on them will not be available to anyone until the embargo expires.
Author ORCID Identifier
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
Education
Year Degree Awarded
2021
Month Degree Awarded
May
First Advisor
Jamila Lyiscott
Subject Categories
Art Education | Language and Literacy Education | Social Justice
Abstract
This dissertation focuses on a qualitative study drawing on critical ethnography in conjunction with the self-reflective components of autoethnography, the critical race methodology of racial and counter-storytelling (Johnson, 2017; Solorzano & Yosso, 2002), and youth-centering components of Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) (Cammarota & Fine, 2010; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Torre et al., 2012). The purpose of this study was to explore the complex relationship between trauma, the lived realities of racially minoritized youth, and the arts. As theory-building research, this study sought to expand trauma theory toward raciocultural perspectives of trauma while expanding performance arts theory into an embodied understanding of performance arts. Moreover, this theory of trauma is based in the lived realities of racially minoritized youth as they live with and through trauma. In this way, trauma functions as a haunting for racially minoritized youth (Derrida, 2012; Gordon, 2008). Observations were conducted at a monthly open mic, L!t (pseudonym) that the researcher volunteered at for two years and hosted prior to gaining permission to conduct research. One cisgender woman and two queer women youth artists participated in the study, which consisted of 10 unstructured interviews held over the course of a year in the New England region of the United States. The participants and researcher identified as Puerto Rican, although one participant identified as bi-cultural and another participant identified as multi-cultural and were mentored by a Puerto Rican artist who was the founder of the monthly open mic, powerful community leader, and a member of the Nuyorican Literary Vanguard. Instead of focusing on pain narratives, this study focused on the various forms of power and wisdom that come from being haunted by traumatic experiences. Findings from this study reveal that participants use embodied arts as a means of therapy that is rooted in culturally sustaining practices. Participants also view performing embodied arts as a pathway toward disrupting the culture of silence around trauma that exists in their communities.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/22469822.0
Recommended Citation
Torres, Andrew Brian, "“LET ME TALK MY SHIT”: EXPLORING RACIOCULTURAL TRAUMA THROUGH EMBODIED ARTS" (2021). Doctoral Dissertations. 2228.
https://doi.org/10.7275/22469822.0
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/2228