Degree Date

9-2016

Document Type

Dissertation - Public Access

Degree Name

Ed.D. Doctor of Education

Academic Discipline

Curriculum, Advocacy, and Policy

First Advisor

Antonina Lukenchuk

Second Advisor

Patrick Roberts

Third Advisor

Eleanor Binstock

Abstract

Vagabond: Returning to Autoethnography as a Doctoral Nomad is a journey into what is described as a purposeful and rhizomatic inquiry of spaces and places in knowing. It prompts questioning within the author such as, “What has this doctoral journey come to mean, and where do I go now as I step outside the roots which have planted in me this need to wander? How do I navigate this struggle?” The work is a coming-to-terms piece. It is a hopeful wandering and documented artifact capturing an organic process of unlearning, relearning, and examining locations of being, while recognizing the emergent need to embrace fracture, fiction, and multiple conflicting positions. By returning to ethnographies or artifacts constructed throughout the doctoral journey as a “doctoral neophyte,” the stage is set for an interpretative performance in poststructural fashion. Positioning and contrasting interviews, poems, and essays written during the coursework as a doctoral student begins to capture the intersecting positions of walking as a mother, teacher, and woman. These narratives are offered as data and then juxtaposed with cultural artifacts authored by some of the Riot Grrrl “zinesters” of the 1990s. Through the folding and positioning of such work, the readers are invited to participate in a poststructural journey as a nomadic inquirer, walking with the author in the hopes to become-other. In documenting this journey or doctoral-audit-trail of deconstruction, the middle ground is worked between the spaces of academic curriculum and lived experiences. This Deleuzian line of flight takes the reader through stories of vulnerability, challenges commonsense assumptions, defines metanarratives, and questions certainty. In regards to curriculum studies, this work is a coming to: a becoming. It celebrates and embraces curriculum as a life event that can be used as a tool for transformation.

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