Like many institutions of high education throughout the United States, the University of North Texas requires all students to pass introductory United States History courses. While the purpose of these courses should be to create a population well versed in U.S. history and sociopolitical and economic context, the foundational textbooks utilized in these courses promote American exceptionalism and U.S. supremacy. Their omission of the complex and controversial history of the United States creates a false master narrative based on an idealized version of U.S. history. Even textbooks that include diversity continue to uphold a progressive master narrative that ignores issues of systemic racism, sexism, and homophobia. My theoretical analysis of the required textbooks, Exploring American Histories: A Survey with Sources, is applicable to all introductory U.S. history textbooks. Decolonialism, critical race, and intersectional feminism are theoretical lenses that disentangle and highlight otherwise invisible aspects of American exceptionalism and the serious consequences of the subjugation of subaltern historical narratives. This thesis applies theory with examples of how textbooks or supplemental teaching can expose foundational oppression, violence, and discrimination to teach students critical thinking and help them see connections between the past and their present.

By analyzing the lived experiences of Black birthing people through a plurality of medical and emotional ethos, I illuminate themes of experience that allow or disallow the subjectivity of the birthing person to thrive or falter. I specifically focus on a spectrum of dynamics of reproductive trauma versus empowerment, resistance versus trust, and feelings of fear versus safety expressed by the birthing person. In the face of birth trauma, the Black birthing community is creating care alternatives that offer support in ways the traditional US medical system is failing. The modes in which communities participate in the birth justice movement and collectively practice modes of resistance that offer safer, more respectful care models are valuable in eliminating racial health disparities in the United States. For this research endeavor I deployed a feminist methodological approach consisting of in-depth, semi-structured, ethnographic interviews, to explore the dynamics of power hierarchies within the realm of labor and delivery. Care paradigms chosen by Black birthing people can be divided into four specific situations which yielded profoundly discernable positive or negative results: (1) Birth experienced as a Black pregnant person delivering in the hospital under the care of a non-black OBGYN and birth team, (2) Birth …

The rapid and radical integration of artificially intelligent (non)human beings into public and private life has reshaped humans' everyday interactions in varied spaces, from the medical examination room to the bedroom. I contend that it is humanity's charge to agitate an onto-epistemological shift toward a post-anthropocentric future grounded in existential equality between all beings. A shift toward better ways of being and knowing is accomplished through a new materialist and decolonial intervention in (non)human subjectivities which require that humans commit to: 1) divest from western-rational discourses binding agency and intimacy to the corporeal body and 2) (re)locate intimacy in the (in)corporeal communion of the soul and spirit to establish harmonious techno-human affinities. I submit Her and Ex Machina, science fiction films and cultural artifacts, as case studies depicting decolonial futures which create discursive space to interrogate western-rational onto-epistemologies, critique colonial hegemonies, and (re)define subjectivity to include all thinking, feeling beings.

This thesis explores the way we learn to advocate for sexual assault survivors. This multi-methodological, qualitative study examines both popular cultural representations of sexual assault and official training materials provided by rape crisis centers and domestic violence organizations as sites of pedagogical messaging. I argue that it is imperative to incorporate intersectional feminist frameworks into understanding how advocacy is animated in these different sites of learning. This project offers an intersectional feminist analysis of two television shows: Netflix's Unbelievable and HBO's I May Destroy You, in addition to the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault (TAASA) training manual and supplemental training materials from six different rape crisis centers within a 75-mile radius of the Dallas Ft. Worth metroplex. Together, both sets of texts work pedagogically to teach us who is a worthy victim, what counts as "real" rape (and to challenge this very framework), and who deserves organizational resources. This thesis concludes by offering an Intersectional Rape Advocacy Toolkit, aimed at offering a set of values, lessons, and practices necessary for activists to grow in mutual advocacy for survivors and mutual support for fellow activists working to put an end to rape culture.

Graduate education can be psychologically taxing, and the academic tasks that graduate students are required to perform can cause a great level of stress, insecurity, and uncertainty. The unique experiences that female students of color face at the intersections of gender, race, and class may have negative effects on their academic performance and attainment. This research explored the experiences of discrimination among the female African American/Black and Hispanic/Latina graduate students and their coping strategies to survive in the program of study at the University of North Texas (UNT), as a minority serving institution (MSI). A narrative research method was applied and 13 in-depth interviews were conducted using a semi-structured interview protocol. The findings showed the participants experienced various types of intragroup and intergroup discrimination based on the intersections of their multiple identities, especially race, gender, and socioeconomic status. The findings of this study revealed structural discrimination that participants experienced through their education; starting with their low income neighborhood where they were raised and the discrimination at the university. They perceived that minorities are not represented in the management and faculty positions, and there is an inadequacy of support resources and lack of racially sensitive advising services for female graduate students …