i'll begin the story where the story began...

In trying to figure out how to condense a nearly two-year journey into twenty minutes, I decided to begin the story where the story began. What follows an excerpt from the researcher’s orientation section within the Methodology chapter of my dissertation. Given the intensely personal connections I have had with my doctoral research, it seemed the most appropriate place to start. As a student in middle and high school social studies classes, I became increasingly aware of – and progressively bothered by – the Grand Narrative tradition that celebrated a pro-(mainstream)-“American” tale. Informed in large part by my identity as a female student of color, I sought extra-curricular ways to learn a more complete and accurate depiction of history and civic engagement than presented in my social studies classes. Though I did not have the language for it then, my family experiences made hybridity and complexity my norm. As such, I have always had low tolerance for the simplistically dichotomous nature of the social studies curriculum in the United States (for example: heroes vs. villains, right vs. wrong, Black vs. White). My life experiences did not match up with the historical narrative I encountered in most of my social studies classes.

My three years teaching social studies at a predominantly Black high school and my eight years of volunteer work within the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Questioning (LGBTQIQ) youth community allowed me to see that many students battle a similar disconnect between their lives and the social studies curriculum.

In addition to my experiential background, my perspective as a researcher was deeply influenced by womanist theory. Womanism provided me a set of lenses-as-tools that I employed to “queer the gaze” of civic education research. That is the context in which this study was born and in which it developed.