Browsing by Author "Santamaria Graff, Cristina"

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    Disabled Youth's Cultural Ways of Knowing and Doing in Special Education: Implications and Strategies
    (Springer, Cham., 2025-06-01) Santamaria Graff, Cristina
    As section leader of the ‘diversity/multicultural’ portion of the International Handbook of Special Education: Implications and Strategies, I have spent considerable time reflecting on the conceptualization of disability at the intersections of multiple non-dominant identity markers in relation to strategies benefiting disabled youth. My reflections have been heavily influenced by Waitoller and Thorius’s (2022) critical scholarship on centering and sustaining disabled youth’s assets within educational spaces. Their work alongside the scholarship of those with multiple intersectional identities (e.g., scholars of Color, disabled scholars, disabled scholars of Color), has supported an evolution of thinking around difference encapsulated in two main ideas: a) disability is part of the fabric of human variance encompassing identity formation, a connection to disability culture/s and communities, and a way of knowing that is contributive, beneficial, and evolving and (b) disability can be located as a counterhegemonic construct to disrupt “normalcy and its location in the bodies and minds of those with dominant identity markers” (Thorius, 2019, p. 212).
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    Expanding Upon Critical Storytelling to Inform Intersectional Disability Futures
    (Springer, Cham., 2025-06-01) Santamaria Graff, Cristina
    Critical storytelling is a methodology that has been used to disrupt and transform deficit-oriented, Western colonial master narratives about marginalized peoples. This chapter expands upon critical storytelling as conceptualized by Dr. Nicholas D. Hartlep and colleagues to explicitly include intersectional disabled youth (IDY), a term used to refer to disabled youth at the intersections of race, language, class, and other identity markers of difference in middle school through higher educational settings. To include IDY, I draw from other critical methodologies that highlight storytelling as a tool to not only disrupt white bodymind normativity but also to honor and center marginalized IDY lived experiences within schools and educational environments. These include Indigenous storywork, testimonio, Critical Race Theory’s counter-stories, and cripistemologies. I synthesize key components from each of these methodological approaches that center one’s embodied story as linked to critical storytelling and apply these to questions informed by the literature about youth with intersectional identities. From these questions and concepts connected to critical storytelling, an understanding of intersectional disability futures emerges to include key pedagogical considerations within teaching and learning that embrace IDY’s stories as knowledgemaking in current and future educational contexts. Accordingly, considerations of time, space, people, content, context, and form are analyzed for their importance in supporting IDY in cocreating and informing desired intersectional disability futures.
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    Leadership in Red, Blue, and White: A Critical Autoethnography for Aspiring Anti-Racist White School Leaders
    (2025-05) Mason, Madeline B.; Scheurich, Jim; Matias, Cheryl; Hayes, Cleveland; Santamaria Graff, Cristina; Nguyen, David Hoa Khoa
    This dissertation presents data from my time as a white school leader working to lead through the lens of racial justice in two very different sociopolitical contexts. I refer to my time working in Indiana as my “red” experience; and my time working in Washington state as my “blue” one. This wording is a play on the common political labels that states and regions often receive based on the presence of more Democrat or Republican leaning leadership, policies, and ideals. As I seek to analyze the differences and similarities between my two geographical experiences, I draw upon the framework of Critical Whiteness Studies with a large emphasis on the work of Cheryl Matias and George Yancy. Through a Critical Autoethnography approach, I seek to understand my own grappling with whiteness and white supremacy culture and how I simultaneously perpetuate them while also working to address them and create more just educational spaces. I present six themes after analyzing journal entries, research papers, and notes from my work in both states that are a direct reflection of my own experiences, all framed within the context of my theoretical framework. I take a story-based approach to my research with the hopes of both connecting with readers and supporting the autoethnographic approach as a valid and engaging method of research. Overall, I found significant meaning in conducting this research both professionally and personally.