Dana Chalupa Young
My courses are centered on an active, equitable, and collaborative learning environment that connects to the students' lives and interests. I emphasize diversity and intentionally represent diverse groups and experiences through course content, readings, lecture examples, and multimedia tools. I include media and popular culture visuals, such as social media posts, documentaries, stand-up comedy, and photographs, to help diverse learners understand the course material.
Additionally, I utilize small collaborative groups for in-class activities to increase learning, rapport, leadership, and student empowerment. Some of these collaborative activities feature class and group discussions, collages, analyzing clips from movies or T.V. shows, mini-research studies such as content analysis of children’s toys, social media advertisements, and interactive games like Sociopoly (Monopoly with a sociological focus).
I also incorporate service-learning projects into some of my courses to have students develop critical analysis skills, a deep understanding of sociology, and community engagement. Through these various activities and the structure of my classes, I aim to empower students to implement a sociological imagination to understand better the course material, their own lives, communities, the U.S., and global issues.
My research has two directions dedicated to deconstructing a homogenous Latina/o/x community in the U.S. The first explores how structural inequalities (race, gender, and class) shape South American immigrants’ racial and ethnic identities and sense of belonging in the U.S. One article, “Where in Mexico is Peru?”: The Racialization and Identities of South American Immigrants,” published in Latina/o Studies, examines how South American immigrants formed empowering panethnic, Latina/o identities as they confronted Mexicanization. Mexicanization is a term I coined to denote a specified type of racialization that homogenizes South American immigrants as Mexican and stereotypes them as undocumented, Spanish-speaking, criminal and threats.
The second direction of my research agenda focuses on interesting inequalities in higher education and Latina/o/x college students. Through interviews and surveys with Latina/o/x college students, I examine the formation of their identities, their well-being, their experiences with racism and microaggressions, and how they cope and resist intersecting inequalities. In another article with a colleague, Dr. Isabel Ayala, we examined the experiences of microaggressions and coping mechanisms of Latina/o college students. The article “Racial Microaggressions and Coping Mechanisms among Latina/o College Students” was published in Sociological Forum.
