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鈥檚 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鈥� racial and ethnic identities and sense of belonging in the U.S. One article, 鈥淲here in Mexico is Peru?鈥�: The Racialization and Identities of South American Immigrants,鈥� 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 鈥淩acial Microaggressions and Coping Mechanisms among Latina/o College Students鈥� was published in Sociological Forum.
