Graduate Studies, UNL

 

Dissertations and Doctoral Documents, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2023–

First Advisor

Edmund Hamann

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Committee Members

Amanda Morales, Lauren Gatti, Rachael Shah, Theresa Catalano

Department

Educational Studies

Date of this Version

12-2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Citation

A dissertation presented to the faculty of the Graduate College of the University of Nebraska in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Major: Educational Studies

Under the supervision of Professor Edmund Hamann

Lincoln, Nebraska, December 2025

Comments

Copyright 2025, Cara Morgenson. Used by permission

Abstract

As the title suggests, this is a humanizing meditation on enduring relationships beyond the classroom construct of student-teacher, with a theoretical framing that braids strands of critical theories and pedagogies to consider critical love, authentic caring, and humanization as a liberatory and justice-oriented framework (see del Carmen Salazar, 2013; Freire, 1970/2020; hooks, 1994; Sealey-Ruiz, 2020, 2021; Valenzuela, 1999). In the spirit of multiple and eclectic methods (Nader, 1972), the methodological framing braids (1) critical autoethnography as feminist method (Adams et. al, 2015; Boylorn & Orbe, 2014; Ettorre, 2017), (2) portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Hoffman Davis, 1997), and (3) narrative epistemology in the tradition testimonio, (counter)stories, feminist narrative writing, and a genre-bending turn in qualitative research. Inspired by the theoretical and embodied writing of women thinkers and scholars like bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Audre Lorde, the author centers feminist commitments to women's bonding, women's speech, dialogic relationality, and (counter)storytelling. Central to this work is hooks' (1984; 1992) notion of theorizing as a liberatory practice—that theory itself can emerge from lived experience and relational knowing as an act of resistance and freedom. The dissertation enacts this principle by engaging participants not as research subjects, but as co-theorists in the ongoing work of meaning-making.

The author first met the women who are central to this research–now as former students, mentees, co-theorists, and friends–in grade 9–12 English Language Learner (ELL) classrooms in Lincoln, Nebraska, a midwestern site of refugee resettlement. As our relationships evolved after graduation, roles shifted into collaborative partnerships that resist fixed categories. This dissertation critiques traditional research boundaries and advances narrative, dialogue, and relationship as rigorous forms of knowledge production and as feminist, relational, and liberatory practice rooted in co-created meaning-making.

Situated within the liminal realm between social sciences and humanities research, the entire dissertation extends that sense of liminality to format, conceptual and methodological framing, and content; it is informed by categories and resistance to their intrinsic reductionism. The study meditates upon the long arc of love and reciprocity of care that evolves after the normative endpoints of schooling, exploring the questions of (1) Who am I to them? (2) Who are they to me? and (3) What is reciprocity that emerges from this dynamic, enduring connection? This evolution resists essentialized classification; as one subject notes, "Americans love putting things in categories." The project wrestles with this impulse toward categorization and, in doing so, with the constraints of the classical dissertation format itself. It offers both a methodological and ethical contribution to reimagining educational inquiry into relational pedagogies as a liberatory, collaborative, and profoundly human act.

Advisor: Edmund Hamann

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