SUGRS 2023 Keynote Speaker – Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Southern California
Dr. Casar Rodriguez is the SUGRS 2023 Keynote Speaker, brought to us by the James P. Curtis Lecture series.
- Thursday, March 30, 2023
- Curtis Lecture: 2 – 3 pm, Autherine Lucy Hall 102
- Fireside Chat w/ faculty & Students: 3:30 – 4:30 pm, Carmichael 311 (Nall Gallery)
Homies Theorizing Back:
Critical Qualitative Methodologies for Educational Justice and School Transformation
ABSTRACT
In this talk, Dr. Casar Rodriguez will begin with his story and positionality, tracing the outlines of what grew to be the theoretical backdrop, questions, and values that animate his research and his identity as a scholar. After, Dr. Casar Rodriguez will introduce Homies Theorizing Back, a critical qualitative research project that follows a group of system-impacted youth as they challenge the overtheorizing and pathologizing of the marginalized and instead, decide to theorize back. Chronicling the study’s genealogy and methodological innovations, this talk will focus on theorizing back, the methodology at the heart of this project. To end, Dr. Casar will return to the theorizing of the Homies, whose insights trouble and denounce the “self-serving truths” stubbornly reproduced by the ways in which scholars ask questions and look for answers and in turn, leave us with a set of provocations fundamental to those committed to just research during deeply unjust times.
About Dr. Casar Rodriguez
Miguel Casar Rodriguez Ph. D. is an activist scholar with expertise in critical qualitative research and educational justice. Compelled by a belief in the transformative power of education and the imperative to put research in the service of social change, Miguel works at the nexus of critical qualitative methodologies, social foundations of education, and justice. His scholarship explores how research can contribute to a collective praxis through which marginalized communities and those resisting oppression can ask critical questions about our realities, build power, and become protagonists of history as we imagine, author and cultivate just and humanizing futures. Methodologically, his research and movement work draw from and are in dialogue with critical ethnographic, participatory action, and decolonizing research traditions.
After getting his Ph. D. from UCLA, Miguel joined the University of Southern California’s School of Education. He currently serves as the Dean’s postdoctoral research associate. In August 2023, Miguel will join The University of Alabama in the role of Assistant Professor of Qualitative Research.