Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationBeginning with the assumption that constructs of the child underpin our educational theories and practices, this dissertation takes up figurations of the child within two educational interventions. The study turns its focus onto the values of affirmation, inclusion, and developing consciousness especially as they are taken up within certain exemplars of multicultural education (MCE) and a specific curricular example of K-12 ethnic studies, and argues these values rely upon normative construction of childhood. Without discounting the importance of MCE and K-12 ethnic studies, this study shows how the MCE values of affirmation and inclusion, and the K-12 ethnic studies value of developing consciousness produce figures of the child that maintain aspects of normative constructs of childhood, especially a construct that understands children as naturally innocent. Moving through an interdisciplinary terrain of queer (youth) studies of education and queer theories of childhood from the humanities, this study outlines how children are figured within these values. Two narratives provide entry points for disrupting these constructions of childhood. Lawrence "Larry" King and the auto-narrative of being a Brown Boy in Drag are placed within the constructions of childhood reproduced through MCE and K-12 ethnic studies. Through a rasquache methodology, the author strings together characterizations of Larry and Brown Boy in Drag as being over-the-top or too much and centers the embodiments of queer childhood. It is precisely through this idea of iv too muchness that Larry and Brown Boy in Drag do not fit within these constructs and reveal the cracks of even our most critical-social justice forms of education, especially within the curricular models of MCE and K-12 ethnic studies. In turn, too muchness offers different imaginations of how children are figured in education theory, research, and curriculum