A journal article by Cindy Cruz, an assistant professor of education at UC Santa Cruz, has won two article of the year awards.
The Queer Studies Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) selected Cruz's article, "LGBTQ street youth talk back: a meditation on resistance and witnessing," as its article of the year for 2012.
The National Association of Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) named the same essay, published in the October 1, 2011 issue of the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, as winner of its 2012 Antonia I. Castaneda Award. The article was one of several in a special issue that explored the possibilities and limitations of theories of youth resistance in educational research, and presented new and expanded theories of youth responses to injustices in schooling.
Reviewers noted that Cruz's article was a "strong theoretical piece that counters the usual colonialist frames of research."
Cruz, who joined UCSC in 2008, is also a fellow of the UC Center for Collaborative Research for an Equitable California based at UC Santa Cruz. Its director, UCSC professor of education Ron Glass, commented that Cruz's "essay seems clearly destined to become a landmark, and these awards from AERA and NACCS represent very significant achievements for this early stage of Cindy's career."
Cruz will receive her awards in March at the NACCS annual meeting in Chicago and in April when AERA holds its annual meeting in Vancouver, B.C.
