| This dissertation is an auto/ethnographic narrative of a poststructuralist-feminist teacher engaged over six years with rural, senior high school students learning critical theories and practices through a course called Women, Media and Culture. The key focus of the narrative tracks the multiple tensions and negotiations this teacher experienced as she struggled with the students to examine popular culture texts through the lens of critical theories.;The dissertation engages a form of critical research called bricolage, a diverse methodological approach that seeks to respect the complex multiplicity of examining the quotidian details of practicing critical pedagogy in a classroom inhabited by many participants, each positioned differently along the intersecting axes of social, political, and economical contexts. To employ the bricolage, different theoretical discourses, journal entries of both teacher and students, societal and institutional politics surrounding the course, and reflective memories interweave throughout the narrative to trace the growth, difficulties, provisional transformations, and dangers that emerged for the participants.;The highlight of the study is the presentation of several political controversies that occurred outside the classroom at the societal and institutional levels related to the teachings in the Women, Media and Culture course.;In the final chapter, the researcher writes back to novice/beginning and seasoned critical pedagogues and theorists about the possible shifting boundaries and limitations of introducing Critical Studies into a high school curriculum. |
