Latino/a Youth Activism in Higher Education - A New Materialist Analysis of the Latino Graduation Ceremony

Oct 15, 2026

Paper interweaves Latino/a youth activism with ritual culture in U.S. higher education, using ethnographically generated data from studies of Latino graduation ceremonies. The analysis is grounded in new materialist philosophy, treating the ceremony as an assemblage and examining how youth activism becomes material through ritual practices. The work addresses how Latino/a youth claim space for social change while contributing to education research that develops methods for revealing youth experiences and rethinking subjectivity and agency.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages16

Reading Time40 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Research focus and purpose

Ritual analysis and political significance

Theoretical framework

New materialism and assemblage theory

Materialization and subjectivity

Context: Latinos in U.S. Higher Education

Policy, access, and success

Federal legislation and programs

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| Latino/a Youth Activism in Higher Education: A New Materialist Analysis of the Latino Graduation Ceremony | | --- | --- | Ryan Evely Gildersleeve & Brenda Jimenez Sifuentez, University of Denver Abstract In this paper, we entangle Latino/a youth activism with ritual culture in U.S. higher education. Specifically, we analyze ethnographically-generated data from Gildersleeve’s (2015; 2016) study of Latino graduation ceremonies, emplacing our analyses within new materialist philosophy. We theorize the Latino graduation ceremony as assemblage (DeLanda, 2006) and produce new sensibilities about the significance of Latino/a youth activism in contemporary U.S. higher education. The purposes of this paper are two-fold. First, we hope to contribute to the knowledge-base around how Latino/a youth use/claim space in their efforts for social change. Second, we hope to contribute to the growing literature in education that draws from new materialist philosophy and develops new methods/analyses to help reveal youth experiences. Keywords: Latino/ayouth activism; higher education; new materialism; assemblage theory; ritual culture Analyzing rituals enhances awareness of cultural realities and the power of the values and beliefs that shape social institutions and the lived experiences ofthe people affected by them (Magolda, 2016). As Latino/a participation in higher education historically has been marked by controversial policy, achievement, and opportunity outcomes, the production of celebratory rituals is indeed significant for understanding higher education’s past, present, and imagined future. Latino graduation ceremonies exist alongside traditional institutional rituals of commencement. Of particular relevance here is the particularly subaltern status of the ritual. There is an inherently oppositional politic in their practice, yet they also perpetuate the neoliberal condition systemic to American higher education today (Gildersleeve, 2015) . Understanding that politic and the new realities it creates when intra-secting with youth activism can provide a more nuanced and complex understanding of how Latino/a youth activism reconfigures space(s) within dominant institutions (i.e., higher education) today. Hence, we ask the question,“How might Latino/a youth activism materialize through ritual culture in higher education?” The purposes of this paper are two-fold. First, we hope to contribute to the knowledge-base around how Latino/a youth use/claim space in their efforts for social change. Second, we hope to contribute to the growing literature in education that draws from new materialist philosophy and develops new methods/analyses to help reveal youth experiences. In this paper, we entangle Latino/a youth activism with ritual culture in U.S. higher education. Specifically, we analyze ethno- graphically-generated data from Gildersleeve’s (2015; 2016) study of Latino graduation ceremonies, emplacing our analyses within new materialist philosophy. We theorize the Latino graduation ceremony as assemblage (DeLanda, 2006) and produce new sensibilities about the significance of Latino/a youth activism in contemporary U.S. higher education. As our paper is multi-purposed and drawing explicitly from posthumanist ontologies (i.e., new materialism and assemblage theory), we depart significantly from the canonical organization of the traditional research report. Rather, we take up Coole and Frost’s (2010) conclusion for the future development of materialist entanglements: …new materialist ontologies demand a rethinking of, and renewed attention to, the dynamics of materialization…such a project demands, as a corollary, a radical reappraisal of the contours ofthe subject, a reassessment of the possibility and texture of ethics, an examination of new domains of power and unfamiliar frames for imagining justice, and an exploration of the sources, quality, and dimensions of agency. (p. 37) We follow Coole and Frost’s (2010) call

FAQs

What central research question does the paper pose?

How might Latino/a youth activism materialize through ritual culture in higher education?

What theoretical lens is used to analyze the Latino graduation ceremony?

The paper uses new materialist philosophy, theorizing the ceremony as an assemblage.

How does the paper describe the purpose of the research?

It aims to explain how Latino/a youth use or claim space for social change and to advance education scholarship grounded in new materialist approaches.

Oct 15, 2026

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