Relational Narratives in “Figured Worlds”: Exploring College Transition, Social Interaction, and Language Usage

• In Event: Roundtable Session 85
  In Roundtable Session: Entryways Into Academia: Complexities and Tensions

Abstract

While the connection between a college education and social mobility has been established, very little is known about the experiences of those who transition to college, the impact of their prior schooling experiences, and how they negotiate collegiate spaces. This interdisciplinary scholarship presents a representative narrative of how a student experiences her social worlds in relation to school. This academic year long study builds on a prior action-based ethnography and takes up the complexities embedded in the transition to college by critically analyzing the narratives of a former Dominican student. Representations suggest that in the process of recounting experiences, multiple selves were enacted in relation to various “figured worlds” where discourses serve as mediating tools for negotiation, contestation, and becoming.

Author

• Carmen Narvaez Veloria, Suffolk University