Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects
Date of Degree
2-2026
Document Type
Doctoral Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Program
Urban Education
Advisor
Anna Stetsenko
Committee Members
Anna Stetsenko
Eduardo Vianna
Elizabeth Dill
Anthony Alessandrini
Subject Categories
Education | Higher Education
Keywords
Refusal, Learning Communities, Community, Fugitive, Abolition, Ethic of Domination
Abstract
This dissertation project is an act of transgression against the settler colonial university through a deliberate disruption of its knowledge-production protocols and intellectual property relations. As it exists as a call to refuse the university and its underlying ethic of domination, this work theorizes refusal as an abolitionist praxis framed by decolonial and Indigenous theory, Black feminist thought, revolutionaries and political prisoners from the Black Radical Tradition, and personal-historical organizing, struggle, and activism at the City University of New York. Grounded in these traditions, the dissertation develops its core argument through a threefold structure: diagnosing the institutionalization of community, forging a methodological weapon of refusal, and enacting a generative fugitive practice. Chapter one, The Foundational Contradictions in the Learning Communities Movement in Higher Education, exposes the fundamental contradictions that emerge from the institutionalization of community through an analysis of the learning communities movement across historical, political and theoretical contexts. Chapter two, Methodology of Refusal: Refusing Research and its Ethic of Domination, argues that academic research and authorizing mechanisms like IRBs are tools of colonial governance. This chapter articulates a methodology of refusal; a strategic, political orientation grounded in revolutionary abolitionist praxis. Chapter three, Practices of Refusal: Refusing Learning Management and Proprietary Enclosure, rearticulates refusal not as mere negation, but as a generative, strategic reorientation to one’s role within the university. This work concludes that the transgressive act of refusing the settler colonial university requires building the fugitive communities necessary to dismantle its colonizing foundations and structures and to create the relational conditions for collective liberation.
Recommended Citation
Dunne, Angela, "Building Fugitive Communities Through Refusal" (2026). CUNY Academic Works.
https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/6573
