Our Purpose & Mission

The Institute for Critical Storytelling (ICS) is a group of students and faculty who are interested in how stories can simultaneously function as tools of oppression and liberation. More specifically, we are interested in how stories act as vehicles for ideology and how these ideologies create, maintain, and justify social and racial hierarchies.

The mission of the Institute for Critical Storytelling is to further the theory and practices of critical storytelling and counterstorytelling and to elevate the scholarship and voices of community college student researchers.

Ultimately, ICS strives to de-stigmatize the scholarly contributions of community college students. The majority of community college students in the United States are students of color, and the majority of low-income students and students of color start their higher education journey in community colleges. In California, for example, almost 75% of community college students identify as African American, Latinx, Indigenous American, or Asian American. It is not a coincidence that in the past several decades, the stereotypes and majoritarian narratives about community college students have grown as the student population has diversified. 

ICS rejects the deficit-minded views of community college students, and this platform is meant to resist and deconstruct such beliefs through counterstorytelling, research and scholarship, and art.