Dr. Nivea Castaneda

Daughter of Mexican immigrants, Nivea Castaneda is a proud first generation Chicana who studies Family, Health, and Intercultural Communication at Boise State University. Specifically, she studies the cultural, gendered, and familial discourses that challenge communication and the collective wellbeing of the family when individuals experience silenced trauma such as child sexual abuse. Her work is featured in Journal of Family Communication, Communication Monographs, and in the edited volume This Bridge We Call Communication. Through the implementation of Indigenous Methodology, critical participatory action research methods, and service learning pedagogy, Castaneda works to create connections between communities and the academy.

Supported Project:

Dr. Nivea Castaneda, “The Voces Valientes Project”

My project was inspired by Latina survivors of child sexual abuse who served as participants in my dissertation in 2017. The study focused on the communicative nature of Latina child sexual abuse disclosure and basically identified the ways in which Latinas negotiated their decision to withhold and/or disclose their experiences of CSA from/with their families. My participants graciously shared a plethora of stories with me, and aside from multiple other themes, one of the largest that emerged was the manner in which religion impacted disclosure and their faith. As such, my current project will build on their stories and will explore how sexual abuse disclosure is affected by religious memorable messages as well as how sexual abuse in general impacts faith.

The second part of my project is to implement community participatory research methods to co-create knowledge about collective healing in Latinx communities. Based on this work, I will produce family communication curriculum that I will teach in local communities through workshops. Ultimately my goal is to use this project to amplify the voices of Latinx survivors of child sexual, to produce artifacts and resources that foster collective healing in the family after sexual trauma, and lastly and most importantly, to educate Latinx families about emotions and effective and compassionate communication.