Between an iPhone and a Safe Space: Exploring Research With LGBTQ Youth as Me-Search

• In Event: Queering Educational Subjectivities

Abstract

This paper seeks to not answer, but to theorize, through qualitative case studies of secondary and college writing spaces, and autoethnographic vignettes, possible responses to the question: How do we build and sustain [q]ulturally responsive queer spaces for research with LGBT and queer youth? Utilizing a “queer as culture” approach and acknowledging its praxis as both a noun and a verb, the study illuminates not only what it means to be [q]ulturally responsive in the practice of research, but, also, sheds light on what queer[ing], as a methodological practice may look like. Consequently, this paper seeks to document the tensions a queer identifying researcher had in navigating and reflecting on the I-witnessing positionality he held working with queer youth.

Author

• Jon Michael Wargo, Michigan State University