“The Elephant in the Room”: Secondary Language Arts Teachers Respond to Transsexualism in an Adolescent Novel

• In Event: Normalizing LGBTQ Across the Curriculum

Abstract

This qualitative study explored the responses of 19 preservice and practicing secondary Language Arts teachers, in a graduate level adolescent literature course, to a novel about the struggles of a male-to-female transgender character. The theoretical framework was structured around reader response, critical theory, and queer theory. The methodology employed ethnographic methods, as well as critical discourse analysis.
Although they were provided with prompts to encourage self-reflection, the participants used strategies to avoid discourses that would allow critical examination of their beliefs and their roles in perpetuating social injustice. They focused on the risk involved with teaching the novel, Luna by Julie Anne Peters, and discussed Luna’s effect on her family, but rarely touched on transsexualism or her issues.

Author

• Beth M Brendler, University of Missouri - Columbia