Rigorous Feelings? Disrupting Tropes of Identities in Historical Educational Research

• In Event: 72.056 - Unruly Queers: Interrogating Power in Higher Education Practice, Policy, and Research

Abstract

Objectives or purpose

What can feelings do for educational research with a historical focus? In answering this question, Scholar B's point of departure is a series of oral histories from college alumni narrating their sexual lives from 1945-51 in the United States at Harvard College. Following Noah Sobe’s (2012) invitation to engage with the affective turn in writing histories of education given its potential to “embrace and enhance the study of the singular, the everyday, the ephemeral” (p. 6), he focuses on the generative potential of listening with compassion in historical research as an example of a disruptive practice that positions 'feelings' as assets in the production of 'rigorous' scholarship. Scholar B claims that this approach can offer an alternative to dominant historical research that privileges typological understandings of sexuality.

Perspective or theoretical framework

Previous scholarship focused on queer voices in the history of education (Dilley, 2002, 2005) has deferred to typological understandings of minoritized sexualities, primarily undergirded by identitarian logics that focus on static understandings of sexual identities. Scholar B follows an unequivocally queer approach to historical research by eschewing the need for typological frameworks. Inspired by the advent of affective histories in queer research in the humanities (Love, 2004; Freeman, 2010), he focuses on participants’ affective narratives: the feelings invoked and evoked by their collegial autobiographies—what he calls ‘compassionate listening’ in this paper.

Methods, techniques, or modes of inquiry/Data Sources

Scholar B draws from eight oral histories from college alumni discussing their college years from 1945-1951. In addition to the interviews (n=8), participants shared personal diaries (1,500+ pages), scrapbooks, and collegiate ephemera. Their stories were then corroborated with University records.

Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view

At the time of the interviews in 2009, all of the interviewees claimed a gay identity, yet their reflections on their collegiate years reveal a distinct understanding of their sexual selves mediated by contemporary discourses of sexuality. Through a compassionate listening of these oral narratives, Scholar B invites readers to refocus their interest away from the pursuit of narrative tropes focusing on the emergence of a stable sexual self and, instead, draw attention to the myriad affective dimensions displayed in participants’ narratives. The grief of sexual anxieties at the start of the World War II and the joys of sexual encounters enabled by collegial residences emerge as two distinct themes across participants’ narratives.

Scientific or scholarly significance of the study or work

Karen Graves (2012) has already reminded us of the dearth of historical works in educational research focusing on issues of sexuality. The author’s work adds to the latter body of work and intervenes at a moment within educational research that is heavily influenced by a regulatory emphasis on quantitative biases veiled in the name of rigor and excellence (Walters, Lareau & Ranis, 2008). By focusing on the affective domains within historical research, Scholar B emphasizes the valuable insights gained from a sustained interrogation of students’ everyday emotions in their discussions of their sexualities and the ways through which their collegiate lives mediated these possibilities.

Author

• Andrés Castro Samayoa, University of Pennsylvania