Transgender Narratives, Drag Performance, and Gender Fluency in the Late Elementary Classroom

• In Event: We're Here, We're Queer, We're in Elementary Schools

Abstract

Objectives. This presentation highlights what becomes possible when late elementary (4th and 5th grade) learners are invited to consider how they read (interpret) and write (perform) gender across their lives. Although a good deal of research and pedagogy aims at dismantling the gender binary—the assumption that there are two, and only two, gender categories, and that all people fit into one of those categories—in practice a new binary has emerged. This binary divides the world into trans* (transgender, genderqueer, gender fluid, agender, etc.) and cisgender people, and it treats gender variance as the domain of those who fall into the trans* camp. In fact, all people, regardless of gender identity, develop strategies for varying their performance of gender across social contexts; these strategies comprise what might be thought of as the literacies of gender. This presentation describes an effort to teach late elementary (4th and 5th grade) students about gender diversity through this gender literacies framework.

Theoretical framework. This presentation draws on work in queer and transgender theory (Butler, 2004; Halberstam, 2005; Jagose, 1996), literacy approaches that aim to account for gendered and sexual identities (Alvermann & Hagood, 2000; Hull & Greeno, 2006; Moje & MuQaribu, 2003; Wohlwend, 2012), and new media literacies studies (Buckingham, 2003; Ito et al., 2010; Jenkins et al., 2013) to position gender fluency as a cluster of critical, creative, and performance-based literacy practices. Classroom activities drew from each of these practices, combining analysis of gendervariant narratives with design of creative artifacts and improv-based activities that invited students to perform as characters whose genders were different from their own.

Methods & data sources. Data were collected in a mixed-age, 4th/5th grade classroom at a public charter school in the Midwest, in the 2013-2014 academic year. Data sources include video and audio recordings, student writing, and other student-generated artifacts including drawings and collages. Findings for this presentation were developed primarily through multimodal analysis (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 1996; LeVine & Scollon, 2004) of student-generated artifacts and dramatic performance in the students’ arts classroom to highlight both the ways in which the gender-as-literacy approach makes visible gender variance and the opportunities this approach creates for helping students reflect on their own and others’ gender performances.

Results. Findings suggest that in this contest, treating gender variance as a common, shared experience not only enabled students to develop more reflective, more creative approaches to performing gender across social contexts, but it also generated an atmosphere of empathy and responsiveness toward the specific challenges of those who identify under the trans* umbrella. In this respect, this approach worked toward generating a culture of support for a diversity of gender identities and gender performances.

Significance. This work contributes to recent scholarship that aims at addressing issues of gender variance and transgender identities in elementary education (e.g., Bryan, 2012; Ryan, Patraw, & Bednar, 2013).

Author

• Jacob McWilliams, University of Colorado - Boulder