Queer Youth in a Small-Town Faith Group: Challenging Normativities of Time, Space, and Queerness

• In Event: Moscone Center North Roundtable Session 9
  In Roundtable Session: Queer and Trans Advocacy: Rethinking Where and How It Can Happen

Abstract

Previous scholarship on queer youth in small town and rural educational contexts has primarily documented educators’ perspectives and experiences of youth victimization. Drawing from a broader, interview-based teacher inquiry project, I extend this research by considering queer youth’s voices and agency. Using queer theorizations of time and space, I examine the telling case of Sylvia, a queer young woman in a semi-rural, small Midwestern town. Through her participation in the educational context of an interdenominational Christian youth group, she experienced pedagogical encounters helping her challenge temporal, spatial, and queer normativities. Sylvia’s experiences suggest the need of attending to heterogeneity and agency in working with queer rural youth and importance of considering constructions of time and space in queer-inclusive curricular texts.

Author

• Ryan Schey, University of Iowa