Queer Knowledges and Literacy in a U.S. Secondary School: Toward Epistemological Justice

• In Event: Pedagogies of Agency, Justice, and Liberation

Abstract

Drawing on a yearlong literacy ethnography at a public, urban, comprehensive, Midwestern high school, this presentation considers the phenomenon of knowledge, especially queer knowledges, and focuses on youths’ negotiation of epistemic authority, in other words, who is seen as believable and trustworthy and why. Theoretically, it combines sociocultural perspectives on literacy with feminist standpoint epistemologies. Data – including fieldnotes, video and audio recordings of classroom lessons and GSA club meetings, documents, and interviews – were coded through a constant comparative perspective. The findings focus on how youth variously drew on more stable, essentialized and fluid, relational perspectives of epistemic authority, yet both practices were filtered through homonormative models that reified whiteness and limited possibilities for be(com)ing queer and working for epistemological justice.

Author

• Ryan Schey, University of Iowa