Challenging (Hetero)Normativity: Tracing Queer World-Making in Seventh Graders' Superhero Storytelling

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session Ten
  In Roundtable Session: The Literacies of Youth Agency (Table 3)

Abstract

This paper describes the work of three seventh grade authors in a superhero storytelling project that took place in their ELA classroom. It examines how these youth used this storytelling space to design queer superhero characters who a) transformed locations of societal stigma into sources of power and b) interrogated assumptions around normativity. Using tools drawn from narrative analysis, we analyze themes from this group’s storytelling to illustrate how they authored what Muñoz (2009) calls queer futurities through their characters, and, in doing so, imagined alternative possibilities for both the superhero genre and themselves. Ultimately, we hope to demonstrate how playful authoring may make space for queer critical literacy work.

Authors

• Beth Krone, Kennesaw State University
  Presenting Author

• Francisco L. Torres, Kent State University
  Presenting Author

• Scott Storm, Bowdoin College
  Presenting Author

• Patricia Enciso, The Ohio State University
  Presenting Author