Quaring Literacy Education: Liberatory Possibilities for Queer African American Language Speakers

• In Event: Black Queer World-Making and the Pursuit of Truth in Educational Research

Abstract

If we are to re-image educational spaces, what would it mean to center Black queer language in the classroom? To expand the call for culturally sustaining pedagogies (Paris, 2012), educators must also include gender and sexuality sustaining approaches to spark educational possibilities for Black queer students. This presentation will engage Quare/Black queer linguistics (Lane, 2019) and Quare theory (Johnson, 2001) in imagining a framework that affirms queer African American Language speakers (also referred to as Black language) in literacy classrooms (Baker-Bell, 2013). Through this pedagogical approach, I focus on students' embodied knowledge and agency to transform traditional educational spaces. As I assert in this conceptual paper, by centering Black queer students’ embodied knowledge and agency, educational practitioners can co-construct knowledge that is authentically consequential in students’ lives despite—and arguably because of—its deviations from neoliberal educational reforms that currently shape the pursuit of truth in K-12 education in the United States.

Author

• Lindsey Allen, University of Maryland
  Presenting Author