The Queer Failure of Required Diversity Courses

• In Event: Sheraton Roundtable Session Eight
  In Roundtable Session: Queer Visibility, Kinship, and Failure in High Education (Table 15)

Abstract

This proposal explores the application of queer failure to a university-required diversity course. I begin with a discussion of Halberstam’s idea of “queer failure.” In heteropatriarchal, capitalist societies, success and failure in schools are tied to how well students conform to majoritarian expectations. Instead, queer pedagogy would ask us to embrace discomfort and senses of failure that often comes from teaching and learning. I apply this queer failure framework to my teaching of required-diversity courses at a PWI in the Mountain West. I unpack the spaces where I felt the learning break down or where I felt discomfort. I try to reframe uncomfortable interactions to understand what we can get from a ‘failure’ to follow traditional academic norms.

Author

• Christine Zabala-Eisshofer, University of Oklahoma
  Presenting Author