Queer Geography & Racial Capitalism (Poster 7)

• In Event: Theory-Stories and Social Studies Education

Abstract

Queer Geography

I write to demonstrate how to use theory to wonder and disrupt social studies educators who think that queer social studies is excavating social pasts or having a debate about “gay” marriage. I explore queer geography as it may disrupt social studies education in three ways. First, queer theory re-places LGBTQ+ people in and of space(s) because attention to queer space makes queer lives visible. Second, queering space is an intellectual and material pursuit that pushes at the boundaries that make gender and sexuality recognizable. Queering space invites youth to imagine themselves within and against gender and sexuality scripts. Third, queer time is set against chrononormalizing ideas of reproduction and heterosexuality. Accepting this enables educators to relocate queerness in the past. Embracing gender<>sexuality through inquiry about the gendered categories and relations in a space and time allows queerness to arise as something that is ever-changing and not-yet-there. Within social studies, starting from the sense of queer as different, weird, and homosocial allows us to find gender<>sexuality variance across time and to look deeply into the use of space to script and resist categorization.

Racial Capitalism

In this chapter, the author describes the silence about capitalism in the social studies standards and the reasons it is important to disrupt the silence. Making the argument for including the concept of racial capitalism, she illuminates a brief history of its conception, which scholars assert occurred before the age of worldwide colonization in the 15th century. Ultimately, the death of capitalism is a prerequisite for marginalized people to live fully. Helping young people explore the structural source of their suffering makes room for their freedom dreams to take shape outside of capitalist divisions. Ford argues that each discipline within the social studies bears responsibility for exposing racial capitalism’s various dimensions.

Authors

• Sandra Schmidt, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Jillian Carter Ford, Kennesaw State University