Unpacking the Islamophobic and Queerphobic Logics of the Sexuality Education Classroom in New Brunswick, Canada: What Might Queer Joy Praxis Offer?

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Exploring Intersectional Justice in Educational Research (Table 10)

Abstract

In this paper, we delve into the development of queer joy praxis derived from the authors’ work with sexuality education teachers in New Brunswick, Canada, where a rise of queerphobic and transphobic policies and rhetoric, alongside growing homonationalist and Islamaphobic discourses is unfolding. Using interviews and art productions collected across five participatory visual workshops with 67 sexuality education teachers, we explore how teachers seem unable to reconcile their practice with the religious, cultural, and queer diversities that exist in their classrooms, and where settler colonial homonationalism and state violence materialize as enduring problematics. Reflecting on these findings, we invoke a queer joy praxis to confront the settler colonial carceral logics and Islamophobia that emerged across the data.

Authors

• Hafsah Mohammad, Queen's University - Kingston

• Casey Megan Burkholder, Concordia University - Montreal

• Melissa Erin Keehn, University of New Brunswick