Queer Ecologies as a Queer Crip Relational Tool in Educational Research

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Sunday 9:50 am Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Queering Theory and Method: Divinatory, Embodied, and Relational Ways of Knowing (Table 4)

Abstract

In this queer autoethnographic essay, we trace the emergence of queer ecologies as a research and relational method in an educational research lab, exploring implications as both a reflexivity tool and a capacity-mapping tool. Used in this way, queer ecologies unsettles normative notions of research(er/ed), landscape, and affect as a queer crip method to advance research that is decidedly messy. Through an exploration of the kelp forest as example, we position ourselves within affective ecosystems of bodies, more than human kin, and water as part of the research process. We see queer ecologies as tools to draw attention to our individual and collective body-mind states and create connection across differences in processing and being as disabled queer and trans people.

Authors

• Kaitlyn Murray, University of California 4-H Youth Development Program

• Iris Xie, University of California - Davis