Methodologies for Understanding Expansive Notions of Masculinity

• In Event: Celebrating 15 Years of "Making Space": Reflections and New Trajectories of Race, Sexuality, and Justice in Education

Abstract

When Dr. McCready engaged in research in an urban high school in the late 90s and early aughts, he was coming from “youth development programs and community-based agencies” (p. 20) and going into school. At the same time, [author 1] was shifting from teaching school to working in youth centers. Both worked closely with queer youth of color. Their paths crossed at AERA, in what was just becoming the Queer Studies Special Interest Group. Neither was Doctor-anyone-at-all, but [author 1] was learning from McCready immediately. [Author 1] had the educative privilege, then, to write with McCready about queer youth in urban schools (Blackburn & McCready, 2009). Rereading his 2010 Making Space for Diverse Masculinities reminded [author 1] not only of how his activist-scholarship informed her own but also of his ongoing legacy in the activist-scholarship of recent graduate [author 2]. For this paper, [authors 1 & 2] focus on McCready’s methodology, described in his chapter entitled “The Social Geography of Parkwood High School,” and how his work matters in that of [author 2].

McCready (2010) conducted an action research project to “pursue social change and research at the same time …. Guided by principles of participation and collaboration” (p. 25). His methodology was rooted in his narrative and “black feminist theories of intersectionality” (p. 6). He spent extensive time contributing and countering with people in the school and community. He studied their history and the “the everyday lives of four gay and gender-nonconforming African American males” (p. 5) through participatory observations and interviews. Similarly, [Author 2]’s narrative inspired a project informed by black feminist theories of intersectionality and related oppressions. Rather than conducting an ethnography, though, she focused on interviews, documenting and studying the narratives of ten Black, queer, and gender-conforming women.

McCready focuses on expanding notions of masculinity embodied by males who identify as men. He names the need “to redefine the terrain of black masculinity[, that is] the normative discourses that allow us to make sense of what it means to be a man, or male” (p. 116). [Author 2] focuses on the embodiment of masculinity by females who identify as women. McCready points to significant moments in the lives of young men and discusses “turning points in their identity construction” (p. 85) in the context of their “vigilantly exercis[ing] their agency” (p. 85) and thus “ ‘making space’ for more diverse forms of black masculinity” (p. 85). [Author 2] discusses Zittoun’s (2007) ruptures and transitions, which align with “turning points,” and adds visibility, which parallel McCready’s agency. Thus, [author 2]’s burgeoning scholarship reflects the legacy of Dr. McCready’s.

Authors

• Mollie V. Blackburn, The Ohio State University

• Joselyn Parker, The Ohio State University