Histories We Carry, Futures We Build: Black Gay Young Men Reimagining Education in the Margins

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 3:45 pm - Gold 3
  In Roundtable Session: STEM & Queerness in Education: Disrupting Normativity, Curriculum, and Reimagination

Abstract

This study used Black Queer Theory and Critical Hope to examine how Black gay young men navigate and transform anti-Black, heteronormative educational spaces through storytelling, cultural expression, and chosen family. Guided by narrative inquiry and critical discourse analysis, it revealed how these youth resist erasure, engage in fugitive pedagogies, and imagine liberatory futures rooted in joy, care, and refusal. Their narratives functioned as fugitive acts that suture past and present struggles to future possibilities. By unforgetting Black queer histories, this study honors intergenerational resistance and positions youth as architects of new educational visions. Rooted in intersectionality, this research also affirms education as a site of radical hope, coalitional healing, and queer futurity shaped by love, justice, and imagination.

Authors

• Marcus North, Georgia State University

• Michelle Zoss, Georgia State University