Reading Queer (In)Humans and Histories: Mobilizing Multimodal Content Analysis to Reparatively Read LGBTQ+ Picture Books

• In Event: Centering Broad Voices: Equity-Oriented Multimodal Methods in Literacy Research

Abstract

Objectives: In the 21st century, LGBTQ+ histories are increasingly represented in elementary English language arts (ELA) and social studies curricula. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendender, and queer (LGBTQ+) picturebooks, in particular, are providing teachers with tools for discussing queer life and history through direct literary instruction (Ryan & Hermann-Wilmarth, 2018). Moreover, representations of queer (in)human characters (e.g., mermaids, unicorns, and hybrid species) as well as queer biographies have become increasingly common pedagogical tools in elementary classrooms (Authors, 2021). However, the critical implications of these multimodal representations have yet to be fully considered for their reparative possibilities. In this presentation, we present findings from two divergent yet complementary projects examining contemporary picturebooks featuring queer (in)human characters and historical LGBTQ+ figures. In so doing, we illuminate our analytical methodology that resulted in the creation of reparative multimodal content analysis (RMCA).

Perspectives: Whereas some scholars have called into question the value of representing queer humanity as abject others have highlighted the potential for such representations to obscure power dynamics related to race and gender (Jiménez, 2018; Young, 2019). Likewise, depictions of historical LGBTQ+ figures in picturebook biographies have been critiqued for their exclusion of explicit references to LGBTQ+ identities (Crawley, 2020), particularly for non-white, non-US, and non-cisgender protagonists. As Hermann-Wilmarth and Ryan (2016) explain, “ limited representations reify neoliberal ideas about sexuality’s relationship to race and class, and encourage gay assimilation into normative but problematic, nonequitable institutions” (p. 847). Accordingly, we take up central tenets of queer theory, namely homonormativity (Puar, 2007; Strkyer, 2008) and reparative reading (Love, 2010; Sedgwick, 2003) and pair them with analytic perspectives for visually reading children’s texts (see, for example, Serafini 2010). In so doing, we advance a new analytical framework for studying Critical Multicultural Children’s Literature (CMCL).

Methods and Data: We share methodological oriented findings from two critical content analysis (Johnson, Mathis, & Short, 2016) of LGBTQ+ picturebooks. Specifically, we illuminate our process of Reparative Multimodal Content Analysis and demonstrate how that analytical framework resulted in an expansion of critical reading practices related to visual representations of queer (in)humans and LGBTQ+ histoires. Our central modes of inquiry in reading against these multimodal texts were perceptual, structural, and ideological. This tripartite reading highlights what Barthes (1977) suggests insofar as “the viewer of an image receives the perspective (denotative) messages and the culture (connotative) message simultaneously and that the denotative message is constituted by what remains in the image when one removes mentally the connotative sign” (Serafini, 2010, p. 88).

Results and Significance: Moving beyond the methodological underpinnings of skeptical critique (Felski, 2019), reparative readings demand attention to reading orientations readers adopt towards their corpuses and, moreover, highlight alternative reading practices that orient analytical methods towards reparative content analysis. In closing, we detail the critical potential of reparative multimodal content analysis to CMCL criticism and visual pedagogy.

Authors

• Josh Coleman, San Jose State University

• Jon Michael Wargo, Boston College