Queer Misfits: Disruption and Joy in Higher Education Design

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Effects of Navigating the Education System During a Pandemic

Abstract

This paper considers the complexities of queer misfitting in relation to higher education policy and practice. Drawing on Garland-Thomson’s (2011) “Misfits: A Feminist Materialist Disability Concept,” this paper uses misfit to reveal the obstructions and potentialities that arise when queer bodies rub up against the cisheteropatriarchal design of higher education institutions. Using our collective narratives of queer misfitting, we interrogate how institutions create misfits through policies and practices. Our narratives ask scholars to consider “in what ways can queer misfitting be educative, and how might it serve as potential sites of insurgence for critical scholars?” The paper is an invitation to the reader to witness our collective interrogation, and to think with us about queer misfitting in their own experiences.

Authors

• Sage Mauldin, University of Oklahoma

• Quan Phan, University of Oklahoma

• Lindsey Churchill, University of Central Oklahoma

• Kirsten Edwards, Florida International University