What Does Queer Theory Have Yet to Offer Literacy Education Research?

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This symposium brings together scholars to explore the question: what does queer theory have yet to offer literacy education research and practice in K-12 schools? In the throughs of rapid advances in LGBT rights and scholarly discussions of the limits of queer theory, we are also aware of educational research underutilizing queer theory’s antinormative potentials and thus failing to stem the homophobia and transphobia that persist as daily features in schools. In response, the scholars in this session explore what new possibilities queer theory might open for literacy research when articulated explicitly towards challenging antiracism, antisexism, anti-ableism, and other interconnected structures of domination in U.S. schools. The papers focus on questions of temporality, artifactual and digital literacies, neuroqueerness, and homonormativity.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Writing and Literacies

Chairs

• Ryan Schey, University of Iowa

• Josh Coleman, San Jose State University

Papers

• Reading Queer Selfhood: A Collaborative Authoethnography of Queer Time Through Artifactual Literacies - Josh Coleman, San Jose State University; Daris McInnis, The University of Pennsylvania; Ericka Graciela Staufert Reyes, The University of Pennsylvania

• Disrupting Notions of Literacy Incompetence: Harnessing a Theoretical Lens of Neurological Queerness - Monica Christine Kleekamp, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Ruptures to (Homo)Normative Literacy Practices in a High School Classroom: Queer Theory, Discreteness, and Intersectionality - Ryan Schey, University of Iowa

• Mapping Queer Black Femme Futures in the Critical Feminist English Classroom and Beyond - Ileana Jiménez, Teachers College, Columbia University

Discussant

• Harper Benjamin Keenan, University of British Columbia