Course Description
To queer is, fundamentally, to make strange. This course utilizes Queer Theory to make that which is normalized in and around the field of education, including the very concept of "normal," strange. As such, it engages different queer reading practices to work through various approaches to sexuality, pleasure, and identity in order to make the unthinkable in education thinkable.
Athena Title
Queer Theories and Education
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
Students will: *Investigate the experiences of LGBTQ individuals (and groups) in American society, particularly as treatment manifests itself through mandatory schooled experiences *Consider the limitations placed on schools, students, administrators, and policymakers in a system that tends toward normalization and systematization *Examine existing epistemological paradigms in educational research with an eye toward queering (making strange) that which is normalized and prioritized, particularly empirical/statistical "scientific" research *Identify significant moments in the development of queer theory as it emerges from feminist, post-structural research and feeds into more recent work in affect/non-representational theories *Analyze educational issues through queer lenses, particularly as they relate to methodological approaches to educational research *Deconstruct an educational object/text, applying queer approaches, queer research, and queer phenomenologies
Topical Outline
1. Reading practices (paranoid and reparative) and performativity, especially as it relates to teacher education/preparation 2. Foundational readings (Butler/Anzaldua/Sedgwick/Warner) as a way to suggest new epistemological lenses 3. The development of literatures around pleasure, sexuality, and normality 4. Sexuality in school: Masculinities, femininities, sex education, and the limits of the possible 5. Queer arrangement: Alternative readings of school spaces, places, and bodies 6. Affect studies, non-representational theories, and the queer beyond
Syllabus