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Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops

Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops Amy E. Winans In recent years, gender, race, and class have increasingly received attention in literature and writing classrooms and in the scholarship of critical pedagogy. In contrast, sexual orientation has much more frequently been glossed over or even ignored. Yet silences in most classrooms about sexual orientation are in striking contrast to public, political conversations — most recently about gay marriage, homosexuality, and church practices — and to slang used fre- quently by students. On my campus, for example, the expression “that’s so gay” is used daily by students to criticize everything from a boring class to an outdated piece of clothing. Discussions about and references to sexual orientation and sexual difference are so common outside the classroom that it is hardly surprising that when the silence is broken inside the classroom the results are marked by strong student engagement — and by types of discourse that are often absent there. Indeed, when sexual orientation is referenced in articles about pedagogy, such as Richard E. Miller’s well-known 1994 essay “Fault Lines in the Contact Zone: Assessing Homophobic Student Writing,” it is often identified as something http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Pedagogy Duke University Press

Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops

Winans, Amy E.
Pedagogy , Volume 6 (1) – Jan 1, 2006
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20 pages

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Copyright
© 2006 Duke University Press
ISSN
1531-4200
eISSN
1533-6255
DOI
10.1215/15314200-6-1-103
Publisher site
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Abstract

Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops Amy E. Winans In recent years, gender, race, and class have increasingly received attention in literature and writing classrooms and in the scholarship of critical pedagogy. In contrast, sexual orientation has much more frequently been glossed over or even ignored. Yet silences in most classrooms about sexual orientation are in striking contrast to public, political conversations — most recently about gay marriage, homosexuality, and church practices — and to slang used fre- quently by students. On my campus, for example, the expression “that’s so gay” is used daily by students to criticize everything from a boring class to an outdated piece of clothing. Discussions about and references to sexual orientation and sexual difference are so common outside the classroom that it is hardly surprising that when the silence is broken inside the classroom the results are marked by strong student engagement — and by types of discourse that are often absent there. Indeed, when sexual orientation is referenced in articles about pedagogy, such as Richard E. Miller’s well-known 1994 essay “Fault Lines in the Contact Zone: Assessing Homophobic Student Writing,” it is often identified as something

Journal

Pedagogy – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2006

References