Educators Queering Academia
sj Miller and Nelson M. Rodriguez
These critical memoirs speak across generations of queer educators and scholars; collectively their work highlights an array of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.
As snapshots in time, the memoirs can be taken up as archive and studied in order to gain perspective on the issues facing queers in the academy across various intersections of identities related to ethnicity, culture, language, (a)gender, (a)sexuality, (dis)ability, socio-economic status, religion, age, veteran status, health status, and more.
Table of Contents
FOREWORD & INTRODUCTION
Foreword
Jen Gilbert
Introduction: The Critical Praxis of Queer Memoirs in Education
sj Miller and Nelson M. Rodriguez
PART 1: QUEER PARANOIA: TO RISK OR NOT TO RISK
Chapter One
Contingent Labor, Contingently Queer – Adam J. Greteman
Chapter Two
Queer Paranoia: Worrying About and Through a Queer Dissertation Study- Summer Pennell
Chapter Three
Reconciling the Personal and Professional: Coming Out From the Classroom Closet – Ryan Burns and Janet D. Johnson
PART 2: QUEERED TENSIONS: BEYOND THE ACADEMY
Chapter Four
Remaining Stubbornly Faithful: What Queering Academia Does to Queer Teacher-Scholars – Sara Staley and Bethy Leonardi
Chapter Five
Inside. Out. Queer Time in Midcareer – Michael Borgstrom
Chapter Six
How I Met Foucault: An Intellectual Career in, Around, and Near Queer Theory – Kristen A. Renn
PART 3: QUEERING ACADEMIC SPACES: RENARRATING LIVES
Chapter Seven: From Doctoral Student to Dr. Sweetie Darling: My Queer(ing) Journey in Academia – Nelson M. Rodriguez
Chapter Eight: Working With and Within: Weaving Queer Spaces With Cycles of Resistance – Jenny Kassen and Alicia Lapointe
Chapter Nine: Adopting a Queer Pedagogy as a Teaching Assistant – Stephanie Anne Shelton
Chapter Ten: Sanctioning Unsanctioned Texts: The True Story of a Gay Writer – Michael Wenk
PART 4: MISRECOGNITION: FROM INVISIBILITY INTO VISIBILITY
Chapter Eleven
(Un)becoming Trans*: Every Breath You Take and Every … – sj Miller
Chapter Twelve
Queering the Inquiry Body: Critical Science Teaching From the Margins – Kerrita K. Mayfield
Chapter Thirteen
Intersectional Warrior: Battling the Onslaught of Layered Microaggressions in the Academy – Darrell Cleveland Hucks
Chapter Fourteen
Undone and (Mis)Recognized: Disorienting Experiences of a Queer, Trans* Educator – Erich N. Pitcher
PART 5: THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL
Chapter Fifteen
Slam Dunk on Tenure? Not So Fast … – Catherine A. Lugg
Chapter Sixteen
Queering South Mississippi: Simple and Seemingly Impossible Work – Kamden K. Strunk, Douglas R. Bristol, and William C. Takewell
Chapter Seventeen
Smear the Queer: A Critical Memoir – Scotty M. Secrist
Chapter Eighteen
“I heard it from a good source”: Queer Desire and Homophobia in a South African Higher Education Institution – Thabo Msibi
PART 6: QUEERED ALL THE WAY THROUGH
Chapter Nineteen
A Profound Moment of Passing – David Lee Carlson
Chapter Twenty
Being Queer in Academia: Queering Academia – Dana M. Stachowiak
Chapter Twenty-One
The Constant in My Life – William F. Pinar
Reviews
With a queer identity comes a positioning that is both already troubled and continuously troubling, as we see in this breathtaking new collection of memoirs of educators queering academia. Miller, Rodriguez, and colleagues share their own life stories and professional journeys that are at once moving and arresting, haunting and joyful, as they both deconstruct and collectivize. Read this book and be prepared to queer your own engagement with academia and to be present with and grateful for such movement as it unfolds.
- Kevin Kumashiro, Professor and Dean of the School of Education, University of San Francisco; Author of Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Antioppressive Pedagogy
Queer cultures are often caught between the desire to know and an ambivalence about confessions. This collection gives us an opportunity to peel back the veneer of professionalism to read academics’ accounts of themselves, while also knowing hat their theoretical and research work is probably chiding us for our curiosity. This text makes for a delightful conundrum as well as a variegated staging of queer differences.
- Cris Mayo, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies and Director of the LGBTQ Center, West Virginia University; Author of LGBTQ Youth Education: Policies and Practices
A must read anthology for scholar activists who are committed to hearing the seldom-heard voices of those in the ‘chorus’ sharing what it means to be queer in the culture and trajectories of academic life. These activist scholars engage in truth telling and testifying talk about queering the academy in ways that lift us all to new heights of understanding the personal and the political embodiment related to the struggles for affirmation and equity.
- Cynthia A. Tyson, Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, The Ohio State University, author of Studying Diversity in Teacher Education
