Queer and trans youth (not) knowing: experiences of epistemic (in)justice in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive secondary curriculum

Abstract

Purpose Current legislative, policy and cultural efforts to censor and illegalize classroom discussions and curricular representations of LGBTQ+ people reflect longstanding challenges in English education. In an effort to explore what curricular inclusion can (not) accomplish – especially what and how current struggles over inclusion, censorship, illegalization and ultimately representation in English education might (not) contribute to queer and trans liberation – the purpose of this article is to feature the experiences of queer and trans youth as knowers in classroom lessons with LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from a yearlong literacy ethnography at a Midwestern high school in which the author explored youth and adults reading, writing and talking about sexual and gender diversity, in this article the author focuses on one literacy learning context at the high school, a co-taught sophomore humanities that combined English language arts and social studies. Findings Engaging theories of epistemic (in) justice, the findings of this article highlight the experiences of queer and trans youth – especially two queer youth of Color, Camden and Imani – as knowers in the context of an LGBTQ+-inclusive classroom curriculum. The author describes epistemic harms with respect to distortions of credibility and homonormative assimilationist requirements and reflects on alternative possibilities that youth gestured toward through their small resistances. Originality/value By centering the experiences of LGBTQ+ youth, this article contributes to research about LGBTQ+-inclusive curriculum in English teaching. Previous research, when empirical rather than conceptual, has tended to focus on the perspectives of teachers.

Literacy (Dis)Orientations in a Secondary Classroom: Possibilities and Limits of an Intersectional LGBTQ+‐Inclusive Curriculum

“…Some queer literacies scholars have already taken up inclusive and queering approaches together. Scholars have done so through outlining ELA classroom practices broadly (Helton, 2020), integrating queer theories with critical literacies (Govender & Andrews, 2021;Helmer, 2016), considering literature instruction (Simon et al, 2018;Smith, 2008), and describing youths' experiences of classroom lessons (Schey, 2020(Schey, , 2021a(Schey, , 2022aVetter, 2010). Developing an explicit framework, Ryan and Hermann-Wilmarth (2018) advocate for "expanding representations" (i.e., inclusion), "questioning categories" (i.e., queering), and interweaving the two by "questioning silences in expanded representations" (pp.…”

“…Although elsewhere I've discussed youth uptake of inclusive curriculum in the humanities course (e.g., Schey, 2020Schey, , 2021aSchey, , 2022aSchey, , 2022b, here I focus on teacherly moves in an effort to describe interconnections between queer literacy pedagogies and strategies of curricular inclusion. I extend Blackburn's (2003) influential queer literacies scholarship by drawing on Ahmed's (2006) queer theorization of (dis)orientations, and I introduce the heuristic of literacy (dis)orientations.…”