Queer Literacies: Queer Objects, Disorientation, and Sponsors of Literacy

Abstract

Since the 1990s, there have been increasing calls to “queer” curricula in order to challenge gender and sexuality norms. In this article, I develop a model of queer literacies that understands queer to encompass anti-normative ways of being and recognizes the agentic potential of queer objects to disorient individuals and spaces. I challenge educators to become sponsors of queer literacies in order to disrupt a range of normative ideologies and open up future possibilities in which difference is acknowledged and accepted. I conclude the article by illustrating how a queer object, Shaun Tan's picture book Cicada (2018), might be read using a queer literacies approach to promote critical literacy, social justice, and well-being.

Rescripting creativity after automation: situating the simulacrum to interpret the queerness of computational creativity

“…It could be argued that automation and platforms are representational signifiers of the defamiliarizing potential of Queer orientations. Orientations that can disrupt normative ideologies by representing “alternative times, spaces, and directions for additional and different orientations and reading practices” (Potter, 2022, p. 9). (Appadurai, 1996, p. 31) has suggested that the work done by our imagination, is “central to all forms of agency” and that “[a]udiences are … more likely to construct imagined worlds that are chimeral, aesthetic, particularly if assessed by the criteria of some other perspective, some other imagined world” (35).…”

Queering a high school EFL literature class in China: Teacher's and student's reflections

“…The Chinese students were 17–18 years old in an internationalized institution that mainly enrolled local learners who wanted to pursue college education overseas. The goal of reading queer themed literary texts was to have learners experience narratives or characters who counter or critique pervasive and normative ideologies (Blackburn, Clark, & Martino, 2016) and promote queer literacies (Potter, 2022).…”