Teaching queer theory at a Normal School

This article presents a case study of the ongoing struggle to queer West Chester University at the level of the institution, the curriculum, and the classroom. Part of that struggle includes an effort to establish a policy for free speech that accommodates the values of the institution toward diversity. Another part involves attempts to introduce LGBT Studies into the curriculum, and the resulting debates over whether the curriculum should be "gayer" or "queerer." I discuss the personal struggle to destabilize ready-made categories and encourage non-binary thinking, while honoring the identities we live, and perform, in the classroom. In the last four years, WCU has hired half a dozen out gay or lesbian faculty members, some of whom identify as "queer." In many ways, those faculty members have entered a climate open to new ideas for adding LGBT content to the curriculum and to queering the structure and curriculum of the university. But as faculty, staff, and students engage this cause-along with the broader cause of social justice at the University- we have found that our enemies are often closer than we might have guessed. Detailing the tensions that have characterized the landscape at WCUduring my three years and half years there, this essay elaborates on the epistemological and pedagogical issues that arise when queer Theory meets LGBT Studies in the process of institutional, curricular, and pedagogical reform. I argue that questions about content and method, inclusion and exclusion, and identity and performance can be answered only with a concerted effort and continued attention to the cultural tendency to re-assert binaries while simultaneously learning from them. What is true of West Chester, I argue, is true of the larger social system where the contested terrain of the queer has implications for the choices we make as both stakeholders and deviants in the systems we chronicle and critique.     

Coming Out à l'oriental: Maghrebi-French performances of gender, sexuality, and religion

In this article, I examine issues of gender, sexuality, and religion for North African (Maghrebi)-French men in contemporary France. I introduce performance artist-photographer "2Fik," one of the Maghrebi-French research subjects from my 2010 fieldwork, and examine excerpts of his particular coming out story to his parents and situate it in relation to recent work on homosexuality in the housing projects of France's banlieues [suburban neighborhoods] (Chaumont, 2009; Na?t-Balk, 2009). The interviewee's narrative interweaves a variety of discourses and imagery that help distinguish his experience from those found in those publications as well as in recent scholarship on sexuality, citizenship, and transnationalism (Cruz-Malavé & Manalansan, 2000; Hayes, 2000; Leap & Boellstorff, 2004; Patton & Sánchez-Eppler, 2000; Provencher, 2007a). I argue that 2Fik's story and photography provide him a unique voice that draws on feminist and queer perspectives--informed by both reformed Islam and contemporary Western values--to "decline" (Rosello, 1998) and rewrite longstanding stereotypes of Islam in France. In fact, by acting as a "citizen-photographer" (M?ller, 2010), 2Fik successfully declines stereotypes including the absent Muslim father, the veiled woman, and the symbolic violence associated with heteronormativity and traditional masculinity in Maghrebi-French families.     

“It’s Not About You”: Disappointment as Queer Pedagogy in Community-Engaged Service-Learning

ABSTRACT

Increasingly popular in the neoliberal university, community-engaged service-learning (CESL) courses offer rich yet contradictory opportunities for LGBTQ studies students to synthesize queer critiques of community and identity with experiences in LGBTQ communities. Much CESL scholarship has focused on the tensions between benefits to community and to students, prioritizing either radical social change or student satisfaction. Beside such debates, I propose the queer ethical, pedagogical, and political value of disappointment in the tedium and contradictions of community itself. Such queer disappointment, I contend, might enable students to cultivate the emotional and critical capacities to engage in community work on sustainable, dedramatized, and unentitled terms.     

Current Challenges of North/South Relations in Gay-Lesbian and Queer Studies

ABSTRACT

The article assesses and analyzes different dimensions of the current configuration of North/South dialogues within gay-lesbian and queer studies, with particular attention to the interrelations between the United States and South America. It looks into how gay-lesbian and queer studies relate to the global division and hierarchy of intellectual labor traditionally embedded in academic practices, and it asks whether the scope of its radical program includes a revision of unequal academic dynamics. Its concerns are both ethical and epistemological, as they speak not only to the moral and political dimensions of academic practice, but also to how these modes affect the knowledge produced in the United States and in South America today. By offering a view from the South conversant with South American as well as Northern production, we hope to contribute to both local and international debates regarding the present and future of the field.     

The Politics of Sexual Citizenship: Negotiating Acts of Citizenship Among Non-Heterosexuals in Hong Kong

ABSTRACT

The notion of sexual citizenship has been developed over the past two decades, and its discussion has been expanded to other regions. This article investigates the claiming of rights by non-heterosexuals in Hong Kong to achieve two objectives: to articulate the importance of the rights claiming process, particularly regarding how non-heterosexuals are being transformed to become claimants through rights claims, and to extend the notion of sexual citizenship in East Asia, particularly in the Hong Kong context. The findings show four distinctive characteristics of sexual citizenship in Hong Kong. Non-heterosexuals are found to have faced different struggles and barriers before or during the process of claiming rights, including restricted welfare rights access in various social institutions. Furthermore, the development of sexual citizenship in the Hong Kong local context is found to be limited.     

Suburban queer: reading Grease

This article examines how nontraditional representations of gender can complicate received social norms, and it examines, in particular, how pre-adolescent suburban youth reconfigure social codes within popular film in order to identify positive queer aesthetics. While several studies have documented the function of classic and mainstream film in the tradition of queer reading, there has been comparatively less analysis devoted to the ways that filmic representations themselves might contribute to theoretical debates regarding sexual identity. As a case in point, this essay analyzes the 1978 musical Grease in order to suggest ways that critics might navigate between strict social constructionist and essentialist theories of sexual identity in order to identify avenues for queer identification within non-queer contexts.     

Between Legal Recognition and Moral Policing: Mapping the Queer Subject in India

ABSTRACT

With the decriminalization of homosexuality in India in 2009, Indian queer subjects have become visible in various ways. Where Indian queer identities have asserted their public presence through Pride marches and protests, incidents of moral policing and surveillance, especially after decriminalization, have highlighted the broader social and religious attitudes that continue to pathologize homosexuality with grave outcomes. This article argues that debates around access to health care of Indian queer subjects must be framed against the social and religious pathologization of homosexuality in various contexts, which remains a primary bioethical dilemma, particularly in relation to legal change.     

Queering Poetics: The Impact of Poetry on LGBT+ Identity in Singaporean Adolescents

ABSTRACT

This qualitative study explores identity formation in LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, and how reading, writing, and listening to poetry shapes Singaporean adolescents’ social identities as queer people. Analyzing in-depth interviews with nine LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents, four themes were found: (1) LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents interested in poetry believe that reading, writing, and/or listening to poetry has been an integral part of constructing their queer identities; (2) the poems that have impacted LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents’ queer identities the most have been informed by queer sociocultural values; (3) poetry provides validation to LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents that their identities are real and that others before them have experienced the same challenges they are going through; and (4) poetry serves as a third space for LGBT+ Singaporean adolescents to safely construct their growing queer identities. Implications for teachers, counselors, and adult supporters of queer Singaporean adolescents are discussed, and recommendations for future research are provided.     

Queering Bollywood: alternative sexualities in popular Indian cinema

In this essay, I demonstrate through numerous examples taken from four identifiable Hindi film subgenres queer themes which, though nontransgressive in their native Indian context, acquire subversive value and serve as queer points of identification when viewed from a non-nationalist bias. Watching particular films with this "queer diasporic viewing practive," sex/gender play which is normative (yet still coded) in the land of the films' production can be reclaimed as queer through the differently subjective lens of transnational spectatorship, a lens removed from patriarchy, sexism, and homophobia. This particularly becomes apparent in the Bollywood dance sequence-the frequent site of Hindi sex/gender play-whose coded queer desires are much easier to de-code (or re-code) when in the diaspora.     

Flexible Queers,Serious Bodies: Transgender Inclusion in Queer Spaces

Queer spaces are significant for understanding transgender inclusion as “queer spaces were places where individuals were expected to be attentive to or aware of alternative possibilities for being, including non-normative formulations of bodies, genders, desires and practices” (Nash, 2011 Nash, C. J. 2011. Trans experiences in lesbian and queer space. Canadian Geographer/Le Géographe Canadien, 55: 192–207. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], p. 203). Indeed, in this interview study of members of a queer leather group called the Club, members described a flexible “sexual landscape” that easily includes transgender members. However, these same queer spaces have been criticized for the way they regulate queer bodies and organize queer subjectivities. In this study, queer members of the Club also contrasted playful queer flexibility with serious transgender bodies. This article argues that, although there is a reiterative relation between transgender inclusion and queer spaces, the idealization of flexibility within queer spaces can also serve to marginalize and regulate transgender bodies.     

Ferment in LGBT studies and queer theory: personal ruminations on contested terrain

The tensions between queer and gay rights theorists, not surprisingly, have grown as queer theory has developed and matured. In this self-reflexive essay, the "contested terrain" between these distinct perspectives is explored, particularly within the discipline of communication studies. The assumptions of queer theory are summarized briefly, and the author takes an autoethnographic approach to demonstrate the constant interplay between lived experience and the basic assumptions of queer theory. The author challenges both LGBT theorists and queer theorists to always consider the implications of their theories and practices.     

Diary entries from the "teachers' professional development playground": multiculturalism meets multisexualities in Australian education

Educational institutions are major cultural and social systems that police and regulate the living out of multicultural and multisexual queer identities, yet which also provide sites for anti-discriminatory responses to the marginalization of these multiple, hybrid identities. Censorship and disapproval (both real and imagined) together with informal codes and regulations for inclusion and representation within school and college communities reflect and reproduce formal debates within the wider society, and within ethnic, feminist, and gay/lesbian communities. Through a series of "Diary Entries," I document my work and experiences with educational groups in both secondary and tertiary education in Australia in recent years-in what a bicultural, bisexual teacher-friend calls "teachers' professional development playgrounds." I explore dilemmas, concerns and strategies for placing "multiculturalism" on the "multisexual" agenda and, conversely, for placing "multisexuality" on the "multicultural" agenda.     

Commentary on the treatment of gender variant and gender dysphoric children and adolescents: common themes and ethical reflections

This commentary offers preliminary ethical reflections on the range of treatments for gender variant and gender dysphoric children, adolescents, and young adults described in the preceding five clinical articles. After clarifying the terminology used to discuss these issues, this commentary reviews several common themes of the clinical articles. Focusing on ethical values of informed consent, full disclosure, the minimization or avoidance of harm, and the maximization of life options, the commentary expresses concerns about various treatment options endorsed by some of the articles. In particular, this commentary focuses on how these practices problematically reproduce social prejudices and stereotypes and how they fail to acknowledge and embrace the multiple pathways for expressing one's gender. It also compares and contrasts the ethical issues related to gender variant and gender dysphoric youths and youths who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or queer.     

Heterosexuals' use of "fag" and "queer" to deride one another: a contributor to heterosexism and stigma

This paper is on heterosexuals' use of words such as "fag" and "queer" to refer to one another in an insulting manner. This behavior perpetuates heterosexism and the stigmatization of gays. Two hundred and fifty-seven university students (73% Euro-American) served as participants. Males exhibited more anti-gay prejudice and anti-gay behavior than females. Heterosexual males frequently used words such as "fag" and "queer" to put one another down. Anti-homosexual prejudice was predictive of anti-gay behavior. However, approximately half of those who engaged in the behavior were not strongly anti-homosexual. For these individuals, the behavior may win approval from their social group. Awareness campaigns and peer reminders that the derisive use of "fag" and "queer" harms homosexuals may be effective in changing this group. It is more difficult to reduce this behavior in individuals with strong anti-homosexual attitudes. The role of individuals and educational and work organizations in bringing about change is discussed.     

Jewish disappearing acts and the construction of gender

In this essay I propose to investigate the interarticulation of race/ethnicity and gender at two fin de siècle moments: the conceptualization of the Oedipus complex at the turn of the twentieth century and the conceptualization of gender as performative in contemporary queer theory. Though these gender constructions contrast strikingly with one another-queer theory opposes and calls into question the heteronormativity of the Oedipal itinerary-both theories are produced through the displacement of racial/ethnic difference onto sexual and gender difference. One line of investigation in this essay is to relate their difference to the distinct situations of ethnic in-betweenness in which they were produced. Freud's situation as a Jew undergoing assimilation to Western European customs has been compared to that of the post-colonial subject. Judith Butler's and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's theories of queer performativity have been located in a post-assimilationist situation in the U.S. of the 1990s. At both moments a doubling takes place but with a radical shift in perspective. Whereas the post-colonial subject undergoes a psychic splitting in which the point of view of the colonizer predominates and promotes assimilation via mimicry, the post-assimilation subject performatively constructs difference, often by a reverse mimicry that involves identification with a subaltern group. Finally, in both situations the notion of "queer incoherence" is deployed not to negate gay and lesbian specificity, but rather to articulate such specificity as historically emergent, on the verge of definition.     

Disciplining "Sextext": queers, fears, and communication studies

This essay is a critical interrogation of disciplinary responses to Tom Nakayama and Fred Corey's 1997 Text and Performance Quarterly essay, "Sextext." Disciplinary responses to the essay suggest strong resistance to queer theory as a "legitimate" intellectual and critical framework. By reading the responses to "Sextext" through the lens of queer theory, and by offering a political reading of conventional studies of sexual representation, this essay suggests how disciplinary boundaries in Communication Studies are policed to protect the production of "legitimate" scholarship. By revealing these practices, this essay provides further support for the central value of queer theory to the discipline of Communication Studies.     

Three Poetry Books

In this article, I argue that Richard Matheson's (1954) vampire novella, I Am Legend, encodes the protagonist's, Robert Neville, traumatic recognition of his queer sexuality in its monstrosity (the unspeakability of male penetrability). Neville's identification with and desire for his undead neighbor, Ben Cortman, are symbolically codified through three different registers: intertextual references to vampiric conventions and codes, the semiotics of queer subculture, and a structure of doubling that links Neville to the queer vampire. Although Neville avoids encountering his unspeakable queer desire, which could be represented only at the level of the Lacanian Real, he must still confront Cortman's obsessive exhortations for him to come out. Only when he symbolically codifies his abnormality in its own monstrosity, by viewing himself through mutant vampires' eyes, can Neville reconfigure the ethical relationship between self and other, humans and mutant humans-vampires. However progressive Matheson's novella is in its advocacy of minority sexual rights, it still renders capitalism's problematic relationship with queer subjectivity invisible. Although capitalism overdetermines every aspect of the social field and makes Neville's daily life possible in its surplus enjoyment, the fundamental antagonism (class struggle) in capitalism is obscured by the assertion of identity politics.     

Walt Whitman,Our Great Gay Poet?

ABSTRACT

This article surveys the critical debates around Walt Whitman's “Calamus” cluster, arguing that a “queer” reading of Whitman—one that does not see him as, for example, a closeted homosexual who censored his work for fear of being “outed”—is both historically accurate and politically efficacious. While previous efforts to reclaim Whitman as “our great gay poet” are understandable—particularly given critical readings of Whitman that denied the homoeroticism of his poems—today, a reading of Whitman as homosexual threatens to simplify our understanding of the history of homosexuality and to blunt the power of Whitman's poetry to continue to “queer” normative understandings of sex and gender identity categories and their relationship to politics.     

Outlaws or in-laws? Queer theory, LGBT studies, and religious studies

Many queer theorists, like many queer activists and perhaps many LGBT people in general, regard religion as so inimical to their purposes and lives that it is not even worthy of critique; references to religion in queer theory, queer studies, and even LGBT studies are usually sparse, brief, and generally derogatory. Likewise, within most of the field of religious studies, queerness is rarely an issue of concern or even consciousness except in the context of organizational tensions over the proper roles of "homosexuals." While there is a growing body of work that brings these two fields together, the study of religion seems to be adapting only haltingly and partially to contemporary developments inLGBTstudies and queer theory. This essay assesses the current state of the "proto-fields" of LGBT studies and queer studies in religion, offers suggestions for new directions in the future, and considers the potential benefits of the interaction of these fields.     

"Beautiful publicity": an introduction to queer Asian film

With a few seemingly apolitical exceptions, openly queer cinemas have generally charted two opposing courses-a propagandistic search for bourgeois acceptance or a radical challenge to sexual hegemony. Yet even the most politically challenging of queer films, for example those of Pasolini, are nevertheless distributed and disseminated through the heteronormative and hegemonically capitalist means they philosophically oppose. This essay thus takes as its texts two low-budget gay male Japanese films of the 1980s, which have been made available on international home video, as opposing examples of politicoeconomic allegories enacted within the self-reflexive contexts of queer cinema and gay male political history. Taken together, the two films present an interlocking example of how Asian queer films both engage and refute "Eastern" and "Western" conceptions of homosexuality and sexual politics in general.