| Abstract |
"Queer Studies and Education: An International Reader explores how the category queer, as a critical stance or set of perspectives, contributes to opportunities individually and collectively for advancing (queer) social justice. Our collection takes up this general goal by presenting a cross-section of international perspectives on queer studies in education to demonstrate commonalities, differences, uncertainties, or pluralities across a range of national contexts and topics, drawing a heightened awareness of heterodominance and heteropatriarchy, and to conceptualize non-normative and non-essentialist imaginings for more inclusive educational environments. Indeed, in a world that continues to be rife with conflict and oppression, including reactionary backlash to sociocultural and political advances made by any number of marginalized groups, there is good reason to consider how researchers and activists position or queer their educational work in this current climate. This work is achieved via diverse theories of critique as researchers, scholars, educators, activists, and other cultural workers labor across any number of sites that now constitute places where people engage in processes of teaching and learning: e.g., polytechnics, workplaces, human services agencies, training programs, primary and secondary education and university classrooms, (social) media, streetscapes, and many other sites of education. (Queer) critique in these locations is always a matter of where one begins and is always caught in a complex web of heteronormative discourses which one may want to challenge as one is also caught up in reproducing them. Unravelling these discourses, and the perpetual reification of them, will remain a long road, and yet, the work needs to be done"-- Provided by publisher. |
