This special edition focuses on queering literature with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) themes in collaboration with students – young to young adult – and their teachers – both pre- and in-service. It strives to generate knowledge and deeper understandings of the pedagogical implications for working with LGBT-themed texts in classrooms across grade levels. As such, it makes a significant contribution in its focus on the application of queer and trans theoretical perspectives and epistemologies, particularly in terms of extending our pedagogical understanding of addressing questions pertaining to heteronormativity, sexual diversity, cisgenderism, and trans inclusivity in various education contexts (Airton, Citation2009a; Britzman, Citation1998; Malatino, Citation2015; Martino, Citation2016; Namaste, Citation2000; Serano, Citation2007). It does so by providing insight into the potential of LGBT-themed literature to provoke complicated conversations about sexuality, queer desire, gender diversity, cisnormativity, and transgender inclusivity. Reading and discussing LGBT-themed literature can assist teachers of young children, young adults, in between and beyond, in considering how to enter into these complicated conversations about sexual identity, gender expression, gender creativity, and gender independence (Ehrensaft, Citation2012; Meyer & Pullen Sansfacon, Citation2014; Pyne, Citation2014; Ryan, Patraw, & Bednar, Citation2013).
Scholars have long advocated for an LGBT-inclusive curriculum, with a particular emphasis on literature in the English language arts (Athanases, Citation1996; Epstein, Citation2000; Hamilton, Citation1998; Reese, Citation1998; Schall & Kauffmann, Citation2003). The actual implementation has been important but not overwhelming. Moreover, some of the efforts at implementation have reinforced heteronormativity and thus reified the othering of LGBTQ people and, in some cases, even strengthened existing homophobia and transphobia (Martino, Citation2009). Working to queer an LGBT-inclusive curriculum offers an alternative approach that while sharing the goal of combating homophobia also strives to interrogate rather than reinforce heteronormativity and cisnormativity in the spirit of embracing sexual diversity and gender democratization (Airton, Citation2009b; Connell, Citation2009; Hicks, in press; Martino, Citation2016; Rodriguez, Martino, Ingrey, & Brockenbrough, Citation2016).
In some ways, queering is subversive, a covert effort. Blackburn and Smith (Citation2010), for example, suggest that, ‘for teachers and youth service providers who do not find LGBT-inclusivity to be a viable option, we encourage them to consider taking on the concepts of heteronormativity and intersectionality as alternatives’ (p. 633). In other ways, it is more overt, more aspirational, and in some cases, even aggressive. For example, Luhmann (Citation1998) describes queer pedagogy in this way: ‘[it] exceeds the incorporation of queer content into curricula and the worry over finding teaching strategies that make this content more palatable to students’ (p. 141). Rather, she suggests, queer pedagogy ‘draws on pedagogy’s curiosity toward the social relations made possible in the process of learning and on queer critiques of identity-based knowledges’ (p. 141). In addition, Britzman (Citation1998) writes about queer pedagogical practices in terms of texts as sites for enacting ‘deconstructive revolts’, with their potential ‘for unhinging the normal from the self in order to prepare the self to encounter its own conditions of alterity’ (p. 85). In this sense, she conceives of reading practices as ‘imaginary sites’ for both interrogating identity imperatives that impose a degree of foreclosure, and for exploring identificatory possibilities beyond heteronormative and cisnormative limits (Airton, Citation2009a; Britzman, Citation1998; Hicks, in press; Martino, Citation2014, Citation2016; Pyne, Citation2014; Serano, Citation2007). Given these conceptualizations of queer pedagogy, and its relevance for addressing questions pertaining to gender diversity, gender democratization and transgender embodiment, the overall focus of this special edition is: What do queering and trans informed pedagogical approaches afford or enable that LGBTQ-inclusivity alone, does not? More specifically and explicitly, the special edition is concerned to address and engage with these questions:
What happens when children’s and young adult literature are queered and English Language Arts teachers are committed to addressing gender justice in their classrooms?
Why is it important to make this literature and these classrooms more queer and trans-infused?
How might trans specific theories and epistemologies inform research into the pedagogical potential of employing texts that deal explicitly with gender expression, gender embodiment, gender creativity and trans inclusivity in the classroom?
What are the implications of queer and trans theorizing for investigating the pedagogical potential of LGBT-themed texts for envisaging gender and sexuality justice in elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, and how might this work inform teacher education?
The exploration of these questions comes in the form of a collection of nine articles. Four of these focus on literature; one of these hones in on chapter books for upper elementary and middle school readers (Hermann-Wilmarth & Ryan); two of them attend to young adult novels (Clark & Blackburn and Carlson & Linville); and the final of the four reviews a collection of queer and trans-themed literature for a range of very young to young adult readers (Bittner, Ingrey, & Stamper). The other five articles examine work in classrooms and schools, two in elementary classrooms and schools (Martino & Cumming-Potvin and DePalma), one in a high school classroom (Helmer), and two in college courses, both of which are young adult literature courses for preservice teachers (Bach and Parsons). Although there is a balance between articles that focus on literature and those that focus on classrooms and schools, all of the articles offer explicit implications for pedagogical practice. The articles are organized, roughly, around the application of queer and trans theories in relation to primary/elementary, middle, and secondary school classrooms, as well as university teacher education classrooms. These eight articles are followed by a critical review of queer and trans-themed books for young readers across primary, elementary, and secondary school age bands.
The first three articles center around younger students and readers. The first, ‘Teaching about sexual minorities and “princess boys”: A queer and trans-fused approach to investigating LGBTQFootnote1-themed texts in the elementary school classroom’ by Wayne Martino and Wendy Cumming-Potvin sets the tone by providing a grounding in queer and trans theories, as well as a concrete example of on queer-identifying elementary school teacher reflecting on her pedagogical approach to addressing gender and sexual diversity in her classroom. What is highlighted here are the contextual specificities and contingencies governing the scaffolded possibilities for envisaging a depathologizing pedagogy that speaks to the materialization of a concrete example of a teacher working to embrace queer and trans-affirmative social imaginaries in her classroom and school community. The second article, entitled ‘Gay penguins, sissy ducklings … and beyond? Exploring gender and sexuality diversity through children’s literature’, by Renée DePalma, examines the queer possibilities of identifying and interrogating social processes by which normativity is constructed and maintained in UK-based primary schools as she reflects on the participatory action research project No Outsiders, a collaborative study in which teachers and university-based researchers explored ways of using children’s books that include themes of gender and sexual diversity. The third article is authored by Jill Hermann-Wilmarth and Caitlin Ryan and is entitled ‘Queering chapter books with LGBT characters for young readers: Recognizing and complicating representations of homonormativity’. In this article, the authors study chapter books, which they describe as in between picture books and young adult novels, which include LGBT characters. They analyze 10 books and trouble the representations of LGBT people in these books, and they assert that a queer lens can disrupt normative representations, whether they are of sexuality, gender, or other identity markers.
The second set of three articles center around adolescent and young adult students and readers. The first of these three, although the fourth of the collection, is Caroline Clark and Mollie Blackburn’s ‘Scenes of violence and sex in recent award-winning LGBT-themed young adult novels and the ideologies they offer readers’. This article analyzes five award-winning young adult novels with particular attention to scenes of sex and violence to explore the ideologies being conveyed to readers about being something beyond the hegemonic heternormative, that is being something other than heterosexual and cisgender. The second of the articles for older students and readers, and the fifth of the collection, is David Lee Carlson and Darla Linville’s ‘The social importance of a kiss: A Honnethian reading of David Levithan’s young adult novel Two Boys Kissing’. In this article, Carlson and Linville bring Honneth’s theory of recognition to Levithan’s novel and focus, in particular, on a kiss between two boys. In doing so they show readers how a public intimate kiss between people of the same gender invites a recognition of humanity in queerness. The third of the three articles focuses on adolescent and young adult readers is ‘Reading queer counter-narratives in the high school literature classroom: Possibilities and challenges’ by Kirsten Helmer. This article offers a Queer Literacies Framework and draws on an ethnographic study of a gay and lesbian literature course. It focuses, in particular, on discussions about Rita Mae Brown’s Rubyfruit Jungle and Michale Cunningham’s The Hours among high school juniors and seniors to illustrate the ways queer moments provoked by queer counter-narratives fleetingly, yet importantly, disrupted the heteronormative space of the English literature classroom.
The next pair of articles, which are articles seven and eight of the collection, turn their attention to college-level young adult literature courses, which are geared toward preservice teachers. Jacqueline Bach’s ‘Exploring queer pedagogies in the college-level YA literature course’ was inspired by a comment Bach hears regularly from the students in her young adult literature course, that is that they love one LGBT-themed book or another, but they cannot teach it. Her study looks widely at syllabi for such courses across the United States to identify ones that include LGBT-themed literature. Ultimately she proposes including LGBT-themed literature in courses ‘without any agenda for discussing sexual orientation or gender identity or promoting tolerance or as a way to address issues of bullying in our schools’, and imagines that one day these books will be so commonplace that her students will come to her asking how to teach an LGBT-themed, like any other book, rather than insisting they cannot. The other article in this pair is Linda Parsons’ ‘Learning from preservice teachers’ responses to trans-themed young adult literature: Improving personal practice in teacher education’. In contrast to Bach, Parsons goes for depth rather the breadth. That is to say, rather than looking outward at many syllabi, she looks in ‘to identify and address the shortcomings in [her] practice of including trans-themed literature in [her] course’. She offers, and troubles, findings which suggest that, through her teaching she ‘skimmed the surface to cover content rather than digging deep to teach my students to examine the beliefs, misconceptions, and prejudices that surfaced in relation to these [trans-themed] novels’. These personal insights into her own teaching point to the implications that teachers include multiple trans-themed texts, both fiction and non-fiction, across themes to help students better understand trans people.
The ninth and final article of the collection is a ‘Queer and trans themed books for young readers: A Critical review’, by Robert Bittner, Jennifer Ingrey, and Christine Stamper. This article offers a brief history of children’s and young adult literature with queer and trans-positive themes. It then articulates theoretical foundations, which form the bases for their reviews of a selection of four picture books and five young adult novels, among the many others that get briefly discussed. In their analyses, the authors recognize the problems in some of these books while still asserting the need for them to be read in primary/elementary, middle, and secondary classrooms, as well as those in colleges and universities.
Across these nine articles, this special edition offers insights on LGBT-themed literature, students, teachers, and readers in a range of classrooms and schools with the purpose of exploring how queer and trans theories might inform the teaching and learning of English language arts with great respect to people who live their lives beyond hegemonic heternormativity and cisnormativity. It is our hope, as the editors of this special edition, that you will find the age range of readers with whom you spend the most time and start reading there; or that you will find the focal area that shapes your interests – whether that is literature or teaching and learning in classrooms and schools – and start reading there. But wherever you start, we hope that you will be pulled in and keep reading because we believe that there are things to learn in each of these articles that go beyond their focal ages, contexts, and topics. There is something to learn about how to provoke, foster, and navigate complicated conversations about sexuality, queer desire, gender creativity, gender independence, and trans inclusivity. And, there is something to learn about how all of these are informed by an epistemological and ontological understanding of gender embodiment as a process of becoming (Lane, Citation2009). Indeed, there is much to learn about how queer and trans theories, as informed and driven by trans and gender diverse scholars themselves, (Airton, Citation2009a; Beauchamp & D’Harlinque, Citation2012; Hicks, in press; Malatino, Citation2015; Namaste, Citation2000; Pyne, Citation2014; Stryker, Citation2006), can move all of us beyond LGBTQ-inclusivity and inform reading, discussing, teaching, and learning in all of the classrooms and school contexts where we live and work. So, regardless of how you move through these articles, or where you do your teaching and learning work, we hope you will continue to read, enjoy, and learn from this special edition. And, when you are done reading, we hope that you feel informed and inspired to continue to engage in your own queer and trans theorizing about the pedagogical potential of LGBT-themed texts for envisaging gender and sexuality justice in your own classrooms.
Notes
1. Acronyms are used throughout this special edition with slight variations and with the overall intention to be as precise and inclusive as possible. In general, LGBT is used to describe themes, since most texts are not already queer but, instead, are queered through the processes of reading, discussing, and interpreting. Occasionally, however, some contributors include Q in their naming of texts to indicate the queer possibilities that are afforded in some children's and young adult literature. Finally, LGBTQ or LGBTQQ are used to describe people, with the additional Q indicating questioning because people have the capacity to question, unlike themes and other inanimate things.
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