Uncommon territory: declaration, and the supervision of queer design theses

Abstract

While attempting to develop authentic, practice-led inquiries into identity, queer students face unique issues. They often need to consider questions of community and frequently find themselves with one foot outside of the academic environment. Many also have to carefully consider the implications of declaration, and the management of trust. This paper discusses some implications of working creatively with queer designers in a postgraduate environment in a New Zealand University. In doing so, it considers certain formative issues impacting on queer students generally. It then reflects upon the research journeys of three candidates and the construction of culturally responsive, creativity supportive research environments developed to support their research.

Keywords:

• postgraduate supervision
• queer students
• teaching and research
• design
• culturally responsive teaching

Notes

1. New Zealand decriminalised consenting sex between men in private in 1986. In 1993 it extended human rights provisions to include sexual preference. Same sex marriage was legalised in April 2013. Although these reforms suggest a relatively nondiscriminatory society, Henrickson et al. (2007) national study of lesbian, gay and bisexual New Zealanders noted that three-quarters of men and two-thirds of women in their sample had been verbally assaulted because of their sexuality and 18% of men and 9% of women had experienced physical assault for the same reason.

2. The word queer entered the academic area via Kosofsky-Sedgwick's (1993) essay Queer and Now. However, the term is not universally accepted because, given its historical and ongoing use as a form of hate speech, some sexual minority individuals consider it offensive, derisive or self-deprecating. This said, I use queer in preference to acronyms like LGBT or LGBTTTFQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, takataapui, two-spirited, fa'afafine, queer or questioning), because as lists like these lengthen in an attempt to become more inclusive, they can also emphasise difference rather than the distinct experiences of social marginalisation and oppression that sexual minority individuals experience in common.

3. Families were largely covert. They contained positions like Aunty, Mother, and Sister. As organised groups they were employed as a way of passing on social values and offering protection from the attention of blackmailers, queer bashers and persecuting authorities (Ings 2010, 2011). Most importantly however, they could help to address the loss of one's biological family if one was disowned. In certain cities these families not only provided information networks but also acted as professional mentoring systems (Livingston 1991).

4. Such communities should not be seen as a form of exclusiveness or separatism. They rarely operate as replacements for a dominant culture; instead they function as empowering environments operating within it.

5. References to this may be seen in Livingston's (1991) documentary Paris is Burning. In recording the ‘houses’ of a New York 1980s gay and transgendered ball culture, she also unpacked both the nurturing nature of these queer families and the brutality of their contexts.

6. Von Gloeden was a German photographer working in Italy prior to World War 1. Only a small proportion of his work remains. In 1933, over 1000 of his glass negatives and 2000 prints were confiscated and destroyed by Mussolini's Fascist police, because their depictions of male intimacy were considered pornographic. Later, in 1936, another 1000 negatives were destroyed.

7. These include locations as diverse as Tonga, Samoa, Singapore, Malaysia, Pakistan, Jamaica, Algeria, Barbados, Morocco, Kenya, and Nigeria.