Pedagogies of Queer and Trans Repair
Letters from Queer Geographic Classrooms
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v20i5.1911Keywords:
Queer, trans, pedagogy, repair, classroom, LGBTQAbstract
In this article, four scholars in feminist, queer and transgender (trans) geographies, and critical race geographies bring forth experiences of teaching about race, gender, sexualities, ability, and citizenship status in contemporary United States and Canada. We utilize “queer epistolary,” a form of letter writing as speaking out loud, co-reflecting, caring, and supporting each other. In doing so, the article suggests that a queer, trans, feminist, and critical race geographic pedagogy requires ongoing community building (both virtual and material) in order to nurture and sustain the work of racialized, queer, and trans, non-binary, and gender non-conforming geographers. This article presents our exchange as a way of illuminating how geography classrooms are laden with power asymmetries, and how our embodied experiences as queer and trans people are tangled in the messy power exchanges of the classroom. We argue that queering the geography classroom necessitates critical explorations of (settler) colonialism, racial capitalism, regionalisms, and geopolitics alongside our own bodies and subjectivities. Queer and trans geographic pedagogies challenge us to locate ourselves, alongside our students, within the personal and geographical specificity of power geometries in the classroom setting. This task is weighted with political urgency while simultaneously attaching vulnerability to the queer and trans geographers who embody the vexing differences that we teach.
References
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———. 2005. Placing the Personal in Pedagogy: Engaged Pedagogy in ‘Feminist’ Geographical Teaching. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Vol. 29, No. 3, 339–354.
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Carter, Angela M. 2015. Teaching with Trauma: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Trigger Warnings Debate. Disability Studies Quarterly 35(2). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4652.
Catungal, John Paul. 2017. Feeling Bodies of Knowledge: Situating Knowledge Production through Felt Embeddedness. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 108(3): 289-301.
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DasGupta, Debanuj. 2019. “The Politics of Transgender Asylum and Detention.” Human Geography. 12(3). 1-16.
Di Feliciantonio, Cesare. 2018. Thinking the Relational Character of Commoning in Political Activism. In Banerjea, DasGupta, DasGupta & Grant (eds.), Friendship as Social Justice Activism: Critical Solidarities in a Global Perspective. Kolkata, Seadgull Press.
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Gopinath, Gayatri. 2005. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas & South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
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———. 2004. Growing Up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Katz, Cindi, Angelika Bammer, Minrose Gwin, and Elizabeth Meese. 1997. In the Place of the Letter: An Epistolary Exchange. In S.H. Aiken, A. Brigham, S.A. Marston, and P. Waterstone (eds.) Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality. University of Arizona Press: 161-202.
Kilgannon, Corey. 2014. Without Tenure or a Home. New York Times, March 27. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/nyregion/without-tenure-or-a-home.html
Kim, Christine and Lee, Christopher. 2015. Asian Canadian Critique beyond the Nation. Canadian Literature, 227: 6-14.
Knoll, Kristina R. 2009. Feminist Disability Studies Pedagogy. Feminist Teacher, 19(2): 122-133.
Knopp, Lawrence. 1999. JGHE Symposium: Teaching Sexualities in Geography, Queer Theory, Queer Pedagogy: New Spaces, New Challenges in Teaching Geography. Journal of Higher Education in Geography. Vol 23:1. 77-79.
———. 2007. “From Lesbian and Gay to Queer Geographies: Past, Prospects and Possibilities.” In Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics. Edited by Gavin Brown, Kathe Browne & Lim, Jason. Ashgate.
Kobyashi, Audrey. 1999. Race and Racism in the classroom: some thoughts on unexpected moments. Journal of Geography, 98:4, 179-182.
Lorde, Audre. 2007 [1984]. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York: Crossing Press, 103-114.
Manalansan IV, Martin F. 2014. The “stuff” of archives: Mess, migration, and queer lives. Radical History Review, 2014(120): 94-107.
McKittrick, Katherine. 2014. Wait Canada Anticipate Black. The CLR James Journal, 20(1/2): 243-249.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Boundary 2, 12(3): 333-358.
Nelson, Lise. 1999. Bodies (and Spaces) Do Matter: The Limits of Performativity. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 6(4): 331–53.
Oswin, Natalie. 2019. An Other Geography. Dialogues in Human Geography, November. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619890433.
Roach, Tom. 2012. Friendship as a Way of Life: Foucault, AIDS & the Politics of Shared Estrangement. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
———. 1996. Introduction: Queerer than Fiction. Studies in the Novel, 28(3): 277-280.
Seitz, David K. 2020. “It’s Not About You”: Disappointment as Queer Pedagogy in Community-Engaged Service-Learning. Journal of Homosexuality 67 (3): 305–14.
Tungohan, Ethel (2013). Reconceptualizing Motherhood, Reconceptualizing Resistance: Migrant Domestic Workers, Transnational Hyper-maternalism and Activism. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 15(1): 39-57.
VanHaitisma, Pamela. 2017. Romantic Correspondence as Queer Extra Curriculum: The Self-Education for Racial Uplift of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus. College Composition and Communication, 69(2): 182-207.
Wiegman, Robyn. 2014. The Times We’re in: Queer Feminist Criticism and the Reparative “Turn.” Feminist Theory 15(1): 4–25.
Baird, Vanessa. 2007. The No-nonsense Guide to Sexual Diversity, 2nd edition. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.
Bannerji, Himani. 1996. On the Dark Side of the Nation: Politics of multiculturalism and the state of ‘Canada’. Journal of Canadian Studies, 31(3): 103-138.
Banerjea, Niharika., DasGupta, Debanuj., DasGupta, Rohit.K. & Grant, J’aime M. 2018. “Why Friendship As Social Activism?” in Friendship As Social Justice Activism: Critical Solidarities in a Global Perspective. Kolkata, India: Seagull Press.
Binnie, Jon. 2017. Sexuality, the Erotic, and Geography: Epistemology, methodology, and pedagogy. In Browne, K., Lim, J., and Brown, G. Eds. Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices, and Politics. Surrey, England and VT, USA. Ashgate.
Brown, Gavin. 2007. “Mutinous Eruptions: Autonomous Spaces of Radical Queer Activism,” Environment and Planning A, 39(11): 2685–2698.
Browne, Kath. 2003. Negotiations and Fieldworkings: Friendship and Feminist Research. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2(2), 132-146. https://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/690.
———. 2005. Placing the Personal in Pedagogy: Engaged Pedagogy in ‘Feminist’ Geographical Teaching. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Vol. 29, No. 3, 339–354.
Browne, Kath, and Nash, Catherine Jennifer. 2010. Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research. Montpelier, Vermont: Ashgate.
Carter, Angela M. 2015. Teaching with Trauma: Disability Pedagogy, Feminism, and the Trigger Warnings Debate. Disability Studies Quarterly 35(2). http://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4652.
Catungal, John Paul. 2017. Feeling Bodies of Knowledge: Situating Knowledge Production through Felt Embeddedness. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie, 108(3): 289-301.
Clare, Eli. Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure. Durham: Duke University Press Books, 2017.
DasGupta, Debanuj. 2019. “The Politics of Transgender Asylum and Detention.” Human Geography. 12(3). 1-16.
Di Feliciantonio, Cesare. 2018. Thinking the Relational Character of Commoning in Political Activism. In Banerjea, DasGupta, DasGupta & Grant (eds.), Friendship as Social Justice Activism: Critical Solidarities in a Global Perspective. Kolkata, Seadgull Press.
Di Feliciantonio, Cesare, Gadelha, Kaciano, and DasGupta, Debanuj. 2017. “Queer(y)ing Methodologies: doing fieldwork and becoming queer. Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography. 24(3): 403-412.
Eaves, LaToya E. 2019. The Imperatives of Struggle: Feminist and Gender Geographies in the United States. Gender, Place, and Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 26(7-9): 1314-1321.
Elder, Glen S. 1999. Queerying Boundaries in the Geography Classroom. Journal of Geography in Higher Education. Vol 23(1): 86-93.
Ellison, Treva. 2019. From Sanctuary to Safe Space: Gay and Lesbian Police-Reform Activism in Los Angeles. Radical History Review, 135, 95-118.
Flannery, Mary Ellen. 2017. The Homeless Professor Who Lives in Her Car. neaToday, November 1. http://neatoday.org/2017/11/01/homeless-professor/
Francisco-Menchavez, Valerie. 2018. The Labor of Care: Filipina Migrants and Transnational Families in the Digital Age. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Gee, Alastair. 2017. Facing Poverty, Academics Turn to Sex Work and Sleeping in Cars. The Guardian, September 28. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/sep/28/adjunct-professors-homeless-sex-work-academia-poverty.
Gibson-Graham, J.K. 1999. Queer(y)ing Capitalism in and out of the Classroom, Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 23(1): 80-85.
Gopinath, Gayatri. 2005. Impossible Desires: Queer Diasporas & South Asian Public Cultures. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Hauen, Jack. 2018. Contract Faculty at Canadian Universities Struggle to Make Ends Meet, Survey Finds. Toronto Star, September 3. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2018/09/03/contract-faculty-at-canadian-universities-struggle-to-make-ends-meet-survey-finds.html
hooks, bell. 1994. Teaching to transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York and London: Routledge.
Katz, Cindi. 1992. All the World Is Staged: Intellectuals and the Projects of Ethnography. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10, no. 5: 495 – 510.
———. 2004. Growing Up Global: Economic Restructuring and Children’s Everyday Lives. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Katz, Cindi, Angelika Bammer, Minrose Gwin, and Elizabeth Meese. 1997. In the Place of the Letter: An Epistolary Exchange. In S.H. Aiken, A. Brigham, S.A. Marston, and P. Waterstone (eds.) Making Worlds: Gender, Metaphor, Materiality. University of Arizona Press: 161-202.
Kilgannon, Corey. 2014. Without Tenure or a Home. New York Times, March 27. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/30/nyregion/without-tenure-or-a-home.html
Kim, Christine and Lee, Christopher. 2015. Asian Canadian Critique beyond the Nation. Canadian Literature, 227: 6-14.
Knoll, Kristina R. 2009. Feminist Disability Studies Pedagogy. Feminist Teacher, 19(2): 122-133.
Knopp, Lawrence. 1999. JGHE Symposium: Teaching Sexualities in Geography, Queer Theory, Queer Pedagogy: New Spaces, New Challenges in Teaching Geography. Journal of Higher Education in Geography. Vol 23:1. 77-79.
———. 2007. “From Lesbian and Gay to Queer Geographies: Past, Prospects and Possibilities.” In Geographies of Sexualities: Theory, Practices and Politics. Edited by Gavin Brown, Kathe Browne & Lim, Jason. Ashgate.
Kobyashi, Audrey. 1999. Race and Racism in the classroom: some thoughts on unexpected moments. Journal of Geography, 98:4, 179-182.
Lorde, Audre. 2007 [1984]. “Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power.” In Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches. New York: Crossing Press, 103-114.
Manalansan IV, Martin F. 2014. The “stuff” of archives: Mess, migration, and queer lives. Radical History Review, 2014(120): 94-107.
McKittrick, Katherine. 2014. Wait Canada Anticipate Black. The CLR James Journal, 20(1/2): 243-249.
Mohanty, Chandra Talpade. 1984. Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses. Boundary 2, 12(3): 333-358.
Nelson, Lise. 1999. Bodies (and Spaces) Do Matter: The Limits of Performativity. Gender, Place & Culture: A Journal of Feminist Geography, 6(4): 331–53.
Oswin, Natalie. 2019. An Other Geography. Dialogues in Human Geography, November. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820619890433.
Roach, Tom. 2012. Friendship as a Way of Life: Foucault, AIDS & the Politics of Shared Estrangement. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1993. Tendencies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
———. 1996. Introduction: Queerer than Fiction. Studies in the Novel, 28(3): 277-280.
Seitz, David K. 2020. “It’s Not About You”: Disappointment as Queer Pedagogy in Community-Engaged Service-Learning. Journal of Homosexuality 67 (3): 305–14.
Tungohan, Ethel (2013). Reconceptualizing Motherhood, Reconceptualizing Resistance: Migrant Domestic Workers, Transnational Hyper-maternalism and Activism. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 15(1): 39-57.
VanHaitisma, Pamela. 2017. Romantic Correspondence as Queer Extra Curriculum: The Self-Education for Racial Uplift of Addie Brown and Rebecca Primus. College Composition and Communication, 69(2): 182-207.
Wiegman, Robyn. 2014. The Times We’re in: Queer Feminist Criticism and the Reparative “Turn.” Feminist Theory 15(1): 4–25.
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Published
2021-11-22
How to Cite
DasGupta, D., Rosenberg, R., Catungal, J. P., & Gieseking, J. J. (2021). Pedagogies of Queer and Trans Repair: Letters from Queer Geographic Classrooms. ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 20(5), 491–508. https://doi.org/10.14288/acme.v20i5.1911
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SI - Controversy in Anti-oppression Pedagogies (Guest Ed. Nicole Laliberte)
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Authors agree to publish their articles in ACME under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-
