Addressing the Lgbtq-Religious Junction in English Studies

DOING JUSTICE: ADDRESSING THE LGBTQ-RELIGIOUS JUNCTION IN ENGLISH STUDIES

by Gina Rebekah Joan Patterson

This dissertation addresses a relative silence in the English Studies pedagogical archive around lgbtq issues and religious discourse. Specifically, this research limits its focus to (conservative) Christian responses to lgbtq issues in the context of the United States. As indicated by its title, this dissertation aims to assist teachers (and administrators) in addressing the lgbtq-religious junction in critical, ethical, and socially just ways. To accomplish this task, I designed a two-phase, person-based research project. In the first phase, I conducted a nationally circulated, online survey that asked English Studies teachers to reflect upon their experiences at the lgbtq-religious junction. In the second phase, I engaged in follow-up interviews with a number of these survey respondents. My results indicate that the difficulty of addressing this intersection has little to do with a lack of socially just responses to anti-lgbtq, (conservative) Christian arguments. Rather, participants indicated three pressures of navigating the lgbtq-religious junction: First, survey and interview data reveal that participants' experiences of institutional violence contributed to a climate of fear, where teachers feel they must steer away from the lgbtq-religious junction (if not lgbtq issues in general) altogether for fear of jeopardizing their career, if not their physical and/or emotional safety. Second, participants' responses indicate that another difficulty of addressing this intersection in the classroom hinges upon having to simultaneously cope with their previous emotional experiences at the lgbtq-religious junction. Finally, my data indicates that, in an attempt to address the lgbtq- religious junction in socially just ways, participants must also contend with the neoliberal expectation (from students, parents, colleagues, administrators, and politicians) that pedagogy ought to be neutral. In the conclusion, I provide readers with suggestions for thinking about the lgbtq-religious junction in socially just ways. I also call on readers to leverage their institutional and/or social privilege to transform oppressive institutional cultures that hinder critical, ethical, and socially just pedagogies at the lgbtq-religious junction (among other similarly volatile intersections) in the first place.

DOING JUSTICE: ADDRESSING THE LGBTQ-RELIGIOUS JUNCTION IN ENGLISH STUDIES

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to the Faculty of

Miami University in partial

fulfillment of the requirements

For the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

English Department

Gina Rebekah Joan Patterson

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2013

Dissertation Director: Dr. Madelyn Detloff

Dissertation Director: Dr. Heidi McKee

Reader: Dr. John Tassoni

Reader: Dr. Lisa Weems

Table of Contents Chapter 1 ...... 1 Getting Schooled: Teaching at the Intersection of LGBTQ Issues and Religious Discourse ...... 1 Chapter 2 ...... 20 Interrogating Pedagogical Narratives at the LGBTQ-Religious Junction ...... 20 Chapter 3 ...... 50 Toward a Methodology of Risk: Bodies, Emotions, and Methods ...... 50 Chapter 4 ...... 72 Surveying Teachers' Experiences at the LGBTQ-RD ...... 72 Interchapter ...... 90 Participant Introductions ...... 90 Chapter 5 ...... 94 The Teacher's Body in Institutional Space ...... 94 Chapter 6 ...... 122 Intimate Encounters at the LGBTQ-Religious Junction ...... 122 Chapter 7 ...... 160 The Unbearable Weight of Pedagogical Neutrality at the LGBTQ-Religious Junction ...... 160 Conclusion ...... 197 Getting Schooled Again: Notes on "Doing Justice" at the LGBTQ-RD ...... 197 Works Cited ...... 229 Appendix A ...... 237 Appendix B ...... 239 Appendix C ...... 241 Endnotes ...... 243

iii

Table of Figures

Figure 1. Survey Questions ...... 61

Figure 2. Participants' Willingness to Address the LGBTQ-RD ...... 62

Figure 3. LGBTQ Participants' Assessment of Risk ...... 62

Figure 4. Post-Survey Interview Questions ...... 64

Figure 5. Codes and Themes for Chapters 4-6 ...... 70

Figure 6. Frequency of Religious Discourse in LGBTQ Contexts ...... 74

Figure 7. Factors that Influence Students' Responses to LGBTQ Issues ...... 75

Figure 8. Frequency of Students' Use of Religious/Values Discourse in LGBTQ Contexts ...... 77

Figure 9. Characterization of Class Discussions at the LGBTQ-RD ...... 78

Figure 10. Assessment of Disciplinary Resources for Navigating the LGBTQ-RD ...... 79

Figure 11. Participants' Attitudes Toward Addressing the LGBTQ-RD ...... 81

Figure 12. LGBTQ Participants' Assessment of Risk ...... 86

Dedication

For Ben Stokes, the Chef of Love —and for all of our queer saints

Acknowledgments

This has been an intellectually and emotionally challenging project for me, and I am so thankful for the folks who have taken this journey with me. I'd like to send a big thank you out to my co-chairs, Madelyn Detloff and Heidi McKee, who "adopted" me later on in the research process. I really couldn't have finished without their direction and encouragement. I'm also thankful to John Tassoni, also a member of my committee, who encouraged me (many years back) to reflect on how the students in my Literature and Sexuality class helped me to prepare for my comprehensive exam. Had he not offered me the opportunity to reflect on this question, I might not have written this dissertation. I'm also indebted to my outside reader, Lisa Weems, for talking to me about feminist and queer methodologies and for introducing me to important contacts along the way. It seems only fair to thank all of the people who participated in my research. Had folks not taken my online survey, I would have been in a real mess. I'd also like to thank those of my participants who agreed to do follow-up interviews with me. While I couldn't include all of these interviews in my dissertation, I truly enjoyed talking pedagogy with all of my interview participants. I am especially grateful to the nine participants whose stories I included in my project: José de la Garza, Aiden Gliesberg, Michelle Gibson, Kami Day, Will Banks, Trixie Smith, TJ Geiger, and finally "Lynn" and "Jo." Though it is true that my project wouldn't have been nearly as successful without their generosity, I am most grateful for the friendships that I developed with these wonderful people. I consider myself lucky to have such wonderful colleagues. I'd also like to thank all of the "helpers" I've encountered during this process. I am grateful, for instance, to Dominic Ashby and Maria Palmieri for giving me invaluable advice on how to design an online survey and turn raw data into measurable results. I'd seriously have been in the weeds without their guidance. Additionally, I am thankful to my learning specialist Christina Carrubba-Whetstine, who not only offered me deadlines but picked me up off of the pavement when I felt crushed by what seemed like an insurmountable task. And though I may be repeating myself here, I'd like to give special acknowledgement to my friend and colleague Kami Day—who in addition to participating in my research also became a mentor to me. It's terribly difficult to make it in academia as a working-class, queer woman, especially given the daily messages that folks like me don't belong in higher education. Having Kami's assurance that I did (in fact) belong and that my research mattered was a huge shot in the arm when I needed it most.

I'd like to thank my queer family of choice, who saw me at my worst and loved me anyhow. I am thankful to Susan Pelle (my sister), who fielded my panicked calls, who read drafts of my dissertation, and who—in an incredible display of kindness—gave me a place to live when I didn't have anywhere else to go. I'm thankful to Nik Niesel (my brother) and Jen Seabaugh (a.k.a. "the Captain") for being such a fabulous distraction. Without their compassion and humor, I would have surely lost my mind ages ago. I'd also be remiss not to mention my four-legged, furry son, Mr. Moody Watts. Though this poor guy can't read a lick of this and though it may seem hokey to do so, I can't write an acknowledgement without mentioning his role as my longtime companion. Ten years is a lot of time to spend with someone—especially when that someone is in graduate school. I do so wish I could give Mr. Moody the gift of a pool—like I promised all those years ago when I thought graduating with my Ph.D. might mean that I'd come into some money. I feel that I owe a full, final paragraph to Mandy Watts—my colleague, my best friend, and my partner. I thank her for encouraging me to write this, all those years ago when we were chatting it up in our first apartment in Asheville, North Carolina. Without her advice, it would have never occurred to me that other folks might want to hear what I had to say about pedagogy, religious discourse, and lgbtq issues. I can't even begin to fully detail the ways in which Mandy has been a boon to me in this process—whether it was letting me cry out in frustration, listening to my ideas, reading countless drafts and offering brilliant feedback, or convincing me that I could finish when I wasn't so sure about that myself. I only hope that I can be such a powerful ally to her.

vii

Chapter 1

Getting Schooled: Teaching at the Intersection of LGBTQ Issues and Religious Discourse

Religious discourse is not an infrequent guest in the classroom—particularly when it comes to lgbtq issues. That discussions about gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality might intersect with religious discourse in unpredictable and sometimes volatile ways hardly surprises; these topics cut across many religious traditions—though in the United States these discussions arise, more often than not, within a Christo-normative context.1 It also hardly surprises that lgbtq issues would intersect with religious discourse in the English Studies classroom, given its attention to public discourse—vis-à-vis novels, film, web-based texts, pop culture, and political rhetoric. But however regularly religious discourse and lgbtq issues might intersect, this pedagogical juncture has a knack for catching teachers off guard. As vexing as the lgbtq-religious junction can be, the resources one might hope to find within the English Studies pedagogical archive prove relatively sparse. For a discipline so influenced by critical pedagogy and so drawn to engaging various contact zones,2 this silence seems all the more peculiar. Doing Justice: Addressing the LGBTQ-Religious Junction in English Studies takes this curious silence as its starting point. In a two-part qualitative study based on an online survey and follow-up interviews, I initiate a conversation about religious discourse and lgbtq issues—a topic typically regarded as a pedagogical no-fly zone. My goals are these: First, I intend to give readers a sense of how other English Studies teachers have experienced the lgbtq-religious junction. Second, I seek to illuminate the complexities and possibilities of critically engaging with this intersection in the classroom. Third, I hope to frame the lgbtq-religious junction as a pedagogical phenomenon that invites critical reflection about the goals of English Studies, if not the mission of higher education in general. My Queer Agenda I take up the lgbtq-religious junction (lgbtq-rd) for my own personal, professional, and political reasons. Like anyone else, my social location and life experiences influence how I will engage with this intersection. But as someone who hails from the borderlands of multiple social groups, I am less convinced that offering a simple laundry list of my positionalities will speak to these questions of motive. For example, that I identify as a white, working-class, cisgender3 flexible, byke—raised in the Midwest by a Native American father, who converted from Judaism to marry

my Irish Catholic mother—hardly illuminates my reasons for taking on this research. Questions linger. What prompted me to investigate the lgbtq-religious junction, why do I think this juncture is important, and how do I politically position myself when it comes to such a vexing intersection? A disorienting number of answers come to mind. I could speak of my years of participation in Catholic and Evangelical Christian communities and the reasons why I eventually left them. Certainly, I could give an account of the anti-lgbtq religious violence I've witnessed in my own life— and the loved ones I've lost to that violence. While these personal-political experiences have influenced this research, I resist lingering too long around these narratives lest they be used to discredit my work. I know how easily dominant social groups are able to dismiss critiques of systematic violence under the rubric of unwarranted, personal vendettas. All that said, I do indeed have an agenda: I believe that how teachers handle the lgbtq-rd is a matter of social justice. To better demonstrate the impetus for this project and to suggest where it's headed, I offer the reader two different stories—a teaching narrative and a disciplinary narrative. A Series of Unfortunate Pedagogical Events When I mention my research to colleagues, they sometimes ask whether or not I'm a glutton for punishment. Perhaps. As a rhetorician and as a queer pedagogue, I believe that uncomfortable (and even volatile) dialogue offers a fruitful point for reflecting on the power of words and the challenges of teaching and learning. For that reason, I tend not to shy away from moments of discord when they arise in the classroom. Nothing, however, evokes that deer-in-the-headlights feeling for me like the lgbtq-religious junction. Though the narratives I share below are unique to my own pedagogical contexts, I suspect readers will recognize something familiar in them. Not only do these anecdotes illustrate the impetus for my research but they also illuminate some of the problems that can arise when lgbtq issues intersect with religious discourse in the English Studies classroom. *** During my M.A. coursework in literature, I taught an introductory lit course around gay and lesbian coming of age narratives. As far as I knew, the class had been a hit. During finals week, however, I received a paper from a student who used the Bible to refute the very idea of homosexuality. In effect, the student attempted to recreate a life-world that excluded competing, queerer ways of knowing. Christianity became a super discourse, beyond reproach. On one hand, responding to the paper was straightforward: he hadn't followed the assignment prompt. Still, I

needed to address how his arguments functioned within a larger discursive system that dehumanizes lgbtq people—but I found myself at a loss to do so. As a fresh-faced Ph.D. student in rhetoric and composition, I found myself similarly frozen in a first-year composition class. My students and I walked around the room, reading and giving feedback on research proposals. Nothing seemed to be amiss. Then I saw it: on a student's proposal that made the case for marriage equality, another student had anonymously written, "God doesn't make gay people!" Here, religious discourse functioned as a policing mechanism. "God" was called upon to establish origins, to make assumptions about the essence of humanity—and humanity wasn't gay (Burke, Motives 13). I struggled with how to respond to the comment during class, particularly since the proposal's author was not "out" to her classmates. Prepping for my qualifying exams, I had the pleasure of working with students who had elected to enroll in my Literature and Sexuality course. Repeatedly, religious discourse entered our conversations. Students struggled with the disconnect between our classroom discussions and the (conservative) Christian talking points used outside of the classroom to justify the oppression of lgbtq people. Students wanted a way to talk back to these arguments, but I had few answers for them. Still, the sincerity of their struggles influenced me enough to inspire this research. More recently, as I revised my dissertation, I taught a routine Composition and Literature course on the fairy tale genre. Students seemed to appreciate my intersectional focus on race, class, gender, gender expression, sexuality, age, and (dis)ability. One student, however, repeatedly challenged course content. In his first paper, he charged me with "indoctrination," adding that I had encouraged students to unfairly criticize fairy tales, which were intended for "normal Christian children." During an office visit, he complained about my refusal to be "objective" on matters of gender roles and sexuality. He also let slip that he'd been recording my class with the hope of documenting my "liberal bias." In spite of my confidence in the pedagogical efficacy of my course, I worried what such an exposé might mean for me, given that my contract renewal is contingent upon student evaluations. *** Certainly, my experiences are influenced by a range of factors, including institutional politics, campus climate, course type, and the funds of knowledge and social locations of both students and myself as a teacher. Nevertheless, they illuminate the pedagogical complexities of negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction. For instance, regardless of course content or whether or not we'd prefer not to discuss religion and lgbtq issues in the classroom, this pedagogical juncture appears to be

unavoidable. To illustrate, while gay and lesbian coming of age novels may seem to invite religious discourse in the classroom, a course on the fairy tale genre seems less related. Even so, the lgbtq-rd still found its way into my classroom. Moreover, even when teachers are prepared to deal with the lgbtq-religious junction, it may still catch some of us off guard—perhaps especially when it functions as moral panopticon, as it did in my second example. Finally, the sociopolitical contexts surrounding the classroom can also influence how a teacher will be able (and unable) to respond to the lgbtq- religious junction. In the fourth anecdote, my student's sense of entitlement to police my pedagogy is inseparable from larger, public conversations about the bias in higher education. In turn, my ability to effectively respond was eclipsed by my vulnerable positionality and the exploitative conditions under which many contract employees in higher education work. Given experiences like mine, the bulk of which have been negative, I understand why few teachers would relish negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction. However frustrating it can be, I argue that this intersection is too important to sidestep. As my third teaching anecdote illustrates, not every student engages with the lgbtq-rd to shut down critical, ethical engagement with course material. Rather, some students understand the need to engage with religious discourse in lgbtq contexts. These students recognize the political potency of (conservative) Christian discourse in U.S. publics—particularly its influence on public perception regarding educational policy, media censorship, equitable access to healthcare, reproductive freedom, religious freedom, and any number of issues related to lgbtq social justice. Indeed, scholars across a range of disciplines including legal studies, performance studies, political science, religious studies, sociology, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies have convincingly argued that (conservative) Christianity cannot be so easily disentangled from the question of how and why heterosexism, cissexism, and gender normativity persist (Burack xxi–xxii; Fetner xiv–xv; Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin 12–13). If, in the tradition of Paulo Freire,4 we hope to empower students to challenge oppression and to leverage their critical literacies toward social justice, then we need to provide them with an education that will help them engage with the potentially volatile discursive intersections they will encounter in and outside the classroom—including the lgbtq-rd. Moreover, even if students in our classrooms do intend to deploy religious discourse in an attempt to derail classroom conversations about lgbtq issues, this doesn't mean that teachers have to allow students to succeed in their goal. Queer pedagogues like Amy Winans and Deborah Britzman5 have argued that teachers need to engage students precisely at those moments where thinking stops—where students become inclined to refuse new information that challenges their privileged

positionalities (Britzman, "Reading Straight" 54; Winans 105). Instead, teachers can read moments of resistance as an invitation to examine the difficulties of learning with students. Resistance at intersections like the lgbtq-religious junction offers teachers a window to examine with students the ethical implications of reading and writing the world. We can remind students about the consequences of discourse—our accountability to others for the stories we tell, the stories we repeat, the stories we interpret, and the stories we refuse. We can point to our collective responsibility to ask, as Judith Butler does in Undoing Gender: "[W]hat forms of community have been created, and through what violences and exclusions have they been created?" (225). Following Butler, I suggest that those who study language must move beyond consensus as the end goal of public discourse. This is also an especially relevant question for English Studies pedagogy, which too often sidesteps such difficult ethical questions. In and around the lgbtq- religious junction, for example, some pedagogical scholars have attempted to sidestep the harmful consequences of religious discourse, and the unlivable conditions it creates for lgbtq people, by paring down the goals of an English Studies education. Some claim that teachers' task simply includes helping students articulate their ideas through appropriate academic conventions—however unethical or unfounded those ideas may be. Other times, instead of helping students to leverage critical literacy toward socially just ends, some contend that our goal as teachers is to assist students in making persuasive arguments—regardless of the unjust circumstances these arguments may create for already oppressed social groups. Still other English Studies pedagogues worry that critically engaging with lgbtq issues veers dangerously close to colonizing (conservative) religious students. For some, this fear of indoctrination creates a climate of fear around lgbtq issues that all but forces supposed pedagogical neutrality in the classroom. While I will examine the pedagogical literature in and around the lgbtq-rd more closely in Chapter 3, I illuminate how these disciplinary conversations tend to play out around this intersection in the narrative below. A Series of Contentious Listserv Threads In late August of 2010, after I had completed both the survey and interview phase of my project, a participant emailed me and suggested that I should check out the conversation taking place on the WPA-L. Hosted by Arizona State, the WPA listserv is an "email discussion intended primarily for individuals who are involved in writing program administration at universities, colleges, or community colleges" (Council of Writing Program Administrators). The list is also open to graduate students, and my participant's email had me curious—especially since the WPA-L was one of the online venues where I circulated my call for participants.

Following up on my participant's suggestion, I checked my email to find that another subscriber had posted an article from a religious right news source about Jennifer Keeton, a graduate student who was dropped from Augusta State University's counseling program after refusing to "participate in a 'remediation' plan to increase her tolerance of gays and lesbians after she made it known that she believed homosexuality was a personal choice" (Netter). The WPA-L subscriber sympathized with Keeton's plight and recommended that interested listserv members should read the legal brief submitted on Keeton's behalf by the Alliance Defense Fund (a legal arm of the religious right). Keeton sued Augusta State University, claiming that the required remediation plan would alter her biblically based views about homosexuality—ultimately infringing upon her right to free speech. The listserv conversation also included a discussion of Julea Ward, a grad student at Eastern Michigan University, who was expelled from her counseling program for similar reasons. Ward also sued her university, aided by the Alliance Defense fund (Stafford).6 The dialogue initiated by this post went on for five days and produced four separate threads on the listserv. Several members who participated in these threads commented on the unprecedentedly long and heated nature of this WPA-L conversation. The dialogue, when printed, spanned over a hundred pages. Among the responses to the Keeton/Ward lawsuits, I identified five themes: *** A sizeable number of participants—much like the listserv member who prompted the dialogue—sympathized with Keeton. They believed Keeton's free speech had been violated, and they worried about the financial setbacks she would face having been expelled from a program with no degree in hand. Many of these participants claimed that Keeton's story illustrated higher education's mistreatment of (conservative) Christian students in general. Other participants expressed sympathy for Keeton in less explicit ways. While many of these participants claimed that they personally believed in equal treatment for lgbtq people (some calling upon their friendships with "gay friends" as evidence of their ally status), they maintained that higher education should offer room for students to disagree when it comes to lgbtq issues. Some went so far as to claim that there was no hard scientific evidence to disprove (conservative) Christian beliefs on human sexuality and gender identity, and thus "both sides" made "equally valid" points. Some listserv participants—perhaps equal in number to those who sympathized with Keeton and Ward—argued that these students must have understood the standards of their discipline before entering the program. They suggested that the resistance these students posed to their counseling

program was as absurd as it would be for a graduate student in the hard sciences to believe in something like creationism. Rebutting this argument, more sympathetic voices claimed that Keeton and Ward were clearly blindsided by their discipline's requirements, and they claimed that lawsuits could have been avoided had proper mentorships been in place to help such students. Another conversation on the thread centered around Christian privilege. A small (though vocal) number of participants on the listserv grew weary with the overwhelming sympathy extended to Keeton and Ward. Not only did they argue that Christians were a privileged social group but they also argued that the lawsuits filed by the ADF were intended to strong-arm public universities into accommodating discriminatory beliefs under the guise of free speech. Worried that these dissenters had painted all Christians with a broad brush, others took to the list to point out that queerness and Christianity weren't always at odds. In addition to adding that many lgbtq people also identify as Christian, they cited many Christian denominations that were supportive of lgbtq people. Finally, a much smaller number of participants called attention to the potentially disastrous consequences for lgbtq clients if graduate students like Keeton and Ward had simply been passed through their programs. The bolder among these participants critiqued those who sympathized with (conservative) Christian students as doing so at the expense of lgbtq people. They openly wondered whether or not the WPA-L would have such a long, heated conversation about these graduate students if they would have used their (conservative) Christian beliefs to bolster anti-Semitic, racist, or sexist views. These comments were not commented upon by the bulk of the thread's participants. *** Most striking, however, were the ways listserv participants attempted (and didn't attempt) to connect this conversation to English Studies pedagogy. In my mind, the connections these participants chose (not) to make seem particularly apt because many of the listserv's subscribers are, in one way or another, responsible for developing and assessing the curriculum of required English courses at their institutions. During this dialogue that circled so close to the lgbtq-religious junction, participants made three different connections to the English Studies classroom. First, using Keeton and Ward's stories as a launching point, some participants cited a similar mistreatment of (conservative) Christian students in English Studies. Too often, they claimed, such students' views were silenced or vilified. Second, sidestepping (conservative) Christian discourse's influential role in permitting (if not encouraging) heterosexist and cissexist violence, some participants claimed that Keeton and Ward's predicaments boiled down to a lack of academic literacy. An education in English Studies, they claimed, could help (conservative) Christian students avoid similar missteps by

understanding that their religious literacy doesn't carry equal weight across discourse communities. Third, other participants claimed to be fascinated by the public debate spurred by Keeton and Ward's cases. Positioning themselves as objective observers, they added that they looked forward to following "both sides" of this debate with the students in their English classes. Though this narrative is clearly limited to a single listserv and a single discipline within English Studies, I believe the WPA-L's response to the lgbtq-religious junction is indicative of a larger issue in the field of English Studies. Pointedly, this WPA-L conversation signals a missed opportunity to discuss the ethical standards of our own discipline—particularly how we ought to convey the ethical standards of our field to students at volatile intersections like the lgbtq-rd. Though few English Studies scholars would deny the power of discourse in shaping our world, and though few would deny this discursive world is often unlivable for the queer among us, we have a tendency to sidestep these very important considerations when it comes to pedagogical practice. Intersections like the lgbtq-religious junction invite us to consider what worlds our pedagogies create and "through what violences and exclusions" they are created (Butler, Undoing 225). By and large, however, it seems that we have attempted to bypass this very important question by doing one of two things: (1) We have a tendency to avoid these questions altogether by limiting the scope of English Studies to its utilitarian purposes: to teach academic discourse by focusing on the text and/or student writing. (2) To sidestep volatile intersections like the lgbtq-rd, which would require taking into consideration things like power and privilege, we limit the scope of critical pedagogy. Instead of focusing on the world-making power of discourse and our collective accountability to deploy it in anti-oppressive ways, we shift the focus from justice to mere inclusion—claiming that all views are equally valid. In both of these instances, pluralism becomes reinvented as pedagogical best practice. In this vein, it is no wonder that participants who highlighted the heterosexist impulse behind much of the WPA-L conversation were ignored. In a similar light, it is no wonder that the pedagogical literature in English Studies by and large discourages examinations of the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice. Such conversations are deemed too unproductive or dangerously close to indoctrination. At both micro and macro levels, it seems that our avoidance of the lgbtq-religious junction functions as a protective mechanism more than anything else. While I agree that dealing with the lgbtq-religious junction is both risky and frustrating, I argue that it remains a conversation worth having in our classrooms. As pedagogues we owe it to our students and to the larger human community to construct pedagogies that contribute to a more

just world. This does not mean that we must demonize students who have (conservative) religious leanings, and it certainly does not mean that we must throw our lgbtq students (and teachers) under the bus by attempting to approach the lgbtq-rd neutrally. We have long agreed that there is no such thing as a neutral classroom;7 we can't un-ring that bell no matter how inconvenient it may be. But more than that, I argue that it is also important to analyze our own resistances to intersections like the lgbtq-rd. This intersection, I believe, functions as a canary in the coal mine—asking whether or not we have the courage to follow our disciplinary convictions even when they might cost us something. Defining Key Terms In the spirit of giving the reader a better idea of where this project is headed (and where it's not headed), this section clarifies what I mean when I deploy the mouthful of a phrase that is the lgbtq-religious junction. For the purposes of this study, I also define broader terms like lgbtq issues, religious discourse, (conservative) Christian discourse, and English Studies. That said, I am wary of definitions that become so tidy that they obscure the messiness and possibility of what actually happens on the ground. LGBTQ-Religious Junction The lgbtq-religious junction (lgbtq-rd) refers to the unpredictable ways that religious discourse inter-animates with questions of gender, gender identity, gender expression, and sexuality. More specifically, I limit my discussion to the context of the United States, where (conservative) Protestant Christianity8 is so hegemonic as to seem unmarked. I narrow my use of the term further by limiting my focus to the English Studies9 classroom and the spaces that surround it. In the classroom, the lgbtq-religious junction might surface in student papers, class discussions, student-teacher communications, etc. In the spaces surrounding the English Studies classroom, the lgbtq-rd might surface in published pedagogical literature, national/local discussions of higher education, random acts of policing "sexual morality" on campus or in the larger community, institutional policy, departmental politics, and interpersonal dynamics with colleagues, among other things. People who engage at the lgbtq-religious junction—students, parents, teachers, administrators, etc.—speak from a range of positionalities. Regardless of these particularities, people deploy religious discourse in lgbtq contexts for various purposes and with varying degrees of certainty, sincerity, and ambivalence. For example, some might engage at this intersection to support and/or challenge the validity of gender justice and sexual justice. Others might profess to engage at

this intersection in neutral ways. Still others might engage at this intersection in the spirit of curiosity or uncertainty. Some discussions at the lgbtq-religious junction may come from a place of Christo- normativity; other discussions may challenge un-interrogated Christian privilege. In a similar vein, some discussions will stem from un-interrogated heterosexual and cisgender privilege. Still other students might engage this intersection for homonormative10 or transgressively queer11 purposes. Other times, the lgbtq-religious junction will linger at the margins of these discussions—perhaps in the way the abject queer haunts public discussions of national values or perhaps in the way that (conservative) Christian discourse becomes the spark that ignites cissexist and/or heterosexist violence (Herman 72; Perry 10; White xiii). LGBTQ Issues Given the complex ways that sexuality, gender expression, gender identity, and sexual identity intersect with various institutions and discourses—including religious ones—it is difficult to determine in advance what counts as an lgbtq issue. At its broadest, lgbtq issues reflect competing community interests, including, as Butler notes, whose subjectivities can be recognized (Undoing 225); how they can be recognized (Clarke 15); whose politics are represented (Duggan 55); and whose lives and needs remain unintelligible and ignored (Warner, Normal 39). This term provisionally joins together political ideologies that often overlap, converge, and interrogate each other. The term lgbtq issues is necessarily flexible, referring to the aims of queerly reimagining human interaction in various publics and working toward rights-based, assimilationist gains including marriage equality, hate crimes protections, military service, housing and employee non- discrimination, and more. While it is common enough to cobble together the lgbtq moniker, the fact remains that lgbt issues are not always queer issues.12 To suggest this tension and to indicate the multiple meanings of "queer," in my research, I italicize the q in the lgbtq moniker. Moreover, while queer is often used as a catchall for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identifications, I resist doing so in my own work. Instead, I prefer that the term "queer" remain a floating signifier that might attach itself to and exceed lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender identifications. Queer politics interrogate discourses of normativity—which may or may not clearly relate to lgbt identities. Queer politics might include— but are not limited to—the following issues: "the family, child care, the body, censorship, health care, reproductive politics, citizenship, national affiliation, and (neo)imperialism" (Spurlin 10). More

generally, a queer politics seeks to expand what it means to be human; its aim is to proliferate who might have access to a livable life (Butler, Undoing 225). In short, I deploy the term lgbtq issues as a necessary fiction, housing any number of circumstances that might intersect with Christian-type religious discourse in the classroom. Throughout I also use the phrase lgbtq as an adjective that refers to a range of people and organizations. There are two exceptions to this rule: In those cases where I am citing scholars who have elected to use a different term in their own scholarship (e.g. queer, gay and lesbian, etc.), I will default to their chosen terminology. Similarly, in referring to participants in my study, I will honor their chosen identifications (e.g. queer of color, byke, FTX, etc.). Religious Discourse In their recent study of religious issues in the English Studies classroom, editors Elizabeth Vander Lei and Bonnie Kyburz choose the term "religious faith" to ground their collection. Ultimately, they chose this terminology because "religion, while it may shape the practice of academic institutions, doesn't enter most of our classrooms—personal faith does" (6). For several reasons, I have decided to go a different route in my own research, settling with the term religious discourse. Generally speaking, a focus on religious discourse allows me to extend beyond belief. Religious discourse denotes a symbolic field that includes community constructions of belief; sectarian doctrine and practice; a "personal" sense of spirituality; and inter-, intra-, and extra- community references to belief constructs and religious practice (Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Secularisms 7–8; Prothero 10). This term, I think, also gets at Kenneth Burke's argument in the Rhetoric of Religion that—whether or not we are aware of it—religious narratives tend to shape our thinking about the world around us (10). This is a useful observation at the lgbtq-religious junction, particularly in the context of the United States, where supporters of a "pro-family," anti-lgbt platform might not see themselves as Christian or even religiously affiliated, though still tapping into images of tradition and values that locate their roots in Protestant13 Christianity (Jakobsen and Pellegrini, "Getting" 109–10). In fact, the success of the family values platform comes in large part from its ability to recycle a sectarian message with secular language. Such values-based branding frequently goes unrecognized as religious; even less are its roots in (conservative) Christianity acknowledged (Burack 5–7). A focus on religious discourse draws our attention back to those connections. More than that, I have chosen this terminology to highlight the discursive nature of belief. Drawing from rhetoricians like Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald, and American pragmatists from William James to Cornell West, I argue that belief happens to an idea. One arrives at belief

through persuasion, and in turn, beliefs are measured by the conduct they inspire (Roskelly and Ronald 83–91). In short, belief doesn't exist in some ethereal, pre-discursive realm. This theory emphasizes our accountability to others for the consequences of our beliefs; it exposes the fact that beliefs do something—they manifest as behavior, custom, law, and policy. A focus on religious discourse suggests that anti-lgbtq perspectives are not exempt from interrogation simply because they are religious. Too often I have encountered students who attempt to exempt themselves from critical analysis of heterosexist and cissexist oppression by claiming: "I have nothing against lgbtq people. I mean, my best friend is gay—but my Christian beliefs tell me that being lgbtq is wrong." And too often, scholars who are otherwise invested in the academic study of discourse give these statements a pass—perhaps because they understand belief as outside the scope of the English Studies classroom. Though not explicitly dealing with religion in her essay, Judith Butler responds to a similar charge made by Stanley Fish, who claims that political and moral judgments don't belong in the classroom. The problem with this line of thinking, according to Butler, is that we set up a scenario in which academic discourse cannot respond to moral questions ("Politics?" 93). Applying her argument to the lgbtq-religious junction, I'd add that sidestepping beliefs can create a situation where oppressive, anti-lgbtq ideas become untouchable under the super-discourse of Belief. (Conservative) Christian Discourse In my research, I rely on the phrase (conservative) Christian.14 Scholars like Didi Herman have preferred the term "Christian Right" (4–7). Trying to widen the scope a bit, scholars like Tina Fetner have used "religious right" as an umbrella term for "lobbying and think-tank organizations that have come to be known as the New Christian Right and the activist organizations that call themselves the pro-family movement" (Fetner xix). I do not, however, use either of these terms in my own research—namely because Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini have persuasively argued that focusing exclusively on "the Right"15 obscures the fact that people who oppose lgbtq issues characterize themselves (more often than not) as tolerant,16 middle-of-the-road Christians ("Getting" 111). I limit the focus of my research at the lgbtq-rd to (conservative) Christianity not to normalize Christianity as the signifier of all religious discourse deployed in the classroom. Rather, I focus on (conservative) Christian discourse because of its hegemonic embeddedness in U.S. culture, to the point that particularly Protestant Christian themes have become unmoored from their sectarian roots to form the basis of a "civil religion" (Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin 13; McKenna 338). I

also focus on (conservative) Christian religious discourse because in the U.S. the loudest, most organized voice against lgbtq issues comes from this demographic17 (Burack xxi–xxii; Fetner xiv–xv; Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin 12–13). But there is another reason why I limit my focus to Christianity. At this current political moment, (conservative) Christian groups have retooled the mythology of their social status— shifting from moral majority to besieged minority (Stein 119). While they use this narrative in many political contexts, I am most interested in how (conservative) Christians deploy minority rhetorics in order to gain leverage in discussions about public education.18 The fact of the matter, at least in the context of the United States, is that Christianity has influenced public education since its inception. In fact, the beginning of secondary public education began as a project to inculcate a new wave of immigrants to the U.S. with a generalized sense of white, Protestant values19 (Marshall 185). The first universities—public in the sense that they were built on federal land—were meant to prepare white Christian gentlemen to serve their communities (Thelin 27). Those chapels that linger on many a public campus are no small coincidence. Many of these public schools required students and faculty to attend services, and this practice was only later phased out so that financially-strapped universities could appeal to a wider audience of students (146–47). Of course, the Christian bias still lingered in these public universities—through placing quotas on how many Jewish students could attend a university or by segregating education by race and gender (173). Significantly, public universities were also interested in managing the sexuality of their students. One impetus for creating women's colleges within male-dominated public universities was that administrators worried that—unsupervised—access to higher education made women unfit for marriage (Weems 239–40). The lgbtq-religious junction has existed for quite some time in higher education. Worried about the secularization of public universities, (conservative) Christian political action committees began to form in the 1980s in an effort to reclaim higher education. This included the funding of (conservative) Christian groups on campus and the construction of legal groups, whose sole purpose was to represent (conservative) Christian students who claimed to be oppressed by the liberal bias in public education (Messer-Davidow 63-65). More recently, (conservative) Christian groups have teamed up with neoliberal politicians to justify tightening the ideological and fiscal reigns of higher education (Lauter 37–39). This neoliberal attack aims to strip public services like higher education and turn them into for-profit institutions with little to no public accountability. This shift has been documented by

teacher-scholars like Kevin Kumashiro and Henry Giroux,20 though their focus has been limited to neoliberal attacks to primary and secondary public education. While the neoliberal attack on public higher education has the same aim, its discourse shifts from failing standards and ineffective teachers to showcasing the "liberal bias" in academia (Messer Davidow 67–68). In The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy, Lisa Duggan demonstrates how neoliberal, fiscal conservatives and social conservatives (including conservative Christians) single out multicultural and lgbtq courses and/or programs to decry the excesses of academia. After stirring up a media frenzy, these groups harness enough political power to justify increasing control of "offending" universities.21 Susan Searls Giroux observes the neoliberal takeover of higher education in a similar manner, though she focuses on its effects on English Studies curriculum. Under the banner of neoliberalism, social conservatism becomes rebranded as pedagogical best practice. Instead of teaching students to challenge oppression, critical pedagogues are pressured to shift their efforts to equipping students for jobs in a dwindling economy (94–99). English Studies To a degree, the phrase English Studies is a fiction. On one hand, I was inspired to use the term after reading William Spurlin's Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English, a collection of essays that included the pedagogical perspectives of teacher-scholars from literature, creative writing, and rhetoric and composition. I prefer the inclusiveness of this term. I particularly appreciate the phrase English Studies when it comes to the lgbtq-religious junction because it suggests that those of us who study discourse, its consequences, and its world-making potential are "in this together" when it comes to reflecting on difficult pedagogical questions. In fact, while my disciplinary home may be rhetoric and composition, much of this research wouldn't have been possible had it not been for the efforts of previous scholars, who hail from this cluster of disciplines I'm referring to as English Studies. In this sense, my turn of phrase acknowledges the value of interdisciplinary work and offers the hopeful suggestion that (in spite of our differences) we are better together. On the other hand, I also choose this term to reflect my own experiences at the lgbtq- religious junction. As my earlier pedagogical narratives indicate, I have encountered this juncture in both literature and composition courses. To be more precise, I have also navigated the lgbtq-rd in my women's, gender, and sexuality courses. That this intersection has popped up across these disciplines suggests that the classroom may be one of the few places available for students to have critical, mediated conversations about the intersections of gender expression, gender identity, sexuality, and religious discourse. According to religious studies professor Julie Howard, "[I]t is

worth thinking about religion as an intellectual, social, and political issue," particularly given the hegemonic influence of (conservative) Christianity on U.S. public policy (qtd. in Talburt 532–533). Though I center my study around English Studies, I imagine that readers who find their disciplinary home in fields like communication, education, women's, gender, and sexuality studies, etc. may also take away something useful from this research. Given the aim of my project—to find critical and ethical ways to address the lgbtq-rd—I am hopeful of this possibility. Surely, teachers outside English Studies also struggle to create classroom environments that invite critical thinking about contentious topics, that extend generosity toward students' funds of knowledge, and that accomplish this feat without compromising their vision of a more socially just world. Aside from the fact that I consider English Studies my home, I also limit my focus to this cluster of disciplines because of their institutional history. This history, I believe, offers additional insight with regard to English Studies' current approach to the lgbtq-religious junction, which tends to favor pedagogical neutrality. At two different points in its history, English Studies has been charged with the responsibility of creating cultural unity. According to Peter Barry, as a consequence of Protestant Christianity's waning hold over England in the mid-1800s, the study of literature was proposed as "a kind of substitute after religion" that might "teach [the middle and lower classes] morality" and give them "a stake in the country" (13). And thus liberal humanism—with its focus on the universal human condition—was born. As public universities became more diverse in terms of race, class, and gender, there became a collective worry that students weren't capable of meeting academic standards. Thus, Susan Miller claims, the composition course was born "in a political moment that was embedded in ambivalence about how to assimilate unentitled, newly admitted students" (79). Though the project of national unity and academic assimilation go unmarked, both reflect the interests of a white, male, heterosexual, cisgender, upper-middle class, and (yes) Christian perspective. While decades of literary, cultural, and rhetorical theory have since challenged these hegemonic aims, questions of unity continue to haunt English Studies—particularly in the classroom. We see this in contemporary anxieties that our discipline has lost its grip. Since the advent of multicultural and critical pedagogies, Susan Searls Giroux claims, teachers are charged with explaining "why Johnny can't write" (99). At the same time, we must respond to the charge that we are diluting the classics in favor of what Richard Rorty calls "victim studies" (79). Though it certainly has company, English Studies has become an emblem of the excesses of higher education and the failure of standards.

In this climate, it is no small wonder that some have reinvented pedagogical neutrality. It's a convenient way to take the heat off of ourselves—and perhaps make sure that our programs don't lose funding. But however much we may gain from pedagogical neutrality, the costs are still too high. We are responsible for far more than we let on. I argue that while we are accountable to students for their academic success, as pedagogues, we are also accountable to the wider human community for the worlds our teaching makes possible and for the worlds our teaching forecloses. Doing Jusitice: Addressing the LGBTQ-Religious Junction in English Studies links the study of discourse to issues of power, privilege, and oppression. It asks how we can honor our disciplinary commitments while also bringing social justice to the fore. It also suggests that justice isn't a detriment to intellectual rigor; rather, it is integral to it. One of the unique things about the lgbtq-religious junction (and perhaps a reason it has been largely avoided) is that it brings into high relief questions about power, privilege, and oppression, and it invites questions about the goals of English Studies pedagogy. If my research is any indication, we should be doing much more than just "focusing on the text" or "focusing on the writing." If English Studies truly does understand its mission as the critical study of discourse, and if we (as practitioners) really do believe that worlds are created through discourse, then we must acknowledge more fully how our pedagogies provide students with lenses for engaging the world. In this light, how we negotiate intersections like the lgbtq-rd in the English Studies classroom (and beyond) becomes a touchstone for reframing knowledge as a human relationship (Britzman, "Reading Straight" 85). Chapter Overview When I first began this study, I was simply hoping to understand what was happening in the classroom and how teachers might negotiate the lgbtq-religious junction in critical and ethical ways. I had assumed that perhaps our reticence to deal with this intersection had to do with the unpredictable nature in which religious discourse and lgbtq issues intersected in our classrooms— that we only needed to develop flexible pedagogical tactics for responding. As it turns out, my hypothesis was wrong. The lgbtq-rd surfaces in the English Studies classroom in rather predictable ways, and for a considerable amount of time, we have had access to critical theories that would enable us to respond to this intersection as a matter of social justice. My research findings shifted my thinking about the lgbtq-religious junction, and I began to understand that English Studies pedagogy does not exist in a vacuum. Instead, I turned my attention to what political, disciplinary, institutional, and emotional circumstances contributed to the difficulty of addressing the lgbtq-rd.

Before I review my chapters in more depth below, I first offer a brief explanation about the design of my research. In Chapters 2–3, I provide readers with the theoretical and methodological frameworks that guide my project. Thereafter, my study is divided into two parts: In the first part of my project, Chapter 4, I analyze the results of a self-designed, online questionnaire that asked English Studies teachers to reflect on their experiences at the lgbtq-religious junction. In the second part of my project, Chapters 5–7, I present and analyze the findings of follow-up interviews that I conducted with nine of the participants who completed my online questionnaire. (I introduce these participants in an inter-chapter before I head into the second part of my study.) Finally, in Chapter 7, I discuss the implications of my research at the lgbtq-religious junction. In Chapter 2, I review English Studies pedagogical scholarship that (to varying degrees) discusses the lgbtq-religious junction. I organize this chapter according to four conversations that circulate around the lgbtq-rd: (1) scholarship that makes the case for religious discourse in the English Studies classroom while (explicitly or implicitly) sidestepping lgbtq issues, (2) scholarship that examines lgbtq issues in the English Studies classroom while dismissing or perhaps overlooking religious discourse, (3) scholarship that attempts to navigate the lgbtq-rd in pedagogically neutral ways, and (4) scholarship that highlights the perils of negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction and the promises of addressing this intersection as a matter of social justice. Throughout, I argue the importance of considering how religious discourse and lgbtq issues intersect in our pedagogical scholarship. I also contend that, though frustrating, intersections like the lgbtq-rd are important to examine precisely because they offer us an opportunity to test the ethical mettle of our pedagogies. In Chapter 3, I explain to readers the design of my study. There are two phases to my project: an online survey geared toward assessing English Studies teachers' experiences at the lgbtq- religious junction and a post-survey follow-up interview, which teases out some of the complexities that might have otherwise gotten lost in the questionnaire genre. For each of these two phases, I describe my research methods. Throughout, I reflect on what it means to balance my academic commitment to queer theory and my activist commitment to social justice with the requirements that go along with person-based research. In short, I map out a queer research methodology. From here, I discuss the results of the first phase of my research project: an online survey that asked English Studies teachers to reflect on their experiences negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction. In Chapter 4, I analyze survey respondents' answers along three lines: (1) participants' perception of how students deploy religious discourse in lgbtq contexts, (2) participants' sense of the available resources that might help them negotiate the lgbtq-rd in their classrooms, and (3)

participants' attitudes toward the lgbtq-religious junction and their sense of its pedagogical importance. The first half of my project sensitizes readers to the core issues surrounding the lgbtq- rd—particularly the ambivalence that exists around this intersection. Before I head into the second half of my project, I include an inter-chapter where I introduce nine of the participants who took part in my post-survey interviews. Afterward, Chapter 5 begins my discussion of the findings from the post-survey interviews. This chapter sets the scene for readers, and it also explains how participants' experience of the lgbtq-rd is heavily influenced by their social location and institutional rank (among other things). Not surprisingly, participants who hail from less privileged positionalities were more likely to experience tension at the lgbtq-religious junction. Moreover, participants' ability to respond to this intersection was further compromised by their experiences of institutional violence. These findings not only suggest that pedagogical approaches to the lgbtq-rd require more than a one-size-fits-all approach but it also suggests that no amount of pedagogical best practice can succeed without also addressing the various forms of oppression that pervade academic contexts. Teachers are, in short, only as strong as their support networks. Chapter 6 continues a discussion of the findings from my post-survey interviews. In this chapter, I focus on how participants' classroom experiences of the lgbtq-religious junction—and what they understand as pedagogically (im)possible—relates to their experiences with this juncture outside of the classroom. This particular finding is significant because, so often, English Studies pedagogical scholarship in and around the lgbtq-rd encourages teachers to set aside their emotions and "just teach." In contrast, participants' stories suggest that this advice is ill-founded, because sidelining emotion may also bypass core ethical questions—namely, that teachers are accountable to the wider human community for the worlds their pedagogies help create. I wrap up the second half of my project in Chapter 7. This chapter examines participants' experiences negotiating the lgbtq-rd alongside existing pedagogical narratives in English Studies. The findings of this culminating chapter suggest that one of the roadblocks to successfully navigating this intersection might actually be English Studies pedagogical scholarship. Indeed, participants note that the toughest battle they face at the lgbtq-religious junction is combatting the expectation (from students, parents, colleagues, administrators, etc.) of pedagogical neutrality. In this regard, it seems, the lgbtq-rd has the added significance of exposing an Achilles' heel in English Studies pedagogy. It tests our ethical commitments as educators.

Finally, in the conclusion, I discuss the implications of my research. Beginning with the idea that the lgbtq-religious junction might function like a canary in the coal mine for English Studies pedagogy, I reflect on what this "little birdie" has to tell us. I return to the idea that English Studies teachers might already have the theoretical resources to critically and ethically respond to the lgbtq- rd. The question, it seems, is whether or not we are willing to follow through. I spend the rest of the chapter reflecting on what such follow-through might look like. Expanding on the notion that pedagogy doesn't exist in a vacuum, I locate the individual, institutional, and local/national factors that influence our (lack of) response to the lgbtq-religious junction. In order to create room for more socially just pedagogies in our classrooms, I argue that committed educators might need to engage in activism outside of the classroom as well.

Chapter 2

Interrogating Pedagogical Narratives at the LGBTQ-Religious Junction

The purpose of this chapter is to give readers a sense about how scholars are (and aren't) talking about the lgbtq-religious junction in English Studies pedagogical scholarship. Like most projects do, I critique and build from this conversation to situate my own research. As I have already established in the Chapter 1, I hold out hope that we might be able to address the lgbtq-rd in critical and ethical ways. What this means to me, briefly, is that we develop pedagogies that demonstrate to students the power of words—how they shape the material conditions of people's lives, sometimes in affirming and other times in devastating ways. It means creating pedagogies that ask students to reflect on their location in matrices of power and privilege, acknowledging the discomfort this may cause for students but nevertheless encouraging them to lean into it—because that discomfort is sometimes the only thing that reminds us that we are accountable to the wider human community for the stories we tell, the stories we repeat, and the stories we refuse. While there are a few moments in English Studies pedagogical scholarship that attempt to address the lgbtq-religious junction in the way I describe above, by and large, this is not the case. Speaking very generally, most scholarship that circulates around this intersection attempts to bypass the lgbtq-rd by focusing on one side of the coin over the other. For example, some scholarship attempts to take up the needs of (conservative) Christian students as a matter of critical pedagogy, often figuring this social group as a besieged minority. In doing so, this scholarship sidesteps questions of how this dominant religious perspective has at times been employed to maintain the oppression of lgbtq people.22 On the other side of this coin, however, scholars who articulate lgbtq issues as a matter of critical pedagogy often sidestep religious discourse—deeming it too unproductive, too personal for the classroom space. As scholars like Keith Miller, Jennifer Santos, and Amy Winans point out, however, when teachers attempt to circumvent students' home literacies, the foundational beliefs that inform students' perception of social issues—including lgbtq issues—go un-interrogated (Miller and Santos 63; Winans 105). By far the most troubling aspect of English Studies pedagogical scholarship—across the board—is a tendency to adopt neutrality at the lgbtq-religious junction. Ironically, some scholars advocate neutral approaches to this intersection using the language of critical pedagogy. So cautious are scholars of the risks of "indoctrinating" or "colonizing" students at this intersection that they

default to false objectivity—claiming that those who advocate for lgbtq social justice and those who oppose it present equally valid positions. Pedagogical approaches like these, according to scholars like Elizabeth Ellsworth, limit "empowerment" to the student's ability to articulate hir views— however oppressive they may be—in the most effective way (307). In essence, both teachers and students are able to abdicate their shared responsibility to reflect on the consequences that our reading-and-writing-the-world may have on others. This brand of pedagogy also speaks to a phenomenon observed by Susan Searls Giroux: Under internal and external pressures to cease and desist the political work of multicultural pedagogies, a grand compromise was made in English Studies to shift the focus from social justice to inclusion—opening the door for socially dominant groups to claim "reverse discrimination" when pesky questions of power and privilege dared to surface in the curriculum (96–102). Of course, intersections like the lgbtq-rd throw this grand compromise into crisis—as it should. I discuss these trends in more depth below. Making the Case for Religious Discourse in the English Studies Classroom While there has been a tradition in English Studies of examining religious discourse in the public sphere,23 scholars who advocate addressing religious topics in the classroom often find themselves making a hard sell. Few English Studies teachers relish the thought of navigating religious discourse in the classroom. These teachers may, for instance, worry that allowing room for religious discourse may give students room to derail course lessons with proselytizing or allow them to sidestep critical thinking by dismissing challenging ideas as immoral. While scholars who advocate examining religious discourse in the classroom acknowledge these difficulties, they also counter that facing these pedagogical challenges comes with its own reward. Moreover, they maintain that banning religious discourse from the classroom is not only unfair to religious students but it also undermines the goals of English Studies and critical pedagogy. For instance, while Ronda Leathers Dively empathizes with teachers' misgivings that students who bring religious discourse in the classroom will use it to proselytize, she maintains that such fears also reinforce an unfair stereotype of religious students. This assumption paints all students who use religious discourse with a broad brush, one that unfairly generalizes them as uncritical, resistant, and even combative (57). She posits that a good many students are indeed capable of addressing religious issues in critical and academically appropriate24 ways, and prohibiting these topics robs students of an opportunity to reflect on "illuminating, interesting, and rhetorically challenging topics" (63). The main argument here seems to be that learning spaces cannot be created

when teachers are already suspicious of their students' motives or when teachers foreclose discussion based on unfair assumptions about students' commitment to learning. Scholars such as Vander Lei, Miller, Santos, and Hansen add to this conversation their argument that religious identities cannot be bracketed for the sake of engaging in tidy academic arguments. In fact, they claim, religious students' faith-based literacies shape their orientation to the issues teachers discuss in the classroom. Elizabeth Vander Lei, for example, acknowledges teachers' worry that religion might intersect with discussions of social issues in a way that is "potentially community-shattering" (5). However real that risk may be, she warns that excising religious faith25 may turn the classroom into a "sterile space," which is "so disjointed from [some students'] lives that they would prefer not to engage the teacher or the course at all" (5). Keith Miller and Jennifer Santos add that students might also miss out on an opportunity to examine the "socially normative assumptions that shape many of their views regarding gender, sexuality, family, law, race, ethics, art, science, government, patriotism, international affairs, and war" (63). They assert that it does little good for teachers to ask students to think critically about these issues without also asking them to examine the (sometimes unacknowledged) religious foundations of their views. Finally, Kristine Hansen argues that students need to address the intersections of religion and politics so that they are prepared for "citizenship in a pluralistic society" (25). As teachers, the argument goes, we ignore students' religious commitments at the expense of the knowledge they derive from these views remaining unnamed, unchecked, and uncritically analyzed. While it is perfectly acceptable to suggest that sidestepping religious discourse in the classroom could have adverse pedagogical consequences, as the authors cited above illustrate, often the pedagogical narrative doesn't stop there. Scholarship that advocates allowing religious discourse in the classroom often glosses over the messy pedagogical situations that arise when religion intersects with issues of social justice like reproductive freedom or lgbtq rights. As a consequence of only vaguely referencing these difficulties, scholars begin to generalize about religious discourse and religious students in ways that allow them to overlook the harm that such discourse can cause in (and outside of) the classroom. There are three arguments, I believe, that teachers need to examine more closely before adopting the view that offering religious discourse carte blanche in the classroom aligns with the goals of English Studies and critical pedagogy. First, a good many of these scholars maintain their defense of religious discourse in the classroom by claiming that the culture of higher education (including English Studies) too often disrespects religious students' beliefs. In fact, these claims have become so common that few scholars26

who take up this position detail which classroom practices they believe trivialize, disrespect, and/or marginalize religious students. Certainly, teachers should not verbally abuse or insult the intelligence of their students—religious or otherwise. The danger comes, I think, in leaving unstated the assumptions about what it means to respect religious students' beliefs. Take for example, Shari Stenberg's assertion that English Studies teachers create an inhospitable environment when they "[critique] or [dismiss]" students' "faith-based knowledge" ("Liberation Theology" 279). Such characterizations of inhospitality lead to dangerous pedagogical waters, because they seem to suggest that any religious claim a student offers up in the classroom should be exempt from interrogation in the name of respecting students' beliefs. However, critiquing a students' claim that lgbtq people are undeserving of equal protection under the law because their "lifestyles" go against "Judeo-Christian values" is not the same as dismissing that argument. A related problem surfaces when scholars characterize all religious students as an oppressed minority group. Some students do indeed hold minority perspectives on religion: atheist and agnostic students—or Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Wiccan, and Muslim students. More often than not, however, scholars apply this minority label equally across all religious groups. Such imprecision leaves the door open for some scholars27 to narrate (conservative) Christian students as the victims of marginalization, ignoring the privileged status that accompanies (conservative) Christianity in the United States that doesn't necessarily extend to students of other religious affiliations. The most egregious examples that characterize (conservative) Christian students as an oppressed minority liken the marginalization they experience in the English Studies classroom to the injustice experienced by women, lgbtq people, and people of color. In other words, appeals to religious diversity in the classroom uncritically locate similarity across difference by glossing over the unique histories of oppression experienced by marginalized groups. The logic goes: cultural groups that are silenced (or here possibly even critiqued) are oppressed, and a commitment to critical pedagogy requires that teachers who wish to combat oppression allow all students an equally valued voice. Priscilla Perkins, for instance, likens her colleagues' avoidance of classroom conversations that might encourage fundamentalist students28 to discuss religion to a kind of "colonialist imposition" similar to the experiences of illiterate peasants with whom Paulo Freire worked in Brazil (589). Analogizing (conservative) Christian positionality to race, Perkins writes, "Though they are white, black, Latino, Asian American, live in every part of the United States, and come from many backgrounds, (conservative) Christian students share enough similarities of social practice and belief

to comprise a cultural group of sorts. As such, they are one of the only cultural groups openly and comfortably disparaged by many otherwise sensitive writing teachers in the country" (586). Lizabeth Rand takes up a similar "like race" analogy in her work with evangelical students.29 She claims that teachers misunderstand these students' "way of denying the authority of the rest of the world"30 (361). Attempting to familiarize such oppositional stances to readers, Rand adds that such "radically unsettling way[s] of thinking [have] been fundamental not only to the nonviolent protest of the civil rights movement but also to conservative agendas within Christianity" (361). Again, while Perkins is right to decry disparaging students and while Rand astutely points out the connections between Christian discourse and the civil rights movement, their "like race" allusions imply an equity between racial oppression (and long histories of genocide, imperialism, colonialism, chattel slavery, lynching) and Christian identity that simply does not exist, at least in the United States.31 In short, characterizing (conservative) Christian students as a minority group not only obscures the everyday privilege that accompanies affiliation with a dominant religious group but it also obscures the reality that (conservative) Christian discourse continues to be used to mete out oppression toward women, lgbtq people, and people of color. Worse still, pedagogical narratives that articulate (conservative) Christianity as a minority status risk sanctioning oppression under the sign of religious freedom. Teachers advocating for religious discourse in the classroom must take care that they acknowledge these complexities before generalizing all religious discourse as potentially liberatory or advocating for all religious students as equally marginalized or oppressed. So far, I have pointed out the shortcomings of this scholarship in terms of its sometimes vague notions of what it means to respect a student's beliefs and its selective reading of the histories of marginalization and oppression. The final shortcoming that teachers need to examine more carefully hinges upon the lgbtq-rd—particularly as this intersection relates to critical pedagogy and the goals of English Studies. In an attempt to make space for religious discourse in the English Studies classroom, scholars like Lizabeth Rand and Shari Stenberg highlight the goals critical pedagogy shares with (conservative) Christianity: challenging racism, sexism, and classism32 (Rand 360; Stenberg, "Liberation Theology" 272). Conspicuously absent from their lists, however, are the goals of challenging heterosexism and cissexism. Given the discipline's history of addressing lgbtq issues, this seems a curious omission, especially since (conservative) Christian discourse often arises in the classroom at the very moment when these issues are being discussed. In addition to claiming that teachers colonize Christian students, Shari Stenberg also employs a decontextualized allusion to the closet in order to demonstrate these students' experience

of marginalization. To ground her image of the closeted Christian student, Stenberg draws on Stephen Barrett's dissertation, which describes the experiences of Pentecostal students in the writing classroom. Imagining their trauma, he writes: "Stripped of belief. Stripped of community. I don't even have Christ to alleviate my aloneness. Persuade that what I've experienced all my life is only a closet filled with costumes I'm asked to don to play the roles I'm asked to engage in" (qtd. in Stenberg, "Liberation Theology" 279). While Barnett's emphasis on roles and costumes suggests students' discomfort with the concept of socially constructed identities, Stenberg takes this a bit further by claiming that students also experience the trauma of having to keep their religious identities "closeted" in order to be accepted in the "new discourse community" of the English Studies classroom ("Liberation Theology" 279). While such an analogy seems to invite a closer look at how the metaphor of the closet can (or cannot) be applied to Christians (an undeniably privileged social group), Stenberg shirks this discussion altogether. To argue a space for Christian students as a minoritized group, Stenberg simply evicts lgbtq people from the closet. Given the fact the lgbtq people continue to closet themselves precisely because religious-moral discourses render them abject citizens, Stenberg's omission seems ironic (if not cynical). Unlike Stenberg and Rand, Priscilla Perkins does not sidestep lgbtq issues in her work— though her treatment of them also invites questioning. Building from Paulo Freire's notion of working with students' home literacies, Perkins advocates inviting fundamentalist students to bring their Bibles to class—a particularly troubling recommendation given that she teaches at a public university in Oklahoma (591–592). She argues that having their Bibles on hand provides fundamentalist33 students "a critical 'church' with which students can open the [academic] texts that seem to threaten them" (601). To illustrate the success of her pedagogical method, Perkins recounts her fundamentalist students' newfound ability to engage with an assigned reading from lesbian theorist Adrienne Rich.34 Though homosexuality remained for students "the worst form of depravity," Perkins claims that some were able to "look at [Rich] with 'benevolent' eyes," connecting her essay to "Jesus's conversation with the divorced Samaritan woman (John 4:9), or Pontius Pilate's equivocal condemnation of Jesus (Matt. 27:11–26)" (601). Though her students sidestep Rich's commentary about compulsory heterosexuality,35 Perkins reads this encounter as a success because students were able to connect with Rich's commentary on domestic violence—thus beginning a movement away from what Perkins calls "textophobia" (601). The coinage of Perkins' term is more than a little ironic; it riffs off of the terms homophobia and transphobia only to suggest that students' real phobia has more to do with their fear of academic texts.

In all of these cases, scholars attempt to make (conservative) Christianity compatible with critical pedagogy by eliding the oppression experienced by lgbtq people. While Stenberg's coopting of the closet to articulate (conservative) Christian students' feelings of trauma and exclusion is perhaps the more obvious offense, Perkins' claim that students have gotten over their textophobia ignores the question of whether or not they have adequately confronted their heterosexual, cisgender, and Christian privilege. She allows her students access to their home literacies, yet the discussion has not acknowledged (at least not yet) how home literacies can be used to oppress others—an odd silence given Perkins' reliance on critical pedagogy. Though this example illustrates how difficult it can be to push students beyond competing literacies—perhaps especially when challenging sexism, racism, heterosexism, and transphobia—this is part of the dirty work of critical pedagogy. No doubt the scholars discussed here offer compelling insights to create a hospitable space for (conservative) Christian students in the classroom. In particular, they convincingly argue the pitfalls of suspecting students' motives (and intellectual aptitude) when they bring religious home literacies to the classroom. At the same time, however, we cannot ignore the places where the aims of critical pedagogy and (conservative) Christianity do not overlap, and we cannot overlook the reality that despite its romantic trappings even home literacies can be used to oppress people. As English Studies scholars, we should question moves to carve out a space for (conservative) Christian students that foreclose the possibility of critique or that argue the oppression of the religious student by ignoring the oppression of others. This is an especially relevant point given that our pedagogies also affect the lgbtq students enrolled in our classes. Dismissing Religious Discourse in LGBTQ Pedagogical Contexts English Studies scholarship that focuses on lgbtq pedagogy demonstrates some of the assumptions about religious discourse that the scholars in the previous section critique. Danielle Mitchell, Tatiana De la Tierra, and other scholars discussed below offer accounts of students who deploy religious discourse to shut down discussions of lgbtq issues. In this scholarship, these moments of confrontation serve as evidence that religious discourse is too often an obstruction to classroom community and to critical thinking. Certainly, this scholarship creates a valuable archive that testifies to the violence that both teachers and lgbtq students sometimes experience in and around the lgbtq-rd—an issue frequently glossed over in pedagogical literature that argues a space for religious discourse. Nevertheless, I question the common sentiment among this scholarship that deems religious discourse always unproductive.

Assuming that the problem lies with religious discourse (or with religious students in general)—instead of the often overlooked intersection between lgbtq issues and religious discourse—many of these scholars signal a preference to avoid religious discourse altogether. While the lgbtq-rd seems to shape their difficult classroom encounters, these scholars oftentimes omit or only mention in passing the religious aspect of this juncture. Regardless, just as considering lgbtq issues might benefit scholars who advocate students' use of religious discourse in the classroom, it might similarly benefit scholars of lgbtq pedagogy to consider how religious discourse animates their work as well. Scholarship like Richard Miller's oft-cited "Fault Lines in the Contact Zone: Assessing Homophobic Student Writing" demonstrates a common move in lgbtq pedagogical scholarship to recount the difficulty of dealing with heterosexism or cissexism while downplaying the role that anti- lgbtq religious discourse plays in creating that difficulty. In this text, Miller critiques Pratt's notion of the contact zone for its failure to provide a framework for teachers to respond to hate speech. This point is illustrated, Miller recounts, when colleagues at a conference are unable to adequately respond to a graphically violent student text that describes the student and his friend's participation in physically assaulting a homeless person (until he "thought the guy was dead") and verbally assaulting a man whom they suspect of being "a fag" (236). In the article, Miller rightly critiques his colleagues' recommendations to not address the violence in the student's paper at all or to treat the student's account as fictional (237). Part of the problem, according to Miller, is that the goal of English Studies pedagogy—to "[study] and [articulate] the power of written word"—is at odds with a safer, [competing response in English Studies] to respond only to "the formal features of the essay and its surface errors" (240, 238). Miller suggests a viable alternative to this approach: to construct pedagogies that would interrogate the "cultural forces that underwrite the ways of thinking that . . . make such [violent] thoughts not only permissible but prevalent" (243). Unfortunately, instead of following through on his advice to examine the "symbolic imagery" that bolsters such violent student discourse, Miller shifts his focus to critique prepackaged English assignments that encourage bland, apolitical student writing. As a consequence of this sudden shifting of gears, it becomes easy to misread the violent student narrative that frames Miller's article. Readers might, for example, misunderstand the student's description of verbally assaulting a suspected "fag" and physically assaulting a homeless person as mere heterosexism or mere indifference to homelessness. What gets lost is a larger question of how and why, in the student's estimation, "queers and bums" have become "the lowest class" of people (236). What gets lost is a

larger discussion of how religious discourse similarly figures lgbtq people and homeless people in the language of filth, depravity, danger—a language that renders them disposable precisely because of the moral failure they symbolize. Unlike Miller, Danielle Mitchell spends a considerable amount of time describing the (conservative) Christian climate at the working-class, rural college where she teaches. She recounts, for example, an instance where "[b]rochures about LGBT safety [were] removed from a public place and replaced by a New Testament" (25). In her classroom, Mitchell observes similar responses when she asks students to thoughtfully discuss compulsory heterosexuality. One student, for example, charges her of "working on behalf of sin," and another student slips her a copy of the New Testament "[in] lieu of [completing] an informal in-class writing activity" (39). Despite her acknowledgement of the (conservative) Christian context that permeates her pedagogical situation, however, Miller does not account for the complex ways that religious discourse animates her confrontation with a violently homophobic student in her class. In response to her suggestion that Will and Grace is a mainstream show that straight people might also enjoy watching, the student in question "slammed his fist into a desk, gathered his books, and approached her with the swiftness that made [Mitchell] wonder if [she] was about to become his tackling dummy" (39). Continuing to invade her personal space, the student shouted, "'I don't like gays; they're not normal! Anyone who wants crap on his dick is not a real man'" (39). After dismissing him from the classroom, Mitchell tried to "turn his outburst into a learning moment" for the remaining students, who observed that their peer was attempting to "redefine what [her] class, and college, are allowed to be" (40–41). Given Mitchell's pedagogical attention to discourses that enforce heterosexuality, it is curious that she does not also explicitly connect the student's violent outburst to a larger, (conservative) Christian context that emboldens students to police discussions of lgbtq issues in the first place. However inadvertently, the narratives above challenge romantic notions about the pedagogical possibilities of allowing religious discourse carte blanche in the English Studies classroom. They also throw a monkey-wrench into the assertion that (conservative) Christian students are a besieged minority. Judging from the scenarios above, it seems more accurate to say that some students respond violently when faced with academic scenarios that challenge their privileged positionalities. While Mitchell and Miller's articles raise questions of heterosexual privilege, they sidestep the religious discourse that animates hetero- and cissexism.

In the previous section, religious discourse lingers on the margins of scholarship that describes students' resistance to lgbtq issues. While religious discourse comes closer to the foreground in the scholarship below, it nevertheless minimizes the importance of the lgbtq-rd by narrating (conservative) Christian students' attempt to police the curriculum as the result of personal beliefs. Thus privatized, scholars are able to read such resistance as a series of isolated events that are in no way connected to a larger political context where (conservative) Christian discourse is systematically deployed as a bulwark against lgbtq social justice. Consequently, the lgbtq-religious junction is framed as an anomaly rather than something that is worthy of sustained examination. For instance, though she receives stiff resistance from (conservative) Christian students for coming out as a lesbian, Tatiana de la Tierra insistently focuses on the positives of coming out as pedagogical strategy. Though she describes student resistance as outliers, de la Tierra's article is peppered with accounts of students using (conservative) Christian discourse not only to harass their teacher but also to advocate violence against lgbtq people. She recounts some of her students' comments in their writing: "The constitution says all men are created equal therefore you must be a man not a homo sexual. The reason gays do not have the support of the government is because they choose to be gay. I did not choose to be a Mexican I was born one . . . gays are fighting for rights that are against the constitution and against the law of God" (186). Another student writes, "I have a solution to cure the world's AIDS problem but when I called Hitler his secretary told me he was booked for life. Ha, ha, get it" (186). And, in a different piece of writing, the same student writes, "I felt I had to be Mexican to fit in. I felt I was discriminated against because I am a Christian" (187). Of these, De la Tierra comments, "I do not respond to these hostile and ignorant comments; there is no need to fuel hatred, and there is little hope that any reaction on my part will favorably influence this kind of homophobia" (186). Furthermore, she stresses that while she may be "annoyed by the Bible thumping student who… constantly makes comments that [she finds] obnoxious [she still has] to teach" (170). It appears that De la Tierra's framing of the lgbtq-religious junction as pointless prevents her from addressing the serious ethical consequences of violent, Christian-type discourse and its intersections with racism, heterosexism and anti-Semitism. To maintain the assertion that coming out is always positive, she characterizes such hostility as "exceptions to mostly favorable responses," and more troubling, she downplays the connection between students' religious arguments and anti- lgbtq violence (187). She does not account for the other students in her class, who are also an audience, who might feel threatened (or empowered) by these remarks.

Employing a similar strategy, Kathy Phillips discusses a volatile classroom collision at the lgbtq-rd in her World Literature course alongside an experience in another course where her students positively responded to her queer framing of Herman Melville's Billy Budd. When Phillips asks students whether or not Melville considered Billy as "unnatural," her students claim that Melville depicts Claggart's homophobia as the real pathology (898). Phillips notes that one student expresses distaste for comparing homosexuality to a civil rights issue, claiming that while she will "always be Japanese, there are ex-homosexuals" (901). But the student's peers rebut her argument— one insisting that gayness is inborn, another claiming that we should resist the medical model and claim gayness as a point of pride, and another student who offered that—choice or not—Billy wasn't harming anyone, so the violence taken against him is the real issue (901). Here, it seems, Phillips' queer reading of Billy Budd enables her students to interrogate36 their peer's heterosexist attempt to debunk "the new discourse of civil rights" (901). In contrast, when Phillips teaches the book of Job in her World Literature class, one student comments that Job's neighbors respond to him as if he deserves to suffer, a response which reminded him of the contemporary moment (early 1990s) where some think that people dying of AIDS deserve to suffer. Immediately, a student responds, "'That's right; they do deserve to suffer" (905). Phillips tells her readers that she was uncertain how to approach the conversation, and in this stumbling pedagogical moment, a third student rebuts, "Your God is a tyrant!" to which the (conservative) Christian student comments, "You have no right to attack my Christianity!" (906). According to Phillips, the "accuser graciously retreated," apologizing for his outburst (906). When both students linger after class, hoping to get a reaction from Phillips, she tells the (conservative) Christian student that she had a friend who recently died of AIDS and that if he was going to be a Christian he should "be a Christian" and practice some compassion (906). She says that though everyone in the class felt "buffeted and exhausted," in the subsequent days, students in the class came to some "mutual understanding" (906). It is significant that Phillips' characterization of this confrontation as an anomaly among mostly positive classroom experiences happens explicitly at the lgbtq-rd. Interestingly, when the accusing student suggests that the language of God authorizes a tyrannizing morality discourse that metes out a death judgment on individuals with AIDS, the discussion becomes about attacking the Christian student's personal beliefs—not the oppressive nature of his discourse. Such a shift is especially striking considering the class's focus on studying religious discourse in the Book of Job. Phillips' response, to meet the Christian student on his own religious terms and suggest he practice a

different Christianity, highlights the reality that there are multiple Christianities, which can be deployed for competing ends. The idea, however, that he should make a personal choice to adopt a compassionate Christianity denies the reality that his statement did not arise from his personal, individualized beliefs. Instead, he deployed an oft-repeated morality judgment, with a long history of promoting violence toward the very communities who are struggling for HIV/AIDS awareness. No doubt, Phillips' account reveals the difficult, murky pedagogical waters teachers oftentimes navigate at this intersection. It is telling, however, that the Christian student's deployment of religious discourse allows him a defense against critique and frames him as attacked, a victim, though the discourse he employs justifies the death of an entire group of people. The scholarship mentioned above shares key characteristics with pieces such as Stenberg's, which argue a space for one type of discourse at the expense of another. The assumption seems to be that (conservative) Christian discourse and talk of lgbtq issues coexist uneasily at best. In these cases perhaps the unconscious response is to take the path of least resistance: removing lgbtq students from the closet and replacing them with a (conservative) Christian student (as in Stenberg's case) or understanding students' resistance to lgbtq issues as just heterosexism, just policing class discussion, or just expressing one's personal beliefs. All responses, however, either deny or gloss over another layer beneath the resistance, the discursive nature of belief. Finally, a third strain of scholarship more explicitly dismisses the usefulness of religious discourse in lgbtq contexts. Specifically, these scholars argue that the lgbtq-rd encourages students to veer off into pedagogically unproductive waters. In their study of composition textbooks, Martha Marinara, Jonathan Alexander, William Banks, and Samantha Blackmon critique publishers' tendency to frame lgbtq issues along pro/con lines, setting the stage for students to view complex issues of sexuality in terms of binary categories: yes/no, right/wrong, good/bad (281). This type of thinking, they argue, does not lead to the type of critical thinking that belongs in the classroom. To illustrate their point, Marinara et al. discuss composition textbooks pro/con framing of marriage equality: While some lively debate can occur, much of the discussion reduces itself to irreconcilable questions of values. A student 'feels' or 'believes' that gay marriage is wrong, that marriage should be reserved for a man and a woman. Such is a student's "opinion," perhaps supported by religious conviction, and further discussion seems useless. Similarly, those with a somewhat different set of religious or personal values equally support extending marital rights to gays as "fair" and "just." . . . While we want to respect students' personal

convictions, religious or otherwise, we cannot help but feel that the polarizing placement of essays on this topic does not invite students to think beyond "opinion" or "belief" to understand more critically what is at stake in this particular issues, much less how to put their opinions and beliefs into productive conversation with—not simply pure opposition to—ideas discussed. (284) In short, their complaint with composition textbooks' framing of lgbtq issues seems to be that it encourages students to moralize (to think in terms of personal belief) rather than thinking critically. On one hand Marinara, Alexander, Banks, and Blackmon complicate the charge that teachers unfairly assume that students employ religious discourse simply to proselytize. Rather, their study indicates that the thinking students do depends on the frameworks their teachers (and their textbooks) make available to them. Moreover, their study also critiques the pedagogical usefulness of pro/con frameworks, which encourage students to approach complex topics like lgbtq issues with yes/no statements. Value judgments, like pro/con, invite a thinking process that is equally binaristic, right and wrong—oftentimes expressed in the language of belief. A bit more slippery, however, the dichotomy37 the authors create between moralizing/belief and thinking critically obscures the idea that belief gets expressed through discourse. After all, even moralizing discourses have histories, political foundations, and cultural assumptions that drive them. As the scholars in the previous section argue, belief cannot be removed for the sake of academic discussion. When students frame their arguments in secular terms, oftentimes their religious arguments simply go underground, driving a student's response while remaining safely hidden from analysis or critique. More importantly, when considering the relationship between belief and critical thought, teachers may rightly ask, "Is there a way to talk about belief in critical ways?" The emphasis upon critical thinking also appears in Harriet Malinowitz's pioneering study about lesbian and gay students' literacy practices in the English Studies classroom. Of all the scholars mentioned above, Malinowitz comes closest to theorizing religious discourse as a discourse, not as an obstacle to be overcome or an anomaly to overlook. Instead, she advocates viewing (conservative) Christian discourse as a language practice. At one moment in Textual Orientations, she analyzes her student Adrian's reflection about an exchange with his peers in another class about marriage equality. His peers commented, "I think homosexual relations are OK just so long as they're not in my face . . .' and 'God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve'" (165). Instead of dismissing these comments as irrelevant, Malinowitz claims that students need to understand the historical force behind statements like these. She argues, "This is not simply the raving of one

misguided individual; it is a popular cliché with millennia of accrued religious philosophy and fervor inscribed upon it, to say nothing of centuries of juridical condemnation, decades of psychoanalytic theory, and a society currently caught up in a panicked backlash to a vocal gay rights movement" (184). In Malinowitz's estimation, religious discourse invites questions, research, and critique. In short, she carves out a space for thinking critically about the lgbtq-religious junction. However, in an anecdote about her lesbian student, Isabel, Malinowitz draws a hard and fast line about where critical thinking begins and ends at the lgbtq-religious junction. Raised in a tight- knit, working-class, Puerto Rican family of Jehovah's Witnesses, Isabel spends too much time for Malinowitz's comfort performing "'close readings' of the Bible" in order to challenge her father's heterosexism (186). Malinowitz characterizes Isabel's writing as "journalistic," "rarely exploratory," and "perhaps a bit absolutist, perhaps a bit like the Bible in her deliverance of 'truth' to the pagans of the world of identity politics" (193–94, 202). Her final analysis of Isabel is that, in a course on lesbian and gay issues, she misses an opportunity to "use her own experience in original and exploratory ways" (204). Though the author reads Isabel's literacy practices as hopelessly caught up in a religious discursive frame, it seems relevant that Isabel is able to recognize the ways that different readers of a text can walk away from it with multiple interpretations. Such a move allows her to challenge the notion that religious text operates at a level of belief—apart from critical thinking practices. Considering Isabel's own identity as a lesbian, it is telling that she would use the reading strategies learned in the classroom to revisit her home literacy and argue a space to re-narrate moral value judgments on her sexuality. Outside of the classroom, what space might Isabella have to do this type of reading, writing, and thinking? Certainly, the scholarship above reinforces how exhausting it can be to engage the lgbtq-rd. As Marinara, Alexander, Banks, and Blackmon point out, (conservative) Christian discourse deployed in response to lgbtq issues can easily turn into a pro/con argument. And as all the examples in this section illustrate, this type of discourse can be used to oppress lgbtq people and other minoritized social groups. Yet, the idea that removing this discourse from the classroom protects students ignores that religious arguments circulate outside of the classroom, and this too, hurts students. In fact, it may hurt students more to ignore the discourse completely, leaving them disarmed when they have to respond to religious arguments that condone, for instance, the abuse of a homeless man or the deaths of individuals with AIDS. Evading the LGBTQ-RD vis-à-vis Pedagogical Neutrality

The previous sections illuminate the difficulty of navigating what seem to be irreconcilable discourses: In some pedagogical contexts, anti-lgbtq arguments are analyzed solely through the lenses of heterosexism and/or cissexism, while the religious-moral foundations of these arguments are either ignored, dismissed, or repackaged as personal belief (thus falling outside legitimate academic discussions). In other pedagogical contexts, scholars attempt to make room for (conservative) Christian students' home literacies in the classroom by sidestepping lgbtq issues altogether. Though I have critiqued both trends, it is worth emphasizing that I attribute sinister motives to neither of these approaches. Rather, it seems, a concern for students cuts across both of these approaches. Ideally, teachers hope to create a pedagogical environment where all students feel encouraged to participate in the learning community. This is a difficult thing to accomplish in general, however, because students and teachers enter the classroom with different positionalities, with clashing political investments, and with various expectations with regard to the purposes of an English Studies education. But things get particularly dicey at the lgbtq-religious junction—and for several reasons: First, for years, (conservative) Christian groups have successfully framed all things regarding gender, gender identity, and sexuality fundamentally religious, fundamentally private, and fundamentally off limits when it comes to critique. As a consequence, the lgbtq-rd surfaces in the classroom regardless of invitation because the inclusion of even secular lgbtq topics—to say nothing of the presence of lgbtq teachers—calls forth religious-moral considerations. Things get touchier because (conservative) Christian students may object to lgbtq topics (or the presence of lgbtq teachers) as an affront to their personal beliefs—a move that simultaneously weighs in on lgbtq issues with the expectation that expressions of religious-moral sentiment are exempt from critique. Second, while it may initially seem the hospitable thing to do to allow students to offer their religious perspectives about lgbtq issues without comment (e.g. "love the sinner hate the sin," "biblical marriage has always been between one man and one woman," etc.), it is also important for teachers to remember that lgbtq issues are always about lgbtq people. Without a doubt, some of those lgbtq people occupy the desks in our classrooms, and they are hyper-aware that (conservative) Christian arguments against lgbtq social justice have very real, very oppressive consequences outside of the classroom. Third, to muddy the waters further, (conservative) Christians have (for over a decade now) shifted their self identifications from the moral majority to a besieged minority—largely as a strategy to sanction their political views under the rubrics of tolerance and valuing diversity.

Given this scenario, there's little wonder that teachers approach the lgbtq-rd like a political hot potato—especially now that questions of social justice have been reduced to a cynical question of who we value more: lgbtq students or (conservative) Christian students. In turn, this shift in political discourse seems to force the hand of English Studies teachers to address the lgbtq-religious junction in as neutral a manner as possible. In fact, an overwhelming amount of pedagogical scholars have since taken up the notion that approaching lgbtq issues neutrally is the fairest approach for all students. In reality, this approach forces lgbtq students (and teachers) to navigate a topsy-turvy landscape that assumes all classroom participants possess equal social footing. Given the privilege that (conservative) Christians enjoy in and outside of the classroom, however, this approach is hardly the panacea it seems. One way that scholars attempt to map out pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd is by parsing out a distinction between belief and critical thinking. With this framework in place, students may voice whatever stance they may have on lgbtq issues, provided they communicate their ideas using appropriate academic conventions. For example, Kristine Hansen claims that the teacher's job is to assist students in writing about "controversial political issues such as abortion, capital punishment, gun control, gay marriage, or preemptive war" and to help students "represent their opinions effectively in these debates" (24). Hansen worries that too often teachers make students "with strong religious convictions" feel that they have to "deny or trivialize their religious beliefs" to succeed in the composition classroom (25). She reminds readers that the goal of the composition classroom is to help students to "learn and practice the rhetorical arts that will prepare them for citizenship in a pluralist society" (25). In this rubric, lgbtq issues exist in the company of life or death-related questions such as war and the death penalty, and the teacher is simply charged with helping students clearly articulate what they want to say. When lgbtq issues are viewed as controversial issues, all perspectives are equally valid. That these perspectives might contribute to the oppression of lgbtq people becomes irrelevant because respecting students' beliefs requires exempting them from critique. Douglas Downs echoes similar views in "True Believers, Real Scholars, and Real True Believing Scholars," but he does so with a twist. In the opening of his article, Downs chastises himself for his angry response toward a student who drew exclusively from LDS doctrine to argue that lgbtq people shouldn't be able to adopt children (40–41). Like Hansen, Downs believes that teachers should ideally remain neutral when it comes to controversial issues. Using James Gee's notion of discourse as an identity kit, Downs disciplines his angry response to "Keith" in

retrospect—rethinking how he might have approached his student's problematic paper as an "epistemological clash" between religious and academic worlds (42). Within this framework, Downs maintains that he should have responded to the student's homophobic remarks not in terms of "value judgments" but in terms of "discourse theory" (48–51). Unfortunately, his theory of discourse does not seem to include a question of ethics, where "discourse is the violence that we do to things"—and to people (Foucault 229). Downs ultimately concludes that he should have helped "Keith" express his religious argument in secular terms, for example, showing him that "the preference he expressed for two heterosexual parents could be supported not only by the Biblical creation story but by careful analysis of cultural expectations, which 'real scholar' readers might be more sympathetic to" (50). Because Downs is so invested in relinquishing his personal outrage for a more neutral, scholarly performance, it doesn't occur to him that he might be speaking from—or internalizing—an oppressive ideology that renders lgbtq lives invisible. In both of these instances, neutrality demands that teachers see their role in terms of a commitment to teaching "effective" scholarly writing. When faced with a clash between academic and religious discourse, both scholars see their role as teachers in terms of leaving the discourse students are bringing with them to class untouched instead of challenging it. Unfortunately, focusing on lgbtq issues in terms of controversy instead of people removes questions about privilege and oppression that would help all students—not just students with conservative religious commitments—think through their arguments more critically. It would help them invent more thoughtful arguments. If, to borrow from Hansen, teachers are responsible for teaching rhetorical arts, truly invention would fall under this rubric. Down's example gets at the confusing writing situation that can follow when students are asked to package their already-formed religious beliefs in the language of academic discourse and present it to an academic audience. Not only does using secular evidence to support anti-lgbtq stances obscure the reality that many of these secular arguments have at their base religious discourse (which "Keith" offered in the first place), but it teaches students to intentionally disguise their motives and their proofs for writing. The idea seems to be that students can hold onto their beliefs—if they are willing to package these beliefs as secular ideas. Of course, such a move asks these students to obfuscate and mislead their readers. In short, neutral responses reveal the uncertainty, fears, and confusion that teachers have to negotiate when they are asked to weigh belief statements against ideas. Scholarship describing radical pedagogical approaches to push students to think critically about religious discourse illustrates this

dissonance. In this body of literature, scholars attempt to bracket personal beliefs by asking students to approach religion as a discourse. While these pedagogical narratives could substantively address the harmful consequences of (conservative) Christian discourse for lgbtq people, they usually end up disavowing this very possibility. Keith Miller, Jennifer Santos, and Donald McCrary offer scholarship that outlines radical pedagogical approaches to get students to think critically about ways that religious discourse shapes how people feel and talk about public issues. In their article, "Recomposing Religious Plotlines" Miller and Santos identify gay marriage as one of many issues where students are motivated to "maintain unreflective . . . perspectives" in terms of their religious beliefs (63). Their hope is that by focusing on plotlines—the near automatic ways that people narrate religious topics in U.S. publics— students will see how religious narratives are not only rife with contradictions but also that they sometimes prevent alternative ways of thinking about an issue. Instead of discussing the possibilities of their pedagogy to think ethically about issues like marriage equality, however, they conclude, "We unequivocally repudiate any pedagogical attempt to undermine students' conviction about religion, and we do not suppose that the course we propose would prompt students to volunteer to shift their convictions dramatically in one direction of the other" (73). While Miller and Santos enable students to consider religious discourse as it proliferates or discloses the kinds of stories told about issues, McCrary offers students readings that complicate the exclusivity of lgbtq issues and religious discourse. In his article "Womanist Theology and Its Efficacy for the Writing Classroom," the author chooses course texts that deal with intersections of race, gender, sexuality, and spirituality in an effort to offer readings that will speak to the interests of his students—who are largely Christian, working-class women of color. He notes that womanist theology productively "critiques black male liberation theories for their sexism and feminist liberation theories for their racism" (528). But while he doesn't shy away from addressing womanist theology's roots in black lesbian feminism, McCrary seems to qualify the critical potential of this scholarship: "My intention in using womanist theology in the classroom is not to impose religion upon my students. I never argued for or against any religious ideology in my classroom and I never will" (549). The course readings reveal the violence that can happen at the intersections, for example when race meets gender, but talk of religion invites a disclaimer statement, much like the one Santos and Miller offer at the end of their piece. In both articles, the fear of changing students' beliefs seems to haunt the pedagogy. It remains unclear how Santos and Miller's focus on religious plotlines could possibly "shift," for

example, a fundamentalist student's belief that the Bible is the inerrant word of God. With McCrary, it is difficult to identify where the line between interrogating the intersections among race/ gender/ sexuality/ religion ends and where the teacher's "imposing" of religion begins. Whether defending against the charge that their pedagogy shifts conviction or imposes religion, both works seem to imply that teachers should not change what a student believes about their religion but should instead invite them to interrogate the ways religious discourse works. This distinction is a tenuous one likely to collapse in practice, for it asks teachers to advocate for learning on the one hand while disavowing change on the other. More often than not, the scholars who advocate pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd tend to focus on the needs of religious (and oftentimes explicitly conservative Christian) students. As the previous examples illustrate, even when lgbtq issues and religious discourse constitute the locus of inquiry, teachers seem to exempt anti-lgbtq religious beliefs in particular from critique. The implication seems to be that teachers who challenge these arguments use their personal beliefs to trump their students' personal beliefs. Alternately, teachers may be charged with indoctrinating students, imposing a more powerful, oppressive academic discourse on a student's more vulnerable home or communal literacies, which deserve protection. As teachers anticipate and maneuver around these charges, a key idea gets lost, especially for teachers committed to critical pedagogy: Where does social justice get lost in these maneuverings to preserve anti-lgbtq religious beliefs? Calls for neutrality also find their way into pedagogical scholarship that explicitly advocates for lgbtq justice. More often than not, these teachers teach lgbtq topics in ways that combat hetero- and cissexism, yet like the scholars mentioned before, they also exempt religious students' beliefs from critique. For example, Thomas Brennan writes a compelling narrative about the political limits of coming out. In the piece, he reflects on his students' reading of Giovanni's Room, namely their insistence that the main character, David, would be happier if he just came out (73). To illustrate that coming out isn't always a liberatory process, he recounts his own "coming out" experience as a gay priest—which was coopted in a student newspaper to advocate celibacy for all lgbtq-identified Catholics (69). In spite of Brennan's commitment to illustrate for students (and for readers) the violence of heterosexism, he reassures readers (and no doubt his employers at Saint Joseph's University) that students uncomfortable with homosexuality "will [not] be required to speak or write about this text if she or he is not comfortable doing so" (72). Similarly, in Eleanor Byington and Barbara Frey Waxman's "Teaching Paul Monette's Memoir/Manifesto to Resistant Readers," a radical memoir about a gay man dying of AIDS, the

pedagogical narrative is clearly centered around conservative straight students. We see this first when Byington and Waxman reference without much interrogation a student who requested to "be excused from reading the book because, as she wrote in her journal, 'homosexuality is from the devil'" (156). It seems curious that, while the authors do acknowledge that "homophobic reactions . . . constrain how we teach," they don't appear to push back against this (157). Moreover, the ways in which they position student resistance as personal limits an investigation of the ethical. They write, "We really do not want to have the right to force Monette's knowledge and our own view of his knowledge on our students. Such a 'cultural invasion' is never justified" (158). Apparently, Byington and Waxman never question whether or not the heteronormative imperative that bears down on their lgbtq students every day might be more of a cultural invasion. While I recognize the political pressures put on teachers who teach lgbtq issues, these appeals to pedagogical neutrality overlook how Christianity has been used to oppress lgbtq people. These students opting out are allowed to not look at their heterosexual and cisgender privilege. While Brennan, Byington, and Waxman are committed to addressing lgbtq issues, the move to allow students to opt out of a lesson for religious reasons seems to suggest that the very act of teaching lgbtq topics is an attack on (conservative) Christian students. Another problem is the rather vague notion of what it means to indoctrinate. This is an interesting worry for a critical pedagogue to have in the sense that the whole point of critical pedagogy introduces critical questions to students. It seems an irony then for religious conservative views—which gain their hegemony through an explicit requirement not to question—to then turn this charge onto critical pedagogues. And it's even more disturbing that this charge is gaining currency in the English Studies classroom. On the surface, the logic advocating a neutral response when students engage the lgbtq-rd seems to be beyond reproach: all students deserve to succeed in academia, and all students deserve an education that will help them participate in the public sphere. However, a closer look at this messaging reveals a disciplinary acquiescence to the charge that an English Studies curriculum routinely marginalizes (conservative) Christian students in particular. Pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd concedes to the claim that (conservative) Christian students are a minority group—and that critiques of privilege and power, which are hallmarks of critical pedagogy, veer dangerously close to trivializing religious students' views when it comes to gender, gender performance, gender identity, and sexuality. Perhaps the oddest part of the trend toward pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd is that these stances are voiced in the language of a pared down critical pedagogy. Instead of teaching

students to mobilize discourse in the name of social justice, a neutral approach asks them to simply mobilize discourse effectively. Quite a vague standard. Instead of allowing students to recognize themselves as agents of discourse to combat oppression, a neutral approach allows them to stop at seeing themselves as agents of discourse. And while advocating neutrality may seem to create a hospitable, even playing field for all students, critical pedagogues like bell hooks, Susan Searls Giroux, and others have convincingly demonstrated how neutrality is often used to universalize dominant, oppressive ideas. Before casting teachers as potentially oppressive and (conservative) Christian students as potential victims, critical pedagogues should perhaps ask what discourse authorizes these too-easy generalizations. Teachers would also be well-served to consider the implications of scholarship at the lgbtq-rd that organizes its pedagogy by first imagining the religious student—not the queer one. Adopting the guise of fairness, it seems, is accomplished on the backs of lgbtq students. Engaging the Stuck Places of the LGBTQ-Religious Junction While scholars who study lgbtq issues in English Studies pedagogy don't typically address the lgbtq-religious junction, this intersection has been on the horizon for some time now. Harriet Malinowitz and Jonathan Alexander, major theorists in the study of literacy and sexuality, note the importance of religious discourse in U.S. publics—particularly as it intersects with lgbtq issues. Their acknowledgement of the lgbtq-rd opens the door for scholars to examine the pedagogical importance of this intersection—thereby linking sexual literacy to religious literacy. This is no small thing, since queer studies scholars who also study religion have long argued that it is impossible to dislocate lgbtq issues from (conservative) Christian discourse in the United States. The scholarship below characterizes the lgbtq-rd as a space conducive to learning and investigates the pedagogical complexities that arise at this particular juncture. Though few of the scholars below exclusively take up this intersection in their work, they do productively engage it. In the process, they shed light on some of the key questions that the scholarship in the previous sections begin to raise: How can teachers complicate the divisions between academic discourse and religious discourse or between scholarly ideas and religious beliefs? How does this intersection, as it arises in the classroom, relate to larger contexts both inside and outside of institutional spaces? Further, how do "neutral" responses offer insight into the assumptions that drive pedagogical approaches at this intersection and in the English Studies classroom? Eugene Garver's work teases out the complexities of religious discourse, disrupting the binaristic notion that it is either a romantic home literacy or uncritical proselytizing. In his article,

Garver laments his students' unwillingness to listen to public arguments offered by religious spokespeople. He maintains that listening to religious arguments is a valuable act that requires good faith (167). He sees the challenge of listening to religious arguments as twofold: On the one hand, nonreligious students often believe that to agree with a religious argument is to sign onto an entire religious doctrine (175). This move personalizes religious discourse so that one conflates the religious argument and the religious person, rejecting both for fear of being hailed as part of a religious community. On the other hand, Garver argues that religious persons often abuse their rhetorical power by sidestepping the religious quality of their claims and instead appeal to popular, secular outrage around an issue (175). Such a move allows religious arguments to proliferate without ever acknowledging that religious text provides the foundation for these arguments. To illustrate this point, Garver explores what it might look like to discuss the Defense of Marriage Act in a public forum. If a person were to make a religious argument against marriage equality, he claims, such arguments should be based in scripture. He writes, "Individuals may or may not be open to argument, but there is room within the Bible and within religious traditions for counterargument, while ‘moral outrage’ purports to simply settle the matter . . . To the extent that they appeal to power, to how popular or traditional their views are, they lose their character as religious arguments, and they must lose" (177). The interpretation of scripture, Garver claims, can always be argued. It would be an act of good faith to offer up scriptural evidence for others to question, critique, or offer alternate readings. Bigotry, however, cannot be argued. Interestingly, Garver's example of unethical religious discourse is the very kind that teachers like Downs seem to advocate when they require religious students to repackage religious arguments as secular. While Garver's work maps out an ethics for presenting and listening to religious arguments, scholars like Ann Smith and Amy Winans tackle the larger contexts that make the lgbtq-rd uncomfortable and easy for teachers to sidestep, yet both choose to lean into the complexity instead of away from it. In the process, they illuminate ways to study and respect both religious literacies and lgbtq literacies, valuing academic discourse and home literacies. Speaking from outside the context of the Unites States, Anne Smith's "Queer Pedagogy and Social Change: Teaching Lesbian Identity in South Africa" examines the link between religious discourse and lgbtq issues in the new South Africa. Working from the idea that sexuality, religious discourse, and civil rights always intersect, Smith designs a Lesbian Literature class that asks students to study the religious arguments being deployed in South Africa in an attempt to write lgbtq people outside the protections of the country's new constitution (259–269). Smith's work differs from lgbtq

pedagogical scholarship that labels the lgbtq-rd as unproductive not only because she is working within a different context, but because she emphasizes the way that this intersection is never just about religion and sexuality. Religion and sexuality both interanimate questions about human rights. Smith comments that the course not only helped her students understand the political negotiations taking place around them but it also opened up a space for her Fundamentalist Christian students to explore "the serious conflicts between their religious beliefs and practices and their academic commitments against the oppression of the Other" (269). Amy Winans' "Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops" echoes similar themes of self-discovery. In her article, Winans advocates using queer pedagogy to examine the "stuck places" of pedagogy, where students resist having their thinking challenged for fear of losing their grip on previously held knowledge. Drawing from the work of English Studies scholars like Lizabeth Rand, Winans agrees that teachers can't forget the importance of engaging with students' religious literacies (115). Winans reminds readers that students first learn about sexuality "from their families, circles of friends, religious organizations, sports teams, Greek organizations, or other affiliations" (Winans 104). She argues that when students aren’t encouraged to explore the foundations of their assumptions about sexuality "their writing might offer merely a restatement of ideas grounded in unexamined beliefs ('It's a choice'), which they might assume are broadly shared" (114). Rather than ban religious discussions in lgbtq contexts, Winans advocates framing assignments so that students might understand how anti-lgbtq religious perspectives are tied to particular discourse communities. Toward this end, she encourages students to examine "current news stories on debates about sexuality and the place of GLBT people within various religious organizations (such as the Episcopal or Lutheran churches, for example)" (115). Here, Winans takes religious discourse seriously by deeming it worthy of investigation and encouraging students to see religious discourse as complex, layered, and tied to multiple religious communities. If anything, Garver, Smith, and Winans could be critiqued for narrating experiences at this junction that are perhaps too ideal. For example, Garver's argument may place too much confidence in establishing an almost Habermasian space for ideal argumentation. And as Cindy Burack points out, the Christian Right has been extremely successful in packaging Christian religious arguments in the language of "family values" as a way to sidestep difficult interrogations about the history, constructedness, and competing interpretations of religious texts (Burack 5–16). In practice, too, one may question how willing Smith's and Winans students were to truly have their religious orientation

to lgbtq issues challenged—especially for those students who might have understood their religious interpretation of lgbtq issues as the only correct interpretation. Regardless, these writings that explore the pedagogical potential of the lgbtq-religious junction are crucial. First, they illustrate that English Studies teachers are capable of interrogating the lgbtq-rd in ways that don't sidestep its political and ethical implications. Second, the lgbtq-rd becomes an important site precisely because of the discursive power—sometimes life-affirming, other times devastating—it has over people's lives. At the same time, these pieces of scholarship trouble the assumption that Christianity and lgbtq issues are always incompatible. Moreover, while most work on the lgbtq-religious junction has been focused on the (conservative) Christian student, Smith highlights its usefulness in terms of advocating for social justice. Still, the previous prognosis of this intersection is a bit rosy—be it focusing on the ideal conditions of public deliberation or recounting a class in which students happily explore religious diversity around issues of sexuality. What's missing in this equation is student resistance. The pieces I review below offer a corrective to this optimistic portrayal of the lgbtq-rd by exploring in depth what happens when this intersection arises as a means to police lgbtq issues in the classroom. While this might already be apparent from the experiences recounted by Mitchell, de la Tierra, and Phillips, the scholars discussed below explicitly link this policing to its (conservative) Christian context. Moreover, these scholars highlight the fact that student resistance in the classroom isn't so much an individual phenomenon so much as it is systematic. For example, Edward Ingebretsen explains the media circus that ensued at Georgetown University when he began offering a film studies course, titled "Unspeakable Lives," that connected the homosexual38 with the monster figure in horror films (25). It was within this context that a student in Ingebretsen's course felt empowered to attempt to shame him, an out gay priest, for teaching the course. Alluding to the then new film Priest (which among other things deals with the "scandal" of a gay priest), Ingebretsen recalls an instance when a student approached him "with something of a smile" to say, "'Father, there is a film about you'" (29). Teaching at a public university in Utah, where 90 percent of her students identify as Mormon, Laurie Wood similarly reflects on the encouragement her students receive from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints to see feminists, lesbians, and academics as "the three most dangerous influences to church members" (432). Convinced by LDS doctrine that Wood wanted to "recruit" him, one student reported her to the chair of her department, the dean, and the vice president of the university. Unsatisfied with their

response, the student took his complaint to the student paper—which "ran it on the front page" (433–34). Moreover, both Ingebretsen and Wood connect these moments of policing to a general lack of institutional and legal support for lgbtq teachers. Because of the assumption that gay teachers are immoral, Ingebretsen observes being surveilled much more than his heterosexual colleagues (16, 24– 25). In addition to coping with the hypocrisy of being disproportionally required to give an account of himself, Ingebretsen was also paraded as evidence of his institution's liberalism (28). Similarly, Wood explains the exhaustion of having to give an account of her pedagogy (and herself) to administrators on multiple occasions, thanks to students who claimed that she was "always taking about gender and sex" and was "trying to convert people" (434). Wood claims that these circumstances—coupled with the fact that there are no protections for lgbtq people in Utah—are "dehumanizing and, along with other everyday experiences, add up to an exhausting and schizophrenic academic existence" (434). These scholars implicate institutions for creating the type of environment where students would feel authorized to police a curriculum or a teacher. The role that institutions play seems a key ingredient to understanding "policing." Ingebretsen and Wood's stories account for a larger picture where individual students respond to larger institutional cues that render lgbtq issues and lgbtq teachers suspect. Teachers advocating neutral approaches at this intersection may no doubt be driven by the fear that they will be singled out by chairs, deans, and university publications as morally reprehensible, inadequate teachers, or even oppressive to their students. Put simply, teachers' responses to the lgbtq-rd are not forged through pedagogical approaches and teacher- student relationships alone. Institutions sometimes perpetuate scripts that err on the side of the (conservative) Christian student while putting the critical pedagogue on defense. They also play a role in creating environments where allies can celebrate their acceptance of their gay colleagues— without having to look at their own relative privilege in institutional space. To revisit, the scholarship discussed so far reveals a tendency to default by focusing on the needs of (conservative) Christian students in the name of "respecting students' beliefs" when theorizing pedagogical approaches at or around this intersection. More so, these texts tend to begin by theorizing student-teacher relationships by assuming a Christian heterosexual student. Consider, for example, Stenberg's claim that banning religious discourse from the classroom places religious students in the closet or Byington and Waxman's charge that forcing the knowledge of a man suffering with AIDS may amount to a "cultural invasion" for (conservative) Christian students. In

the former case, the protections of the closet get coopted by the Christian student. In the latter, colonialism becomes re-narrated as the imposition that critical pedagogues place on (conservative) Christian students who resist lgbtq perspectives. Even neutral responses like Downs', which decry the violence that (conservative) Christian discourse can produce, tend to advocate leaving (unsettling) (conservative) Christian content unchallenged and emphasize the importance of teaching academic conventions instead. Alternately, while moves to ban religious discourse from classroom discussions may be read as an attempt to envision an alternate pedagogy that begins by protecting the queer student, these pedagogies leave queer students with little literacy to respond to anti-lgbtq religious arguments that abound outside of the classroom. The scholarship offered here poses a critical question: for what students and for what purposes do we allow our pedagogies to take shape? Scholars who look closely at the discomfort at this intersection offer another key question: For what teachers do we theorize approaches at the lgbtq-rd? The emphasis to teach students to simply "mobilize discourse" for whatever ends suits their beliefs at this intersection denies the emotional work of teaching, specifically for lgbtq-identified teachers. Worlds collide when lgbtq teachers attempt to navigate the lgbtq-rd. Juanita Smart, for instance, talks about how her student's religious proselytizing triggers for her a cluster of memories: her past experiences evangelizing as a former (conservative) Christian, her (conservative) Christian sister disowning her for being a lesbian, and the Westboro Baptist Church protesting her university (13–16). Though he doesn't address this emotional impact as explicitly as Smart, we see a similar experience of exhaustion in Ingebretsen's article. Linking himself to the monster in horror films, he recounts the dehumanizing process of being ostracized as both a gay teacher and as a gay priest. He writes, "For the hapless lesbian or gay teacher, an unthinking use of Christian theology finds support from civic ideology, while media-organized fear politics noisily confirm both church and state: monsters cannot be allowed to live" (14–15). We see a similar exhaustion in Wood's hyper-consciousness of how her sexuality is read as bias. She writes of the pain and uncertainty of responding to heterosexist comments in students' papers, asking herself "'how would a straight professor grade this paper?'" (436). When she does not ask herself this question, Wood explains, "I am tempted to defend . . . 'my people' . . . I want to explain . . . that queers are of value . . . that queers have lives, not lifestyles. I want them to see the effect (the hurt) of their words" (436). In these situations, she continues, "I have caught myself writing comments I immediately regret (and scribble out). Sometimes I totally distance myself from the subject and get out the red pen" (436).

Perhaps more importantly, this scholarship points out the flaws in two common approaches to addressing the lgbtq-rd. Juanita Smart, for instance, takes issue with pedagogical scholarship that figures the (conservative) Christian student as a victim and suggests that teachers find a way to connect with these students on a personal level—be it learning to speak in (conservative) Christian codes or sharing their own religious perspectives with students (18). Specifically, Smart takes issue with Rand's suggestion that teachers ask (conservative) Christian students to reflect on how they've lost friends as family as a result to their faith commitments. Paraphrasing Rand, she writes: While I do not want to undervalue the kinds of struggles her question seeks to validate for faith-oriented students, I also feel compelled to cite the "critically resistant stance" of uncounted gay and lesbian students who have traditionally been disenfranchised from faith communities and who in many cases lead the ranks of those whom Christian culture would cast out . . . I cannot help but entertain a paradoxical question: "How do those in the church community react to gay and lesbian students' sexual identity?" (17) Smart also points out that not every teacher can so easily connect with religious students. This assumption presumes a harmonious connection between student and teacher. For example, one wonders how receptive students would be if Smart shared her own story, which highlights how easily privileged religious discourse can become a weapon (13–16). Smart's piece suggests that such pedagogical scholarship is only feasible for those students and teachers who occupy dominant positionalities. In a similar vein, Laurie Wood critiques the move to celebrate pedagogical neutrality, even when deployed as a tactic. Specifically, Wood critiques Karen Kopelson's award-winning piece, "Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning," where she advocates a stealth performance of neutrality to engage otherwise resistant students. Wood draws from her own classroom experiences to illustrate how employing a cunning neutrality falls apart in practice. For example, Wood demonstrates that it's difficult to perform a stealth neutrality when students already view the teacher as suspect by virtue of their queer body. Wood tells readers, "I have overheard students trying to make sense of what they see as conflicting signifiers: 'She wears a wedding band', 'But she has a tattoo', 'She wears skirts', 'But her earrings don’t match' . . . mostly, if all the signifiers do not add up, their default conclusion is 'Oh, she must be gay.'" (434–35). In short, her students look for difference on her body to prove that she must be a lesbian—and thus biased. Wood also points out the psychological burden that neutrality (cunning or no) places upon the minoritized teacher, who develops a kind of double consciousness. For example, when Wood

encounters heterosexist discourse in her students' papers, she finds herself asking: "How do straight people see this? (436). Illustrating the degree to which she must police herself, Wood explains: If I do not [ask this question], I am tempted to defend and argue for 'my people' (usually by pointing out what an ass the writer is). I want to explain to John that queers are of value. I want McKensie to recognize that queers have lives, not lifestyles. I want them to see the effect (the hurt) of their words. I have caught myself writing comments I immediately regret (and scribble out). Sometimes I totally distance myself from the subject by getting out the red pen and turning into the grammar police. Neither is very constructive for the student. Neither is productive teaching. Most times, I hope I land somewhere midpoint, asking probing questions, pointing out over generalizations and identifying poor logic. Regardless of how I deal with it, alone in my office or grading papers late at night, I find it very exhausting to keep my subjectivity at bay (436). While cunning performances of neutrality might be conceived as a way to engage the otherwise resistant student, in practice, this "engagement" comes at the cost of conceding to the perspectives of dominant social groups. To be fair, Kopelson encourages readers to see a cunning neutrality as only one tactic that teachers might employ (Kopelson 142). Still, given the sociopolitical climate circulating the English Studies pedagogical archive when it comes to lgbtq issues in particular, it is worth asking whether or not Kopelson's essay might too easily become an alibi for those in dominant social groups to uncritically deploy neutrality, to claim this as pedagogical best practice, and (more insidiously) to expect minoritized colleagues to follow suit. Both Wood and Smart's critiques expose how privilege is sedimented in English Studies pedagogy—be it through narratives of neutrality or narratives of victimization. What gets lost in this equation are the power dynamics that are always happening in and outside of the classroom, and the English Studies teacher's obligation to expose the oppression of language. *** When I first started this project, I couldn't understand why there wasn't much writing on the lgbtq-religious junction. Judging from my own experiences, and judging from the conversations I've had with colleagues, it is clear that lgbtq issues and (conservative) Christian discourse intersect with some frequency in the English Studies classroom—so the paucity of scholarship in this area doesn't mean that the lgbtq-rd comes up too infrequently to merit investigation. Having spent some time with this intersection, I have now come to see that the silence around the lgbtq-religious junction might have been purposeful. At the very least, it reflects a

disciplinary ambivalence when it comes to the lgbtq-religious junction. I get it; this pedagogical juncture is a pain—for several reasons. For instance, the lgbtq-rd messes up our tidy theories about how English Studies pedagogy is supposed to work. As I have demonstrated above, this intersection throws into question the idea that (conservative) Christian students are a minority in the classroom. Of course, in the same breath, this intersection also interrogates the assertion that religion has no place in the classroom. We cannot, for example, begin to critically understand lgbtq discourses without also considering how they circulate within a Christo-normative context. And while some pedagogical scholarship advocates neutrality at this intersection, a closer examination of the lgbtq-rd demonstrates that this approach is hardly fair. Rather, its assertion that all points of view are equally valid sidesteps questions of privilege and power—a move that can only benefit those with heterosexist and cissexist viewpoints (religious or not). Teachers may also want to avoid this intersection because they believe that doing so will create a safe space for lgbtq students (and teachers). But this view is also short-sighted. The fact of the matter is that, outside of the classroom, (conservative) Christian discourse does an extraordinary job of ensuring that lgbtq people are anything but safe. Not only are lgbtq people denied equal protection under the law, under the guise of preserving religious freedom, but (conservative) Christian discourse also narratives lgbtq people as depraved and thus worthy of scorn and sometimes violence. As it turns out, the classroom might be one of the only places that students are able to make sense of these experiences. For lgbtq and ally students, the classroom might be a place to construct ways to respond to hetero- and cis-sexist violence cloaked in religious-moral language. And for students who may subscribe to anti-lgbtq religious or anti-lgbtq-moral views, the English Studies classroom might offer a space to reflect on the power of discourse. Perhaps for the first time, such students might be encouraged to see that belief discourses have very real consequences for lgbtq people. Students who hold religious-moral objections to lgbtq issues sometimes entertain contradictory viewpoints. For example, some may claim that they have "nothing against lgbtq people"—they may even claim to have "gay friends." At the same time, these students may also claim that their religious beliefs tell them that being lgbtq is wrong. In doing so, they attempt to exempt themselves from being accountable to others for the ways they read and write the world through belief discourses. In short, those of us invested in social justice more broadly may be doing

more harm than good in unequivocally barring considerations of religious discourse from the classroom—perhaps especially when it comes to lgbtq issues. Finally, there are those who might prefer to avoid this intersection because (frankly) it's a political headache waiting to happen, always accompanied by the very real risk of losing one's job. Without question lgbtq people occupy a minoritized position in the United States. In higher education, the project of multicultural and critical pedagogies asks us to look at how our curriculums are not neutral—and how they in fact maintain an oppressive status quo by passing off the viewpoints of privileged social groups as "universally" valuable. Unfortunately, the goals of multicultural and critical pedagogies have—under internal and external pressures—been diluted to achieving "inclusion," "tolerance," and "diversity" in the classroom. And while this may seem like an innocent enough thing on the surface, this neoliberal turn in education is actually a Trojan horse of sorts. This rubric of inclusion opens a window for socially dominant groups—like (conservative) Christians—to cry foul when their views aren't considered "equally valid" in the classroom. This much is clear in the narratives above. Edward Ingebretsen's course created a media circus; Laurie Woods' critical pedagogy landed her on the front page of the student newspaper. Given this type of political climate, it is very easy to see why those of us in English Studies might prefer to sidestep the lgbtq-religious junction altogether—or keep conversations at this intersection "neutral" (however farcical). Indeed, in this climate it may make sense to focus on "effective writing" or to frame potentially political novels as a "learning experience" for privileged students. The lgbtq-religious junction is rife with uncertainty, and whether advertently or inadvertently, our pedagogical literature reflects this ambivalence. But if we allow ourselves to entertain it, I believe that this intersection also offers an opportunity for reflection. If we seriously believe in the power of discourse, and if we seriously believe that our pedagogies help bring into being new ways of relating to the world, then the lgbtq-rd offers us an opportunity to test these commitments.

Chapter 3

Toward a Methodology of Risk: Bodies, Emotions, and Methods

What you risk reveals what you value. – Jeanette Winterson At the time of my research few scholars explicitly addressed their encounters at the lgbtq-rd in the classroom, and I was curious about this. Given these articles, my own experiences in the classroom, and the informal conversations I'd had with colleagues about this pedagogical intersection, I knew I wasn't the only teacher who had difficulties negotiating the lgbtq-rd. The question remained: Why was there such a relative silence in the literature? What were other teachers' classroom experiences, pedagogical responses, and concerns with regard to the lgbtq-rd? Answering these questions required that I take on person-based research. There are two phases to my research project. In the first phase, I conduct an online survey to get a sense of English Studies teachers' experiences at the lgbtq-rd. I turned to survey research for two practical reasons: First, I chose survey research to locate potential interview participants for the second phase of my project. From the beginning, I knew that I wanted to focus my study on qualitative interviews—but the problem was finding people who had stories they wanted to share. I hoped that in advertising the survey, these folks would take the survey and volunteer for a follow-up interview. Second, the survey was also a safety measure, since there was always a chance that no one would agree to follow-up interviews. After all, I did have a dissertation to write. As I imagined it, the best case scenario was that the survey responses would sensitize me to broad issues that surfaced at the lgbtq-rd. As evident from the description above, the second interview phase of my project dovetails with the first. Perhaps the reason I wanted to do interviews in the first place is because I enjoy talking to people about their teaching. Clearly, pedagogical theory is informed by broader disciplinary ideas, but it is also informed by classroom practice. Indeed, the classroom (among other spaces) is a place to test the fortitude of our disciplinary and pedagogical theorizations. I also know that there's sometimes a gap between the happy stories we like to tell about disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge and the rather unhappy ways that our knowledge unravels in the classroom. Working from my own experiences, I knew that repeating these stories had a particular pull on teachers—even if they didn't work, even if they were contradictory. On one level, repeating these stories is about a sense of belonging to a discourse community, but those stories are also forms of

control about what knowledge is valid. Indeed, Michel Foucault observed that to stay "within the true," practitioners of a discourse toe the line or risk that their ideas are met with silence, censure, and/or censorship (223–224). In a similar fashion, Deborah Britzman and Jen Gilbert argue that our pedagogical theories can become limited through an overreliance on narrative tropes. Because we feel compelled to take up these stories, we "[foreclose] the work of thinking about our thinking" (82). In order to combat the cycle of citation, they argue, requires being "audacious enough to consider the disjunctions, ambivalence . . . conflicts [and] 'loose ends'" of our pedagogical narratives (92). My motive for interviewing participants was to bypass the disciplinary narratives that often control discourse in more public academic venues. From my own hallway and barroom conversations, I knew that my colleagues also engaged in disciplinary and pedagogical talk that falls outside of pedagogical narrative tropes. While the research interview didn't necessarily mimic the coffee shops, barrooms, hallways, and other comfortable venues in our academic lives, I hoped to provide a space for participants to "attend to that which lingers in the margins of any story: what will have been said" (Britzman & Gilbert 83). Research Influences I'm a shameless disciplinary hybrid. While my disciplinary homes in English Studies have at one point or another included literature, creative writing, and rhetoric and composition, my research interests also resonate with fields like education and interdisciplinary fields like women's, gender, and sexuality studies. This much is apparent in my reflection about the research projects that have influenced my work. Across the diverse works that have inspired me, three core research values emerge: (a) understanding research as activism, (b) theorizing through particularities, and (c) engaging in reflexivity as a form of reciprocity. Research as Activism As a researcher and as a teacher, I am deeply committed to social justice. Since the term is foundational to my project, I'd like to take some times to review some of the core ideas that comprise my vision of socially just research. First off, I am influenced by Iris Marion Young's work on oppression,39 which she describes as discursive, systematic, and embodied. I am also influenced by Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality, a term she coined to explain how a person's experience of oppression is influenced by multiple factors, be it race, class, gender, etc. (1245). In a similar vein, I draw from Allan Johnson's assertion that we cannot fight oppression without also acknowledging and actively working against privilege40 (8). These works challenge me to ground my

research at the lgbtq-religious junction in questions of systemic injustice and to consider how differently teachers are (un)able to navigate different matrices of power in and outside of the classroom. Given the focus of my research, it also seems important that I articulate the connection between pedagogy and social justice. Foremost, I am indebted to critical pedagogues like Harriet Malinowitz and Amy Winans, who have made the case that exploring and developing students' literacies can aid in combatting heterosexist oppression. (I would, of course, add to this list combatting cissexist and gender normative oppression.) As I mention in Chapter 2, Malinowitz has acknowledged how composition curricula tends to marginalize lesbian and gay students' literacies, and she sought to give these students the tools to make sense of heterosexist discourse and combat it (184). Similarly, Amy Winans was the first teacher-scholar in English Studies to delve into the value of examining how students' religious literacies shaped their views of sexuality. Rather than assuming that difficult intersections like the lgbtq-rd was the responsibility of some other department, Winans advocated exploring this juncture and encouraging students to see that their heterosexist worldviews weren't necessarily universally shared (106, 114). But at a broader level, I am influenced by bell hooks, who calls on teachers to understand that their pedagogies are never neutral (30). Hooks's assertion demanded that teachers examine the consequences of their pedagogies, and her work also legitimated social justice perspectives in the classroom—a powerful achievement given the backlash against multiculturalism at the time of her writing. Of course, this backlash against social justice pedagogies isn't a thing of the past—though the form of backlash has changed. In the last twenty years or so, there has been a meticulously planned assault on higher education, where social and fiscal conservatives have worked hand in hand to strip funding from higher education, privatize it, and in then limit the scope of what it means to receive a college education. I am thus indebted to scholars like Henry Giroux, Kevin Kumashiro, and Lisa Duggan, who have defined and detailed this neoliberal assault41 on higher education. Their scholarship reminds me to be vigilant with regard to the contexts surrounding the lgbtq-rd. The classroom does not exist in a vacuum. Indeed, the pressures to remain neutral at the lgbtq-religious junction are related to a larger push in English Studies to shift pedagogical focus away from critical pedagogy (which aims to challenge oppression) and toward a more neutral focus on "the writing" and/or "the text" (which aims instead to equip students with skills to prepare them for a dwindling economy). Theorizing Through Particularities

Dovetailing with my understanding of pedagogical research as activism, my work is also informed by theorists who claim that knowledge is embodied and emotionally inhabited. E. Patrick Johnson crystalizes this idea for me in his concept of quare studies42 as a "theory in the flesh" that is " discursively mediated . . . historically situated . . . materially conditioned," emotionally inhabited and experienced through the body (Moraga and Anzaldúa cited in Johnson 71–72). I also heed David Wallace's critique that some researchers in English Studies rarely offer nuanced accounts of how their positionalities influence all aspects of their work (509). Bringing this conversation into the classroom in particular, my work is also informed by Katherine Mayberry's Teaching What You're Not and Diane Freedman and Martha Stoddard Holmes' The Teacher's Body, edited collections which argue that what teachers are able and unable to accomplish pedagogically is (in part) due to their embodied social locations. This scholarship urges me to not only pay attention to my own positionality but also the positionality of my participants. Just as important to my research is considering the emotional aspect of teaching and learning. While scholars like Anne Herrington and Marcia Curtis have focused on the role emotions play in students' acquisition of academic literacies, I am especially influenced by Alice Pitt's and Deborah Britzman's assertion that the practice of teaching and even talking about teaching—trigger an emotional resurrection (or haunting) of teachers' past and present experiences with learning. Rather than try to distance ourselves from these emotional ruptures, they argue that these moments are resources for developing more generous interactions with our students (and ourselves) and for understanding the ethical implications of pedagogy (756). This work on emotion is particularly important for my study, as the lgbtq-rd brings up learning lessons that take place both inside and outside of the classroom space. This much is apparent particularly when it comes to the interview phase of my research, where many participants articulated their pedagogical experiences at the lgbtq- rd by blending personal and pedagogical accounts. Reflexivity as Reciprocity In addition to interpreting participants' emotional encounters at the lgbtq-rd, I am equally concerned with doing justice to them in my research. As a way to honor participants' generosity, I have thought carefully about how I might best give back to them. In this vein, I am influenced by queer and feminist researchers' visions of reciprocity. Much of the research I have encountered on reciprocity frames the researcher as occupying a dominant position43 vis-à-vis participants. My positionality as a researcher is, however, a bit different. For instance, a good many of my participants were tenured professors, and as such they occupied a more privileged institutional space. An equal

number of my participants were (like me) graduate students. Given that I have relatively little power to wield in institutional spaces, I have come to practice reflexivity as a form of reciprocity. Building from William Tierny's notion of reciprocity, I am moved to reflect honestly about the motives of my research and whether or not my project will be useful to participants44 (104–105). For some participants, my project provided them with a space to reflect on both their pedagogies and their personal lives. In the first phase of my research, for example, several of my participants thanked me for writing a survey that allowed them room to reflect on their pedagogies. Another participant, José, explained to me that my research had (in part) inspired him to come out to his family—a move that in turn emboldened his pedagogical practice. Beyond engaging in research that is mutually beneficial to participants, I am also influenced by Kevin Kumashiro's reciprocal practice of theorizing with participants, instead of treating them as "objects of inquiry" (Troubling 18). Throughout, I have aimed to engage with participants as collaborators, offering "conceptual and cultural resources . . . to use as we rethink our practices, constantly looking for new insights, and engaging differently in antioppressive education" (Troubling 25). Part of theorizing with participants also means understanding them as beautiful, complex, and sometimes contradictory people. In this regard, I have tried to model the type of reflexivity that Patty Lather and Chris Smithies model in Troubling the Angels, where in addition to formally collecting data they also "spent time with various participants at holiday and birthday parties, camping trips, retreats, hospital rooms, funerals, baby showers and picnics" (xix). While queer methodologists like Alison Rooke have convincingly argued that the boundaries that separate research from everyday life are blurry at best, I believe that spending time with participants beyond the scope of my project has allowed me to better appreciate the value of their stories instead of just "mining" them for data (29). Participant Selection & Recruitment Participant Selection I addressed my call for participants to all teachers who considered themselves invested in addressing lgbtq issues and who also considered themselves affiliated with English Studies— regardless of their particular discipline or departmental home. (See Appendix A for the call for participants and Appendices B and C for informed consent.) As indicated above, I consider myself a hybrid scholar. On a fundamental level, I believe that my training in my home field, rhetoric and composition, as well as in literature, creative writing, and women's, gender, and sexuality studies are a source of strength in my thinking about teaching and research. It is also important to note, however, that I wanted to keep the boundaries of my study

somewhat permeable because of the realities of my own pedagogical experiences. Indeed, as my teaching vignettes in Chapter 1 indicate, I have had classroom encounters at the lgbtq-rd in both literature courses and rhetoric and composition courses. More still, pedagogical accounts of lgbtq issues, and articulations of queer pedagogy, cross-pollinate quite a bit in English Studies. As a case in point, scholars who have addressed the lgbtq-rd hail from literature and rhetoric and composition. I also didn't want to be too selective when it came to recruiting participants who considered themselves invested in lgbtq issues. With an eye toward coalition building, it was important to me that I acknowledged in the call that participants might have varying identifications, affinities, and commitments with regard to lgbtq issues. At a practical level, I wanted to get a broad sense of how people understood their political and pedagogical commitments to lgbtq issues. This is not, however, because I believe that all political and pedagogical commitments to lgbtq issues are equal. Rather, I hoped to get a broad array of voices in particular so that I could see whether or not (and how) pedagogical neutrality might operate even as participants understood themselves as committed to lgbtq issues in the classroom. Participant Recruitment While my study begins with an online survey, it continues with post-survey follow-up interviews. In that sense, when I recruited for the survey I was recruiting interview participants as well. My goal in circulating the survey was to hit the widest audience possible. Unfortunately, and for reasons I will address momentarily, my survey didn't circulate with as much breadth as I had hoped. Technically speaking, I employed a method of convenience (or purposive) sampling. Frankly, I'm not sure how a researcher could feasibly do a random sampling to get in contact with this particular population of participants. Moreover, I think that whether or not it is acknowledged, the researcher's status and social location, and the research topic itself, play into where and how researchers are able to find participants. Getting By With a Little Help From My Friends. For example, two lesbian-identified friends and fellow graduate students who were committed to my research recommended that I advertise my call for participants on two national listservs: the Queer Studies Listserv, maintained by Rice University, and the Writing Program Administrator's Listserv, maintained by the Council of Writing Program Administrators. Throughout the process, I attempted to widen the circulation of my study by recruiting through the spaces where I felt safe and where I already had relationships. For instance, in spite of the access that my Visiting Instructor status gave me to the faculty listserv in my department,

I chose to recruit participants only through my department's graduate student listserv. As I address below, this had everything to do with issues of safety. Finally, in an effort to circulate my study, I also called upon my friends at other institutions, who were friends of mine on Facebook. With this social media tool, I had been able to network with graduate students and faculty members well beyond my geographic area. Many of my Facebook friends were also kind enough to "share" the link to my call on their own Facebook pages. Sixty-four people responded to my survey. Recruiting for the second phase of my project was much easier, since I had already incorporated a brief call for participants within the survey. Of the sixty-four survey participants, seventeen participants left their contact information to schedule an interview. Of the seventeen, twelve agreed to be contacted for follow-up interviews. Once again, the friend connection was also at play, since eight of these twelve participants either knew me personally or knew me through my close friends and mentors. Positionality in the Recruitment Process. As evident above, the ways in which I was able to circulate my research at the lgbtq-rd had everything to do with a network of friends—many who were lgbtq and ally graduate students. In a similar vein, the ways in which I was unable to circulate my survey also had to do with my positionality. For instance, as I noted above, I opted not to circulate a call for participants on my department's faculty listserv. My reluctance to circulate this call on the faculty listserv was directly related to a phobic, and intimidating, encounter with a tenured and relatively influential faculty member of my department. Of all places, this encounter took place smack-dab in the middle of an already awkward "wine and cheese" reception for a potential job candidate. I was standing with my partner (also a graduate student in the department) and a respected faculty member and friend when another faculty member approached me and began casual conversation about my dissertation research. After informing him that I planned to do a qualitative study that focused on teachers' pedagogical experiences at the lgbtq-rd, the tenor of the conversation changed. This white, hetero-identified, male scholar's expression soured as he told me that he identified as a Christian, at which point (already looming over me, at well beyond six feet tall), he proceeded to poke my chest while "warning" me that I'd better be careful at how I proceeded with my project. Stunned, my partner, my friend, and I said nothing as this faculty member made his way into another conversation. Needless to say, when it came time to circulate the call for my study, I avoided the faculty listserv like the plague. As my partner's mom likes to say, "Don't borrow trouble."

My positionality and research topic also collided infelicitously when I attempted to recruit participants at a professional lgbtq meeting, which met annually during a widely attended conference in my field. I came to the meeting hoping to get permission from one of the group's presidents to announce my project via email. At the time, our professional organization had limited networking capabilities, and the only people with access to attendees' email addresses happened to be those who served on the group's board. After the meeting, I approached the chair and introduced myself. Noting his announcement that he was collecting emails to create a listserv for the group, I explained that I was doing qualitative research with English Studies people, and I asked if it might be possible to recruit for my project. The tenured, white, and gay-identified chair smiled and asked about my topic. However, when I explained that I was researching pedagogical encounters at the lgbtq-rd, his face fell as he said something like, "Oh. Well—ok, you could email me and I'll see what I can do." Though I emailed him (gently) several times, and though I have received many emails since then from the group, my call for participants was never one of them. While on one hand, this response might have had to do with my marginal status as a grad student in the group or the religious aspect of my project, it also just as likely had to do with my gendered embodiment. Generally speaking, I consider myself "gender flexible." Though I tend toward a performance that my friends have referred to as "punky androgyny," at the time of this encounter, I was uncharacteristically sporting a head of long curly hair and "dress clothes," which only further contributed to a rather un-queer aesthetic. In other words, it is also possible that my inability to successfully network in this space had something to do with being read as a straight woman doing research on religion and sexuality. Suspicious, I know. Research Measures and Data Analysis Study One: Survey Research Quantifying Queerly: Survey Design. Numbers trauma aside, a bigger concern for me was negotiating my commitments to queer theory—which, as I understand it, embraces transgression, proliferation, intersectionality, and deviation—with a quantitative research method concerned with validity, reliability, means, and standardizing deviations. Thankfully, I wasn't alone in my methodological qualms. Speaking to my anxieties about the oppressive assumptions behind and uses of survey research, Kath Browne acknowledges that surveys have indeed been used to surveil, measure, and control marginalized populations like lgbtq people. Working from her experience conducting queer census research in Canada, Browne notes that survey research can alternately affect political change

in terms of making sure that queer peoples' lives count and also interrogate the politics behind whose lives remain invisible (8). Commenting on survey development, Browne argues that achieving the progressive ends sometimes requires transgressing both our queer methodologies—by taking on quantitative methods—and our quantitative methods, by interrogating them with our queer methodologies. Browne's work suggests to me that "getting my hands dirty" with un-queer methods didn't meant that I couldn't interrogate claims of objectivity and neutrality in the process. Keeping this in mind, I was able to give myself some theoretical wiggle-room for thinking about survey research. Of course, I was still wary about how I might develop and justify my queer approach to survey research. Lynda Johnston's research with pride parade attendees and Lisa Bowleg's survey and interview research with black lesbian participants was helpful in this regard. Both acknowledge the epistemological difficulties of negotiating queer and intersectional frameworks with quantitative research, and they offer useful critiques of positivism in quantitative research. Indeed, I echo Johnston's assertion that "'validity' and 'reliability' . . . need to be subverted—as they reduce data to numbers and frequency" (132). In an attempt to queer the survey, Johnston and Bowleg also give useful advice about survey design. For example, both scholars critique the survey's attempt to disembody participants. Johnston recommends including profile questions early on in the survey (213). As a general rule, Bowleg notes that while it may be difficult, the researcher should frame questions around meaningful concepts in the study, while also giving participants room to reflect on how their answers to these questions might be informed by their intersecting identities (318). Moreover, both participants advocate allowing participants wiggle room in answering quantifiable survey questions. In this regard, I followed their advice when constructing checkbox questions to allow participants to "check all that apply," and I also allowed for a write-in answer to all checkbox questions (Johnston 131; Bowleg 316). In that same spirit, I kept radio button questions (which require a single answer) to a minimum, opting for likert questions instead. Finally, both Bowleg and Johnston recommend prioritizing open-ended, write-in questions. While I did not require participants to answer these questions, I did attempt to feature them in the survey. My approach was to ask a series of related checkbox and likert questions, and toward the end of this series of questions, I included a textbox question that asked participants to feel free to share any additional information that they thought would be helpful in contextualizing their answers to the previous questions.

The Checkbox Survey had thirty-six questions, which I organized so that they would build into a story about participants' experiences at the lgbtq-rd. I grouped questions into four different sections, and at the beginning of each section, I gave participants a rationale for the questions I asked. For example, I titled the first section Pedagogical Situations, and I explained: "The following questions acknowledge that teachers' experiences in the classroom are not homogenous. Your answers will help illustrate the complexities of teachers' identities and professional circumstances, shedding light on how these factors influence classroom practices and pedagogies." The three remaining sections were organized similarly. In Classroom Experiences, I asked participants to reflect on their classroom experiences at the lgbtq-rd. In Teaching Practices, I asked participants to reflect on whether or not the lgbtq-rd had caused them to reevaluate their pedagogies. Finally, in Available Resources, I asked participants to reflect on the institutional and disciplinary resources available to them, whether they felt prepared to address the lgbtq-rd, and what concerns they may have about this intersection. My hope in designing the survey in this way was to encourage participants to think about their experiences as valuable stories that offered critical insight at the lgbtq-rd. In figure 1 below, I list survey questions organized into the headings I note above. Next to each question, I indicate the type of question: open-ended, textbox (TB), likert scale (LS), checkbox (CB), or radio button (RB).

PEDAGOGICAL SITUATIONS 1. In what regions of the U.S. have you taught? Select all that apply. (CB) 2. In what types of higher education institutions have you taught? Select all that apply. (CB) 3. With what disciplines are you affiliated? (CB) 4. Please check all identifications that apply to you in terms of sexuality, gender-identity, gender performance, and sexual identity. (CB) 5. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q4. (TB) 6. Whether identifying as lgbtq and/or ally, in what aspects of your career (if any) are you out? Please rate and check all that apply. (LS) 7. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q6. (TB) 8. Might any of the following identifications/embodiments influence your experiences in the classroom, particularly relating to addressing lgbtq issues? (CB) 9. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q8. (TB) 10. In what ways might university and community attitudes/policies toward lgbtq issues influence your classroom experience? Please answer the following questions: (LS) 11. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q10. (TB)

CLASSROOM EXPERIENCES 12. How would you characterize your commitment to addressing lgbtq issues in the classroom? Please rate the following statements: (LS) 13. How have you engaged with lgbtq issues in the classroom? Select and rate all that apply: (LS) 14. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q13. (TB) 15. In your particular teaching situation, how typical would it be for religious discourse to intersect with lgbtq issues? (RB) 16. In general, when you have met resistance in addressing lgbtq issues in the classroom, how likely was that resistance religiously (or "values") motivated? (RB) 17. In general, when you have seen support for lgbtq issues in the classroom, how likely was the support religiously (or "values") motivated? (RB) 18. Given your particular teaching situation, please rate how strongly the following factors might influence students' attitudes toward lgbtq issues: (LS) 19. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q18. (TB) 20. In light of your experiences in the classroom, how would you characterize what happens when lgbtq issues intersect with religious discourse? Please rate the following statements: (LS) 21. In the classroom, are there particular lgbtq issues (or related circumstances) that prompt religious discourse more than others? Check all that apply. (CB) 22. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q21. (TB) TEACHING PRACTICES 23. How familiar are you with the following categories of scholarship? (LS) 24. Describe your stance on addressing the lgbtq -religious junction in the classroom. Please rate the following statements: (LS) 25. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q23–24. (TB) 26. Related to the lgbtq-religious junction, have you ever had to respond to volatile classroom situations? (RB) 27. If "No" to Q26, please skip the following question: In terms of pedagogical success, how would you rate these experiences? (LS) 28. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q28. (TB) 29. Have your experiences with the lgbtq-religious junction caused you to reevaluate your pedagogy? (RB) 30. Which of the following concerns (if any) arise with regard to addressing the lgbtq-religious junction in the classroom? Please check all that apply. (CB) 31. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q30. (TB) AVAILABLE RESOURCES 32. Has existing scholarship, in any of the following areas, been helpful for you in negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction in the classroom? Check all that apply. (CB) 33. What of the following campus resources (if any) have been helpful to you in addressing the lgbtq-religious junction in the classroom? Check all that apply. (CB) 34. Please answer the following questions: Do your colleagues, including those in related fields,

also teach at the lgbtq-religious junction? If "Yes," do you exchange pedagogical tactics? (RB) 35. In light of the resources mentioned above, do you feel prepared to critically discuss the lgbtq-religious junction in your classrooms? (RB) 36. Please feel free to give any additional info that might help explain/complicate your answer to Q35. (TB) Figure 1. Survey Questions Queering Quantitative Data: Analysis. In analyzing my data, I also draw from the approaches offered by Johnston and Bowleg. For example, like Johnston I read the numerical data in terms of "raw counts and proportions" instead of looking for the mean and standard deviation of each question (132). Rather, I read numerical data looking for the deviations, for the stories that might be found in the margins of survey participants' answers. As a general rule, Bowleg and Johnston advocated reading survey data as a text and interpreting it according to its social and ideological contexts (Johnston 133; Bowleg 320). Indeed Bowleg advises that "data do not speak for themselves" (320). Rather, she suggests, the data speaks depending on the researcher's lens (320). I appreciate this directive that interpreting data is more than just crunching numbers. More than that, however, Bowleg also argues that researchers should take a proactively ideological approach to interpreting the data. Rather than tie one's hands with distanced interpretations, Bowleg suggests that researchers read the data according to "a larger sociohistorical context of structural inequality that may not be explicit or directly observable in the data" [emphasis added] (320). From these directives, I was able to wrest myself from a neutral, numbers-oriented interpretation of survey data. Reading queerly allowed me to take an activist approach to quantitative data. While this approach is admittedly ideological, it allowed me to stop hiding behind the numbers and to tell a focused story about participants' experiences at the lgbtq-rd. To illustrate what this type of analysis looked like in practice, I offer the example from figure 2. At this point, I turn the reader's attention to statements B and C. Had I interpreted participants' answers according to the mean and standard deviation, I would have lost a crucial story. Looking at participants' answers, it appears as if very few participants worried about the risks to career and safety that addressing the lgbtq-rd might pose. But those "few" people's experiences matter to me, and I wondered: Who are these people on the margins? Taking Bowleg and Johnston's advice, I decided to go back and track participants' answers to survey questions based on their lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and heterosexual identifications. (More on this below.) What I found was stunning.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

A. I am willing to address the religious-LGBTq 8% 14% 20% 25% 33% junction in my classroom. B. Addressing the religious-LGBTq junction might 2% 45% 23% 14% 6% jeopardize my teaching career C. Addressing the religious-LGBTq junction might 36% 27% 22% 6% jeopardize my physical/emotional safety 2% D. Addressing the religious-LGBTq junction is 3% 36% 23% 27% essential for a queer rhetorical education 1 - Never 2 3 - Sometimes 4 5 - Always

Figure 2. Participants' Willingness to Address the LGBTQ-RD Response Rate: QA 64/64, QB-QD 58/64.

Of the twenty-seven total heterosexual participants, 15% reported that addressing the lgbtq- rd might pose risks to their career, and another 15% reported that addressing this intersection might pose risks to their physical and/or emotional safety. These numbers jumped significantly for lgbtq- identified participants. Of the twenty-nine total lgbtq-identified participants, 31% reported that addressing the lgbtq-rd might pose risks to their career, and another 45% reported that addressing this intersection might pose risks to their physical and/or emotional safety. It's difficult not to read these results inside of a sociohistorical context where lgbtq people are denied civil rights and are demonized by religious right groups in various publics. Moreover, it's also difficult not to read this within the framework of heterosexual privilege in the workplace. As evident in the graph below, things got even more interesting when I broke apart the lgbtq moniker. (See figure 3.) In this case, it is exceedingly difficult not to read the spread of answers below outside of the context of sexism, biphobia, transphobia, and homo-normativity within lgbtq communities. This only reaffirmed my belief that teachers' positionalities in the classroom matter.

100% 80% 60% 57% 60% 43% 44% 33% 33% 40% 20% 25% 20% 9% 9% 0% Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans Queer Career Risk Emotional/Physical Risk

Figure 3. LGBTQ Participants' Assessment of Risk

Response Rate: 58/64.

Finally, another layer of analysis comes in my privileging of participants' write-in answers. In general, I used participants' write-in answers to complicate the numerical data. I also used the write- in answers, along with a larger understanding of sociohistorical context, to guide my argument about what was happening in the data. This approach becomes clear in the write-up of my findings, as I introduce each section of the report with an argument about the relevance of my findings. After grounding these findings in existing literature, I provide readers with a brief overview of numerical data and then turn to a more in-depth analysis of participants' write-in answers. Survey Difficulties. In the spirit of Sullivan and Porter's assertion that postmodern research must (among other things) admit detours in the research process, I offer up a disappointing flaw in my research design. As I began an initial review of the survey data, I began to understand more clearly Bowleg's assertion that developing intersectionally-informed survey questions is a difficult endeavor. It is indeed. I discovered this in regard to a key profile question, in which I asked participants to reflect on what aspects of their identities, affinities, and embodiments (if any) most influenced their classroom experiences. Attempting an intersectionally-informed checkbox question, I listed a series of identifications—including race, ethnicity, class, gender identity, ability, sexuality, gender, age, regional identity, nationality, and religious affiliation—and I instructed participants to check all that applied. Much to my chagrin—and in spite of my best intentions—my question's design also had the unfortunate effect of making it impossible to actually track participants' identifications in terms of class, gender, race, ethnicity, ability, etc. My only luck in the matter was that I was a bit repetitive. I was only able to determine what percentage of participants found particular identity categories relevant to their experiences. So, for example, while 50% of participants might have said gender was important, I had no way to determine how participants identified in terms of gender. Had it not been for my repetitiveness, I wouldn't have been able to track participants' answers at all. However, I had asked two "check all that apply" questions about participants' sexuality and gender identities. For that reason, at the very least, I was able to track how many of my participants identified as lesbian, trans, bisexual, gay, queer, heterosexual, and ally. While I acknowledge that this is a weakness of my study, and while I acknowledge that sexuality and gender identity are not the only relevant factors in determining participants' responses, it nevertheless allowed me to embody participants somewhat. And, as illustrative from the example I offered in my

analysis section above, tracking participants' answers nevertheless offered me a relevant interpretive lens. Returning to Bowleg's study, I was comforted to fully understand her observation that developing intersectional questions and interpreting them adequately was often impractical and nearly impossible—but try we must (314–315). I had certainly tried. Bowleg's reflection that an "overzealous focus on designing the perfect qualitative or quantitative question harkens back to positivism's ontological tenet that there is some single, fixed reality" also encouraged me not to beat myself up too much for asking an imperfect question (317). While my misstep might have compromised my data, it did leave me much the wiser about how not to queerly quantify—and I suppose that counts as a methodological finding. Study Two: Post-Survey Interview Research Interview Questions, Interview Prep. As evident below, I used participants' survey answers as a launching point for discussion. (See figure 4.) Before each interview, I prepared by reading participants' survey answers and taking notes.

INTRODUCTORY QUESTION 1. What prompted you to participate in this research project? SURVEY-RELATED QUESTIONS 2. In your survey you said X; could you expand upon this? 3. Are there any survey questions you'd like to expand on? LOOSE ENDS QUESTION 4. Are there any particular concerns that you felt the survey didn't address that you'd like to add here? 5. As I proceed in this study, I am interested in making sure that my project remains useful. What kind of approach at the lgbtq-rd would be useful for you? Figure 4. Post-Survey Interview Questions

I also prepared for interviews by reviewing scholarship about interviewing. In terms of thinking about how to structure the interview and phrase interview questions, I drew primarily from Irving Seidman's work on interviewing as a qualitative research method. Seidman recommends heading into the interview with the presumption that participants have valuable stories to tell. He also discourages researchers from opening the interview with hardball questions. When phrasing questions, he recommends asking clear, open-ended questions, framed in the present tense. When a researcher must ask questions about the past, he claims, it is better to avoid asking participants to remember and instead ask participants to reconstruct their memories. Throughout the interview, Seidman recommends recapping participants' answers to questions and providing signposts when

transitioning into a different line of questioning. He also recommends closing the interview by asking participants if they have additional thoughts not mentioned during the interview. While these sources helped me frame questions, they also made some recommendations that seemed to advocate a kind of objectivity that I'm not sure researchers can perform. In this regard, I relied on Kevin Kumashiro and Stephen Ritchie and Donna Rigano's thoughts on interviewing. First, these authors claim that researchers shouldn't withhold their opinions and experiences from participants. Not only does withholding do a violence by forcing the participant to take on all of the risk, but it is also unrealistic in the sense that people always co-construct knowledge with each other. Moreover, they claim researchers should offer participants opportunities to reconsider their statements from a different angle. This recommendation takes into account that participants are always in the process of thinking things through—as are the researchers. In short, it is better to gently interrogate during the interview rather than treat the participant's words as final and analyze them unfairly in the write-up. Finally, these authors challenge modernist notions of "validity" through using methods like triangulation. Instead, they note that "validity" comes through the researcher's interrogation of their own analyses and through performing member checks. Armed with these perspectives on interviewing and the notes from participants' survey answers, I was ready to head into the interviews. Interviewing Participants Via Skype/Phone. As a general rule, I began all of my interviews using similar pacing. After some initial small talk, I briefly described my research project and its aims, and I began the interview with a "softball" question about what motivated participants to take part in the study. In this way, I planted a seed for the "hardball" questions about the lgbtq-rd. From here, I asked participants to think through their survey answers to questions about their institutional and regional climates, as well as how their positionality influenced their classroom experiences. Finally, I headed into a closer examination of participants' survey answers to questions about the lgbtq-rd. That said, there were three other factors that surfaced in each interview, which warrant further investigation. First, participants often apologized about what they believed to be digressions in their answers. Rather than move participants on to another topic, I explained to participants that there were no real digressions in an interview, and I asked them to consider our interaction a conversation. Oftentimes, by heading down what initially seemed like a digression, participants would arrive at a revealing point undergirding their story. Indeed, during an interview about pedagogical experiences at the lgbtq-rd, one participant continually referred back to an infamous thread on the WPA listserv, in which both the participant and I took part. Rather than steer the

conversation back to pedagogy, we analyzed the thread together. Only later in the interview did this conversation come to fruition in what I realized was an important conclusion about teachers' ethical obligations at the lgbtq-rd. This leads me to my second point. Oftentimes, participants answered questions about their pedagogical experiences at the lgbtq-rd through sharing personal stories that exceeded the classroom space. These conversations centered on experiences with family members and friends or with present and past religious affiliations. Rather than leave participants hanging in their own disclosures (for fear of contaminating the data), I responded in turn. For instance, as a response to one participant's sense of religious hybridity, I told him about my own experience coming of age within a pastiche of interfamilial Catholic-Protestant rivalries, Judaism, Native American spirituality, and (later in my college years) Evangelical Christianity. From here, we were able to examine how our experiences of hybridity shaped our approach to the lgbtq-rd. Finally, bodies came up a lot during our interviews. Previously I had asked survey participants to reflect on how their literacies, community affiliations, and embodiments influenced their classroom experiences at the lgbtq-rd. Conducting interviews via Skype only compounded the emphasis on physical markers, as mine and each interviewee's body became part of the text that shaped our conversations. For instance, one participant observed that participants were less apt to back up on her in class because she was older, noting that men probably backed up on me more frequently because I was "young and pretty." Another participant read my gender performance as similar to her own and used this as a launching point to comment on femme invisibility in the classroom. Two other participants, however, bonded with me through their read of my performance of working-class queerness. Observing my gauged ears, tattoos, and (at the time) pink hair, both of these participants commented on heteronormative, racialized, and classed expectations of performing "professionalism." In these cases, participants' read of my body led to commentaries about institutional violence and various mechanisms for producing docile professional bodies. Though there were more examples, I reference these accounts to suggest that the interviewer's body poses another set of questions during the face-to-face interview (even via Skype). Interview Participant Selection. Though I interviewed twelve participants, I chose to include nine of these participants in my data set. Limiting my focus to nine participants had everything to do with having a manageable data set, since the interviews averaged about two hours apiece and, taken together, the transcripts totaled just over three hundred fifty single-spaced pages. In addition, the participants I excluded from the data set either had little experience teaching lgbtq issues, or because

of their insecure position in academia, the interviews were so cautious as to produce little analyzable content. Indeed, not only am I well aware how professionally dangerous addressing this intersection can be, but it is also not lost on me that of the two most candid interviews, one participant was retired and the other chose to share her story using a pseudonym. When Thematic Analysis Isn't Enough. Initially, as I headed into analyzing my data, I had planned to rely solely on thematic analysis (a process that I will describe shortly). While I was successfully able to locate patterns cutting across the data, I was less able to write up the data in a way that seemed coherent. I wrote hundreds of pages of tortured drafts, the floor littered with crumbled notes and mind maps. I couldn't make it work, and worse still, the writing process was anxiety-inducing. Here again, I am thankful for participants. I was in the middle of writing more tortured drafts when I took one of my participants to lunch for a member check. During our talk about institutional violence, I told him that I was having a hell of a time doing a thematic analysis because I felt that I was disembodying participants by focusing on themes that cut across the data. While this strategy was useful for orienting readers, it also felt very disorienting to me, because I also saw the rich ways that certain themes overlapped in participants' stories, and how their narratives converged or diverged with others. Across our vegetable jalfrezi, he said, "Don't you do that to me." Later that same week, another participant offered similar feedback, reflecting that for too long she had been "erasing herself." She asked me to honor her story by giving her a body, giving her a voice. It was indeed fortuitous that later on that night I picked up a book that my learning specialist had loaned to me as a wonderful example of how to sort through tomes of data, Marcia Baxter Magolda's Authoring Your Life. Rather than perform a strict thematic analysis of her interviews with participants, Magolda took a blended approach. At the beginning of each chapter, she provided readers with a brief, thematic analysis that interpreted participants' stories more broadly. From there, Magolda selected several participants' stories and presented them as cases, in order to highlight the complexities that might have otherwise been lost. Working from Magolda's approach, in Chapters 4–6, I have maintained my chapters' individual focuses on institutional violence, the emotional work of pedagogy, and critiques of pedagogical neutrality (respectively). In the first portion of each chapter, I present the results of my thematic analysis, focusing my examples on five of my nine participants. Then, in the latter portion of each chapter, I present the remaining four participants' stories using a case study approach. I modify Magolda's approach only slightly in that I focus on the same four participants as serial cases in each of my three qualitative chapters. Selecting the case

studies I featured was relatively easy in the sense that four participants' stories gave the most detailed accounts at the lgbtq-rd. In doing this, I am not only able to illustrate the complexities of how one participant, like Kami for example, experiences institutional violence, but as the chapters progress I am also able to illustrate how those experiences overlap with her emotional experiences at the lgbtq-rd and her critiques of pedagogical neutrality. Not only does this approach allow readers some continuity in the case studies, but it also allows readers to keep track of participants' answers more easily in the thematic analysis as well. Finally, I believe that this approach to presenting data is more effective in the sense that, by the time readers arrive at participants' critiques of pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd, they are less able to dismiss participants' observations. It's easier to dismiss a somewhat controversial idea when it's disembodied. Coding for Thematic Analysis and for Case Studies. In coding my data set, I drew from Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke's explanation of performing a rigorous thematic analysis. Braun and Clarke argue that while thematic analysis can be a method in its own right, often researchers don't explain how they perform a thematic analysis. In this regard, they make several observations. One of their first critiques centers upon how often qualitative researchers note themes emerging from the data. Braun and Clarke argue that researchers locate themes, based upon particular decisions about what is important in the data set—and they note that researchers need to own this responsibility (80). Braun and Clarke also note that it is important for researchers to make clear the goals of what they set out to find, as well as what theoretical positions inform their work. These theoretical positions determine whether or not a researcher performs an inductive or deductive analysis, and whether or not they look for semantic or latent cues in the data, or whether or not the researcher blends these approaches (81). When it comes to coding the data, Braun and Clarke advocate coding for as many factors as possible—but they also note that the researcher needs to be clear about how themes were chosen. While numbers don't necessarily reflect the validity of a theme, they argue that researchers should nevertheless be precise, avoiding constructions like "many participants" or "a number of participants" (83). In terms of choosing themes, Braun and Clarke also urge researchers to avoid collapsing interview questions with themes—this approach, they maintain, is not analysis (85–86). Finally, they observe that thematic analysis is a recursive process that requires coding and re-coding, organizing and reorganizing data excerpts into meaningful groups, and analyzing and reanalyzing the

broad connections among those groups (88). In coding my data for Chapters 4–6, I have employed their approach. In general, my coding consisted of two phases. In the first phase, I performed what Ellen Barton refers to as an inductive thematic analysis, a process which includes identifying "rich features . . . that are meaningful across the texts and their contexts" (24). This initial coding allowed me to see the broad themes that cut across the data: (a) participants' embodied experiences of institutional violence, (b) participants' emotional experiences at the lgbtq-rd, and (c) participants' critiques of pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd. This first phase of coding only gave me a broad overview of the data; for each of these major themes, I would have to recode the data to understand the intricacies of participants' stories. In the second phase of my research, my approach to coding shifted as I employed a more deductive approach, looking for both semantic and latent cues in the data. In Chapter 4, as I coded the data, I was informed by existing scholarship on the teacher's body (Freedman and Holmes; Mayberry), on pedagogical accounts of institutional violence (Wood; Mitchell), and on intersecting forms of privilege and oppression (Young; Johnson). Not only did this shape how I coded data, but this focus on bodies and power in institutional space also influenced the core themes of my work. In Chapter 5, as I examined participants' emotional experiences at the lgbtq-rd, I was deeply informed by Deborah Britzman's sense of knowledge as a human relationship and her focus on emotional work as a pedagogical resource. My work was also informed by Judith Butler's work on the role of injury and countertransference in theorizing an ethical relation to the other. Perhaps this chapter, with its emphasis on the emotional labor of pedagogy, focused more exclusively on latent cues in the data set than the other two chapters. Finally, in Chapter 7 I focused on participants' critique of pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd. Not only were my coding and analyses informed by the myriad of references to the lgbtq-rd in English Studies pedagogical scholarship, but more broadly speaking, I was also influenced by other scholars' work on neoliberalism (Duggan; Jakobsen; Searls Giroux; Giroux) and religious right activism in schools (Baez and Opfer; Lugg, "The Religious Right" and "One Nation"; Guzman; Macgillivray). Here, I read the data set looking for both semantic and latent cues. As shown in figure 5 below, my codes did not necessarily line up with my themes. CHAPTER 5 CODES CHAPTER 5 THEMES • Sexuality, Sexual Identity • Privilege and Institutional Optimism • Community Affiliations • Minoritized Positionality and Institutional • Gender, Gender Performance Violence

• Race, Ethnicity • Minoritized Positionality and Student • Ability, Stature Resistance • Regional Identity • Activism • Religious Identification • Faculty Status • Socioeconomic Class • Body as Text • Privilege CHAPTER 6 CODES CHAPTER 6 THEMES • Coming Out • Intimate Encounters with Religious and • Staying in the Closet Activist Communities • Difficulty Identifying with Students • Intimate Encounters with Kin • Identifying with Students • Intimate Encounters with Self • Religious Literacy • Righteous Frustration • Insider Community Knowledge • Queer Literacy • Personal Connections at the LGBTQ-RD • Tensions CHAPTER 7 CODES CHAPTER 7 THEMES • Conservative Christians as Victims • Questioning "Just" Approaches to Writing • "Just Writing" and to Texts • "Just Focus on the Text" • Questioning Neutrality with Regard to • Neutrality About LGBTQ Issues LGBTQ Issues • Having an Agenda • Questioning Conservative Christian • Persuasion Students as Victims

• Focus on Audience • Questioning "Agendas" as Neoliberal Gag Order • Humanity • Queer Students Figure 5. Codes and Themes for Chapters 4-6 Rather than organizing participants' cases according to the themes listed in the thematic analysis, I grouped participants' stories around their own narrative themes as a way to map out a beginning, middle, and end to the story. After I had organized participants' data excerpts chronologically, I reread the excerpts and did some free-writing to come up with a narrative thread for each participants' story. Working from the narrative thread that I chose for a particular story, I began writing each case. Including Participant Descriptions. Before I head into the Chapters 4–6, which discuss the findings of my interviews, I include an inter-chapter that describes the nine participants I included in my study. Understanding the importance of embodying participants, but also leery of laundry listing participants' social locations, I invited participants to construct their own biographies for the inter-

chapter. I borrowed this approach from Kevin Kumashiro's Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy—largely because I believed participants' deserved some agency in naming themselves. In the actual write-up of participants' stories in Chapter 5–7 I take a different approach to describing participants—one recommended by AnnaLouise Keating in Teaching Transformation. In lieu of simply listing participants' identity categories in the inter-chapter and forgetting them in the write-up of their stories, I reference their positionality in relational, context specific ways (87).

Chapter 4

Surveying Teachers' Experiences at the LGBTQ-RD

Participants' survey responses reflect the messy complications that arise at the lgbtq-rd. For instance, participants noted that students most frequently deploy religious discourse to resist or object to classroom discussions of lgbtq issues. In spite of this resistance, however, participants' responses indicate ample room for harnessing tensions at the lgbtq-rd into real moments for dialogue and critical reflection. In addition, while participants described high levels of commitment toward lgbtq issues, this commitment was at points tempered with a preference for neutral, hands- off approaches to lgbtq issues. Related to this, while participants highly ranked the lgbtq-rd in terms of pedagogical importance, they also voiced some reticence in addressing this intersection. Finally, complicating matters further, while participants were unified in their commitments to lgbtq issues and their pedagogical interest in the lgbtq-rd, their attitudes toward these topics tended to vary in part based on their positionalities among intersecting categories of privilege and oppression. Description of Participants The majority of the 64 participants who completed the survey noted disciplinary affiliations with rhetoric and composition (72%) and literature (63%). Participants also frequently reported affiliations with cultural studies (46%), women's studies (44%), gender and sexuality studies (40%). A smaller population of participants indicated affiliations with creative writing (18%), media studies (14%), linguistics (12%), and professional writing (6%). In the write-in portion of the survey, participants also noted affiliations with ESL, critical race theory, postcolonial studies, philosophy, international relations, and queer studies. In terms of region, the biggest chunk of participants reported teaching (or having previously taught) in the Midwest (64%). Thereafter, participants evenly hailed from the Northeast (21%), Northwest (19%), Southeast (19%), and Southwest (16%) continental United States. One participant hailed from Alaska (2%), and another two reported teaching (or having taught) in Hawai'i (3%). In the write-in portion, respondents also noted several geographic areas that they felt best fell under the category "the South" (as opposed to Southeast or Southwest), including Texas, Arkansas, and Appalachia. Two respondents reported having taught in Eastern Europe and France. In terms of institution type, the majority of participants (70%) reported teaching (or having taught) at public institutions. A smaller number of participants (20%) reported teaching (or having

taught) at private institutions. Perhaps because most participants began their teaching careers while in graduate school, it is not surprising that 80% of participants reported teaching (or having taught) at Ph.D. granting institutions and that 49% of participants reported teaching (or having taught) at M.A. granting institutions. A smaller number of participants (21%) also noted teaching (or having taught) at two-year colleges. In the write-in portion of the survey, participants also noted teaching (or having taught) at proprietary and business colleges. As detailed in Chapter 3, an error in my survey design significantly limited the amount of statistical data that I was able to track on participants' identities. However, working within these constraints, I was able to account for participants' sexualities and gender identities. Of the total number of participants, 32 identified as lgbtq (with one participant also identifying as heterosexual) and 28 identified as heterosexual (with one participant also identifying as queer). In terms of percentages, 50% of participants identified as heterosexual, 25% identified as queer, 17% identified as lesbian, 17% identified as gay, 13% identified as bisexual, and 5% of participants identified as trans. Significantly, no trans or bisexual respondents also identified as heterosexual. Because I believe that teachers' sexuality and/or gender/sexual identities significantly influence their experiences at the lgbtq-rd, at select points in the write-up, I tracked participants' responses according to these identities. So as not to overwhelm readers, I highlight participants' sexualities and gender identities at key points only in the second and third sections in the write-up. As I note in detail below, tracking for participants' identities in these sections makes sense, as these sections highlight participants' assessment of resources and attitudes toward the lgbtq-rd. Survey Findings I organize the following survey results around three different data trends. In the first section, I present participants' reflections on students' use of religious discourse in lgbtq contexts. This section includes data on the tenor of students' religious discourse, the topics that prompt it, and finally, the pedagogical opportunities that might arise at the lgbtq-rd. In the second section, I discuss participants' assessment of available disciplinary and institutional resources for addressing the lgbtq- rd. Finally, in the third section, I examine participants' general attitudes and concerns with regard to the lgbtq-rd. In each instance, I begin by analyzing the quantitative survey results, and I conclude each section by discussing how participants' qualitative, write-in answers illuminate and/or complicate emerging data themes. Assessing Students' Use of Religious Discourse in LGBTQ Contexts

On the surface, the findings in this section seem rather unsurprising. In classroom discussions, the lgbtq-rd arises with some frequency—usually around rather normative discussions of marriage, adoption, and military service. Students' use of religious discourse in these contexts is predominantly resistant. That said, just under the surface of these findings, another set of narratives surface, which offers us the possibility to rethink the importance of religious discourse and instead locate pedagogical possibilities at the lgbtq-rd. Rethinking the Place of Religious Discourse. Generally, when we discuss students' responses toward lgbtq issues, we tend to minimize the pedagogical impact of religious discourse. If religious discourse is accounted for at all in lgbtq pedagogical contexts, it is narrated as the exception to the rule.45 Similarly, there exists a tendency to frame students' religious discussions of lgbtq issues within specific regions of the United States, which also contributes to the assumption that the lgbtq-rd emerges only in exceptional (if not anachronistic) cases.46 While these pedagogical narratives might nonetheless reflect teachers' individual experiences, the survey data articulates a more complex story. Perhaps in contrast to the assumption that the lgbtq-rd arises as the exception to the rule, participant responses reveal that students rather frequently raise religious perspectives in lgbtq contexts. (See figure 6.) For example, 45% of participants reported that the lgbtq-rd Always/Almost Always surfaces, and another 40% of participants reported that the lgbtq-rd Sometimes arises in classroom discussions.

60.0% 51.7% 50.0% 40.0% 30.0% 22.4% 17.2% 20.0% 8.6% 10.0% 0.0% 0.0% Always Often Rarely Sometimes Never

Figure 6. Frequency of Religious Discourse in LGBTQ Contexts Response Rate: 58/64

Significantly, only 15% of participants indicated that students Rarely deploy religious discourse in lgbtq contexts—and no participant reported that students Never raise religious issues in lgbtq contexts. Moreover, participants ranked students' religious affiliations (59%) and political identifications (49%) as the most frequent mitigating factors when it comes to their response to

lgbtq issues. (See figure 7.) In contrast, participants ranked regional differences (33%) as only the third most frequent factor in determining students' response to lgbtq issues. In short, not only does religious discourse surface rather frequently in lgbtq contexts but it also appears to be an important mitigating factor regardless of regional differences.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

A. Academic Institution 20% 8% 43% 20% 8%

2% B. Regional Differences 2% 30% 33% 33%

C. Religious Affiliations 3% 19% 19% 59%

D. Community Affiliations 8% 5% 33% 30% 25% 2% E. Political Identifications 2% 15% 32% 49%

1 - Never 2 3 - Sometimes 4 5 - Always

Figure 7. Factors that Influence Students' Responses to LGBTQ Issues Response Rates: QA–QB 60/64, QC 59/64, QD 64/64, QE 59/64

Participants' write-in answers seem to mirror figure 7 data. For instance, while several participants noted that political and religious identifications tend to overlap, participants equally noted that students' religious beliefs appear to outweigh their political beliefs when it comes to their stance on lgbtq issues. For example, one participant reflected on their classroom experience, noting that when it comes to discussing lgbtq issues "there are usually 2–5 visibly and vocally uncomfortable students . . . and of those 2 or more are religious. . . . However, I have noticed that when we discuss things like gay rights and gay marriage in classes of 24-25 people, students enthusiastically support these things. In unscientific polls (they raise their hands; I count) a majority of all classes support gay rights and gay marriage." Complicating this narrative further, the participant concluded, "Students who support these measures come from all political stripes, regions, etc. Religious students, in general, seem to object though." Religion, it seems, outpaces both politics and region in this example. Also significant, while two participants noted a higher frequency of the lgbtq-rd when they taught in Utah and in the South, more participants' responses complicated this region-specific

response to lgbtq issues. For instance, two participants noted that while they taught in lgbtq-friendly areas, these regions were nevertheless not immune to anti-lgbtq sentiment. One participant, for instance, expressed disappointment that, "when fed a pack of lies by religious bigots," California voters ultimately supported Proposition 8. Similarly, a participant teaching in New York City reported feeling nevertheless isolated, thanks to the "religious orthodoxy of the institution." Still, two other participants teaching in Hawai'i complicated the story further by drawing attention to how colonization also impacts regional responses to lgbtq issues. One of the participants noted that many people of color on the Islands "are very colonized and have assimilated to conservative Christian discourse." Even so, the participant added, "same-sex desire (Ai Kane) and transgender (Mahu) are a part of Hawaiian history/culture, even today." In short, as these participants illustrate, the connections between religion and region are hardly self-evident. The short takeaway seems to be this: religion still seems to matter a heckuva lot when it comes to lgbtq issues. Rather than suggest that the lgbtq-rd arises only as the exception to the rule, or surfaces only in particular regional contexts, this data suggests that we might do well to reconsider the pedagogical impact of religion in lgbtq contexts. Specifically, this data seems to suggest that addressing heterosexism, cisism, genderism, and homonormativity might not be sufficient on its own. Context matters. Given the near hegemonic cultural reach of (conservative) Christianity in the United States, it makes sense that students would raise religious issues within lgbtq contexts, and it seems important to address the rhetorical, religious contexts in which students' views about lgbtq issues are shaped. Locating Possibilities at the LGBTQ-RD. Participants' responses suggest that classroom discussions at the lgbtq-rd tend to mirror public discussions of lgbtq issues in three key ways. First, thanks in equal part to neoliberal politics and the dominance of religious right discourse, public discussions of lgbtq issues are homonormative in scope.47 Participants noted a similar trend, where class discussions48 that most frequently prompted religious discourse included questions about marriage and/or civil unions (94%) and families and/or adoption (57%). Second, in various publics, those who oppose lgbtq issues tend to overwhelmingly—if not exclusively—rely on both overt, religious arguments and covert "family values" arguments.49 As evident in figures 8 and 9, participants reported similarly high frequency rates of both values-based (74%) and religious-based (55%) opposition to lgbtq issues in class discussion. Similarly evident in figures 8 and 9, participants noted that students who supported lgbtq issues tended to much less frequently employ values-based (12%) and religious-based (13%) arguments. Third, in various publics, those who support lgbtq

issues (and other progressive issues) often cede religious/moral ground to religious conservatives, making ultimately less persuasive appeals to fairness and equality.50 In their write-in answers, participants further confirmed this trend, noting that lgbtq- supportive students relayed general appeals to democracy, tolerance, and the universality of love. Several participants noted that lgbtq-supportive arguments were never voiced in religious terms.

60% 51.7% 50% 43.10% 40% 35%

30% 22.4% 20% 17.2% 10.30% 8.6% 10.30% 10% 1.70% 0.2% 0% Always Often Sometimes Rarely Never Supportive Resistant Figure 8. Frequency of Students' Use of Religious/Values Discourse in LGBTQ Contexts Response Rate: 58/64

In contrast to the findings above, however, participants also noted one crucial distinction between public discussions about lgbtq issues and classroom discussions about lgbtq issues. Namely, while public discourse about lgbtq issues is rigidly presented along pro/con lines—with little room for uncertainty—the same is not necessarily the case in the English Studies classroom. As evident in figure 9, participants also indicated that their students voice uncertainty (71%) about the lgbtq-rd with almost as much frequency as they voice religious-based opposition (75%) to lgbtq issues. Indeed, several participants noted classroom texts and campus events that prompted sincere dialogue around the lgbtq-rd. In this light, the classroom seems to offer a window of possibility for discussion and uncertainty—something one is not likely to find in various public discussions of lgbtq issues. Indeed, as one participant noted, such a space for real dialogue is sorely needed. Alluding to how binaristic, bombastic public discourse limits students' thinking at the lgbtq-rd, ze wrote, "There's so much misinformation out there. I have lgbtq students who completely mislabel and stereotype all religions and religious movements. And I have religious students who do the same in regards to lgbtq students. My lgbtq religious students really confound others!"

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

A. Students use religious arguments to support 19% 36% 25% 8% 3% LGBTq issues.

B. Students use religious arguments to undercut 6% 6% 27% 34% 14% LGBTq issues.

C. Students interrogate religious discourse as a means 19% 27% 33% 11% to support LGBTq issues.

D. Students are uncertain about the intersection of 8% 11% 41% 25% 5% LGBTq issues and religious discourse.

1 - Never 2 3 - Sometimes 4 5 - Always

Figure 9. Characterization of Class Discussions at the LGBTQ-RD Response Rate: QA-QD 57/64

In short, these findings suggest that it might be pedagogically productive to temporarily stall the classroom's connection to the public sphere. Put another way, it might be helpful to resist the pro/con arguments about lgbtq issues that are so prevalent in the various publics. Instead of encouraging students to take a particular stance on lgbtq issues and argue it out—thus mirroring the tenor of public debate as a zero-sum game—we might alternatively emphasize the classroom as a space for posing questions and engaging in critical reflection.51 Capitalizing on the uncertainty of the classroom space, we might disrupt the status quo of "public debate" by taking a step back and encouraging our students to be curious about the political contexts that shape public discussions about lgbtq issues. Secondly, thinking about the classroom as a space for uncertainty in a different light, it might also be pedagogically useful to unsettle our assumptions about why students voice religious perspectives about lgbtq issues in the classroom. As Amy Winans notes, because religious students are so infrequently encouraged to critically examine their beliefs, their responses to the lgbtq-rd "are sometimes difficult to predict" (108). Given that the classroom remains one of the only spaces to critically reflect on the lgbtq-rd, it is altogether possible that a student might voice certain perspectives to think through them. Assessing Participants' Resources at the LGBTQ-RD—and Beyond Participants reported52 only moderate feelings of preparedness when it comes to addressing the lgbtq-rd. Few participants (28%) confidently reported feeling prepared to address the lgbtq-rd.

The majority of participants expressed varying levels of preparedness, from feeling only somewhat prepared (52%) to feeling not at all prepared (17%). A small number of participants (3%) noted that they were not at all interested in addressing this intersection in their classrooms. In part, participants' mediocre feelings of preparedness suggest a lack of available disciplinary and institutional resources at the lgbtq-rd. Thinking Through Disciplinary Resources. When it comes to disciplinary resources, participants most frequently reported scholarship in Queer Theory (77%) as helpful in negotiating the lgbtq-rd. (See figure 10.) This seems to make sense, given the ample scholarship on the lgbtq-religious junction that has emerged from this interdisciplinary field. 53 I had imagined that LGBTQ Composition Pedagogy might be another viable resource—but this is not the case. In fact, participants least frequently reported (26%) that this area of scholarship was useful in addressing the lgbtq-rd. This seems to make sense, however, given the paucity of scholarship that addresses the lgbtq-rd as a pedagogically viable intersection.

100% 77.4% 80% 64.2% 62.3% 54.7% 60% 32.1% 40% 26.4% 20% 9.4% 0% Queer Theory Religious Studies Women's Studies Rhetorical Theory Composition LGBTq Write-In Pedagogy Composition Pedagogy

Figure 10. Assessment of Disciplinary Resources for Navigating the LGBTQ-RD Response Rate: 53/64. Multiple responses per respondent are possible. Write-In Answers: Critical Race Theory, Cultural Studies and Anarchist Theory; Native Studies; Post-Structuralist Theory; National Political Discourse.

A similar trend emerged in participants' write-in answers. A good many participants cited courses they'd taken in Queer Theory as most helpful in navigating the lgbtq-rd. When it comes to LGBTQ Composition Pedagogy, however, participants expressed more ambivalence. For instance, one participant lamented the neutral, inadequate framing of lgbtq issues in the composition textbook frequently assigned to students in introductory composition courses at her university. Expressing a

similar lack of resources, one participant noted that while he felt passionately about the rhetorical relevance of the lgbtq-rd, he lamented the overemphasis on religion as personal, home literacy, which in the process "undersells the power and importance of religious discourse." In short, it seems that participants' assessment of scholarship isn't just about availability. It also has to do with that scholarship's political orientation toward the lgbtq-rd. Interrogating Institutional Resources. Participants' assessment54 of available resources at the lgbtq- rd is rather bleak. In fact, participants consistently ranked institutional resources with low scores. LGBTQ/Ally (Student/Faculty) Groups received the highest rate of usefulness (22%), and thereafter the rates dropped off significantly for Faculty Workshops (13%), LGBTQ Services (11%), Interfaith Alliances (9%), and Diversity Affairs Councils (8%). In the available write-in portion of this checkbox question, several participants simply wrote in the word "None." In their write-in answers, several participants indicated having no one to talk to about the lgbtq-rd. More interesting, however, some participants used this space to talk about the lack of adequate institutional resources when it came to lgbtq issues in general. For three participants, the root of this problem had to do with the clash between institutional and pedagogical values. For instance, one trans respondent observed that it wasn't simply a matter of unavailable resources. Rather, ze stated that these programs were lacking as a direct result of "university-wide cuts" that gutted the budgets of smaller programs that would have otherwise provided excellent resources at the lgbtq-rd. Shifting gears from providing resources to shaping resources, two participants took issue with the general nature of lgbtq resources provided by their institutions. For example, one gay respondent lamented that administrators (not teachers) shaped lgbtq services, and as a result, they were "pretty horrible, essentializing and simplistic—well-intended but pretty poorly thought out." Echoing a similar criticism about lack of scope, a trans/queer respondent criticized the philosophy of programs like Safe Zones. Ze argued that these programs were harmful in that they gave lgbtq students a false "sense of empowerment" in the classroom, only to experience "general harassment on campus" and "violence outside of the classroom." Rather than privatizing the responsibility of providing safety for lgbtq students, this participant seems to suggest that the whole campus ought to be safe. On the whole, these comments suggest that scant resources at the lgbtq-rd might be just the tip of the iceberg. Assessing Participants' Views toward the LGBTQ-RD—and Beyond Taken together, participants' pedagogical views about the lgbtq-rd appear strikingly similar to their views about lgbtq issues in general. While participants expressed a high level of commitment to

lgbtq issues, on the whole, they also seemed to prefer less direct pedagogical interventions. For instance, participants most frequently reported55 (91%) challenging homo-/transphobia and hetero- /cissexism as it arose in the classroom. In contrast, fewer participants reported frequently taking more proactive approaches to lgbtq issues, like being "out" to students as an lgbtq ally (57%) or assigning reading material that addresses lgbtq issues (48%). When it comes to addressing the lgbtq- rd, this trend continues. While the majority of participants (95%) indicated that the lgbtq-rd was pedagogically important, fewer participants (77%) reported that they were willing to address it in their classrooms. (See figure 11.) Putting this statistical data in conversation with their write-in answers, a significant number of participants appear ambivalent when it comes to lgbtq issues in general—and not just at the lgbtq-rd.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%

A. I am willing to address the religious-LGBTq 8% 14% 20% 25% 33% junction in my classroom.

B. Addressing the religious-LGBTq junction might 45% 23% 14% 6% 2% jeopardize my teaching career C. Addressing the religious-LGBTq junction might 36% 27% 22% 6% jeopardize my physical/emotional safety 2% D. Addressing the religious-LGBTq junction is 3% 36% 23% 27% essential for a queer rhetorical education 1 - Never 2 3 - Sometimes 4 5 - Always

Figure 11. Participants' Attitudes Toward Addressing the LGBTQ-RD Response Rates: QA 64/64, QB–QD 58/64

Among the reasons for this ambivalence, three themes emerge. First, participants expressed56 disciplinary concerns when it came to addressing both the lgbtq-rd and lgbtq issues in general. Second, specifically at the lgbtq-rd, participants voiced religious and ethical concerns. Third, when it came to the lgbtq-rd, and lgbtq issues in general, participants perceived risks to their career, personal safety, and emotional safety. As will emerge from the findings below, participants' assessments of disciplinary, ethical, and safety concerns are in part related to their positionalities among multiple categories of privilege and oppression. Voicing Disciplinary Concerns. 53% of participants raised disciplinary concerns with addressing the lgbtq-rd. Interestingly, however, participants' answers in the write-in portion also spoke to

concerns with addressing lgbtq issues in general. A significant portion of these write-in comments expressed a preference for neutral or hands-off approaches toward lgbtq issues in the classroom. In both types of narratives, participants expressed their preferences primarily within the context of teaching writing. In terms of those responses that I categorize as leaning toward neutrality, a handful of participants mentioned feeling reticent to take a pro-lgbtq stance in their freshman writing classes and others mentioned that they framed lgbtq issues along pro/con lines. Speaking of the lgbtq-rd, however, one participant noted feeling a responsibility to practice neutrality—as a public employee and as a writing teacher in particular. The participant wrote, "Students come in with hard feelings toward writing. That is my first and major task to address, and the one that everyone would agree we are there for, even if most do not like that. In a public university, it is my task to show them how the rest of the university community expects them to write and how to perfect their own, individual arguments, whether I agree with them or not." Here, it seems, the participant indicates that not everyone is taking writing, or the call for pedagogical neutrality, seriously. Of the responses that I categorize as hands-off approaches, participants overwhelmingly expressed a preference for dealing with lgbtq issues in general on a case-by-case basis as they emerged in class discussions. Participants often expressed this preference as not wanting to "make an issue out of it," "go out of my way," or "force an issue." Significantly, several participants noted that the writing classroom should be run as a workshop, where students (not teachers) bring in issues that are relevant to them. For instance, one participant wrote, "I teach writing. My basic courses are Business Writing, Technical Writing, methods of teaching writing, and Young Adult Literature. Except for the literature course, I use a workshop approach. I don't bring in outside readings to a large extent. If a student wants to work on a project that is related to gay/ lesbian/ bi/ transgender issues, s/he will always be free to do so as long as the choice of topic stays within the confines of my assignments." Clearly, inquiry-based approaches to writing are rather popular, and my intention is not to criticize workshops per se. As Chapter 7 of my research indicates, this hands- off approach to lgbtq issues might result in more frequent instances of uncritical readings and/or dehumanizing portrayals of lgbtq people. Though in the minority, two participants voiced critiques of pedagogical neutrality. In particular, they seemed to chafe at the unwelcome pressures they received to adopt pedagogical neutrality toward lgbtq issues. Notably, both of these participants called attention to their lesbian positionalities. Both participants' responses expose the heterosexual imperative behind calls for

pedagogical "neutrality" and "objectivity" around lgbtq issues. Their reflections also illustrate how the assumption of a "universal" pedagogical stance can contribute to disembodied (if not dehumanizing) experiences. For instance, one participant wrote, "I am challenged in that, because I'm a lesbian, I must back off from my personal reactions and try to act in a more objective, reasonable way. When these issues come up, I feel my face get red and sometimes I'm not as articulate as I'd like to be, even though I practice for these situations." Here, it seems, taking on an "objective" lens requires that the participant read herself as always already suspect. Interestingly, the second respondent also used embodied language to describe her struggles with pedagogical neutrality. She noted feeling torn between "the push-pull to be both as neutral and objective as I can possibly be if lgbtq issues arise in the classroom and also to be an advocate for ideals I believe in, such as equality, and respect for all persons, regardless of perceived differences." In short, one's positionality as a teacher might determine whether or not "pedagogical neutrality" becomes a privileged or perilous space to inhabit. Voicing Religious and Ethical Concerns. Participants ranked ethical (83%) and religious (56%) concerns as the two most important concerns at the lgbtq-rd. In their write-in answers, participants' concerns surfaced in two overlapping tracks. First, participants voiced concern that their pedagogical commitments to lgbtq issues clashed with their religious beliefs about lgbtq issues. Second, participants voiced concerns that their commitments to lgbtq issues might unduly silence or offend students in their classes. Participants who voiced these concerns tended to frame these conflicts in personal terms, for instance in terms of "personal" religious beliefs and "personal" beliefs about lgbtq issues. Interestingly, participants who spoke of these concerns identified as heterosexual. While there are limits to understanding participants' answers based on sexual identifications, participants' heterosexual positionalities seem relevant given that their answers reflect a struggle with dominant religious and ethical paradigms. Elsewhere in the survey, some participants noted that their minoritized religious and/or lgbtq identifications gave them relevant pedagogical perspectives at the lgbtq-rd. For instance, a heterosexual ally indicated that his positionality as a secular Jew shaped his perspective on lgbtq issues, in the sense that it helped him understand "what it means to be an outsider who may feel the need to hide or downplay his identity." Additionally, several lgbtq participants noted that they had access to robust pedagogical resources at the lgbtq-rd. As a consequence of being raised in (conservative) Christian cultures, these participants noted that their need for survival (on many levels) prompted them to research ways to challenge and respond to religious-based heterosexism

and cissexism. In contrast, several heterosexual participants noted that while they were invested in lgbtq issues, they also struggled with lgbtq issues—due in large part to their (conservative) Christian upbringing. For example, one participant explained, "I grew up Evangelical and am not sure how I would characterize my religious views at this time, other than to say I am still a Protestant Christian. However, I wrestle tremendously with lgbtq issues as a Christian and a citizen." Unlike their lgbtq and non-Christian counterparts, these participants who identified within both dominant forms of sexuality and religion voiced their concerns within "personal" and/or "private" frameworks. On the other hand, participants who identified as religious and/or sexual minorities tended to voice their narratives within personal-as-political and public frameworks. Interestingly, personal belief narratives appear to mirror pedagogical neutrality narratives in the sense that both seem to consolidate privilege through appeals to privacy and/or universality. Both of these narratives seem difficult for minoritized teachers to inhabit. A similar pattern of "personal" and "universal" appeals emerged in participants' ethical concerns for students. Overwhelmingly, those participants who spoke from (an otherwise unmitigated) heterosexual positionality worried that their commitments to lgbtq issues might silence or otherwise offend their students. Representative of such responses, a participant who self- identified as a heterosexual ally reflected, "I see myself as less vocal about my personal opinions in the classroom, even on issues that I feel strongly about—perhaps especially those ones, as I do not want to alienate students. So, I am clear about where I stand but perhaps less vocal than usual." Consistent among reflections like these, participants framed lgbtq social justice as a "personal opinion" or a "private belief," while also constructing "the student" as universally heterosexual and universally opposed to lgbtq social justice. In many cases, too, these participants expressed a preference for framing lgbtq issues neutrally or not talking about them at all. In contrast, participants speaking from minoritized religious and/or lgbtq perspectives tended to frame their ethical pedagogical commitments within political terms. These participants also tended to challenge universal notions of "the student." For instance, reflecting on public discussions of lgbtq issues, two heterosexual participants expressed frustration that progressive Christian voices like theirs were drowned out by the Christian Right. Both participants noted that such censorship in public discussions about lgbtq issues contributed to uncritical, binaristic views in the classroom. Speaking of the lgbtq-rd in particular, one participant criticized composition scholarship for privileging (conservative) Christianity as a "personal belief," while overlooking its powerful, politically normative force in shaping public discussions about lgbtq issues. Teasing out similar

themes, one lesbian participant worried that a hands-off approach to lgbtq issues might inadvertently "promote hate and discrimination" in the classroom. She also questioned whether or not this approach could actually deliver its promise of a welcoming environment for all students, adding, "Is it possible for all students to feel safe? Should it be?" Refusing both "universal" and "personal" frameworks, she exposes the tendency of this model to keep privileged students "safe" from interrogating their privilege, while further marginalizing lgbtq and ally students through its disavowal of political and ethical accountability. Included at the heart of this issue, it seems, is also a question of whether or not certain pedagogical narratives create a perilous classroom environment for minoritized students. Voicing Safety Concerns. Finally, when it comes to addressing the lgbtq-rd and lgbtq issues in general, participants also raised concerns about their safety. Taken as a whole, just over a quarter of participants expressed concerns for their career safety (25%) and their physical and/or emotional safety (31%). Throughout the survey, participants called attention to the ways various forms of privilege influence the ease with which they are able to address lgbtq issues in the classroom without punitive repercussions. These privileges included: class privilege, male privilege, white privilege, Christian privilege, gender normative privilege, able-bodied privilege, and the privilege of being tenured or having a full-time teaching position. Other participants mentioned that their location within conservative religious institutions and/or regions also influenced their pedagogical experiences at the lgbtq-rd. That said, participants overwhelmingly emphasized heterosexual and cisgender privilege as the most common mitigating factors influencing their experience teaching lgbtq issues. For that reason, it is not surprising to discover that lgbtq participants' perceptions of risks to career and risks to emotional/physical safety (31%, 45% respectively) outpaced those participants who did not identify as lgbtq (15%, 15% respectively). Moreover, along the lgbtq moniker, gay men reported risks to career and emotional/physical safety at much lower rates. (See figure 12.)

100% 80% 60% 57% 60% 43% 44% 33% 33% 40% 20% 25% 20% 9% 9% 0% Gay Lesbian Bisexual Trans Queer Career Risk Emotional/Physical Risk

Figure 12. LGBTQ Participants' Assessment of Risk Response Rate: 58/64

Further illustrating this trend, some heterosexual participants noted that their perception of risk was based upon their lack of tenure and/or their employment at a religiously conservative university. While some lgbtq-identified participants also mentioned faculty status as a mitigating factor, their perceptions of risk were also mitigated by their experiences of institutional violence. Many participants, for example, cited inadequate or non-existing protections for lgbtq faculty. Speaking of this, one lesbian respondent commented, "I have chosen not to be out professionally because I teach at an institution and in a state with inadequate safeguards and rights, respectively, for LGBT faculty." In addition, several participants noted that such protections—if they exist at all— often exclude protections for trans and gender variant students and faculty. Explaining the consequences of such exclusions, one trans participant noted that part of hir everyday experience included dodging threats from students and verbal assaults from fellow colleagues. Ze also noted that the absence of protections trickled down to undergraduate students who had no recourse for combating "immense discrimination from university officials and the student body." Still other lgbtq participants noted that protections were "untested" or existed "only on paper." One lesbian participant explained that her experience in the classroom had everything to do with the disconnect between institutional policy and institutional practice. As a result, she added, "I purposely avoid any banter . . . that would require I reveal anything related to my 'personal life,' specifically my sexual orientation." Taken together, these narratives suggest two things. Most obviously, the classroom does not exist in a vacuum; teachers' experiences are tied to their situatedness among intersecting frameworks of power. Consequently, depending on their social locations, teachers mightn't always be empowered in the classroom. Given participants' accounts of feeling surveilled both in and outside

of the classroom space, it seems that power between teacher and student mightn't be as unidirectional as one would assume. *** Because of their anonymity and relatively unimposing time constraints, surveys can attract a broad range of participants, which in turn provides the researcher with a breadth of data. Surveys are also a useful measure in that they can function as a barometer of sorts. This can be especially useful when assessing the social pulse of a pedagogical issue like the lgbtq-rd, a less frequently discussed (and seemingly risky) topic. Although my findings are not generalizable because I used a convenience sample, I do think that this survey sheds light on some of the existing pedagogical narratives that circulate around the lgbtq-rd. As I review these findings below, I will also forecast the second phase of my research, where I discuss the results of the follow-up interviews that came from the survey. Broadly speaking, this survey reaffirms the idea that talking about the lgbtq-rd may be important. For one thing, many participants claimed that the lgbtq-rd frequently arose in their classrooms. Interestingly, while participants noted that students who brought up religious discourse did so to question the value of lgbtq justice, participants just as frequently offered that students expressed uncertainty at this intersection. To me, these findings affirm Amy Winans' claim that there is value in looking at these moments of resistance in the classroom because they offer us an opportunity to get students to recognize that the views they have about sexuality may not be universally shared (114). Related to Harriet Malinowitz's claim that teachers need to help gay and lesbian students understand the discourse that harms them and the forces that make them vulnerable, an additional finding was that the students who did advocate for lgbtq issues very rarely did so in religious terms (184). This suggests to me (and is supported in an abundance of queer and religious studies scholarship) that there exists a (conservative) Christian hegemony that narrates lgbtq individuals as written outside of religious/moral frameworks—and this is something to talk about in the classroom. True, scholars like Keith Miller and Jennifer Santos note this hegemony and advocate examining the narratives that frame public discourse, but more immediately, we need to ask students what it means to live in a secular nation defined by religious freedom—where it's hard to imagine lgbtq and religious identifications coexisting (63). To echo an earlier respondent, we need to explore why lgbtq-religious students confound their peers.

This survey also unpacks some of the ambivalence that emerges in pedagogical scholarship at the lgbtq-rd. By and large, participants communicated the pedagogical importance of the lgbtq- religious junction, but they seemed to hesitate when it came to addressing or engaging it in the classroom. Findings suggest that this ambivalence may be in part be related to questions of power and privilege in higher education. For instance, there were a number of heterosexual allies who revealed in their write-in responses that while they supported lgbtq issues, they didn't want to talk about their "personal" beliefs in the classroom. Although some ally-identified participants referenced the fear of engaging this intersection because they were not tenured, by and large the most fearful of dealing with repercussions at this junction were lgbtq-identified participants, who talked about risks related to their career, emotional well-being, and physical safety. For example, one transgender respondent discussed being verbally abused by faculty members, and though less extreme, other participants who identified along the lgbtq moniker talked about the deplorable lgbtq resources available to them or they emphasized the idea that protections exist only on paper. While I'm not trying to create a dichotomy between lgbtq-identified teachers and hetero-cis teachers, the survey findings invite us to question in nuanced ways how the pedagogies we enact in the classroom are not only attached to our privilege vis-à-vis our social location or students' read of us in the classroom, but they also relate to our experiences outside of the classroom, including experiences of institutional violence. Pedagogical scholarship has of course acknowledged the relationship between privilege and pedagogy, but the lgbtq-rd brings in high relief the importance of critically examining the ease in which teachers' positionalities enable them to move not only in the classroom but in other institutional spaces as well. These are questions that I'm going to be exploring in Chapter 5. Findings (particularly in the comment portion of the survey) also suggest the role emotions play when it comes to the lgbtq-rd. For example, several respondents who identified as heterosexual allies talked about their experiences growing up in (conservative) Christian environments. While they didn't clearly connect this to their classroom experiences, given the context, their comments suggest that encountering the lgbtq-rd brings back all these earlier experiences. Similarly, some heterosexual respondents spoke about how they continue to struggle with lgbtq issues as religious people. Interestingly, more than a handful of lgbtq respondents also talked about how their experiences growing up in (conservative) Christian communities has equipped them to engage this intersection. Given the relative paucity of pedagogical scholarship on the lgbtq-rd and participants' sense that

institutional resources are often lacking, this reliance on more intimate funds of knowledge seems rather significant. Beyond the funds of knowledge teachers bring with them into the classroom, this data seems to suggest that teachers also bring emotional baggage with them into the classroom. In other words, previous emotional experiences of the lgbtq-rd (whether or not they are acknowledged) influence how we respond to this intersection in our classrooms. For some participants, it is possible that previous negative experiences at the lgbtq-rd cause such a visceral response that engaging this pedagogical juncture seems impossible (or otherwise distasteful). In other cases, it seems that when participants have had time to process these previous emotional encounters (whether positive or negative), they are perhaps better able to respond to the lgbtq-religious junction with a sense of hopefulness and even generosity. I will be looking at this in more depth in Chapter 6. Finally, key to the ambivalence surrounding the lgbtq-rd, respondents also revealed the expectation of pedagogical neutrality at this intersection. For instance, participants repeatedly emphasized that the real job of composition isn't to take sides but to teach students appropriate writing strategies. These responses echo scholarship in Chapter 2, such as Kristine Hansen's discussion about teaching students the "rhetorical arts" (25). Additionally, participants expressed ethical concerns about addressing the lgbtq-rd because they worried that in doing so they would offend students. Many of those comments seem to be based on the assumption that the offended student is always already cisgender and heterosexual. Such responses seem to be a less overt expression of Perkins' and Rand's warnings about colonizing or victimizing students in the classroom (Perkins 589; Rand 361). Several lgbtq-identified participants noted feeling an expectation from unnamed colleagues (or students, perhaps) that they perform objectivity or neutrality largely because they identify as lgbtq. I find this last finding especially interesting for those of us in English Studies who have been influenced by feminist pedagogies that tout the relationship between the personal and the political, and critical pedagogy that points out the impossibility of neutral pedagogies. It seems worrisome that when our pedagogical convictions hit turbulent waters57 (as they would at this intersection) we allow ourselves to backpedal in practice on those theories we profess to be pivotal in our field. These findings suggest that the lgbtq-rd challenges us to revisit our teaching philosophies: are we teaching a skillset that will allow students to be good workers and consumers, or are we emphasizing the critical in critical pedagogy to get students to fight oppression. I take these questions up in Chapter 7.

Interchapter

Participant Introductions

In total, I interviewed twelve participants in the second phase of my project. While participants' perspectives spanned the nine intrastate regions of the United States, they tended to cluster around the Eastern, North Central, and South Atlantic regions. Participants' disciplinary affiliations also spanned English Studies, including creative writing, literature, and rhetoric and composition. That said, participants most frequently noted affiliations in rhetoric and composition, queer studies, and/or women's, gender, and sexuality studies. In terms of social location, participants identified among different ethnic, racial, classed, and religious backgrounds—though participants tended to overwhelmingly identify as white, middle- class, and Christian. Participants also identified across different gender identities, gender performances, and sexualities, though they overwhelmingly identified as cisgender and gender normative, and many identified as lesbian, gay, and/or queer. While all of the participants I interviewed provided me with valuable insight, I limited my focus to nine of these participants, because their interviews most directly spoke to classroom experiences at the lgbtq-rd. While I will certainly flesh out participants' stories and address their social locations in more context-specific ways in my chapters, the following bios are meant to embody participants for readers. The descriptions I include below were, with few exceptions, composed by the participants themselves. In solidarity with my participants (some who found it difficult to collapse their social location into a paragraph), I have also included my own information to start off the list of bios:

Gina identifies as working-class, (cis)gender flexible byke. She claims Irish, Swiss, and Lenape American heritage, but she identifies as white because people read her as white and confer upon her the unearned privileges that go along with whiteness. Gina also acknowledges her privilege as able-bodied. She does, however, understand ableism, given the discomfort some express when she outs herself as dyslexic. Though she identifies simply as spiritual, Gina was raised Catholic—and for six years or so in her twenties, she participated in various Evangelical Christian communities. (Adding to the complexity, Gina's father converted from Judaism to Catholicism to marry her mother—a significant family narrative

that has always muddied clear-cut religious views for her.) Gina works as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University Hamilton, a regional campus that primarily serves working- class and "non-traditional" students. She teaches courses in English Studies and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Jo identifies as a white, working-class, Southern, lesbian. Jo is cisgender and identifies her gender performance as somewhere in the middle of the butch–femme continuum. Though raised within fundamentalist and evangelical traditions of Christianity, Jo identifies simply as a Christian. Jo is currently a Ph.D. student in Rhetoric & Composition at Hudson University (pseudonym), a public university located in Ohio. Previously to that, Jo taught first-year writing at Banting University (pseudonym), a public university located in the South.

Kami is originally from Utah and was raised as a Mormon, but she resigned her membership in that organization and now thinks of herself as an atheist. She is white, middle class, and able-bodied, and in the constellation of queerness, she identifies as female and lesbian, although she was in a straight marriage for twenty-three years. She earned her Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Linguistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania and was on the English faculty at Meadowlark Community College (pseudonym), from which she retired in 2009. She now lives with her partner in Oklahoma, where she gardens, raises chickens, and teaches a class for the University of Oklahoma.

TJ identifies as a white, middle-class, Texan, heterosexual ally. While he was not raised in a religious home, TJ found himself gradually drawn to Christianity, and he currently identifies as Episcopalian. TJ is a Ph.D. candidate in Composition & Cultural Rhetoric at Syracuse University, located in central New York. Prior to that, TJ taught basic and first-year writing at several universities and colleges located in Texas.

José identifies as a queer, working-class, first-generation Mexican migrant. José identifies his gender performance as a strategic and fluid response to gendered, raced, and classed notions of Latino masculinity. While a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormon) while young, José's upbringing was also informed by Mexican Catholic traditions and culture. He currently identifies as agnostic. José is a doctoral candidate studying Queer

Chicano Literature at Hudson University (pseudonym), a public university located in southern Ohio. Prior to that, José taught first-year composition at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, Texas.

Aiden is a scholar, activist, and sex worker. The approximation of their fluid subjectivity entails being a sex positive, switchy-vers, nonmonogamous and polyamorous pansexual/omnisexual boi (assignmed female at birth), who is genderqueer and identifies as a non-op transgender—but also happens to be a racially mixed (Hawaiian, Chinese, Native American, and white), culturally confused, and politically depressed anarchist Queer of Color. They are invested in kink culture and building a collective liberation movement that prioritizes anti-racist, anti-colonialist, multiracial, indigenous, feminist, queer, trans, and anti- authoritarian voices. Aiden is a nihilistic atheist (despite being a recovering Catholic), and they served seven years in the United States military. Currently, they are a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at the University of Hawai`i (Mānoa), where they formerly taught, and now teach Critical Theory at California College of the Arts in Oakland. Aiden has been an instructor for a variety of different courses, including first-year writing, argumentative writing, film, multiethnic literature, children's literature, and courses that emphasize Gender Studies and queer theory.

Trixie is the Director of The Writing Center at Michigan State University; she is also core faculty with the Rhetoric & Writing graduate program and with the Center for Gender in Global Contexts. Trixie teaches graduate courses in Rhetoric & Writing, including Writing Center Theory & Practice, Composition Studies, and Queer Rhetorics, as well as undergraduate courses in Writing Center Theory and Gender Studies. Her teaching and research are infused with issues of gender and activism even as they revolve around writing center theory and practice, writing across the curriculum, writing pedagogy, and teacher training. Trixie identifies as a strong Southern woman who values family and friends. When forced to assign labels, she calls herself a femme-queer lesbian feminist with bisexual tendencies; she understands her gender presentation as fairly fluid. She also identifies as white and as a first-generation college student.

Michelle is Professor Emerita of the Department of Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at the University of Cincinnati. She has co-authored with Deborah Meem and Jonathan Alexander the second edition of Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies. She also writes a blog called ProfSpazz (http://profspazz.com) about life as a lesbian living with Multiple Sclerosis.

Will is an Associate Professor at East Carolina University. He primarily teaches graduate courses in Rhetoric & Composition, undergraduate courses in writing, and (sometimes) courses in Women's Studies, drama, and children's literature. Will identifies as a white, gay, cisgender male with working-class and Southern roots. In terms of religious identifications, Will identifies primarily as agnostic, though he spent most of his childhood assuming a Christian identity and attending a Southern Baptist church.

Lynn identifies as a white lesbian living in the South. Married with a daughter, she has lived in the South for the past fourteen years. As a small child, she lived on the East Coast and in the Upper Midwest as a teenager. She has no religious affiliation, a difficult thing to do in the Bible Belt. She considers herself middle-class.

Chapter 5

The Teacher's Body in Institutional Space

Given the complexity of my own encounters at the lgbtq-rd, I am well aware that the difficulties of navigating this intersection aren't simply a matter of pedagogy. What I have been able, and unable, to do in the classroom is directly related to geographical location, institution type, instructor rank, and my (sometimes fluid) social location. For instance, in my introduction I reference my recent encounter with a student, who not only attempted to undermine my authority in the classroom but also confessed to recording our classroom sessions to document my "liberal bias." Throughout the semester, this student persisted in his assumption that something like a neutral pedagogy can (and should) be accomplished. This pedagogical narrative, however, cannot be separated from context. My campus is located in one of the most conservative counties in southern Ohio, home to Tea Party enthusiasts and hardcore republicans like John Boehner. In contrast to the main campus, Miami Hamilton serves a more economically and racially diverse student population. Additionally, though some students enrolled in courses are in their late teens and early twenties, an equal constituency of older students take courses as part of workforce retraining programs. Across these age groups, a sizeable portion of students attend Miami Hamilton with some form of government assistance. The city of Hamilton (like others in the area) was once a thriving industrial town, now left economically depressed as the industries that bolstered them abandoned the area. Rather than leave this area with a sense of working-class and working-poor solidarity, anti-immigrant and anti-welfare sentiment proliferates—views frequently (though not exclusively) expressed by working-class and middle-class white students on my campus. For many of my working-class students and working-poor students, college is primarily a pathway to employment. While this ideological view of education is not monolithic, it nevertheless contributes to a sense that critical pedagogies are superfluous—if not suspect. Adding to the complexity, my rank as a visiting professor leaves me vulnerable. My contract is renewed or not at the end of every semester based on student enrollment, and though many (but not all) visiting professors complete their five-year contracts without issue, student evaluations58 play a significant role in my rehiring. Very unfortunately, what these evaluations do not account for is how students read my body. While my white, cisgender, and able-body privilege confer upon me no small amount of

authority as a teacher, my students still read my gender, my (queerly classed) gender presentation, and my (oftentimes assumed) sexuality as a deficit to my credibility as a teacher. While some working-class, queer, and female students have felt empowered by my presence in the classroom, in every class I must also contend with a greater number of students who understand my positionality not only as an intellectual deficit but also as evidence of my "personal agenda." There has been a long tradition of feminist and critical race pedagogical scholarship that addresses teachers' embodiments and positionalities in the classroom. Many of these works point out that teachers with white, male, able-bodied, cisgender, and heterosexual privilege are less often challenged by students in the classroom, and as a result, when they adopt critical pedagogies in the classroom, they are less likely to be read as having an agenda (Brueggemann and Moddelmog 216; Condit 160–62; Heller 229–34, Karamcheti 216–17). These biases against the teacher's body are not only held by students, but also by more privileged faculty, who sidestep interrogations of their own privilege to read resistance in the classroom simply as evidence of pedagogical incompetence (James Alexander 114–15). As a consequence, many scholars articulate the minoritized teacher as both empowered and disempowered in the classroom (Condit 156; James Alexander 106; Karamcheti 226). This most certainly affects pedagogical empowerment, particularly at tense intersections like the lgbtq-rd. For instance, as I recount in Chapter 2, the resistance that Ingebretsen, Mitchell, and Wood experience has everything to do with their ability to move through space based upon their positionalities among various networks of power and privilege. Unfortunately, despite this trend to look at the phenomenon of teachers' bodies in space, David Wallace argues that too often teachers continue to construct pedagogical theories that overlook how their social location—in terms of race, class, gender, gender identity, sexuality, and religious identification—influences what they can (and can't) accomplish in the classroom (507–09). This is certainly the case in conversations that circulate in and around the lgbtq-religious junction. For example, in scholarship that advocates examining religious discourse, scholars like Perkins suggest that teachers connect with (conservative) Christian students on a personal level in order to ease these students' aversion to critical theory (590–91). What this pedagogy does not consider, however, is how a queer teacher might find a way to personally connect with a student who finds the teacher's very presence in the classroom objectionable (Smart 18). Conversely, in scholarship that takes up lgbtq issues, scholars like Jonathan Alexander have suggested that though some (conservative) Christian students have worried about his spiritual status as a gay teacher they are nonetheless able to move past these qualms. He claims that his evaluations

have actually improved since coming out ("Sisterly" 175). What Alexander fails to mention, however, in his scholarship is how students' responses to him may also be influenced by his white, male, cisgender privilege. In both of the examples I offer above, scholars tend to sidestep how their social location and institutional rank (among other factors) influence these pedagogical responses. Ignoring questions of power and privilege obscures the fact that negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction requires more than a one-size-fits-all approach. Given a Gordian knot like the lgbtq-rd, accounting for pedagogical specificity becomes even more important. For that reason, as I approached the qualitative phase of my project, my intention was to set the scene for participants' later stories at the lgbtq-rd. During the interviews, I asked participants to comment on how their pedagogical experiences were influenced by their social location, institutional rank, institution type, and region. What I hadn't anticipated, however, was how much these questions would matter for participants. In fact, out of my nine participants—Kami, Will, José, Jo, Lynn, Aiden, Michelle, Trixie, and TJ—five of them spent equal (if not more) time on "setting the scene" than they did on addressing their classroom experiences at the lgbtq-rd. Moreover, participants' narratives on setting often included much more detail than their classroom stories. Overwhelmingly, participants focused on their institutional setting. Initially, I worried that I had perhaps asked participants the wrong types of questions. I wondered what interview procedure I had inadvertently flubbed to get such lopsided stories—where stories about setting the scene became more prominent than stories about the primary scene of investigation: the lgbtq-rd. It was only through the process of coding and recoding, interpreting and reinterpreting themes, writing and rewriting, that I began to see that participants' institutional setting was its own kind of pedagogical scene. In a sense, participants were getting schooled by their institutional setting—they were not simply actors within an institution; they were being acted upon by that institution. Based upon their own social locations and institutional ranks, participants encountered differential experiences of pedagogical and professional empowerment. To illustrate this argument, I begin the chapter by offering readers a brief analysis of the themes that cut across all nine of the participants' stories. Moving from generalities to complexities, in the bulk of my chapter, I present four case studies to illuminate how these general themes become specifically inhabited by bodies in space. Thematic Analysis

Working from participants' interviews, I argue that participants' social location and institutional rank profoundly affect the ways participants can inhabit institutional spaces—in and outside of the classroom. I locate three key themes that illustrate this idea: • First, participants with more privilege (vis-à-vis their social location and/or their institutional rank) more frequently expressed optimistic views about their institutional setting in regard to the campus climate toward lgbtq issues and/or in regard to their own sense of pedagogical empowerment in the classroom. • Second, participants with less privilege (vis-à-vis their social location and/or institutional rank) experienced both direct and indirect forms of institutional violence. They also frequently noted attempts from within the institution to silence, minimize, and/or privatize these experiences of violence. • Third, participants with less privilege (vis-à-vis their social location and/or institutional rank) more frequently recounted experiences of student resistance in the classroom. Without exception, participants who directly experienced institutional violence also experienced the most student resistance in their classrooms—suggesting a relationship between institutional climate and campus climate. Institutional Optimism and Pedagogical Empowerment Four participants expressed various levels of optimism regarding their campus climate toward lgbtq issues and/or their sense of pedagogical empowerment in addressing lgbtq issues in the classroom. Both Trixie and Michelle noted that they "lived their lives out," and while they both recounted students' past hostilities to what they identified as their femme lesbian identities, they emphasized these as atypical events that took place much earlier on in their careers. Trixie and Michelle also noted that they were very active and very out on campus, though neither commented on their campus's climate toward lgbtq issues. Will, on the other hand, noted that few students spoke back to him in class, in spite of self-identifying as gay. While he noted his privilege as a tenured professor and as a white, Southern male teaching in the South, he also suggested that homophobia might be a generational thing. While geographically diverse, all three participants were tenured professors at public research institutions, and they each noted almost exclusively teaching upper- level courses. TJ, who also expressed optimism at this intersection, was a graduate student, and he frequently taught introductory composition courses. I will discuss his story in one of the cases below. Institutional Violence

Seven participants recounted experiences of institutional violence. While diverse in terms of institutional rank, all seven participants were lgbtq-identified. Sometimes, participants experienced this violence indirectly, through witnessing practices and policies that oppressed minoritized colleagues and students. Several participants told stories about witnessing institutional silence and inaction in the face of homophobic, transphobic, gender-queer phobic, and racist violence— perpetrated both on and off campus. At her previous institution, for example, Trixie noted the university's inaction in response to the violence experienced by a trans-identified graduate student, "who consistently had hate messages pasted on his [on-campus apartment] door." Trixie added that for trans and gender-queer students, in particular, campus spaces became hostile territory—not only in terms of having access to safe on-campus housing but also in terms of essential, everyday things like figuring out "where they could use restrooms." Two of the case studies below will examine indirect institutional violence in more detail. Others experienced indirect violence through interactions with colleagues. For example, Will was asked by a heterosexual colleague to give his insider opinion about the veracity of an award- nominated essay on pedagogy—authored by a lesbian from a different institution. In addition to asking offensive questions about the scholar's gender performance, Will said that this colleague also seemed to be fishing for an affirmation that "where she worked wasn't as homophobic as where [said scholar] was . . . that these were non-issues here." Regardless of whether such violence stemmed from institutional policy or from individuals within said institution, these experiences indicated for participants their own abject positionality within the institution. Some participants directly experienced institutional violence. While the intensity of their stories varied, each participant's firsthand account centered on interpersonal interactions with professors, mentors, staff members, colleagues, and department chairs. Lynn, for example, told me about a discussion that she had with her department chair about the university catalogue's misspelling of her Queer Theory course. When she suggested that the "Clear Theory" typo be fixed, her chair suggested that—given her upcoming tenure review—perhaps the misspelling was for the best. Noting a more aggressive story, Aiden recounted countless hostilities they experienced on campus due to their gender expression. In one instance, a tenured professor got in Aiden's face and shouted, "Fuck you!" And when Aiden approached the university's gender equity specialist about these violences, the specialist disregarded Aiden's call for institutional reform and re-narrated their experience as a special case. Ultimately, the specialist suggested that Aiden develop an "action plan" for their personal safety.

In both of these cases of direct institutional violence—and in three of the cases of institutional violence I present below—there is no room for misrecognition: Participants' abject bodies inhabit institutional spaces at their own peril. Whether speaking of risks to career, to physical safety, and/or to emotional safety, participants' accounts of inhabiting these institutional spaces were indeed perilous. Pedagogical Interference Seven participants recounted experiences of student resistance. While diverse in terms of institutional rank, these participants were all lgbtq-identified. In some cases, students simultaneously expressed resistance to course material and resistance to the participant as a teacher. For instance, Aiden noted that some of their students frequently conflated difficulties with queer-related course material to difficulties with Aiden's queer body in the classroom. They observed, "I think that people want to confront me personally because they see that it's an issue they're grappling with." While Aiden added that students often worked out those issues by the end of the semester, others did not. Aiden told me that one of their students threatened legal action, because he felt oppressed as a heterosexual male and as a Christian. In the case studies I present below, I will discuss two more instances where students similarly resist course material through resisting the teacher. In other cases, participants told accounts of students whose resistance was specifically teacher-focused. For example, Trixie recounted a time when she decided to organically "out" herself to her women's studies students. While her Tennessee undergraduate students had discussed lgbtq material all semester long without issue, they were shocked and angered when Trixie came out to them within the context of a class discussion on domestic partner benefits. Rather than view this as a context-specific approach to talking about identity, Trixie said that her students read her as dishonest. Michelle noted a similar interaction with a student enrolled in her developmental writing course. Believing that Michelle was dishonest with him in not disclosing her sexuality, the student decided to drop her class. She recalled, "He said to me something like, 'You know, I had to drop your class . . . because you tricked me. . . . You look like my mom or my aunt, but you're a lesbian.'" In contrast to Michelle and Trixie, however, Lynn noted that she made a point to come out to her classes early on. Noting the conservatism of her Arkansas students, she emphasized that she was careful about addressing anything during class time that wasn't germane to her Technical Writing course. During a moment before class, however, one of her students inquired about her new wedding band. When she explained to the student that her partner had recently proposed to her, an older, white male student became very upset and exclaimed, "This doesn't belong in any classroom!"

before walking out. In one of the case studies below, I discuss disclosure conflicts similar to those expressed above. While thematic analysis is useful for presenting broad themes across a data set, it also has the unfortunate tendency to disembody interview participants' stories. Consequently, it is difficult to fully account for how participants inhabit various institutional spaces—in and outside of the classroom. Moreover, it is difficult to account for how each participant's story might converge or diverge with each particular theme without, in the end, disorienting the reader. In order to reanimate some of the embodied particularities of participants' stories, below, I present four flash-cases related to the themes addressed above. Case Studies When it comes to the business of pedagogical theory, context matters. In order to establish some continuity, while also providing context, I present Kami, José, Jo, and TJ's stories as serial cases, which I will return to and extend in the chapters that follow. The flash-cases below will serve the dual purpose of setting the scene for each participant's story while also illuminating the complex ways that participants are able to navigate their scenes in the first place. Kami, José, Jo, and TJ are all very committed to lgbtq issues. That said, each of these four participants has access to different institutional resources, vis-à-vis their social location and their institutional rank. Consequently, they also experience different constraints that influence how they are able to act on their commitments to social justice. Kami's Story—I Can't Pretend that Queer Issues Don't Exist Before her retirement, Kami taught composition courses at Meadowlark Community College, located in a conservative city in Kansas. Kami noted that the campus was also "very conservative," so much so, in fact, that the campus quad featured a Campus Crusade for Christ prayer tent for a week every semester. She also described the student population as conservative—often religiously so. In spite of her students' conservatism, however, Kami told me that she always came out to her students. She said, "I can't teach without being who I am authentically, and I can't pretend that we teach in a world where queer people don't live and queer issues don't exist." While Kami noted that her white, middle-class privilege and her professional job enabled her to be out in the classroom, she also noted repeated experiences of student resistance in her classes. Kami speculated that her students were less vocal in their homophobia as a consequence of having an out queer-identified teacher. But she also noted that a good bit of students' homophobic

100

aggression went underground. In general, students expressed their anger in passive aggressive ways—often conflating Kami's queer presence with class course material: In my comp class, we were talking about identities, so I wanted them to think about how race, class, religion, education, gender, and ability—how their identities around those things are formed and things like that. And sexual orientation— . . . I didn't require that they write about or think about it explicitly, but I invited them to if they wanted to. . . . We practiced paraphrasing from a paragraph in Eli Clare's book [Exile and Pride]. And that is really about people with disabilities, but he's also queer. . . . Then we read an article about reparative therapy, a scholarly article, and of course, and of course, I'm their teacher, right? So if there were things that were coming up in the news, they might come up in class. I didn't talk about my personal life at all— but if there was a time when Prop 8 was coming up in the news, we might talk about that— so we didn't do a lot of reading about sexual orientation, but because I think I'm there in the class, and I'm talking about it, and they never heard anybody talk about it. . . . It turns out that it's the only thing they remember about the class. . . . When I retired, I finished and I thought, Ok, I'll just go to RateMyProfessor.com and see what people have said. I hadn't looked at it for about nine years—but the early ones were pretty positive, and the last . . . ones—there were some very angry students. And it was because they thought I had forced them to think about and write about sexual orientation. Clearly, some of Kami's students read her as biased—if not morally suspect—by virtue of her queer identity. In spite of all of the precautions Kami took to ameliorate such a gaze, some of her students angrily accused her of teaching exclusively about sexuality. Kami's queerness it seems, became its own kind of course material—an ever-present queer text that, much to the chagrin of some of her students, would not go away. While covert forms of student resistance appeared with some frequency, Kami observed that the age gap with her students prevented more overt forms of aggression. Even so, she noted several brushes with male students that made her fearful for her safety. Kami detailed one such encounter with a white, hetero-identified, (conservative) Christian male: I had a student who wrote in his paper that he wished we could go back to the good old days when they took fags out in the alley and beat the crap out of them. And [during peer review] his group said nothing to him about this, so when I looked at the paper I wrote him a long response . . . I said to him, "I think this is hate speech, and I don't want to have this in my class." . . . And we had many long email exchanges, and he never came to see that he had

101

done something that was offensive or inappropriate. And I was so glad to get rid of him that he got a B, and he didn't deserve one. I just never wanted to see him again. That happened to me a couple of times. Men that I was almost afraid of— there were men that I did not ever want to be in the room alone with, and they had said things just like [this student] said, and I just wanted them to go away. During another portion of the interview, Kami said that these hostile encounters made her mindful of her small stature, alluding to how easily one of these male students might have overpowered her. In lieu of such resistance, Kami tempered critical pedagogy with tactical precaution. Sometimes, this meant being guarded about the number (and type) of lgbtq issues she used in class. It also meant that she was guarded about what she shared with her students. But Kami's classroom experiences were also influenced by her institutional contexts. Outside of the classroom, Kami was also very "out" and very involved with campus social justice initiatives. In fact, before she retired, she served as a faculty fellow for the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. On the whole, while Kami felt positive about her activist work, she was also hyper-aware that her commitments came with a price: some of her colleagues appeared to have limits on how much they valued her queer positionality. For instance, during her time at the ODI, Kami was dismayed to discover that another faculty fellow was homophobic. She made this unfortunate discovery during an exchange with her colleague about Proposition 8, wherein this particular fellow questioned the validity of marriage equality as a social justice issue, using (conservative) Christian appeals to bolster her argument. When Kami asked her colleague to refrain from making "statements that promote[d] oppression, discrimination, and violence," the fellow retorted that, since lesbians were also atheists, Kami wouldn't understand her position. Taking this incident to the ODI listserv, her other fellows did not intervene. Kami noted that the whole thing was "very disheartening." Articulating her frustration further, she said: I tried—I called meetings. I could not even get support even from the fellows, because they felt we should 'agree to disagree', right?— or, 'Isn't it wonderful that we have different philosophies?' And I would say to the director, "It's not a philosophical difference. This is about people's civil rights." But this person, who was African-American, was not asked to leave the Office of Diversity. She wasn't asked to leave. Now, if we had discovered among

102

our ranks that we had a racist, that person would have been gone—that fast—would have been gone. But we had a homophobic person, and that person was allowed to stay. Of course, Kami noted the well-documented institutional violence experienced by people of color in higher education. Kami also acknowledged that her colleague likely experienced racism within the ODI, but given the office's stated commitment to "diversity and equity," it was likely that racist and homophobic discourse circulated in similar terms: through micro-aggressions, obliviousness to privilege, and refusals to name injustice. The problem here, it seems, is that the ODI fellows responded to such overt hostility as if it were simply the flourishing of different ideas. While their minimizing response perhaps indicates their own (unexamined) homophobia, it is likely that her colleagues were equally confounded by the religious and intersectional components of the conflict. This, it seems, is the irony Kami highlights. While Kami's white and middle-class privilege enabled her to self-identify as queer in various institutional spaces, and while she was able to leverage her privilege to enact social justice, Kami's empowerment also came at a cost. She appeared to walk a fine line—where one slip-up could jeopardize not only her career but also her physical safety. This story, of course, reveals little about the emotional costs of this tightrope walk. And, as Chapter 6 will evidence, things become even more complicated when directly considering the lgbtq-rd. José's Story—A Button Is Not Gonna Save Me During his M.A. work, José taught non-credit-bearing writing courses at a public university in Texas. Teaching Assistants, he said, didn't have a lot of freedom in terms of teaching: "We got a form syllabus, and you penciled in your name and just photocopied it and gave it to your students." In general, restriction seemed to be the name of the game. José described his previous institution as a "very straight department." In support of that point, he added, "I mean, they just hired their first queer man this last year in the department. There was no room for 'any of that.'" In the classroom, too, José got the distinct impression that "we're not supposed to talk about 'these things.'" The unspoken heterosexist context of his department only encouraged José to remain closeted. This, in turn, influenced his teaching. He explained that he avoided talking about lgbtq issues in class because he didn't want his students to read him as gay. He reflected: I think that for so long I've been like— "No, I don't want you to identify me as this." So it's just been very like— I mean, the closet can do very awful things, I think. I mean it can really fuck with the way that even like your professional life goes, and I think it's that self- conscious resistance like, "I don't want to go there."

103

In short, one of the first lessons José learned in grad school was that "professionalism" required a certain kind of docile body—maintained through self-erasure. José took this lesson with him to Hudson University (pseudonym), a public university located in Ohio. While José also noted Hudson's preference for docile bodies, this performance of professionalism didn't necessarily require closeting oneself. In fact, he noted a great amount of support for lgbtq graduate and undergraduate groups. This kind of vibrancy—coupled with the academic freedom to shape course syllabi—was "magical" for José. When it came to teaching at Hudson, however, José experienced a huge culture shock. At his previous institution in Texas, José tended to identify with his students more because they were—like him—working-class, first-generation college students. At Hudson, however, where most of his students come from very privileged backgrounds, José noted feeling "forced to occupy this other ideological space" as a working-class, queer person of color. Much of this culture shock stemmed from how his Hudson students interacted with him. He explained that, from the moment students saw his name on their rosters, they expected "difference." In spite of his attempts to perform a professional body, students seemed to hold him at arm's length. Calling attention to his body, he added, "Even if I— Look at me! I wear sweater vests, button-down shirts, whatever. Pretty much as normal . . . as it gets, and still, I feel like they're like [saying], 'We'll, you're still not. You're still not us. You're already an outsider, so you know, whatever.'" Because José's students tended to greet him as an outsider, he had to invent tactical ways of getting his students to engage with him in the classroom. To that end, José employed his sense of humor as a "rhetorical massage" to loosen his students' apprehension, and in the end, to get them to think critically about the intersections of race, class, and sexuality. Even with his sense of humor, however, there were some serious limits to where students were willing to go with him. For example, students expressed a limited amount of comfort talking about these intersections—so long as those conversations remained at a safe distance. Critical theory must remain theory. The problem, however, was that his students also wanted to know more about José's life—but in asking that question, they wanted only the most superficial of answers. To illustrate this, he recounted the following scenario that took place when he came out in his literature survey course: We were reading Giovanni's Room, and then we followed that up with City of Night by John Rechy. And they were really pressing the question, "Are you out?" And when we talked about heteronormativity I'm like, "Let's practice ya'll. Let's openly put this out there . . . like when I came out to my family this summer . . . " And their faces were just like [gives

104

shocked expression]-- "You just owned up to this in the classroom. You crossed a line. . . . Well, I don't know how to respond to this." And I'm like, "I know you don't know how to respond to this, and I'm not asking you to. I'm just asking you to think about— it's just an example of heteronormativity: Like my mom's response, which was, 'Are you the boy or the girl?' And I'm like, 'You're still organizing my life within the terms that you've established for yourself.'" My students were just like, "Oh my God!" [Gives scandalized expression.] Students seemed to want to know—and not know—about their teacher. They wanted José to disclose his sexuality, but they didn't want to consider the particularities of José's sexuality. As José's example illuminates, his students wanted a simple identification—not an embodied lesson on heteronormativity. Much like their books, students wanted to consume José from a safe distance. Related to this notion of safe distance, the hyper-visibility of José's queer, classed, brown body in the classroom also had a way of shining a light on students' own positionalities. For many of his white, straight, middle-class students, José observed, the idea of self-reflection caused a self- defensive anxiety, because many of them operated as if they had no social positionality—they were just people. The idea that aspects of their identities might be implicated in networks of power and privilege was very threatening to them, because they assumed that their position in life had everything to do with being good students and hard workers. To explain power and privilege in the least threatening way possible, José told his students: It's almost like we're part of this mechanism and you need to figure out if you want to be understood as subversive or radical. It's not like you can drop the cell phone of the global world in like the global toilet. You can't do that. You need to think about what circuit you're in and where exactly you're positioned, or what circuits are intersecting in you, and play with it. It's like if a key sticks in a cell phone, it's the most annoying thing ever. You can be that sticking key. . . . We just need to acknowledge those positions and how we can use that privilege, again, to like mess up that circuit . . . But José noted "part of the problem is getting them to acknowledge what circuit they're at." He also noted that this seemed to be a particularly uncomfortable lesson for his straight, white, male students. Frequently, they accused José of simply identifying as brown and queer because these were oppressed positionalities. In turn, these students claimed being victims of "reverse discrimination" as white, straight men. Others located José at the locus of their oppression, claiming, "'You're just this brown person. You're anti-white, anti-America, anti-Jesus, anti-whatever.'"

105

These encounters and others, José told me, convinced him that his body must be present in the classroom—in all of its specificity. While students responded to his body with anger and shock, José says that others began to see how the issues they were talking about in a particular book have real consequences for people's lives. In part, José observed, the tensions he experienced in the classroom seemed directly related to the administration's habitual silence regarding instances of racism, homophobia, transphobia, and classism on campus. During our interview, José recounted two different moments of conflict, where multiple university stakeholders seemed invested in silencing and/or limiting what counted as a queer issue. One of these conflicts centered around the administration's recent push for a sweeping financial "restructuring" that would devastate unionized staff and working-class students alike. After a coalition of students and staff members unsuccessfully met with the university president, José and other queer graduate students decided to make their voices heard during Hudson's gay pride parade. José explained that Hudson's president was asked to be the grand marshal for the march, and so it seemed like a good opportunity to call attention to Hudson's restructuring and to articulate working- class issues as queer issues. The response was swift and angry. Several undergraduate students confronted the protestors and insisted, "This is about gay pride—not anything else." Not long after, Hudson 's LGBTQ Services Director publicly lambasted the protestors for their "lack of respect" for the university president. Behind this reaction, José observed, is a move to compartmentalize queerness. "Gay pride," José said, "is not about partying. It is about resisting. And I am not just queer—I will always be queer, brown, and poor." Both the students and the LGBTQ Services Director refused to see how the administration's budget cuts would affect them, because they had already articulated queerness as white and upper-middle class. José noted a similar move to silence and compartmentalize at work in two overlapping student protests. Hudson, he explained, had a long record of responding to racism and homophobia on (and off) campus with ambivalent silence and insubstantial platitudes. In the span of a week's time, Hudson found itself scrambling to do damage control on both of these fronts. First, the tension erupted after an off-campus, student committee advertised their "Ghetto Fest" block party on Facebook. The invitation (initially) featured a black man eating a slice of watermelon, and the text encouraged Hudson 's largely upper-class, white student body to attend wearing their best "ghetto attire." Second, and right on the heels of Ghetto Fest, a second wave of conflict erupted when two

106

gay students were beaten up at an off-campus, university-sponsored drag show. In both instances, the university was reticent to step in until students began to angrily mobilize, thereafter mobilizing support from faculty and staff. The plan, José recollected, was to mobilize an intersectional protest, calling attention to the ways that the university was complicit in both of these violent events. Early on, however, José noted the sinking feeling that some faculty and staff were more interested in containing the situation than they were in helping students agitate for social justice. Proving this point, he recalled a planning meeting that he attended right after the attacks. At this meeting, José said, the LGBTQ Services Director "really wanted to shut down all of the hate crime lingo," so she invited a police officer to the meeting in order to "explain the difference between a hate crime and any other crime." Equally disheartening for José, however, was the meeting's conversation about the multi- issue protest—No Hate on My Campus. In no time, the white, middle-class queer students expressed anxieties that the protest's message could "get out of control." At the helm of these conversations, ironically, was one of the students attacked at the drag show. Recounting this white, gay male student's objections, José said, "'Rallies always become about other things. I'm a Republican, and I don't want to be the poster child for some liberal agenda like healthcare. This needs to stay focused on tolerance." Given that the rally was meant59 to address both the racism of Ghetto Fest and the drag show attacks, the student's anxiety that the rally might turn to "other issues" seemed curious. Reflecting on the student's move to limit what counted as a queer issue, José said, "This is why intersectionality is important. . . . I don't see the college Republicans totally responding to like people beating a gay man. I just don't see that. So we're at this interesting axis of so many things. I think that sometimes our students forget the radical queer history behind their identities . . . especially when I think of queers of color . . . like we have been at the forefront of so many big moments in queer history." This student's privilege got in the way of his ability to see healthcare as a queer issue. Queer issues were about tolerance and inclusion, not about intersecting issues of social justice that might challenge an existing social paradigm. Noting the student's focus on tolerance, Jose commented, "If 'tolerance' is the issue, then how do we tolerate certain queer, brown, and working- class bodies differently?" Sadly, the hate continues. "Not a week after the protest," he said, "a lesbian student was once again beaten up walking on campus. This has been like the second time she's been attacked on campus!" José also added that a year after the No Hate On My Campus rally, two more gay students

107

were attacked after the drag show, and a transgender student is suing the university for employment discrimination. "The funny thing," José observed, "is that I'll get these emails from LGBTQ Services that will announce that these terrible things are still happening on campus, and the email will close with something like, 'If you have a problem, just come and talk to me, and come and pick up a No Hate on My Campus button.' But a button's not going to save me." In short, while José might have more of a space to be "out," to do radical scholarship, and to engage in campus protests, his relationship with the university is still precarious—asking him at every turn to divest himself of particularity and of complexity. His experiences reminded him of Cherrie Moraga's cautionary tale to queers of color. Recounting her words, he said, "They will try to erase you." Jo's Story—I Wanted to Be This Chameleon After completing her M.A. work at Hudson, Jo was hired to teach first-year writing at her undergraduate alma mater, Banting University (pseudonym). Banting is a four-year university, somewhat in the tradition of open access, located in South Carolina. While her largely white and upper-middle-class students at Hudson had high expectations for their lives post-graduation, Jo said that her first-generation, working-class Banting students rarely operated under that illusion. Still, for the majority of her students, South Carolina was home, and students were reticent to leave the area the university served. On one hand, Jo said, the feeling of being tied to a region with few opportunities created a climate where students were apathetic about their grades. It was a "spare me the thrills and give me what I need to get a job" kind of attitude. But, very much unlike her Hudson students, Jo's students at Banting were more talkative in class—particularly because they understood how course material applied to their lives. While teaching at Hudson was often like "pulling teeth," Jo said that she typically had to "calm students down" during class discussions at Banting. Upon returning to the area after her time teaching in Ohio, Jo said that she was literally blown away by how much the Bible functioned as a public text in the classroom. "Part of becoming a professional," Jo lamented, "is forgetting a previous part of yourself. To be a scholar, you have to be secular." As an insider to the region, however, Jo earned quick rapport with her students. They seemed quite comfortable discussing the particularities of their life in class: family relationships, economic hardship, and the Bible as a resource for navigating the complications of life. Oftentimes, students stayed after class, wanting to know what Jo thought about discussions, but Jo said she was always careful to deflect—to present herself as a chameleon.

108

On the surface, Jo seemed to easily navigate the classroom because her students read her white, Southern, working-class body as trustworthy. A big reason that her students were so open with her, too, Jo said, was because they read her as straight. Commenting on this, Jo said, "Gender performance was hard, because part of being a professional woman means looking straight." And as a working-class lesbian, straight out of grad school, Jo needed to play the part to keep the job. While Jo's colleagues knew she was a lesbian, there was a general expectation that she should blend in on campus. "Part of being a Southerner," she added, "is knowing that you'll be accepted only if you do not rock the boat." And given the conservativism of Banting students, faculty, and staff, rocking the boat was a pretty easy thing to do. To illustrate this point, Jo told me about her own experience as an undergrad at Banting, when a favorite professor was reprimanded by the department chair for explaining to his class what Shakespeare's use of "tupping" meant in Othello. If a straight, white, male professor could be reprimanded for not operating within the confines of Bible Belt norms, Jo observed, her own situation might be even more precarious. As an employee, Jo quickly learned her own lessons about the rigid boundaries of propriety at Banting. Within the first year, for example, Jo witnessed a very public reprimand of one of her fellow visiting instructors, who was also serving as the advisor to Banting's Gay-Straight Alliance. Recalling the situation, she said, "It was all very simple. He sent a brief email to the faculty listserv, announcing that it was National Coming Out week, and that if faculty members wanted to show their support, they could come to the student union and pick up an ally button from the GSA's table." Jo's colleague, Neil, stopped by her office to discuss homophobic emails he had received from faculty and staff: The emails indicated that not only did they not consider themselves allies, but the very idea of a Gay-Straight Alliance was immoral, since homosexuality was a sin. They also lambasted this out, gay employee for clogging up the listserv space with inappropriate messages. Neil just looked very beaten down, very deflated. After his contract at Banting ended, he left the university and took a job as a high school teacher, where he's closeted. Not only was Neil deflated from this experience, but so was Jo. What was particularly telling to her, however, was that so few faculty members from the English Department spoke up—even the ones who personally knew Neil and Jo. This sent a clear signal to Jo that belonging at Banting meant keeping your head down, closeting difference, and building relationships with faculty and staff based exclusively upon commonalities.

109

In general, Jo did just that. When she attended campus events or faculty parties, she came alone. When asked about her personal life, she would refer to parents, grandparents, cousins, or her sister. While faculty members knew that was a lesbian, Jo never called attention to this fact. In general, this strategy seemed to work, and Jo became close to a good many faculty members and former mentors through their shared love of bluegrass music. Jo spent a good deal of time each week, in fact, taking part in a faculty-staff jam session. In spite of her ability to blend, however, things soon came to a screeching halt. Jo told me that it was within the context of these jam sessions that she had come to befriend a longtime staff member named David. Describing him, Jo said, "David was one of those good old boys. He was a bit older than my parents, and we bonded together over our shared love of fishing, family, and bluegrass." Outside of these jam sessions, David would often swing by Jo's office, which she shared with her friend and officemate Whitney. Generally, Jo said, the conversations were casual—with the exception of one particular time. On one particular day, he stopped by while she and Whitney were working in the office. Usually pleasant, Jo said, David looked rather irked—and the topic of conversation that David broached seemed seriously outside of the purview of their usual conversations. Jo recalled: It didn't the follow the natural flow of conversation. It seems to me he saw something in the hall, or maybe he saw something earlier. . . . We were talking about fashion, which I never talk about, and we were basically talking about how we didn't have fashion-sense. We didn't have it. Another thing we have in common, right? I remember him speaking up, and he kind of stepped into my office, he got closer, and he kind of whispered—like he knew he was saying something he shouldn't say, as if I were his confidant. . . . He started talking about fashion as this kind of gay, queer thing: "It makes [me] sick all these fashion experts who are these flaming gay men, ya know?" . . . And it was really out of nowhere, and he continued to talk about how when he saw two girls on campus holding hands or two guys on campus holding hands that it made him absolutely sick, and it was wrong. And that he felt that it's biological—sexuality is biological. . . . For him, he believed that being gay was biological, and he believed it was evolution—or I guess the opposite: a genetic defect. And he continued, "To make the human race better we need to get rid of those defective individuals." Yeah. Even advocating these gay people should be killed . . . and, I mean, he had one foot out and one foot in. It's not like he was completely in the office and this was a closed-door

110

conversation. But yeah, he said that he had a constable's license, so he could carry a gun on campus, and he's like "That's something that gives me comfort." Jo said that her officemate—a close friend of hers, who knew Jo was a lesbian—was "just frozen at her computer." She didn't say a word, leaving Jo to respond to David alone. Unlike her English colleagues and mentors, David didn't know that Jo was a lesbian. Reasonably terrified to out herself to this gun-toting staff member, Jo simply expressed shock and asked him to clarify if he really meant to imply that gay people should be killed. David affirmed his stance, adding that it was his "God-given right" to correct the defect. As a way to process, Jo blogged about this encounter on MySpace, relaying the details of her experience to her network of friends. Quite a few people read her post, Jo remembered. Both her queer friends outside of Banting and her heterosexual colleague-friends at Banting responded to the blog. While both groups initially expressed a shocked disbelief, their ultimate attitudes toward Jo's encounter were split along community lines. Jo explained, "My lgbtq friends said things like, 'Jo, this happened to you! This is not ok,' or 'This is terrible! Jo, you have to say something—if not for yourself then for your queer students.'" Her heterosexual colleague-friends from Banting, however, responded by saying, "'I can't believe he would say these horrible, violently homophobic things, because there are so many good things about him.'" In general, her colleagues' response boiled down to choosing to "focus on the good things" about David and "giving him a pass on these horrible statements." The result, Jo said, was that David "became the typical good guy who [they were] willing to pardon." None of her colleagues, in fact, made any overtures that something ought to be done about the situation. After seeing the disparity in these responses, Jo said, "It became clear to me that my colleagues just expected me to hold the bag—like, 'Here, gay person, bear your burden.'" Jo also realized that if she didn't intervene, no one else would. After making the decision to report David, Jo said, "I still had to compartmentalize a bit—make it about my students, not me—just to stay sane." For Jo, this had not been the first time in her life when those closest to her, those "faced with [her] humanity as a lesbian," not only chose to look the other way but also implied that Jo follow suit in the interest of "keeping the peace." Even Jo's officemate, Whitney—a close friend, who witnessed firsthand David's dangerous antipathy toward lgbtq people—was hesitant to report him. During an email exchange with Jo, Whitney revealed that she didn’t want to get him in trouble, and she really didn't think it was her place to intervene. The crux of Whitney's objections, Jo said boiled down to "Oh, you know, so he's

111

homophobic. But what can you do? Homosexuality is still controversial and lgbtq issues are still up for debate. You can't blame a person for being homophobic, because well, it's not like he's a racist or anything. Those are his personal beliefs." Jo was clearly disappointed by her officemate's response; she hoped that their off-campus friendship would be enough to motivate Whitney. It wasn't. Nevertheless, Jo was adamant to get her officemate on board. The difficulty, Jo said, was that Whitney "couldn't see [her] humanity as a gay person, so [Jo] needed to find another way to put a human face to this for her." Reflecting on this difficulty, Jo said: [A]fter I got the response from my officemate that I did . . . I wrote her back, and it was—it was a really emotional email. I guess it really struck me. Holy crap. How can you not take this seriously? It really showed me how, I guess, because I was lesbian-identified. Oh, you don't want to rock the boat with your "personal feelings." . . . So I wrote to her using an analogy—which is probably problematic—but . . . I summarized what happened, except I substituted [sexuality for race], and I was like, "How would you respond to this if we were talking about race instead of sexuality? You would feel worried about the safety of those students, right?" My officemate changed her stance. She completely changed. She said, "'Oh my god. Absolutely we should say something. I didn't even see this before, but whoa yeah. This person could be a threat to students.'" I had to change the story a bit, so that she was not thinking about sexuality, so that she was considering race. Hyper-aware of how white, gay activists uncritically frame "gayness as the new black," Jo knew the problems with making "like-race" analogies. Her choice, she explained, was a tactical one to get her officemate to recognize her humanity as a lesbian—and more importantly, to get her officemate to recognize the very real risks that lgbtq students would face on the campus if she couldn't also recognize their humanity. Across the board, Jo observed, her friends and colleagues were so fixated on David's humanity that they couldn't see the humanity of gay people. In the end, however, nothing came of the report. David still works at Banting University. Jo had played the game, blended in, bonded with her heterosexual colleagues on their own terms. And yet, when it counted most, they still couldn't see her humanity. Needless to say, this terrifying and heart-wrenching situation only reaffirmed Jo's need to be a chameleon—if not to disconnect further. Jo took this lesson with her when she returned to Hudson University for her Ph.D. While she acknowledged that some of her colleagues were "out" on campus, Jo notes her resolve to keep her head down, blend, and not get involved. Summing it up, she said, "Long story short, this

112

encounter, and encounters like these, definitely shape how much I share about myself because of . . . the fear that someone is carrying a gun and feels it is their God-given right to shoot you down. It makes you think about your outness in a way that's different than if you'd never experienced anything like this, and in a university setting too, in the 'safety' of your office." That said, she repeatedly emphasized that such violence was not unique to the South. During her interview, she called into question the same instances of violence that José recounted in his narrative about Hudson. While Jo acknowledged that Hudson provided domestic partner benefits and non-discrimination policies, she also believed that they "only existed on paper." For Jo, the university's silence seemed all too familiar. To crystalize this point, Jo concluded, "I think it's a problem when the same student is attacked twice on campus, and instead of it making front-page news, it's in the campus beat with reports of public urination." TJ's Story—I Want to Stand on the Right Side of History TJ teaches introductory and upper-division writing courses at Syracuse University. Syracuse University is a private research institution located in central New York. While Syracuse was founded by the Methodist Episcopal Church, it has operated as a nonsectarian institution since the early twentieth century. In general, Syracuse's political climate—including its rhetoric and writing department—tends to be invested in issues of social justice. The university's student population is largely white and upper-middle-class, and the majority of students have Jewish and Christian identifications. In TJ's experience, though, "in many ways (students) seem indifferent to religion." In giving a general sense of his students' political orientations, TJ says that his students are primarily liberal leaning, but they also tend to voice neoliberal notions of equality. Explaining this further, he commented: I'm really working with a privileged population in a certain sense. And there's a strong sense of entitlement to a worldview, and even though I am in a department that is really committed to justice—to social justice, to using the writing classroom as a site to do all kinds of really interesting things—the student population is really resistant to having their worldview complicated, challenged, shown where the pressure points in it can be, and to think through and to become a new kind of person or become a different kind of subject who is entering the world that has made claims on you in certain kinds of ways. So it's fun but it's also exhausting. Giving an example of his students' neoliberal politics, TJ says that his students are "basically for gay rights, in the most basic sort of way." In the classroom, for example, students might express this

113

support with comments like, "'We're all the same, right?'" What students are less willing to acknowledge, TJ observed, is how their positionalities might implicate them "in unjust power relationships." TJ repeatedly noted, however, that his department is very committed to issues of social justice, and they gave TJ equal amounts of freedom and support to focus his "intermediate (Sophomore) writing courses" on the intersections of religious discourse and social justice. Moreover, when TJ told his mentors that he wanted to give a sustained focus on the intersections of religion and lgbtq issues in the classroom, they were excited about his approach. In fact, he told me that the Teacher Training Coordinator60 helped him design a "curriculum that really invites lots of resistance in lots of different ways." Together, he and his mentor devised ways to focus on contemporary issues of social justice that interanimate with religious rhetorics. When I asked TJ if he experienced any student resistance when he taught this course, he said that he hadn't. In general, he said, while some students initially expressed surprise at the ways religion and lgbtq issues intersect in various publics, they were also willing to critically engage with course material. Because TJ identities as a white, cisgender, heterosexual, Christian ally, I was also curious if his positionality might have influenced how his students responded to his course. Upon discussing his teacherly embodiment, TJ acknowledged that his students undoubtedly responded to him as a normative figure of authority. In part because he considered himself a relatively young teacher, TJ noted that he intentionally capitalized on a normative performance of professionalism, taking on "vestments of authority," like wearing collared shirts and ties on campus. This, he said, was a move to "create buy-in" not only from his students, but also from his colleagues as well. Reflecting on this performance, TJ added, "I agree with you that you can get away with more the more normative you appear, and I don't know how I feel about that, but I try to exploit is as much as I can." While TJ noted taking "advantage of the normalizing power" of his religious identity, through "confess[ing] to Christian identity" in the classroom, he noted taking a different approach with his sexual identification. TJ explained that he did not overtly identify himself as heterosexual: Because I do teach with topics that do speak to religion and sexuality—that do raise those questions deliberately—I use a strategy that I take from . . . [AnaLouise Keating's] book Teaching Transformation . . . I deliberately do not—I'm not sure how to say this, but I don't come out as a straight person—and I talk with students about not coming out as a straight person or as a gay person, because I don't want them to think, "Oh, you know what you're

114

talking about with regard to this material, because you have the authority of experience. You're the person who is going to enlighten me about this particular topic." Nor do I want to get into the dynamic of "Who are you to teach this stuff? You're not involved in this community. You're not involved in this identity category, so how can you say something about it?" . . . That becomes a starting point to talk about the authority of experience and the authority of expertise, and the authority of being involved in struggles and of having particular affinities, and finding strength in the power and authority of that, as opposed to a more simple kind of "I'm this identity so my affinities must be this." In spite of this resistance to out himself as heterosexual in the classroom, TJ also said that his students continue to read him as straight. Ultimately, TJ acknowledged that his students' responses to his course, and to his position as an authority figure in the classroom, stem from his privileged positionality. Throughout his interview, however, TJ reiterated his belief that being a heterosexual Christian ally meant leveraging his privilege to enact social justice. For TJ, identifying as an ally required more than making affirmative statements about lgbtq issues; it also required that he put his body on the line to speak out against oppression. This meant educating himself about lgbtq issues and designing a course that explicitly addressed the lgbtq-rd as a site of social justice. It also meant writing editorials for the student paper, calling upon Christians to make themselves allies to lgbtq social justice. It also meant taking professional risks in discussing his commitment to the lgbtq-rd in his conference papers and scholarship. While he offered multiple motivations for his social justice work, in and outside of the classroom, TJ's most succinct reason was that he wanted "to be on the right side of history." *** As I have tried to demonstrate in both the thematic analysis and in the case studies above, context matters. To begin, participants' experiences at the lgbtq-religious junction have been shaped by their sense of professional (dis)empowerment. While participants relationships to their institutions inform their feelings of (dis)empowerment, their stories also suggest that institutions don't relate to every teacher in the same way. The quality of participants' institutional relationships seems to correspond with their social location and professional rank. Certain kinds of professional bodies tend to move more easily through institutional spaces. In lieu of the gains made by minoritized students, faculty, and staff, and in spite of efforts to decolonize61 higher education, institutional practices, policies, and norms continue to favor those who occupy white, male,

115

heterosexual, cisgender, gender normative, able-bodied, and upper and/or middle-class positionalities (among others) (Mohanty 196). In "A Paradox of Silence: Reflections of a Man Who Teaches Women's Studies," Craig Heller asserts that "the gender of the instructor is an important element of one's feminist pedagogy and that 'one size does not fit all'" (225). As a feminist pedagogue, Heller observes that his students not only confer upon him more authority than his female colleagues but they also are much less likely to read his course content as biased (234). Heller does not, however, mention his race, sexuality, or gender identity in his article—and perhaps this is a hallmark of epistemic privilege to not have to call attention to the "default," "universal" positions of whiteness, heterosexuality, and cisgender identity. As we see in TJ and Will's stories, accrued privilege positionalities translate to a less resistant classroom situation. For instance, much like Jonathan Alexander, Will reported positive experiences in his classroom after coming out—experiences that are (no doubt) influenced by his positionality as a white, cis male with a normative gender expression (Alexander, "Sisterly" 175). Still, unlike TJ, Will walked into the classroom anticipating resistance. On the other hand, TJ reported little student resistance, a remarkable feat for someone teaching at the lgbtq-religious junction. More than that, while Will had to contend with low-grade micro-aggressions from his colleagues, TJ experiences tremendous support from his mentors. And while his department (and his institution's) commitment to social justice certainly plays a role here, it is still worth asking whether or not the same type of safety net would have been extended to an lgbtq-identified62 graduate student with similar teaching interests. Of course, both participants acknowledge their privilege, noting how they have attempted to leverage their privilege for social justice. Similar calls for (as José put it) "being that sticking key" also surface in José, Jo, and Kami's stories, though their path to institutional leverage seems less straightforward. At the same time that participants' stories reflect a preference for the "universal" teacher, they also observe the contradictory ways that this preference exists alongside institutional overtures toward "valuing diversity." Several participants, for instance, identify these overtures as half-hearted attempts to provide institutional "access" rather than overhauling unjust institutional practices, policies, and norms. Chandre Tapalde Mohanty observes a similar trend in "On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s." In her article, she critiques the ways in which difference becomes framed as "benign variations (diversity) . . . rather than as conflict, struggle, or the threat of disruption," not to mention the way that this retooling of difference "bypasses power

116

as well as history to suggest a harmonious pluralism" (181). Mohanty argues that institutions have reigned in legitimate challenges to systemic injustice, filtering them through an industry that "manages, commodifies, and domesticates" difference and transforms oppositional critique into multicultural programming geared toward privileged "students[,] . . . resident counselors[, and] . . . administrators" (186–97). Within this rubric, minoritized students, faculty, and staff become object lessons for those occupying more privileged positionalities, while their own needs are overlooked. Immediately, Aiden's conflict with a university Gender Equity Specialist comes to mind. Rather than address a larger climate of transphobia, the specialist suggested that Aiden develop an "action plan" for their personal safety. Institutional culture, it seemed, was not on the table for change. In a similar fashion, Jo and José observed that Hudson 's non-discrimination policies seemed to only exist on paper—not in practice, and as Kami observed, those who sit on diversity committees may have little real leverage to enact social justice. All three of these participants also noted that movers within such diversity initiatives seemed hell-bent on limiting the scope of what counted as a legitimate issue of social justice. In such a political environment, participants were themselves schooled by their institutions—and the lessons were perhaps hardest learned for those with the least amount of privilege (vis-à-vis their social location and institutional rank). Working- class, lgbtq-identified graduate students and/or contract instructors seemed the hardest hit. But participants weren't the only ones getting schooled by their institutions. Students, too, picked up on their institutions' attitudes toward difference. While students might have been less aware of institutional policy, they were sure to pick up on more immediate cues—like their university's response to bias-related violence and discrimination. For instance, Jo, Aiden, and José all noted that their universities' attempts to disavow, silence, minimize, and/or privatize discrimination sent students a clear message about what bodies are valued and devalued—both in and outside of classrooms. Moreover, as Jo and José's account of Hudson University evidenced, lukewarm responses to violence guaranteed that violence would continue. And indeed it did. Participants connect the dots between institutional practice, campus climate, and classroom climate. As Kami, Aiden, and José's stories illustrate, minoritized teachers are not only more likely to have to negotiate institutional oppression but they are also more likely to have to negotiate various student resistances in the classroom. And in light of the dynamics detailed above, responding to student resistance doesn't seem as simple as crafting an appropriate pedagogical response. In fact, their experiences illustrate that pedagogical responses to student resistance are, in large part, shaped by institutional constraints. In some cases, teachers become so thoroughly schooled by their

117

institutions—so fearful of repercussions—that they may eventually back off from potentially volatile classroom topics altogether. Teachers are only as empowered as their institutional supports allow. In contrast to TJ, for instance, it was no wonder that Jo avoided the lgbtq-religious junction whenever possible, considering her experiences with institutional violence at Banting and Hudson. Participants' stories thus illustrate that school is in session for teachers well beyond the classroom walls. The institution becomes a pedagogical site that spills over into the classroom. Still, my findings aren't just relevant in terms of understanding the complexities of professional (dis)empowerment; they also have implications for pedagogical scholarship at the lgbtq- religious junction. Albeit briefly, some lgbtq-rd pedagogical scholarship offers an overview of campus settings and student demographics before entering classroom analyses. For instance, Eugene Garver and Shari Stenberg situate their studies within the context of Catholic Universities and Donald McCrary explains that the majority of his basic writing students were first-generation African-American women. (Garver 164; Stenberg, "Liberation Theology" 281; McCrary 523–24). Less frequently, authors provide additional background information about students' general attitudes toward difference—like Perkins' description of the relationship between English teachers and their working- class, fundamentalist students in Oklahoma or Harriet Malinowitz's biographies of select gay and lesbian students enrolled in her course (Perkins 587; Malinowitz 163–248). Fewer scholarship circulating in and around the lgbtq-rd highlights the link between classroom resistance and institutional attitudes toward difference. We do, however, see brief mentions of this in Laurie Wood and Edward Ingebretsen's accounts of the pedagogical pressures of heterosexism. Wood recalls different moments where she had to defend her course content as the result of student complaints, and she also mentions her experience of heightened vulnerability given the lack of protections for lgbtq workers in Utah (433–37). Ingebretsen recounts not only feeling surveilled by his heterosexual colleagues but also having to contend with institutional tokenism (24–28). Danielle Mitchell takes her description of institutional contexts furthest of all by tying her students' resistance (including a violent outburst) to a campus climate where members of the administration pass the risks of educating students squarely upon the shoulders of overworked faculty members. She argues that administrators (and all academic disciplines) need to share the responsibility of educating students about difference (43–46). In general, however, the bulk of scholarship that addresses the lgbtq-religious junction tends to gloss over these important contexts, jumping headlong into the problem of how to address

118

(students' resistance to) lgbtq issues in the classroom. To demonstrate, Eleanor Byington and Barbara Frey Waxman provide scant information about the pedagogical contexts of their course, beyond the fact that it is geared toward English majors (156). Keith Miller and Jennifer Santos similarly propose a course (with assignments) that encourages teachers to help students examine the rhetoric of religion without once describing the context in which they developed this pedagogical approach (63–73). But beginning with the problem of students' reticence to engage critically with the lgbtq-rd risks inadvertently privatizing student resistance as discrete, isolated phenomena. As Mitchell argues, "the tone set by the administration" models for students (in)appropriate ways to respond to difference (44). My research similarly points toward the importance of creating an environment that is emotionally, intellectually, and physically inhabitable for minoritized students, faculty, and staff. The connections between student resistance, campus climate, and institutional politics are not incidental. Just as common a silence in lgbtq-rd scholarship is a fuller, more nuanced account of how teachers' positionalities shape their experiences in the classroom. There are, of course, some exceptions to my observation. For instance, Laurie Wood not only explores the relationship between student resistance and their reading of her queer body but she also recounts the fatigue of feeling as if she must constantly judge the reasonableness of her responses to students' heterosexism by comparing herself to her straight colleagues (434–46). Participants' stories echo Wood, whether it's Michelle's account of how conservative students have felt "tricked" by her femme gender expression or Lynn's sense that she must remain hyper aware of how many lgbtq examples she provides in her professional writing classes. The bulk of pedagogical accounts, however, spends less time accounting for how the teacher's positionality and embodiment influence their experience of the lgbtq-religious junction. For instance, Amy Winans talks about the relatively positive experiences she has had navigating the intersection of lgbtq issues and religious discourse with students, but she does not account in her write-up for how her social location allow her to circumvent student resistance (114–15). Similarly, Doug Downs also dodges questions about his privileged positionality—a significant omission given his recommendation to coach (conservative) Christian students to make anti-lgbtq arguments that might be more "sympathetic" to academic audiences (50). As I mention in my introduction, critical race and feminist pedagogical scholarship has a long tradition of highlighting how teachers' positionalities shape classroom experiences. Particularly, they have critiqued how disembodied scholarship feeds the expectations of the universal teacher,

119

fueling the assumption that what isn't an issue for the privileged teacher isn't an issue for anybody else. For instance, Indira Karamcheti speaks of students' racist and sexist reading her body as both a "native informant" and as a teacher with an "imperfectly concealed political agenda" (215). Her reflection that "the minority teacher is already known, in personal terms" surfaces in different ways for José and Trixie. Trixie's students initially read her whiteness and her femme gender performance as signs of "trustworthiness," but when she came out, they felt betrayed. In contrast, José's students immediately distrusted what they read as his "brown bias," a suspicion that was compacted after he came out to them as gay. It is indeed more difficult to contend with students' expectation of the "universal" (and thus "neutral") teacher when one's difference is so easily read upon the body. On top of having to deal with students' resistance, minoritized teachers must also contend with their colleagues' bias toward the "universal" teacher as well. Simone James Alexander critiques an evaluative system that places "a preponderance of weight on students' evaluations when judging a teacher's competence—or incompetence" (114). These measures, she argues, do not account for how student evaluations might reflect racist and sexist bias toward the teacher. Moreover, James Alexander claims, the "atmosphere of fear and prejudice" extends to interactions with her colleagues, who assume that when a minoritized teacher does experience resistance in the classroom it is more a consequence of her incompetency than it is a consequence of her social location (114). Kami's story echoes a similar point. In fact, before she retired from Meadowlark, the quality of Kami's teaching was taken up at a student grievance hearing. The student believed that Kami, an out lesbian, was unfairly biased. Not only was Kami encouraged not to defend herself at the hearing (as was her right) but none of her colleagues were willing to speak on her behalf. For a person who had given so much to the academic community, this assault on her professionalism was devastating. The issues presented in this chapter dovetail nicely into Chapter 6. Here, I have illustrated how policies, practices, and norms that value the disembodied, "universal" teacher have the (unintended) consequence of circumventing questions of power and privilege and skirting teachers' shared responsibility to combat oppression. In not accounting for our positionalities, teachers also run the risk of advocating pedagogical practices that do violence to others (however unintended). But just as important as considering social location is a nuanced consideration of the emotional frameworks that inform teachers' pedagogical practice. For instance, in compartmentalizing our commitments to lgbtq social justice as "personal beliefs," it may become easier to advocate neutrality at the lgbtq-rd. Similarly, if we enter the classroom without deeply reflecting on our previous,

120

negative encounters at the lgbtq-religious junction, we may be more apt to consider this intersection as always already hopeless.

121

Chapter 6

Intimate Encounters at the LGBTQ-Religious Junction

Many of us who teach . . . consciously accept the fact that the work of education is as difficult for us as it is for our students, that a great deal of what occurs in seminars and classrooms seems beyond conscious reach, that in the midst of unfolding pedagogy, more often than not, we become undone. – Deborah Britzman63

Allow me to return for a moment to my own teaching experiences at the lgbtq-rd, which I offer in my introduction. In writing these narratives, I chose descriptive language because part of my aim was to help readers imagine the lgbtq-rd—or perhaps help them call forth their own experiences at this intersection. Turning to these narratives again, I also notice that I framed these accounts using analytical language. For instance, in recalling the story of my student who wrote an anti-gay final paper, I draw on Foucault to illustrate how the student uses the Bible as his sole source to frame gay and lesbian narratives as monstrous, as outside the realm of "the true" (216–224). In a later narrative, I draw from Kenneth Burke's claim that people return to religious frames to establish origins, and I apply this to interpret a student who has anonymously written on a peer's proposal, "God doesn't make gay people!" (Motives 13). While I frame these narratives in academic terms, I'd be lying if I said that this was my only interpretive frame. The disciplinary knowledge I bring with me into the classroom is accompanied by a series of home movies, triggered whenever the lgbtq-religious junction arises. These short films play out my previous sites of learning at the lgbtq-rd—lessons laden with affect, feeling, and emotion. I may, for example, be confronted with an earlier (straighter) scene in my life where I participated in (conservative) Christian ministries like Campus Crusade for Christ. And I may recall how (in a moment of what I'm sure I then thought was generous witnessing) I once told my gay younger sister, Gabriel, that I didn't judge her because "all sins were equal at the foot of the cross." Home movies such as these play on loop, offering me visceral reminders of my past (and present) connections to various discourse communities, family members, friends, lovers—even earlier versions of myself. I refer to these moments as intimate encounters. Borrowing from Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology, I believe these intimate encounters (when taken together) compose a "home" of sorts—a place where I have stretched out, a place that knows my secrets. Sometimes comfortable,

122

other times unbearable, it is nevertheless a psychic space that I occupy, and it influences how I view the (im)possibilities of negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction. As it turns out, I am not the only one to have had this experience in the classroom. With the exception of Michelle, each participant narrated their experiences at the lgbtq-rd alongside such intimate encounters. Like me, Will, Kami, José, Jo, Lynn, TJ, and Aiden's intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd seemed to profoundly shape their understanding of pedagogical (im)possibility at the lgbtq- rd. Significantly, participants' intimate encounters surfaced in the midst of our discussions about pedagogy—often interrupting the linear flow of discussion. Our interviews became haunted by these home movies. However interesting a pedagogical phenomena, it was left to me to interpret the significance of this aspect of participants' stories. To be sure, English Studies has seen its share of pedagogical scholarship on affect, feeling, and emotion. Significant for my work here are scholars like Marlia Banning, Shari Stenberg, and Jennifer Trainor, who claim that in order to develop socially just pedagogies, teachers must do more than simply challenge the logics of oppression (Banning 90; Stenberg, "Rhetoric and Emotion" 351; Trainor 645). Commenting on the failures of reason alone in social justice pedagogies, Mark Bracher argues: Many students and readers simply dismiss the critiques of their beliefs, values, and behaviors, along with the new knowledge and values that our classes offer. Other students accept these arguments and knowledge but experience little change in their attitudes, remaining indifferent, if not hostile, to oppressed groups and individuals. And of the few students whose attitudes may be altered by the arguments and knowledge they encounter in our classes, many show little change in social and political behavior regarding the injustices that have been revealed to them, supporting political candidates and policies that are indifferent if not hostile to the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, the uninsured, the addicted, the imprisoned, and so on. (467–68) The key to combatting oppression, according to scholars like Lynn Worsham and Raymond Williams is understanding how "structures of feeling"64 shape our beliefs and actions—ultimately disciplining us in ways that are beneficial to the status quo (Williams 23; Worsham 130). Much of this work in English Studies pedagogy, claims K. Hyoejin Yoon, tends to focus exclusively on students—perhaps assuming that pedagogues have wrested themselves from these emotional regimes (721–22).

123

Jeffrey Di Leo makes a similar call for more accounts of what he calls teachers' "academic emotions," adding that such stories (told by the common folk) of higher education are valuable in the sense that they "[tell] us about who we—the readers—are or should be" (221, 225). That said, Di Leo's interests are limited to improving academic performance and shedding light on academic culture as a whole (222–25). What is not useful, he posits, are "mere narrations of academic events and their writer's emotional response to them" (226). Borrowing from Laura Micciche, I counter that there is nothing "mere" about emotions. Not only are emotions bound up with (not subordinate to) rational thought but, in creating this false rational/emotional binary,65 we lose out on an opportunity to reflect on the "affective stances" in our own disciplinary narratives ("Emotion, Ethics" 176–77; Doing Emotion 3). Similarly, we lose out on an opportunity to reflect on the motives of our pedagogies and our ethical obligations as teachers ("Emotion, Ethics" 177). This is indeed what I believe participants' intimate encounters at the lgbtq- religious junction accomplish. Making Sense of Intimate Encounters Before we head into the heart of my chapter, I'd like to take some time to elucidate some of the interpretive frames I use in this chapter. To understand the significance of participants' stories, I rely heavily on scholars like Alice Pitt and Deborah Britzman, who have studied the emotional life of teaching, drawing from psychoanalytic, feminist, and queer theories to ground their work. One of the first concepts that helps me understand participants' intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd is the concept of "difficult knowledge" and its relationship to "lovely knowledge." Difficult knowledge is the ruins of one's lovely knowledge—the pretty theories that organize our lives until the unravel (Pitt & Britzman 175–76). In their qualitative study, Alice Pitt and Deborah Britzman interview educators about their ability to work through difficult knowledge, and what is striking to me is their description of how participants worked through their difficult knowledge. For one, the stories themselves are difficult for their participants to narrate, both chronologically and emotionally. Across the board, Pitt and Britzman witnessed that their teacher-participants' stories were full of stops and starts, interruptions and digressions.66 The more participants grappled with the ruins of their lovely knowledge, the more the temporal boundary between past and present blurred. Moreover, in their narratives, teacher-participants resurrected ghosts of their past student selves (Pitt & Britzman 759–60). Pitt and Britzman's description of this process was invaluable to me, because I noticed similar instances during my interviews with participants. The narrative ruptures in participants' pedagogical accounts at the lgbtq-rd were, in fact, difficult for me to make sense of outside of this

124

framework. Additionally, many of my participants' accounts seemed painful for them to tell, and so I was heartened by Pitt and Britzman's claim that while confronting the ruins of one's lovely knowledge can be painful, teachers can learn from these "social breakdowns in ways that might open [them] to their present ethical obligations" (756). Deborah Britzman extends her analysis on the links between pedagogy and emotion in The Very Thought of Education. One of her key questions is to explore the labor of what Freud labeled the impossible professions, which include education and psychiatry (3). The quote that introduces this chapter crystalizes this feeling of impossibility. Not only is learning difficult for both teacher and student, but in the practice of pedagogy, the teacher can "become undone" (xi). Part of this undoing, according to Britzman, is that teachers are too often trained to tell only the happy stories of pedagogy. As a consequence, without this outlet to explore "what breaks the heart" of pedagogy, teachers can become burnt out, and they also lose out on valuable insight that might actually help them in the classroom (85–86). Another concept I find particularly useful for interpreting my findings is the idea of countertransference, a concept developed by Freud that informs several of Britzman's works. For example, in "Some Psychoanalytic Observations on Quiet, Ordinary and Painful Resistance," Britzman argues that students' resistance to learning can, in turn, trigger teachers' own painful histories of learning. Because they are rarely encouraged to examine their histories, she claims, teachers run the risk of reenacting their painful lessons with students (242, 248). According to Britzman, teachers and psychoanalysts alike have understood countertransference as an entirely counterproductive experience, as it collapses the boundary between self and other, between student and teacher (Very Thought 94–95). In contrast, she contends that countertransference offers teachers a fruitful resource for engaging more generously with their students (and themselves)—provided that teachers are willing to reflect on the emotional significance of these slippages (Very Thought 100– 101, "Painful Resistance" 247–48). Britzman's investigation into the impossible professions seems apt for this study—and perhaps particularly apt for this chapter. Across their interviews, participants narrated the lgbtq- religious junction as feeling impossible. Of course, Britzman's theorization of the possibilities of countertransference seems equally appropriate for this chapter, given the numerous times such issues cropped up in participants' accounts of their intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd. For example, in their stories, a participant's student would suddenly morph into a participant's relative—or even into an earlier version of the participant's student-self. Britzman's work not only helped me

125

understand such slippages, but it also helped me understand the participants' intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd as a resource. Switching gears a bit, I also draw from Judith Butler's theorization of the ethical relationship in Giving an Account of Oneself. In her book, Butler makes two points that are relevant to my participants' intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd. First, Butler suggests that an ethical relationship to the other might result from a failure to give an account of ourselves—when our words fail or when who we say we are clashes with the actualities of our lives. In recognizing our own opacity or perhaps the parts of ourselves that seem unspeakable, Butler claims that we may be able to relate to others with more generosity—even when they might not deserve it (63, 78–82). Illustrating this idea's applicability to the lgbtq-rd, it might be helpful for the reader to consider my previous example of witnessing to my sister Gabriel and how I might draw from this unspeakable (even shameful) part of myself, in my current role as a queer teacher, in order to practice empathy and patience toward (conservative) Christian students in my class who deploy similar forms of anti-lgbtq religious discourse. Also significant to my study, Butler adds that the ethical relationship might begin with an injury. As a consequence of being injured by another person, we might begin to see how our lives are always in someone else's hands. From this experience, Butler claims, we may come to two different conclusions: On one hand, we might come to see through this injury how precarious our lives are, how much our sense of humanity hinges upon whether or not the other will see us as human, and how much our access to a livable life hinges upon whether or not the other will view our lives as worthy in the first place. In this inauguration of pain, we may change; we may see more clearly our connectedness to others (Account 86–92). Or, on the other hand, in response to this injury, we may decide to siphon ourselves off from others—promising never to be hurt again, promising to be the masters of ourselves (Account 100–107). But in this latter instance, Butler argues, our ethical relationship to the other is foreclosed. The ethical relationship requires a risking of the self (Account 133–36). The concepts I review above are relevant to my research at the lgbtq-religious junction for several reasons. First, I have argued that how teachers respond to the lgbtq-rd is a matter of pedagogical ethics. As teachers, we present students with lenses for seeing the world, lenses which should proliferate human relationships—not shut them down by cordoning off topics like the lgbtq- rd as too controversial (Britzman and Gilbert 84). Second, these ideas offer us an avenue for relating to all students with generosity—even when some of these same students contribute to our

126

experiences of marginalization and injustice, in and outside of the classroom. Third, these theories suggest the value of sorting through our intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd, however impossible they may feel. To further illuminate what I have referred to as intimate encounters at the lgbtq-religious junction, I first present a brief analysis of the themes that cut across eight of my participants' stories. In the bulk of my chapter, I return to the case studies of Kami, José, Jo, and TJ in order to showcase how intimate encounters might shape pedagogical (im)possibility at the lgbtq-rd. Thematic Analysis As my interviews indicate, how we negotiate these intimate encounters will (in part) shape our sense of pedagogical (im)possibilities at the lgbtq-rd. Working from participants' interviews, I located three funds of knowledge that influenced their pedagogical understanding of the lgbtq-rd: • Through intimate encounters with various communities, participants developed activist and religious literacies that shaped their understanding of the lgbtq-rd. These community literacies (in part) shaped participants' sense of the pedagogical (im)possibilities at the lgbtq- rd. • Participants also experienced intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd with the people closest to them: parents, siblings, spouses, children, friends, extended family members, and church members. These interpersonal encounters (in part) influenced participants' understanding of the lgbtq-rd as a site of pedagogical (im)possibility. • Participants also experienced intimate encounters with themselves. Here, participants reflected on past/present iterations of themselves as they negotiated the lgbtq-rd. These intrapersonal encounters (in part) shaped participants' sense of the pedagogical (im)possibilities at the lgbtq-rd. Intimate Encounters with Literacy at the LGBTQ-RD Seven participants' intimate encounters with religious and/or activist groups offered them extra-scholarly lenses for understanding the lgbtq-rd. These intimately acquired literacies, in turn, influenced participants' understanding of pedagogical (im)possibilities at the lgbtq-rd. Two participants developed their understanding about this intersection through activist encounters. Lynn, for instance, is married to a full-time gay rights activist, and she frequently draws on her partner's insights to understand her students. For example, she told me about the way that Focus on the Family once encouraged their members to acquire petition signatures in church in order to get a local gay adoption ban on the ballot. While this move was illegal, Lynn noted that it was particularly

127

effective for people like her non-traditional students in Arkansas, whom she described as "busy people . . . trying to put food on the table." She noted that many of her students were not overtly homophobic—some had gay friends. Nevertheless, they were likely to vote for the measure, and equally unlikely to "expend intellectual energy" on the issue, she said, because their pastor had already "given [them] the answer." Using her activist literacy, Lynn highlighted the difficult translation of anti-homophobic education into anti-homophobic praxis. Articulating a more grassroots experience of literacy, Aiden noted that they came to see the importance of the lgbtq-rd through their activist work with trans and genderqueer youth in Hawai'i. For Aiden, the boundary between activist and classroom spaces was permeable, as many of these youths later enrolled in Aiden's college courses. Speaking of their activism, Aiden observed that part of the "revolving door" of coming out for these young people involved grappling with religious indoctrination. And having seen firsthand how these struggles could make a life unlivable, Aiden noted their pedagogical commitment to touching upon the violence of religious discourse as a socializing mechanism. Six participants developed their pedagogical understanding of the lgbtq-rd through contact with religious discourse communities. For example, Trixie noted her intimate past involvement with the Southern Baptist Church through her high school and college years, and her more recent involvement with affirming churches like the Metropolitan Community Church. This religious literacy gave her a valuable resource for understanding her students' struggles with religious literacy. This literacy empowers her to "have a conversation" with students so that they are unable to "dismiss [her]." Moreover, when faced with the lgbtq-rd in the classroom, she noted not feeling inclined to "cower or get mad." While Trixie's religious literacy enabled her to see pedagogical possibilities, this was not necessarily the case for everyone. Some participants' religious literacy created pedagogical relationships to the lgbtq-rd that were a bit more vexed. During his interview, for example, Will recounted a very positive intimate encounter with a religious discourse community—an insight that allowed him to make the distinction between religion and religious people. This insight allowed him to make the observation that teachers sometimes jump to conclusions that religious students are always already homophobic. Sometimes, he explained, they simply "[didn't] know what to do with" lgbtq issues. That said, while Will noted that Christianity was "the discourse [he] best [understood]," he was nevertheless ambivalent about classroom dialogues at the lgbtq-rd. His intimate knowledge of this literacy illuminated its rhetorical abuses. For example, he observed that religious discussions that initially appeared to be a "give and

128

take" exchange—"Help me understand this . . . this is where I come from . . . this is how I was raised"—more often became a diversionary tactic to take up class time and not have to think about lgbtq issues. In short, intimate knowledge of religious literacy can highlight both the possibilities and impossibilities of classroom dialogue. In the case studies below, I will illuminate four more participants' intimate encounters with religious literacy. Intimate Encounters with "Kin" at the LGBTQ-RD Six participants recounted experiences at the lgbtq-rd that centered on particularly affect- laden relationships. These stories evoked a sense of belonging to another through bonds of kinship, such as shared family ties, but also including shared relationships to sex work, and/or shared romantic ties (past and present). My notion of kinship is similar to Kath Weston's notion of kinship in "Forever is a Long Time: Romancing the Real in Gay Kinship Ideologies." Here, Weston expands the notion of kinship beyond the biological family to include "diffuse, enduring [forms of] solidarity" which evidence "reciprocal exchanges of emotion and support" (93). According to Weston, "gay kinship ideologies" throw into question "everyday notions of the permanence that is supposed to be embedded within kinship into strange and startling relief" (92). Building from her framework, I claim that whether or not participants' kinships were momentary or ongoing, they functioned as a catalyst that shaped their pedagogical understanding of the lgbtq-rd. For example, while teaching in Hawai'i, Aiden developed a kinship with a gay student, who was vilified for filming videos of himself masturbating on campus and posting them on XTube. Immediately, Aiden recalled, local and national media networks went into a frenzy, describing the student as a criminal who was dangerous and morally depraved. The university, in concert with the student paper, sent out a series of campus crime alerts that gave a detailed description of the student, cautioning campus community members: "If you see this student, do not approach. Call the police." To wit, lgbtq student groups launched attacks on the student, as a means to viciously dis-identify with what they perceived to be their peer's abnormality. Aiden also noted that even tenured queer studies faculty, who spoke so eloquently in their scholarship of transgressive re-appropriations of public space, neglected to come to the student's aid. Not only did Aiden note that such a fuss was never made when hetero-identified students shot sex tapes on campus, they also noted that their response to this gay student hinged upon his abject queerness. Having worked for many years as a sex worker, Aiden was all too familiar with how religious, legal, and medical discourses had pathologized sex work and perpetuated the idea that sex workers were disposable, inhuman. In this regard, Aiden's experience of kinship not only inspired them to counsel this beleaguered student

129

about his rights, but it also inspired Aiden to address the incident in their classes as an example of the violent, and frequently hypocritical, deployment of moral discourse on sexuality. Here, shared kinship became the catalyst for a kairotic pedagogical moment. While painful bonds of kinship sometimes inspire possibility, at other times, they highlight the pedagogical impossibility of engaging at the lgbtq-rd. For instance, Will expressed skepticism about the lgbtq-rd, noting that students who offered religious discourse weren't "interested in going to another level" because "appeals to God [were] the grand authority." Will characterized such appeals as a refusal to learn, expressing exasperation that "a certain strain of Christianity has encouraged the stupidity of its members." To illustrate such pedagogical impossibilities, Will turned to his relationship with his siblings. He explained that while he was able to have conversations with his "intellectually curious," non-religious brother, dialoguing with his sister was nearly impossible, because her emphasis on being "as children to God" meant "not asking hard questions." For Will, this refusal to question violated one of his core beliefs. Switching to the academy, he added, "I'm trying to process why you'd come to college, as anything more than a hoop you'd have to jump through to make money to give to the offering plate. Like, I don't know. Part of me thinks that's just really not genuine. Like, [sexuality] is the only issue you're going to bring [religion] up in? You don't bring this up in your economics class at all . . . why is this?" Here, sibling kinship functioned as a catalyst for seeing pedagogical impossibility. In the case studies below, I discuss three other instances where interpersonal encounters with kin shape participants' understanding of pedagogical (im)possibility at the lgbtq-rd. Intimate Encounters with the Self at the LGBTQ-RD As three participants' stories evidence, pedagogical (im)possibilities at the lgbtq-rd can themselves become an emotional catalyst—one that causes a slippage between interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships. Here, participants' pedagogical reflections at the lgbtq-rd resurrect a ghost of their past student-selves, who painfully attempted to negotiate the lgbtq-rd. As a consequence of participants' resurrections, the boundaries blur between a pedagogical past and future, between the participant's past-student self and a current hypothetic student. This rupture causes participants to face an unhappy ghost, whose deployment of religious discourse caused harm to self and others. This humbling, intimate encounter, in turn, opens a window of pedagogical possibility at the lgbtq-rd. Participants' past student-selves function as an emotional palimpsest for understanding their present students. Facing their own opacity, in turn, allows participants to identify

130

with actual students whose deployments of religious discourse at the lgbtq-rd cause harm to self and/or others. For example, in thinking about the pedagogical opportunities at the lgbtq-rd, Trixie related a story about her previous life as a hetero-identified, fundamentalist teen. Very committed to her church's youth group, and accepting its lessons about sinfulness uncritically, Trixie broke up with her Catholic boyfriend because she was taught that Catholicism was a cult "because they pray to Mary when they should pray to Jesus. That's idolatry—and we know what the Bible says about idolatry in the Old Testament." She noted that she "really hurt him," and that the pain she caused was her "biggest regret in life." Commenting on her own violent use of religious discourse, Trixie reflected: That's one thing I would go back and change in my life. It's kind of crazy—and so from that kind of background to "Actually, let's learn the whole story"—because I had those arguments thrown at me and didn't get the whole story—so being able to have conversations with students about the whole thing, and "Why do you think this?" and "Let's look at the bigger picture." Because what I've found is so many of them are at that place that I was at, that they had been told this by their church and their parents, and they'd also been told not to question. Her relationship to her past student-self collapses onto her relationships to her current students. Arguably, while Trixie cannot "go back" to erase the hurt she caused, her going back does allow her to transform this pain into pedagogical possibility. This intimate encounter highlights, for Trixie, the importance of maintaining a dialogue with (conservative) Christian students, encouraging them to sort through "why they think what they do," and suggesting ways they might "look at the bigger picture." For Trixie, the bigger picture opens into larger questions about our accountability to others. In the following case studies, I examine two more moments where participants' intimate encounters with past student-selves resulted in pedagogical possibility at the lgbtq-rd. While this thematic analysis presents broad themes across my data set, I am unable to demonstrate here how each of these themes tend to overlap and inform each other. For that reason, it remains difficult to fully account for how these intimate encounters inform participants' pedagogical negotiations of the lgbtq-rd. In order illuminate the complexities of participants' stories, below, I present four flash-cases related to the theme of intimate encounters. Case Studies

131

While we are most familiar with how teachers rely on scholarly resources to negotiate classroom experience, we less often (if ever) discuss how teachers also draw upon their emotional resources in the classroom. As Kami, José, Jo, and TJ's stories evidence, while we might be tempted to exorcise our emotional responses to the classroom, they nevertheless have a way of creeping up on us. This is especially the case at a fraught intersection like the lgbtq-rd. And yet, as the second edition of these serial cases will illustrate, participants' intimate encounters—with literacy, with kin, with past student-selves—can become a rich resource for engaging at the lgbtq-rd. While Kami, José, Jo, and TJ all have different intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd, what unites their stories is an acknowledgement of pedagogy's emotional labor. This acknowledgement, in turn, allows each participant an avenue (even if precarious) to engage with students at the lgbtq-rd. Kami's Story—Theorizing Possibility from Pedagogical Impossibility Ever the rhetorician and student of rhetoric, Kami evidenced that the business of pedagogy never stops. Kami's life was its own site for pedagogy, a place for testing and theorizing the limits of rhetorical theory. This meant that the boundaries between classroom, activist, and intimate experience were necessarily permeable. Indeed, throughout her interview, Kami seamlessly articulated her thoughts on rhetoric by moving between these levels of experience. Building from her intimate encounters with activism and with kin, Kami observed that while addressing the lgbtq-rd was indeed arduous, it was also pedagogically important. Because Kami's intimate encounters at this intersection were frequently painful and frustrating, she observed that negotiating this intersection in the classroom was difficult because it was "so personal" and emotional for her. And because Kami refused to compartmentalize the person from the scholar, she was able to use this emotional framework to articulate both the pedagogical possibilities and impossibilities at the lgbtq-rd. In particular, Kami's story highlights three sites of (im)possibility. First, Kami's intimate encounters with kin influenced how she presented her teacherly identity in the classroom. As I noted in the previous portion of her story, Kami was always out to her students. The impetus for her outness boiled down to a refusal to compartmentalize, a refusal to pretend that "we teach and live in a world where queer people and queer issues don't exist." To illustrate the importance of her outness, Kami related a story to me about a time when she didn't come out to her students in class. This classroom encounter, she suggested, precipitated her eventual decision to out herself to students at the very beginning of class. The encounter took place toward the end of the semester, when students were working in groups and deciding what paper topic they would like to research and co-author together. In

132

making her rounds among student groups, Kami came across a group of students who were discussing "whether gays and lesbians should be allowed to adopt children," so she sat down and listened to their conversation. Some of the students in the group were sifting through the pros and cons of the issue—and the cons were largely informed by religious reasoning. Finally, one of Kami's students "looked at [her] and said, 'What do you think about this?'" Recalling her answer, Kami continued: "And I said, 'Well, I'm a lesbian, so yes, I think that a lesbian should be invited to adopt children.' And boy, I could feel my face just heat up. And I'm sure I turned bright red." Kami was unwilling to compartmentalize, unwilling to pretend that she didn't exist. Building from this story, Kami explained her hope that her queer difference in the classroom might inspire students to critically examine their own positionalities. She also hoped that students might be more willing to think through their own ideas about difference in general—where those ideas come from and what consequences they have for others. That said, however, Kami also noted that she chose not to disclose her atheist identification to students. When I asked her to clarify, Kami explained that while she didn't announce this positionality in class, she would have been willing to tell students if they asked. For many of her students, she added, the idea that Kami might not be Christian wasn't even on their radar as a possibility. But Kami also explained that her decision not to out herself as an atheist was also "complicated by the fact that [she was] not out as an atheist to her family." Similar to her classroom experience, Kami was out to her family as queer but not out as an atheist. Explaining the connections between the personal, the professional, and the pedagogical, Kami added: [My family members are] most of them pretty devout Mormons, and I just feel like that's one more thing I don't want to do. . . . But with my students—I mean this is true as coming out as queer too—but in my mind I'm thinking, If they think I'm an atheist, then they're really going to think that I dismiss everything they say and . . .[that I] am prone to demeaning their beliefs. . . . Maybe I was just tired of coming out in such dramatic things. You know, I just felt like coming out as queer was enough, and I didn't want to some other "weird minority" on the campus—because most of the people I work with are Christians. Drawing connections between her family, her students, and her colleagues, Kami expressed her belief that being "who [she was] authentically" always came with limits. Being completely honest about the complexity of her identifications might have created too much distance to maintain a relationship. Heterosexuality and Christianity, Kami implied, aren't simply privileged identifications;

133

they also establish the relationships between insiders and outsiders. For Kami, the prospect of dealing with another abject status was almost too much to bear. Moreover, it is telling that Kami articulated her desire not to be read as "some other 'weird minority'" within the context of her Christian colleagues. By this point in our interview, Kami had already recounted her experience at the ODE, where a homophobic colleague discredited Kami based on the assumption that she must also be an atheist because she was a lesbian. This, it seemed, was enough for her colleague to discredit Kami's stance on what counted as a legitimate issue of social justice. And Kami's colleagues' refusal to intervene only cemented her experience of abject outsiderhood. Moving between intimate and institutional encounters, Kami arrived at the supposition that tactical disclosures were a means of professional, pedagogical, and emotional survival. Kami's ability to navigate these relationships meant circumventing the lgbtq-rd. If life was indeed a teacher, it aptly illuminated the impossibilities that go along with the lgbtq-rd. Second, Kami's intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd shaped how she engaged with religious discourse in the classroom. During our interview, for instance, Kami noted her previous involvement in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. She left the church after her divorce, but she still experienced the church's ideology vicariously because her family members—and her adult children—still identified as Mormon. Knowing Kami's complex relationship to LDS as a discourse community, I asked Kami whether or not this literacy opened up an avenue for her to perhaps empathize with her (conservative) Christian students. Kami responded, "In the classroom if those things come up of course we will address them, but I'm not very good at it because it's so personal for me." She added: I will be very honest with you and say that I have so little regard for the Mormon Church, and I don't—I have empathy, but I also have a lot of anger. And I did not transfer this to my Christian students or my religious students. I tried to create a classroom in which everybody was respected, and so I think I did a good job of not silencing them and listening to them. And when they were writing about their faith, I think I did a good job of asking questions to help them think more about it. I was really careful never to say anything demeaning or dismissive or anything like that, but in my heart of hearts, I'm really angry at organized religion, and Mormonism in particular [. . .] For me, it's so oppressive and so discriminatory and it's so bad that it's really a real challenge for me to be respectful. But I can do it in class. . . . [A] couple of semesters before I left, at the end of the semester, [a female student

134

in my class] came to me and said, "I'm so glad I took your class. I know you used to be a Mormon, but I really appreciate your not making me feel like I was criticized." She said she felt like I respected her beliefs. And so I thought, Ok. That's good. That's good. We were able to have some conversations about Mormon culture because, of course, I know a lot about that. I know there are good thing about the church, but they just aren't enough. Here, while Kami had the literacy to engage with her religious students, this literacy was always tempered with anger. Indeed, throughout her interview, Kami expressed frustration with the ways that religion is used as a refusal to acknowledge the humanity, and civil liberties, of lgbtq people. In acknowledging her emotional response, however, Kami was able to make sure that her general feelings of anger at the lgbtq-rd didn't transfer into angry feelings toward her students. Clearly, Kami was able to engage with her religious students, and some students seemed to genuinely appreciate her level of engagement with them. And yet, for Kami, pedagogical possibility was tempered with impossibility. While Kami saw the lgbtq-rd as a relevant pedagogical intersection, her experiences had repeatedly illustrated that "the religious position and the queer-supportive position usually don't have common ground, and the differences are irresolvable." Life was indeed Kami's teacher, and it taught her to tread carefully. Third, and perhaps most importantly, while Kami's intimate encounters evidence the many impossibilities at the lgbtq-rd, these impossibilities didn't prompt her to write off this intersection completely. Indeed, it was clear that Kami drew from this impossibility as a resource. Sorting through the wreckage at the lgbtq-rd enabled Kami to reflect more deeply on the connections between rhetorics, ethics, and pedagogy. In theorizing these connections, Kami troubled the boundary between the personal and the pedagogical. For example, while Kami conceded that conversations at the lgbtq-rd seemed "impossible to have," she didn't agree with the common pedagogical assertion that the lgbtq-rd is irredeemably unproductive. Explaining her point, she observed that pedagogical impossibilities at the lgbtq-rd doesn't stem from a lack of logic or reason. Indeed, she noted a multitude of available scholarly resources that might help a person negotiate the lgbtq-rd. The real problem, she explained, was that to engage at the lgbtq-rd, a person has to be willing to listen. To flesh out her observation, she drew from two intimate encounters where logic broke down: [I]n some ways . . . the conversation is impossible to have. And on the other hand, I have this book called Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality—it's written by Jack Rogers—and he just takes the Bible and in a very scholarly way, he talks about what it says about homosexuality.

135

So it's not that you can't have that conversation. It's not as if there are those people who are not trying to resolve those sorts of difficulties. But my oldest son is a very smart man, but he's a Fundamentalist Christian. He's a Bible literalist, and it doesn't matter what anybody says to him. It doesn't matter that somebody has written a scholarly book about it. It doesn't matter because this is what he believes and this is what God told him and whatever. And you can't have the conversation, so unless people are willing—I don't know—unless they want to learn something, unless they think they have something to learn, then you can't have it. That sounds stupid—but there was a woman who just contacted me, and she said that one of my students had told her about me because he thought that I was open-minded and he knew I was a lesbian. She was a Christian and she was trying to figure out how to work to raise awareness of LGBT stuff. So we met and we had lunch, and then we met one more time. And as time went on, she finally had to admit that she didn't support same-sex marriage, and then it just went downhill really fast after that. Because I said, "Do you understand what you're saying about me if you think I am not worthy of the same rights that you have? Do you understand that?" And it was really like—no, she didn't understand that. And then she wrote me that she just attended her lesbian friend's wedding. And I said, "You didn't go to a wedding. They can't have a wedding in Kansas. They're not getting married; they can't get married here." So then she started to ask, "Well, why aren't you supporting the rights of those who want more than one wife or one husband? Why aren't you supporting the rights of people who want to do this and want to do that?" In both the examples that Kami offered, the refusal to listen has the same source. In different ways, it seems, both people are unwilling to relinquish an aspect of their privilege. While Kami's son is a "smart man," who could reasonably engage in a scholarly conversation at the lgbtq-rd, he was unwilling to listen (in part) because his world was already neatly ordered. He already had the answers, and listening to Kami would mean admitting to the possibility of being wrong. It would mean relinquishing the privilege that stems from religious righteousness. On the other hand, while Kami's acquaintance initiated the dialogue because she wanted to "raise awareness about LGBT stuff," her desire to engage had limits. For Kami's acquaintance, acknowledging Kami's point would mean relinquishing her heterosexual privilege—relinquishing her special rights within heterosexual marriage. Rhetoric, ethics, and pedagogy converge in Kami's observation at the lgbtq-rd. Rhetoric isn't simply about persuasion; it is also an address that requires another to listen. Indeed, as Kami noted

136

during her interview, so very rarely do we teach students to listen, even though listening might be the more daunting task. In listening to the other, there is always a risk that we will change—and in that changing we might give up something of ourselves. In short, in granting the humanity of another, we too might have to be willing to come undone. Kami also observed that another impossibility at the lgbtq-rd stems from a refusal to acknowledge emotion. Lgbtq issues, she explained, are never simply issues. People's stances on lgbtq issues always stem from relationships with people. And yet, particularly when it comes to those with anti-lgbtq stances, Kami noted, few are willing to acknowledge the emotional investments that bolster their views. In fact, Kami wagered, prohibitive stances on lgbtq issues might have little to do with religious belief. She illustrated this point by calling upon her relationship with her daughter: The example I'm thinking of is my daughter who is a pretty liberal Mormon. They support same-sex marriage. They support—they're pro-choice and everything--but we are not allowed to stay in their house because we're dangerous to their children . . . and what I said to her was that "You, and my parents and my brother and my sister, have not thought through what your special rules about me or what your betrayal says to me about who you think I am." You know? I thought, Screw it. You haven't thought about how personal it is to you and why it's so personal. Why you have taken this to—I mean they make rules that have nothing to do with the church, so it's very personal for them that they have this queer mother. And they just haven't thought it through, I don't think. In this instance, too, Kami highlights another key point about the connections between pedagogy, rhetorics, and ethics. In our insistence upon logic and critical thinking, we circumvent the ways that experience is always emotionally informed. In skipping this step, in refusing to acknowledge emotion, it becomes that much easier to insist that knowledge is simply a collection of facts. It becomes that much easier to deny that knowledge—what we claim to know and what we refuse to know—is always about human relationships. Finally, and related to this issue of human relationships, Kami observed that another impossibility of engaging at the lgbtq-rd stems from a refusal to relate. While refusals might stem from unexamined emotion or possessive investments in privilege, Kami argued that refusals to relate also stem from more everyday practices like compartmentalization. To maintain the status quo, Kami explained, some people siphon off their religious beliefs, regarding them as something completely disconnected to the actual people in their lives. The irony, Kami observed, is that this

137

kind of compartmentalization can flourish even with people who understand themselves as generally supportive of lgbtq issues. Illustrating this point, Kami related the following story: We were in Buffalo last Christmas, because that's where [my partner's] parents are, and her niece is a lesbian. She came out a couple of years ago, and she was sitting at the table with everybody—including her parents. [My partner's] sister, with whom she's very close, is this wonderful person. And we were talking about some other family who has a gay son, and they're Fundamentalist Christian. And I said—and I was looking at [my partner's] sister—I said, "I don't know how parents stay in a religion that oppresses and discriminates against their children. I don't understand it." I mean, I'm looking at her and I'm thinking, You've got a lesbian daughter, and you're just this devout Catholic. How in the world? But they don't think it through. And they figure out how to separate it out, and I . . . so that's a problem. And students do it, too. They separate things out so they can live with them. They put them aside or they cover them up so that they don't have to think about it, you know? Once again, Kami's story speaks to the connections between rhetoric, ethics, and pedagogy. Beliefs aren't ever simply beliefs. They are established through discourse, through persuasion, and the stories we tell about beliefs always materialize into actions. Beliefs, Kami observed, have consequences. An ethical relation to discourse then, it seems, would be to disrupt overtures to create homeostasis, overtures that insist that beliefs are simply personal. In disrupting this homeostasis, Kami's story suggests, we might see how we are always accountable to others for our beliefs. José's Story—Theorizing Pedagogical Possibility through Particularity Before and after taking my survey, and in the months leading up to our follow-up interview, José was in the midst of a series of significant transitions—many of which were extraordinarily tied to the lgbtq-religious junction. Up until very recently, José's intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd could be summed by the word compartmentalization. In order to maintain various relationships in his life, José had learned to operate within a series of disconnected worlds: the world of his church, the world of his family, and the world of academia—but in particular here, the world of the classroom. While José was out to himself and to his queer, academic friends at Hudson, he made a practice of deploying a tactical silence with regard to his sexuality when it came to the LDS church, his family in Texas, and his Hudson students. Within these spaces, José allowed church members, family members, and students to read him and infer what they would. This strategy was fine for José—until it wasn't anymore.

138

Around the time of Proposition 8, José decided to sever ties with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. While his family was Catholic, José converted to Mormonism on his own accord as a teenager, and Mormons had long since become a second family to José. Deciding to leave the church wasn't easy for him. In part, interactions with his Hudson students and with his queer, academic friends became a catalyst that prompted José to reevaluate his relationship with the church. These interactions, José acknowledged, put him a bit on the defensive. He explained: Remember those raids in Texas at the polygamous camps? That's whenever I had the most personal discussions of religion with my class, because they knew that I was Mormon. And so they'd say, "Did you see those Mormons on the news?" That was their response. And in queer circles it goes, "Did you see the Mormons on the news with Prop 8?" Like that kind of shit. It's always— the first situation was like, No, I don't belong to that particular— I mean mainstream Mormonism is not like that. Most Mormonism is very friendly. And of course, then Prop 8 happens and it's like, "OMG, mainstream Mormonism is crazy!" And of course in that moment, when I'm thinking about my personal experiences and the way that I discuss them with students, or with peers or colleagues, it was almost this kind of very defensive, No, but like this— I was there when they were reading the statements of people supporting the Defense of Marriage, and it never clicked with me. And I was like, OMG, this is what's going on? The church is consciously engaging in this project? . . . [An LDS official publication titled] "The Family: A Proclamation to the World" . . . just completely established heteronormativity: "This is a man and a woman. There's no blah, blah, blah." There's a paragraph about queer identity, and like it's not something that just happened—it's something that is actually being produced. Like, we're working up to this moment where one sentence appended to an article of the constitution of California actually denies people the civil right of marriage. One sentence! That is what people are passing legally. There's so much that's leading up to this. This is completely invoking a lot of these things that we can't dismiss. We can't dismiss it, especially in the classroom, if this is where people's thinking is being forged and molded and challenged. Initially, as José's narrative suggests, he dis-identified with his students and his queer, academic friends, who put him on the defensive. His students, José noted, thought that Mormonism was "strange" and interacted with him as if he were the cultural representative for all things Mormon. While José responded to their questions with good grace, their questions of José—including whether or not his "mother wore pioneer skirts" and "how many moms" he had in the first place—were

139

rather offensive. Their only points of reference, José observed, stemmed from sensationalist news stories about "polygamous camps" and (of course) the HBO series Big Love. As a result, José spent a lot of time trying to prove to his students that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints was, much to their chagrin, rather "normal." José attempted a similar tactic with his queer, academic friends, who took him to task for his LDS membership, in light of the church's recent support of Proposition 8 in California. Here, José's defensiveness stemmed from a different source: worlds collided when his queer, academic friends asked him to account for his association with a church so openly invested in denying marriage equality to lgbtq people. His strategy of compartmentalization came undone. Perhaps because of the constant bombardment from students and friends, or perhaps because of Proposition 8—or perhaps because of José's involvement in the church as a closeted gay Mormon—something clicked. José implied that while his strategy of compartmentalization enabled him to maintain a relationship with the Church, it also made him complicit in a violent hetero-normative project. Upon this realization, José explained, he "dropped the Church." Significantly, José also linked his story of compartmentalization to pedagogical possibility at the lgbtq-rd. Through narrative, José charts his past-self's trajectory of knowledge about the Church's agenda, moving through a passion for ignorance, willful denial, and finally acknowledgement. As he stated, there was indeed "so much leading up to" the LDS Church's involvement in Proposition 8. Not many years before Proposition 8, José explained, he sat in church and listened to the Church's proclamation of support for the Defense of Marriage Act. He quite literally witnessed the Church's institutionalization of the heterosexual, married couple—it just "never clicked with [him]." José's exclamation, "I was there," however, marks an acknowledgement that it "never clicked" because he couldn't bear to know his own complicity in heterosexist violence. This intimate encounter with his past-self allowed José to identify with the hypothetical resistant student at the lgbtq-rd. Moreover, his own "passion for ignorance"67 also illuminates the pedagogical importance of the lgbtq-rd (Britzman, Lost Subjects 57). José concluded his story with the collective imperative: "We can't dismiss it." On the heels of confronting his relationship to the Church, however, José's worlds collided again. Ironically, José observed, completing my survey questions about levels of academic "outness" (e.g. classroom, department, campus, campus community, and professional scholarship) caused him to confront yet another compartmentalization strategy in his life. Particularly, José explained, taking

140

a survey on the pedagogical implications of the lgbtq-rd prompted a realization that he wasn't out in his classrooms because he wasn't out to his family. He added: Yeah. Whenever I answered the survey, I was thinking about my family. I move from space to space, and that completely changes how people perceive me or how I perceive myself within a particular context. But I think the ultimate question to me was: Are you out to your family? And that for me meant "out." I don't know why for me that happened but it's like, I have to talk to my family, and once I talk to my family I can identify myself as "out." And I finally talked to my family this summer. So, after the survey, it just really stuck with me. So I was having this conversation with other people, and of course thinking about my own work, and I was like, Come on. I need to have this talk with them. And I did. But even then, looking back at the answer, it's still very much a relationship to space. Because this last week I ran into a person who attends the church that I used to go to here, and they saw me smoking, they saw my lip ring, and my eyebrow ring—all relatively new—and they're like, "When did you do this? When did you do that?" And I was eating with this friend of mine who happens to be a lesbian, and they're like, "Is this your girlfriend?" And I was like—This is so uncomfortable. And again it's like the fact that I have spoken to my family doesn't mean that I can just comfortably speak to them. Right? So I think a lot of that still applies, too. Here, José's relationship to his students merged with his relationship to his family members and his former church members. And after he eventually came out to his family, José noted that he was further emboldened to come out to his literature class. But for José, the connection between the personal and the pedagogical didn't simply boil down to the issue of being "out." Rather, his experience of compartmentalization at the lgbtq-rd illuminated larger pedagogical and political issues. Namely, José observed that his silence about his sexuality to his church, to his family, and to his students wasn’t simply an unmediated choice. Rather, his silence in these spaces was a response to a series of cultural expectations that seemed to demand he compartmentalize himself. Indeed, in Chapter 5, we saw that José's reticence to come out to his students in Texas was (in part) mediated by an institutional, hetero-normative expectation that queerness had no place in the department nor in the classroom. Moreover, when he eventually did come out to his Hudson students—who seemed so eager for him to disclose his sexual identity—they responded with shock. Because his students believed that "queer is weird . . . it's unnatural," José observed, they regarded his coming out as crossing a line. His intimate encounters elsewhere in his life, however, prompted

141

him to recognize the pedagogical possibility in refusing to compartmentalize himself in the classroom. José explained: I give them my history: "Here I am, getting my Ph.D. in literature. My brother just graduated from high school. My dad never learned English. He was a welder forever, and I come from generations of welders, who got here illegally. I'm like the first naturalized citizen. What do you do with that? . . . I dropped the church. I came out to my family. What do you do with that? Let's learn. Recognizing the discursive violence of these phrases, José told me that he made a strategic choice to "put [his] history at the forefront" in the classroom. But José also noted that students' shock doesn't materialize out of thin air; it comes from somewhere. To illustrate that point, he added that, as teachers, we are so often trained to use compartmentalizing phrases like "no show of hands." José's point is apt: while we might think that such phrases keep students safe from revealing too much, it also keeps them safe from recognizing knowledge as a human relationship. Illustrating his compartmentalization with regard to the Church, José noted that even after he came out to his family, he was still unable to come out to an overly inquisitive church member. Given José's fruitful evidence that the church expected—if not demanded—that queerness and religiosity mustn't overlap, his silence seemed a reasonable tactical maneuver for emotional survival. Still, José noted, the idea that queerness and religiosity couldn't coexist circulated within the popular imaginary as well. Indeed, drawing from his own experiences—and the experiences of his queer, Christian-identified friends—he also noted pressure from within the queer community to dis- identify with religiosity altogether. The irony of such pressure, he added, was that it "[gave] the finger" to religious communities that have been strong advocates for lgbtq social justice. But more importantly, José said, such binaries also rob lgbtq-identified people the opportunity to look for— and to create—moments of "queer possibility" in all aspects of their lives. Working from this experience of compartmentalization, José made a case for proliferating queer possibilities in academia. Particularly, he lamented the way in which some scholars perpetuate the queer-religious binary through outright dismissiveness of religion. To illustrate the pedagogical importance of resisting compartmentalization at the lgbtq-rd, José added: There's this small group in California that has tried to establish a queer Mormon thing. And that's very interesting, because I don't understand how that could happen, but I'm not willing to completely shut down how people are trying to read. Because if we're thinking about religion or the Bible, I mean, that's interpretation. And of course that's another big question

142

in religion: Is it interpretation or do you take it by the letter of the law? And so as a scholar I think everything is interpretive, so I think that certainly we need to think critically about those interpretations. And what about the queer possibilities in these texts? And for me, there's nothing absolute. Why can't we think that there's a queer possibility within these texts—spiritually or just discursively? There's something. There's always this space for that. And dismissing is just a disservice. In José's earlier narrative, he cautioned teachers against dismissing the lgbtq-rd for fear that the powerful (and sometimes harmful) force of religious discourse would circulate unchecked. This articulation of pedagogical possibility centered upon providing students with the critical literacy to engage religious discourse in various publics. Here, however, José's articulation of pedagogical possibility stems from a different source. Literacy practices are also about survival. In response to a pervasive binary that divests queers of religious-moral agency, literacy practices can also be transgressive. In repeating religious narratives with a critical difference, literacy can also create moments of "queer possibility" where there were none before. In dismissing religion outright, José observed, teacher-scholars may inadvertently limit pedagogical possibilities at the lgbtq-rd. But compartmentalization doesn't simply occur along queer/religious lines. Drawing from his experiences with his family, José illuminates another cultural expectation: that queerness and brown-ness mustn't overlap—and if they do happen to overlap, then one mustn't talk about it. To illustrate the pervasiveness of this type of compartmentalization, José links intimate encounters with family to intimate encounters with Chicano/Chicana literacy—and to intimate encounters with his previous experience as a closeted gay Mormon. Worlds collide once again: [Manuel Muñoz] identified as a queer writer before he identified as a Chicano writer. And then like he comes out in the nineties with this novel called The Faith Healer of Olive Avenue, which would be an intersecting thing, but why do you put Chicano identity at the forefront whenever you are identifying as Chicano as opposed to [when you are identifying] as a queer writer? Because there is rarely any— I mean, there's mention of religion in this novel but it's just like: What gives!? It's the same thing with the poets responding to SB 1070: it's sponsored by a queer, Chicano poet—and a lot of the rhetoric that's coming out of the poetry is not at all queer. It's just like responding to race. At what point does queerness have to take a step back in order for race discourses to actually come to the forefront? It's very interesting. . . . From the Chicana/Chicano studies perspective, we also have Richard Rodriguez, self- proclaimed Mexican-American model of assimilation success but it's hard to even talk about

143

it without even getting mixed up with that—for me—because I come from a very different perspective of this like faux-Protestant tradition intersecting with the Catholicism of my parents and my negotiations of like queer identity. And, for me, that's something that I had to deal with. . . . Of course [Rodriguez is] like this über-conservative-assimilation-Catholic guy. And like the resistance is to completely be like: Oh, well whatever. How is it that you and your partner are sitting there on the back bench, as devout Catholics, without being able to actually engage with the community? And, for me, it's just—I think that those are interesting questions to think about—not just like, "Oh. Well, I'm Catholic." No! We need to resist those discourses. And this is at a personal level. If that's the kind of stuff that people, like the media, are like, "We need a brown person to talk; we're going to get this guy." And we need to develop these kinds of discourses. And to me, what a better place to actually play with those counter- discourses than in the classroom? Here, José illustrates three different moments where queer-identified Chicano activists, writers, and scholars compartmentalize their queerness to bring race discourses to the forefront. The expectation that a person compartmentalize, José suggested, stems from an underlying assumption that the queer, brown body—if not the queer, brown, religious body—is too much. While compartmentalizing might be a tactical move for survival—or to garner recognition as a human being—accounting for oneself in such limited ways comes at a huge cost. Drawing from this experience of compartmentalization, José articulated English Studies pedagogy as a site of queer possibility—at the lgbtq-rd and beyond. Once again, possibility stems from queer literacy practices. For José, it seems, such literacy begins through examining the cost of compartmentalization. What does it mean, for example, that a queer- and religious-identified brown person can only "engage with the community" through violent narratives of assimilation? Furthermore, what is the use of compartmentalization when the only acceptable body becomes the one stripped of the human particularities of both queerness and brown-ness, and when the only bodies that can be heard are the ones telling an assimilationist story? In short, José's story lays bare our collective accountability to others for how we choose to read and write the world. Keeping these questions in mind, pedagogical possibility emerges through playing with discourse, resisting expectation, and carving out more generous ways to be seen as human. As José's story seems to illustrate, such pedagogical possibility includes—but necessarily exceeds—engaging at the lgbtq-rd. Jo's Story—Theorizing "Survival" as Radical Hospitality

144

Initially, I had the hardest time locating a narrative thread for Jo's story. During our interview, she described her pedagogical and personal negotiations at the lgbtq-religious junction as a means of "survival," a form of "self-erasure," and as "a denial of self." Jo didn't then—nor does she now—think of herself as particularly empowered at the lgbtq-rd, in or outside of the classroom. With her family, her friends, and her colleagues, Jo had experienced cruel and violent indifference at the lgbtq-rd. Perhaps out of all the participants, her intimate encounters most warranted a self- protective disengagement from this intersection. Indeed, she admitted several times that she understood the academic imperative to dismiss the lgbtq-rd completely. Yet in spite of this admission, her stories indicate that Jo engaged at the lgbtq-rd more than most, and in ways that put her sense of self at risk. Something wasn't adding up. If this was a survival mechanism, it didn't seem like the best strategy. So I called Jo, trying to understand what seemed to me such an obvious contradiction. I flat-out asked her why she chose to engage so generously at a volatile intersection like the lgbtq-rd when the payoff seemed so bleak. In reply, Jo said, "Well, I guess if I thought that it was all hopeless, I wouldn't have anything to live for, now would I?" And then it clicked. I had mistaken Jo's use of the word "survival" to mean self-preservation. In contrast, Jo's intimate encounters had shown her that, to make a life worth living, she would have to risk herself. In order to illuminate her perspective of pedagogical possibility, I interpret what Jo believed to be her "crowning classroom narrative" as a palimpsest for her intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd. Jo's story took place at Banting University, where she taught first-year writing before returning to grad school. In one of her writing courses, Jo was just beginning to teach rhetorical analysis, and the only viable piece in the reader was a pro/con piece on gay marriage. Looking back, Jo said that choosing a pro/con piece "was a mistake, because it oversimplifies an argument," but she also acknowledged that she was still "a newbie teacher" and it was easy for her students to access texts from the course reader. In any case, Jo said, her initial reaction to the prospect of teaching the text could be summed up with the phrase "doggone it." Jo was reluctant to use the piece: Up to that point, I would say there was a good community in that classroom. But at that particular time . . . I was going through really hard times with being accepted as gay in my family, being gay in the South, and having a group of lesbian friends, and figuring out how we were going to hang out in public together. How "out" should we be?— just having to negotiate that in my personal life so incredibly much, all the time, that the last thing I wanted to do was go to school and have to deal with it again. You've got so much homophobia to

145

have to deal with in your personal life and then you have to deal with it in your professional life. It's almost as if there is no safe space, no place where you can just be a person, a friend, a scholar, a family member, without also being a political issue. That was another reason, too, because I was having these same religious arguments used against me outside of the classroom. . . . But you talk about the lgbtq-religious junction, I mean, that was something that I was having to deal with quite a bit in my personal life. . . . I was hoping it wouldn't "go there," but my fear was that it would—and it did. Jo's anxiety stemmed from feeling embattled. Geographically, discursively, emotionally—and then professionally—Jo felt that she had no "safe space" to go. Significantly, her sense of safety wasn't about siphoning herself off; it was about being able to move through these spaces as a person. While teaching a pro/con piece on gay marriage might seem banal for a scholar with a different positionality, for Jo, taking on this topic felt like a very real risk to herself. But as Jo said, it did indeed "go there." Jo told me that she initially attempted to talk about rhetorical strategy while circumventing discussions of belief, but her students "weren't having it." Right off of the bat, "They wanted to talk about: Gay Marriage: Is It Right or Wrong?" Jo recounted the general points of the discussion: I had a student speak up and say, "Well, gay marriage is just wrong, because marriage is between a man and a woman." And somebody asked the question, "So what authorizes you to say that marriage is between a man and a woman? What is your authority to say that?" And a student speaks up and says, "Well, it says this clearly in the Bible. God made man and woman to procreate." You know, common arguments. And then I had a student speak up, she was one of my more outspoken students—one of my stronger writers—who spoke up and said, "Ya know, we can't do that. We can't bring religion into this discussion. Marriage, ya know, is a civil issue. You can't let personal, religious beliefs taint how you view this argument." . . . Then she said, "My personal belief, for example, is that marriage is between a man and a woman, because God says that's the way it is, but I have to take that out because there is a separation between church and state." So although she personally believes that God says one thing, she was saying that this is personal, and we have to take this out if we're debating civil issues. . . . And if I'm remembering correctly, there was a move to talk about it without mentioning religion—taking a cue from the outspoken student I mentioned before. Already for Jo, her biggest fear had materialized. Intimate encounters and pedagogical encounters collided. Still, when she had the chance to shut the conversation down, she didn't. The conversation

146

ignited a passion in her students. She felt that to shut it down would be dismissive. But more than that, Jo identified with her students. She was once a first-generation college student, who also struggled to find balance between her religious life and her scholarly life. Remembering a past student-self, alongside her current experience of self-erasure, Jo also empathized68 with the pressure her students must have felt to "divide themselves up and perform a certain identity." This was something she knew well. Drawing from this experience, Jo added that academics oftentimes operate under the assumption of an "ideal classroom, where we have secular discussions and talk theory," but they rarely call into question how these "white, upper-middle-class" values also privatize belief. As a result, she said, we reinforce the idea that an examination of beliefs is off limits. This is particularly troubling for rhetorical theory, Jo explained: "I mean you have to interrogate where belief comes from. Beliefs don't just arise. Belief is something that's communicated, articulated, constructed." More still, Jo said, in circumventing belief we also run the risk of circumventing human connections. To illuminate this point, she referred back to her students' negotiation of the lgbtq-rd: I want to say too and emphasize students were bringing the personal into it. . . . People were sorting through it, not just by sticking to pure logic. . . . Students had to think of people they knew, and if it wasn't a gay person they knew, it was someone else they knew who they loved. . . . And those personal stories had to come up, I think, for students to complicate ideas and the conceptions of humanity they were borrowing from to think through an issue. It's hard to theorize humanity without thinking of particular humans, you know? While Jo acknowledged fear that students would bring up religious discourse and that she wouldn't "know where it's going to go" or that "discussion [would] get volatile," she ultimately believed that wading through that uncertainty wasn't such a bad thing. Not only were her students more willing to "sort through the scholarship," but in bringing their personal identities to bear on the topic, they were also able to see "how they're not separate—the people they care about [are not separate]— from a scholarly issue." Of course, to get to those human connections, sometimes students had to do quite a bit of wading. Jo recalled that many of the religious points that students offered also tended to question the humanity of others. One student, for example, spoke up and said, "If God says something about gay people, then their rights as citizens should be judged based upon what God says about them as people." Her student's point, Jo reflected, was that "gay marriage [should be] understood not just in terms of your rights as a citizen but in terms of your value as a person—which is dictated by

147

religious authority that comes from God, as written in one text, the Bible." Even the people who attempted to take up for gay marriage accepted as a given that gayness was sinful. For instance, another student compared her gay friend "who does really good things" to a straight person she knew who did "all kinds of things . . . that the Bible says is wrong." The crux of this argument, Jo observed, came down to one question: "Is one sin greater than another sin?" In response to these kinds of arguments, Jo said, "I asked a lot of questions—carefully." She was hyper-aware of her lack of institutional support, and hyper-aware that what she might offer as an interrogation could be read as an attack. She was also aware that when she asked a student to ponder his move to "reduce an entire person to a behavior that [he] disagree[d] with" that she was such a person. For Jo, this produced a kind of double-consciousness: I work hard to balance this professional I'm a scholar vs. the more personable I want to share just like I'm asking my students to share. But . . . that particular day, when I realized the conversation was going in the direction I didn't want it to, part of me went into this kind of performance of a "professional identity". . . because, ultimately, I mean— this debate became in a lot of ways—the issue was about the worth of human beings: citizens as compromised because they were an immoral group of people. I was part of this group, after all. My worth as a human being was up for grabs. To deal with this, I remember trying to look at it, to tell myself, Ok, I'm not a human being . . . I'm a scholar. . . . And it's difficult to do, but I think at that moment I did that, too, because I didn't want all the emotional baggage I had to come up and cause me to get emotional or break down. In spite of—or perhaps because of—Jo's experience of coming undone, she also manages to identify with the students using Christianist, heterosexist arguments. Interestingly, Jo told me that her students reminded her of a sixteen-year-old version of herself. Though Jo came out in middle school, she had continued to repeat those same religious arguments up until the point that she reached college. What people didn't understand, Jo said, was that the Bible functioned as a public text in the South. It was a way to create connections with strangers, a way to maintain connections with family. Much like her students, Jo said, "I was brought up Protestant, believing that the Bible was the word of God, foundational truth, clearly accessible by me and knowable by me. You have the Bible: that's the only book you really need to be a literate person." Community was forged through certainty, and uncertainty was so threatening that even questions were posed so that the only possible answer was "yes." Many children in the area, including Jo, grew up with Southern Baptist, Pentecostal, or African Methodist

148

Episcopalian69 (AME) lenses, among others. And so much of belonging hinged upon accepting and repeating those stories without question. While Jo acknowledged that some of her students' arguments were troubling, she also saw something important happening. Jo explained, "Even those students who were saying problematic things, it was the kind of discussion where even they would say something and question themselves." More still, she said, "Even though many were Christian, they were willing to challenge each other's interpretations of the same religious text: the Bible." In sharing her students' intimate encounters with religious literacy, Jo was able to see the possibilities just underneath the surface. Certainly, while Jo understood that her investment in rethinking the lgbtq-rd was different than most of her students' investments, opening up a rare window to articulate religious narratives within the context of uncertainty—within the context of questioning—just might have been the radical seed that encouraged students to change the story. Jo wasn't, however, operating under the illusion that students' use of religious discourse was "always innocent." She had seen too many times in her own life how "religious discourse work[ed] as a bludgeon." Even so, she expressed a tempered hope that college might give her students "new lenses" for seeing the world. This in turn shaped her understanding of pedagogy. On the one hand, Jo said, her experiences made her critical of the "blanket statement that when students use religious discourse that 'They're just not seeing' and that 'This type of religious discourse is a refusal to learn or to complicate beliefs.'" In giving them the space to go there, Jo said, "I've had students who were willing to interrogate and move beyond definitive statements that begin and end with 'The Bible says X.'" On the other hand, Jo's experience had also cautioned her to be suspicious of pedagogical narratives that advocated "respecting students' beliefs" to the point of not questioning them. She commented, "No. I believe that if you bring it to class, it should be interrogated." Remembering her own experiences in undergrad, Jo had seen firsthand how a queasiness about questioning students' beliefs resulted in an experience of marginalization for lgbtq students. Remembering her own experiences of being "on the receiving end" of heterosexism in the classroom, Jo added that teachers need to be more cognizant that their lgbtq students "hear everything their peers are saying, and they pay attention to every little move you're making and everything you're saying to speak up on their behalf—or not." Jo told me that she always assumed that she had at "at least one gay student" in her classroom. So while she was willing to engage the lgbtq-rd, she was also unwilling to allow harmful religious discourse to "go by unchecked, un- interrogated." In a sense, Jo was simultaneously teaching to two iterations of her past student-selves.

149

In this particular course, there was indeed an lgbtq-identified student in the class, and she did in fact watch every move that Jo made. Her African-American lesbian student, who was widely known to be an "out" butch on campus, "almost had an amused look, as if she were predicting the movements in the conversation: Uh yeah, yes. I knew that this statement was coming. Yeah. Predictable." Up until the end of the period, the student had just been listening—taking in her peers' anti-lgbtq religious arguments. Then she stepped into the conversation, and working from her peers' religious arguments, she not only complicated their literalist readings of the Bible but she also questioned their assertion that heterosexuality was "universally preferred" across all world religions. Reflecting on her student's classroom ethos, Jo said, "It was clear that she had a lot of religious literacy." Not only did her peers listen to her, but it was "clear that she had moved many of her peers." Even her staunch, religious conservative peers respected her arguments, making comments to the effect of, "Heh. That's interesting. I would have never thought of that." Reflecting further on her student's entrance into the conversation, Jo acknowledged that part of what might have inspired the student to speak up had little to do with Jo's ability to facilitate an engaging conversation. Jo also believed that her student felt a kind of kinship toward her, precisely because she was able to read Jo as a lesbian. Jo recounted her interaction with her student: I mean, I can't be certain, but during the discussion, she just kind of leaned back and listened patiently—as if she were taking all of the information in and waiting for her moment to speak up. And the entire time the classroom discussion was happening, she would make eye contact with me at particular points—reading me while she was reading the discussion. There was this kind of recognition. . . . In a lot of ways I wonder . . . if there was kind of an awareness in that situation that I was working a role: asking questions and complicating, right? And I wonder if she didn't take a cue, too. I mean— because I talked to this student afterwards—but I wonder if her reading me as a lesbian, and seeing me take on a particular role, if she was able to take up a different role, in a sense, and make statements instead of asking questions. While Jo makes a convincing case that her student read her as lesbian, it also seems possible that her student's affinity toward Jo stemmed from a butch-femme dynamic. Jo's narrative also suggests that her student recognized that Jo's ability to engage at the lgbtq-rd was in part due to her stealth femme gender performance. Perceiving Jo's conscripted "role" of asking questions, her student took a "cue" to step in and "make statements." In a follow-up interview, Jo confirmed my reading that a butch- femme dynamic was in play. Commenting further, Jo added that this dynamic hinged upon the

150

particularities of place and class, because in the Midwest, her Southern, working-class gender performance was rarely recognized as femme. But feelings of kinship worked both ways. Jo told me that she also saw in her student a glimpse of herself as a first-year student in college. Growing up as a lesbian teen in the South, Jo told me, religious literacy was a form of survival. In her middle school and high school years, Jo told me, she engaged in close readings of the Bible, because she felt that she was "written out of the Bible—out of Christianity." But coming to college opened up whole fields of academic inquiry, like religious studies, that weren't before available to Jo. This new literacy was a lifeline. She explained: My relationships with my family—the ones who taught me to believe that the Bible is the unquestioned word of God that doesn't invite different interpretations or historicizing or contextualizing—convincing my family members and having relationships with my family— to get them to see me as a person and not a sinful act—has required that I have a religious literacy and that I'm able to talk the Bible with them. For me to just go to them and say, "Here's some queer theory," for example, that's just not going to work because it's a completely different language from the one they know. It's really simple but a lot of it goes back to Burke's identification: I recognize that you have a certain perspective, that you view this text in this particular way, and to a large extent, I can understand where you're coming from—because I used to be there. How can I have a conversation with you and help you think through the things that I had to think through so that I'm not dismissing your religious beliefs, but I'm also not willing to let you compromise my humanity based upon your reading of a text? For me it's largely about complicating a relationship to a text. When I say survival, a lot of the relationships I have with my family I have because I did a lot of reading and researching, and I had to look at the Bible more critically. . . . That's what I mean. Watching her student in class brought to mind Jo's earliest inaugurations into rhetoric, into academic inquiry. Jo recognized the rhetorical moves her student made with her peers as not so unlike the moves that she had to make (and continues to make) with her family members. Furthermore, in making this connection to her student, Jo was also able to articulate the pedagogical import of the lgbtq-rd. While queer theory offered her insight into heteronormativity, into discourses of normalcy, survival came for her through translating that insight into the everyday talk of religious discourse. It meant merging theory with rhetorical praxis. More still, Jo's story indicated, the critical study of discourse isn't a game of persuasion: lives are at stake.

151

And perhaps Jo's students caught a glimpse of the seriousness of their classroom conversation. Many students stayed after class to ask Jo her thoughts on the discussion, but Jo dodged their questions by posing more questions. She told me that she didn't want to take away from her lesbian student's closing comments. There was also an added level of irony here for Jo, in the sense that her students likely wanted to know her opinion because they read her as straight. Had her students known that she was gay, Jo told me, not only would they have read her as "biased" but they might have also been unwilling to let down their guard in class. For many of the students, what seemed to guarantee their safe passage through the lgbtq-rd was Jo's self-erasure. Jo told me that this dynamic was something she "constantly wrestle[d] with," adding that it made "something as simple as establishing rapport as a fellow human being—not just a scholar, a teacher, a professional identity—difficult." Jo's commitment to navigating the lgbtq-rd hinged upon her willingness to momentarily throw herself into crisis. While Jo's wrestling with "coming out" should not be diminished, it is clear that this act of self-erasure allowed her to take great risks in the classroom. Many times, this risk felt like a risk of self. For example, because of the very real pain she experienced outside of the classroom, Jo didn't like to talk about lgbtq issues in general—but she did. Knowing how religious discourse had been used as a bludgeon in her life, and being hyper-aware of the lack of institutional support she had, Jo also didn't like to talk about religion. But she did. And in spite of the ways in which lgbtq issues and religious discourse intersected so violently in her life, and in spite of her stated preference to "not go there," Jo went there with her students. As I said, it was not initially clear to me how Jo's story was about survival—that is, until Jo said, "Well, I guess if I thought it was all hopeless, I wouldn't have anything to live for—now would I?" Survival wasn't just about self-preservation; siphoning herself off from others, or dismissing the lgbtq-rd, wasn't going to work. Given her own experiences, she very well knew how a life could become unlivable, and this showed Jo how much the lgbtq-rd mattered. Her sense of inhumanity, experienced through the repetition of community discourse, caused her to locate pedagogical possibility through changing the stories that we tell about community: who belongs and who doesn't, who can be seen as human and who will be seen as less than human. To change that story of community, Jo adopted a stance of radical hospitality.70 While engaging at the lgbtq-rd caused a painful slippage between past and present selves, Jo's willingness to inhabit this emotional space also allowed her to recognize a part of herself in every student, even those whose beliefs questioned her humanity. TJ's Story—Theorizing Queer Possibility through Divine Possession

152

TJ's intimate encounters began with his reading of Gloria Anzaldúa's scholarship. He was already very invested in feminist and lgbtq issues of social justice, and before reading her work, he worked under the assumption that his political and academic commitments couldn't coexist with a Christian identification. Explaining this, he commented: My own journey is interesting to me for a couple of reasons—particularly my faith journey and how that has sort of informed my pedagogical interests and my research interests. I did not always and have not until really—just the last couple of years—identified as a Christian. It was really reading Gloria Anzaldúa that helped me see that as a possibility for me—not that she takes up that position, obviously. But she is somebody who writes so powerfully about the range of identities that one can take on, the range of social justice work that can happen, and the affinities that inform and ground that work. And for her, and she articulates this in many places, a commitment to non-hierarchical, indigenously-informed spiritual practice that was central in motivating her political work. In a certain way, she was political because she was spiritual. TJ's intimate encounters with academic literacy made possible a spiritual coming together of "a whole range of [his] identities." This is a very unexpected story of religious conversion. Very rarely, I suspect, is one's Christian identification inaugurated through the academic writings of a Chicana lesbian feminist and spiritual activist. There is an added level of irony in TJ's conversion story in the sense that he shared, with many lgbtq-identified people, a painful experience of compartmentalization. While it is worth noting that TJ's white, cisgender, gender-normative, and hetero identifications lend themselves more easily to the possibility of bringing together dislocated selves, his queer baptism (of sorts) became the catalyst that inspired TJ's active engagement at the lgbtq-religious junction. Indeed, TJ acknowledged that his positionality has empowered him to actively seek out the lgbtq-rd as an aspect of a social justice pedagogy. When I asked him about his motivations for engaging at this intersection, TJ replied that being an ally for him meant entering into "the struggle . . . to bring about a more just world and to stand with people who are excluded and marginalized." But TJ added that his pedagogical investment in lgbtq social justice is not politically motivated but religiously inspired. As a Christian ally, TJ believed that he was ethically implicated to challenge the ways that (conservative) Christian discourse has been deployed to "demonize" and "exclude" lgbtq people.

153

In more sectarian terms, TJ noted, this ethical claim might be captured in this address: "I need you in order to be fully human, and we need all the diversity and all the multiple manifestations of human life in order to be the most full realization of what God is and what God wants for the world." Articulating how this ethical claim plays itself out in the classroom, TJ added: The resurrection message of Jesus, that we have the power to redeem life in the midst of death, provides me with hope and holds out the promise of a world transformed and healed by justice. For me, this is the work of writing and the teaching of writing. Another world is possible, and we are just writing it into existence. Feminist and antiracist perspectives help me undertake this work, but the primary terms in which I understand all my labor— including my teaching at the LGBT-religious discourse intersection—come from my engagement with the Christian tradition. My encounter with Christ teaches me that God actively desires every person to have an abundant life, not bare life. God wants justice and peace to kiss; She does not want to have precariousness unevenly distributed so that some people are more vulnerable to hurt and harm. . . . This identity I carry with me into the writing classroom. For TJ, the resurrection message wasn't about waiting for things to get better in the afterlife; it was about an ethical responsibility to write a new life into existence. Noting the recent news reports on queer teens' suicides, TJ added that religious discourse is more than just words—just beliefs. It can create "a culture of death." But he added that this culture of death also makes ethical claims on educators more generally—laying bare the imperative to create pedagogies that challenge the "linguistic violence" that makes death seem like the only attractive possibility. For that, TJ said, "We are responsible." In thinking about this collective, disciplinary responsibility and in lieu of the general squeamishness when it comes to addressing the lgbtq-rd in the classroom, I asked TJ how he might highlight the importance of this intersection for his colleagues. Speaking of his home field of rhetoric and composition, TJ immediately answered that the lgbtq-rd "brings into high relief some of the things that really haunt us, that discursively haunt us." Clarifying this point further, TJ explained: My thought is if we as a discipline and academics can think about being haunted or being discursively possessed or produced (by something like heteronormativity or neoliberal capitalism), then we also have the potential for divine possession or divine work—for spirit as this thing moving forward or moving in us as this thing that is discursively involved and materially involved. And haunting is a part of that—and not haunting as a bad thing but as this

154

thing that consistently invites destabilization. As this thing that invites us to remember who is here and who is not here, and why and why not. Drawing again from his intimate encounters with religious literacy, TJ expresses the wish that those in his field who might simultaneously "wish to disturb the universe but prefer not to" might understand themselves as discursively haunted (Britzman, "Painful Resistance" 247). If educators allow themselves to become possessed by the queer patron saints, TJ suggested, this possession might destabilize pedagogical complicity and reinvigorate the connections between the discursive and the material. This divine haunting might remind teachers that, especially in their pedagogies, lives are at stake. Not surprisingly, TJ's sense of the "divine work" of pedagogy also informed how he developed his second-year writing course. From the beginning, TJ noted that one of his goals was to get students to think about religion itself "as a kind of literacy not as the always already truth—given from God, directly to whomever it was given to, and however they got it." This emphasis on literacy as "co-constructed and socially situated," TJ explained, was not to discount people's profound emotional claims to religious identities, communities, and belief structures. The problem, he claimed, was that when emotion becomes unhinged from literacy, belief discourses can easily be used as a bludgeon. To "unsettle" his students' assumptions about the consequences of belief discourses, TJ told me, he began his class by showing students video clips of a SoulForce protest at Liberty University, an evangelical institution founded by Jerry Falwell. So we look at those [video clips] . . . to pay attention to what binaries are at work. How are things coming into opposition with each other? Where do we align ourselves? Where have we seen these? For example, have we ever seen LGBT people on a college campus—on a Liberty University campus—lying down, sort of "dying-in" to say: Students here are queer. There are some, and they are dying in the closet in this space. And we are going to stand in solidarity with them. And so where is the possibility for that conversation in our general public discourse? The point of this exercise is to highlight the harm of religious binaries—that queerness and Christianity cannot co-exist—and to show the very real, material consequences of this belief. The implication here is profound: when we assume that our beliefs are simply private, or when we assume that beliefs are eternal and unchanging, we siphon ourselves off from an ethical relationship to others. We refuse to see how we are accountable to others for the harm of our beliefs. Emphasizing this sense of accountability to others in a different way, TJ also noted his commitment as a Christian ally and as a rhetorician to "model opportunities for connection, for

155

coalition across lines of faith difference." To do that, TJ centered the course around the overlap between public and religious discourses, and he assigned course texts that spoke to a range of faith perspectives and non-faith perspectives. TJ explained that his goal was to "talk about the ways in which sexuality and spirituality intersect or don't intersect—or exist only in binary opposition to one another, rather than coalesce with one another in multi-varied forms." To capture the ethical heartbeat of the course, TJ explained: I am really interested in entering with students into situations, reading texts that absolutely undo that or challenge the assumption that we are separate—like Gloria Anzaldúa talking about . . . "I am interconnected with all the world, with the waters of the oceans with other human beings, with all living creatures"—this really intense idea of being interconnected with all that is, and that out of that experience of connectedness, there is also infinite diversity and variety, and sexual experience and sexual variety can take infinite forms. And that it's diversity within wholeness, and it's this really interesting interplay, and that is not captured in a FOX News clip about [laughs] about you know whatever . . . . In short, TJ was not interested in presenting a FOX News: Fair and Balanced approach to belief discourses, nor was he interested in presenting the idea that all beliefs were simply relative. This emphasis on "diversity through wholeness" meant to showcase an infinite relationship to others that mustn't ever be foreclosed. TJ explained that being "a spiritual person" also shaped his relationships to students. TJ explained his practice of "being a loving witness" in both his face-to-face interactions with students and in responding to their writing. In facilitating discussion, he explained, it is important to encourage students to relinquish their preconceptions at the lgbtq-rd, to instead begin with the assumption "that we do not know" and work from that assumption to begin to hear others. Related to this, TJ added that being a loving witness also means helping students see "the potential for fruitful embarrassment." Inevitably, TJ commented, students will "say something that is just not right." In those moments, being a loving witness means taking up those problematic statements in classroom conversation and teaching students "not to be afraid of that moment of shame but to see it as this thing that can produce new knowledge and make a new subject in light of that experience." Finally, TJ said, being a loving witness also means keeping in mind that students are always in the process of becoming—and to let ourselves as teachers be okay with that. Appropriately, his dialogue came full circle. Returning to the guidance of Anzaldúa's spiritual activism, TJ concluded, "I really do believe . . . that the change, even a minor change in another person, really does potentially lay the

156

groundwork for a new idea that's encountered—even it if doesn't take, even if the person doesn't know what to do with it—that that has a potentially long-term useful effect." Teaching at the lgbtq- rd meant having faith, even as small as a mustard seed. *** So what is the larger significance of participants' stories? For one thing, in sorting through their intimate encounters, some participants were able to respond to their students more generously when religious discourse and lgbtq issues intersected in their classrooms. Indeed, participants' stories reflect Laura Micciche's notion of intersubjectivity, which she describes as not just "listening for and responding only to sameness—for confirmation of what one already thinks or believes" but acknowledging difference "as a means of recognizing others and of being recognized" ("Emotion, Ethics" 179). This process for Micciche creates a necessary blurring of the boundaries of self and other, and like Butler's notion of the ethical relationship, Micciche claims that when this process is averted we are "prevented from developing empathy for others who, in their presumed difference, are conceived as totally unreachable, as beings whose difference marks them so totally as to render them unrecognizable" ("Emotion, Ethics" 179). We see this, for example, in Jo's ability to connect with (conservative) Christian students at Banting University. Though the religious discourse her students deployed in the classroom contributed to a stressful classroom environment as a closeted teacher, and though it also contributed to a local and national discourses that made it dangerous for her to be "out" in the first place, Jo recognized in her students the importance of religious ties as community narratives in the South. In a different vein, we see this in the way José drew from his intimate encounters as a former Mormon, who remained silently complicit in his oppression as a closeted gay man. Here, José had seen something "unspeakable" in himself, something that was not so unlike his (conservative) Christian students' complicity in oppression. In both of these accounts, to see their students as reachable, these participants drew from their own intimate encounters to practice an "ethical recognition" (Butler, Giving an Account 179). Both believed that navigating the lgbtq-rd was crucial for these students, but at the same time that they practiced a radical hospitality in acknowledging students' need to talk it out, neither of them were willing to allow oppressive discourse to go unchecked in their classrooms—religious or not. That said, drawing from these intimate encounters did cost participants something. In allowing themselves to connect with their students, they also risked something of themselves. For instance, a condition of negotiating the lgbtq-rd for Jo meant that she felt like she was erasing herself

157

in the classroom. But realizing that the un-livability of her life was directly tied to the repetition of particular community discourses at the lgbtq-religious junction, she took this risk hoping that it might open up a space for some of her students to rewrite these oppressive community discourses. Not every participant felt they were able to task such risks; the costs of navigating the lgbtq- rd were too great. Recall, for example, Lynn's worry when it came to how many references she made in class to lgbtq issues. Certainly, Lynn wasn't alone in her worry that navigating lgbtq issues—let alone the lgbtq-rd—would compromise her career. For others, navigating this intersection posed too great a risk to their personal well-being. For instance, Kami and Will's previous negative experiences with (conservative) Christian family members lead them to believe that navigating this intersection was impossible. At one point or another, I have shared similar concerns and taken similar approaches to the lgbtq-rd, and I certainly am not claiming that there is only one way to address this intersection—or that teachers should always address this intersection in their classrooms. Regardless of the (im)possibilities participants saw in the lgbtq-religious junction, there is yet another value in sorting through these intimate encounters. In sharing their experiences, participants bucked the pressure to "discipline" their emotions and only tell happy pedagogical stories. Building from K. Hyoejin Yoon's "Affecting the Transformative Intellectual: Questioning "Noble" Sentiments in Critical Pedagogy and Composition," I argue that participants' courage in "entertaining the … [wrong] feelings" allowed them to point toward a weakness in critical pedagogy in general. As theorists like Yoon argue, the structures of feeling in critical pedagogy expose a continued emphasis on white, male teachers. Building from Yoon, Catherine Fox also cites the continued assumption of heterosexuality, though I'd add cisgender, gender normative, and Christian positionalities to that list. Consider, for instance, how easily and explicitly TJ has been able to mobilize critical pedagogies at the lgbtq-religious junction in ways that other participants were not. TJ's stories, unlike theirs, expresses what Yoon calls a valorized performance of "'militant optimism,'" one that usually works hand-in-glove with the "contempt of bad teachers" for whom the practice of critical pedagogy feels impossible (733). The problem, Yoon writes, is that many of these teachers with "bad feelings" also occupy minoritized positionalities, and when they share their critiques of critical pedagogy, they are shamed. The message this shaming sends to minoritized teachers, she claims, is that "rather than succumbing to despair teachers must internalize critical pedagogy's emotional dispositions: righteousness, desire for change, and a certain euphoria of possibility" (732). Extending Yoon's critique to existing pedagogical literature at the lgbtq-religious junction, I'd argue that when minoritized teachers do try to adopt the ill-fitting emotional frameworks of critical

158

pedagogy, we get statements like Tatiana De la Tierra's, who writes off the harm of anti-lgbtq discourse and claims that though she "may be annoyed at the Bible-thumping student who sits in the front row and constantly makes comments that [she finds] obnoxious" her real job is to teach writing (170). Or we get situations like Laurie Wood's, where she desires so much to "defend and argue for [her] people" and explains to her students "the effect (the hurt) of their words" (436). Instead, she scribbles out such comments, asking herself "'how would a straight professor grade this paper?'" (436). Even for those who (presumably) occupy more privileged positionalities, such as Doug Downs, we are still faced with scenarios where a teacher seeks to reign in his anger toward a students' homophobic discourse, then turns around to advocate helping the said student improve their anti-lgbtq paper so that it might be more "sympathetic" to a scholarly audience (40, 50). But in circumventing these "bad feelings," we are prevented from asking important questions like: Why isn't this working? What are some of the unspoken, flawed structures of feeling that shape critical pedagogy—if not the discipline of English Studies in general? In working through their intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd, participants expose the lie of pedagogical neutrality—one that circulates all too frequently in English Studies pedagogical scholarship. As a consequence, they were freed up to think about the socially just pedagogical praxis—something I discuss further in Chapter 7.

159

Chapter 7

The Unbearable Weight of Pedagogical Neutrality at the LGBTQ-Religious Junction

Sometimes, articulating the "so what" of a research project isn't particularly hard to do—but that doesn't mean that making these real-life connections is any less painful. Indeed, making these connections is especially difficult now as I research the pedagogical implications of the lgbtq-rd. For example, my heart sank as I read Sabrina Rubin Erdley's Rolling Stone report on the Anoka-Hennepin school district's "No Promo Homo" policy, which banned teachers from making any statements that could be perceived as affirming homosexuality—including intervening in bullying. In spite of this expose's coverage on how "No Promo Homo" created a "suicide contagion zone," (conservative) Christians on the Anoka-Hennepin school board pressed on, demanding that the school provide students with resources for ex-gay counseling. In my home state of Ohio, a student was asked to remove his "Jesus Was Not a Homophobe" t-shirt on the grounds that it was "sexual in nature and therefore indecent" (Murray). Finally, this year, as a counterpart to the grassroots Day of Silence, Focus on the Family launched the Day of Dialogue to "express biblical viewpoints" about how anti- bullying initiatives that protected lgbtq teens were tantamount to reverse discrimination (Ford). On a more intimate note, a dear friend of mine—who was a beacon for lgbtq students on my campus—recently resigned after a months-long battle to garner university protection after she was flooded with hate messages from students who opposed her efforts to organize an lgbtq film festival. Some students sent her multiple emails a day, telling her "This is disgusting," "This is a sin," "You are going to hell." One of the harassing students threatened to sue—claiming that she felt the (four) emails advertising the event were discriminatory toward her religious beliefs. In spite of the clear guidelines about student conduct, which could have been used to reprimand students, no action was taken against the students. Moreover, during a closed-door meeting precipitated by the WGS director to end the student harassment and protect this faculty member, the administrators present instead censored and censured my friend. Not only did the administration block the Gay- Straight Alliance from advertising student events on the all-student listserv but they also suggested that she brought the harassment upon herself. Commenting on a fifty-page printout of hate messages she received from students and brought to share during the meeting, they suggested that the emails "weren't really that serious, since none of them threatened her life," and they also claimed

160

that "students—even groups like the Westboro Baptist Church—had a right to counter-protest views which they believed to be immoral." No, I don't need to look very far to locate the real-world connections to my research. I see them everywhere—and sometimes those connections are unbearable. But I am not alone on this front. During their interviews, participants repeatedly called attention to the larger sociopolitical climate that circulated around their experiences at the lgbtq-rd. In the wake of teen suicides and unchecked violence against lgbtq people, for example, Trixie called attention to educational initiatives like Tennessee's "Don't Say Gay Bill" (HB229/SB049), which put a gag order on teachers' ability to talk about lgbtq issues and forced already vulnerable lgbtq student groups off school grounds. The purpose of this initiative, legislators claimed, was to protect parents' rights to educate their children on matters of sexuality. During his interview, José cited Arizona's SB 1070. This bill is an unprecedented attack on transnational workers—which in addition to legalizing racial profiling, requires public schools to verify the citizenship of all attending students and bans ethnic studies courses. Here, legislators claim the need to protect communities from "illegal aliens," adding to this claim that ethnic studies programs breed unfair resentment toward white, Anglo culture. At her public university in Arkansas, Lynn told me, she and other faculty members were rocked when a fellow colleague was sued for discussing affirmative action in his law courses. Similarly, during his interview, Will returned several times to comment on the story of a Georgia graduate student who sued her public university after the psychology department booted her from their program for refusing to council a gay client. In both of these latter cases, culturally dominant students sued for "reverse discrimination." In fact, each of the narratives I've recounted above stem from a highly organized political push for pedagogical neutrality. This neutrality movement, popularized by David Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights, suggests that a liberal agenda has created an unfair climate for college students, and it calls for teachers to represent "all sides" of a particular issue without judgment. The language of the bill reinvents the goal of higher education as a means to provide students with marketable job skills. Any pedagogical approach that politicizes its education with left-leaning politics, the movement claims, is a violation of students' right to compete in a highly competitive job market (Searls Giroux 323). Here, religiously conservative and fiscally conservative ideologies overlap, couching discrimination in the neoliberal claim of inclusion for all and equal treatment under the law.

161

This style of politics is nothing new. Religious right groups are equally outspoken about women's rights, affirmative action, and welfare programs (Jakobsen 119–20). Indeed, in the public school system, religious right groups have successfully thwarted anti-bullying programs, multicultural curriculums, and school lunch programs, and the key to this multi-issue attack on social justice hinges upon the idea of a besieged Christian minority—parents, whose only fault is the desire to protect their children (Lugg, "The Religious Right" 275). Moreover, in higher education, Susan Searls Giroux claims that the Right has successfully co-opted the language of critical pedagogy. The reason that this message was vulnerable to co-option in the first place, Searls Giroux claims, is because educators greeted multiculturalism with a lukewarm welcome. Rather than taking seriously the claims for a radical revisioning of the politics of higher education, administrators and academic conservative figureheads were successful in whittling multiculturalism down to "inclusion" (316– 317). Within the landscape of neoliberalism,71 we all get to be victims—systematic inequality be damned. The real problem with these narratives is how easy they are to repeat. The campaign for pedagogical neutrality has been so pervasive—and so well-funded from religious right and fiscal right think-tanks—that even well-intentioned teachers mightn't realize the relationship between the neoliberal expectations acting upon the classroom and the pedagogies they enact. And when a lie gets told often enough, it begins to sound true. In such a political climate, it becomes easy to liken (conservative) Christian students to both colonized populations and activists in the civil rights movement—forgetting the crucial role (conservative) Christians have played in the histories of colonization, slavery, and segregation (Rand 361; Perkins 589). It also becomes easy, apparently, to liken (conservative) Christian students' experience of marginalization to the trauma experienced by lgbtq students, who must lock themselves away in the closet for fear of being rejected by family and friends (Stenberg, "Liberation Theology" 279). But to believe this, again, one must forget the role of (conservative) Christianity in demonizing lgbtq people in the first place—thus necessitating their need to closet themselves. In this neoliberal landscape, when talking about homophobia in the classroom, it becomes all too easy to distance oneself from the very social justice agenda one proposes—cautioning teachers not to push their agendas on students (Byington and Waxman 2; De la Tierra 171; Richard Miller 251). And when theorizing the lgbtq-rd in particular, it becomes very clear why teachers would feel the need to move heaven and earth to disclaim any possibility that their pedagogies might change students' beliefs about lgbtq issues (McCrary 459; Miller and Santos 73). This distancing is seen as a matter of fairness to all students—but to make this claim, one has to actively disavow72 that creating a distance

162

from social justice can only ever hurt those students already marginalized in the worlds outside of the classroom (not to mention in it). Finally, in this climate, it becomes very easy to see why teachers would want to distance themselves from the political aspect of their teaching altogether (Downs 50; Hansen 42). In this view, we just teach literature; we just teach writing. But as participants' stories suggest, this last pedagogical narrative is perhaps the most dangerous of them all—precisely because it feeds the lie that pedagogy can ever be neutral in the first place. Working from participants' narratives in Chapter 6, I argue that English Studies critical pedagogy has become so easily coopted by neoliberal politics because we have already bought into the idea that knowledge is about information—not human relationships. With this understanding of knowledge, it becomes easy to compartmentalize one's commitment to lgbtq issues as a personal belief, which is consequently trumped by one's broader pedagogical duties. Without an emotional framework to ground our pedagogical investments, it becomes dangerously easy to forget the human cost of our pedagogies. The lgbtq-rd isn't simply fraught because of the tense social context surrounding this intersection. Another reason it may sometimes feel so impossible to address this intersection, I suggest, hinges upon the fact that the lgbtq-rd exposes the breaking points of some oft-repeated pedagogical narratives in English Studies. Thematic Analysis Working from participants' interviews, I argue that while we may attest to the value of critical pedagogy in theory, when it comes to practice, we still sometimes operate under the rubric of pedagogical neutrality. In this regard, I locate four related themes in participants' interviews, which I believe provide us with an opportune moment to reflect on pedagogical ethics: • First, participants questioned the twinned narratives that English Studies teachers should "just teach writing" or that they should "just focus on the text." • Second, participants questioned the assumption that lgbtq issues—if they are addressed in the classroom—should be presented along neutral, pro/con lines. • Third, participants questioned the claim that (conservative) Christian students are an overlooked minority in the English Studies classroom. • Fourth, participants questioned the expectation that English Studies teachers shouldn't have social justice agendas at the lgbtq-rd. Critiquing "Just Writing" and "Just Literature" Narratives

163

Seven participants identified two core disciplinary narratives that seemed to guarantee a pedagogically neutral stance in the classroom. The first narrative participants questioned was the assertion that our primary job is to just teach writing. Participants honed in on the "just" aspect of writing. For instance, Michelle noted that "just writing" narratives not only limit the scope of rhetoric and composition but also, in turn, limit teachers' possible interactions with students. Citing the lgbtq-rd as an example, she said that when a student uses the Bible to make an anti-gay argument, it is certainly possible to focus on audience, sources, and assignment goals. But she concluded that some pedagogical issues exceed questions about writing. Picking up on a similar theme, Will observed that "just writing" narratives sidestep questions of ethics. When teachers claim to "just deal with logic" or "just teach academic discourse," Will argued, they also willfully ignore that they are also teaching "an ethical stance." As a graduate student, Aiden taught both classes in their home field of literary studies and in rhetoric and composition. When teaching first-year writing, Aiden picked up on the expectation that they should "just" teach writing. Bucking this expectation, Aiden noted that they wanted their students to "critically think about themselves, their own position, the world around them, how it impacts them—so the affect, the aesthetic, and the political, and how all are intertwined in modes of identification and embodiments." Rather than view first-year writing as a "subject-less discourse," Aiden explained that they wanted students to see how they were never "removed from what [they] learn." Writing may feel like a solitary act, Aiden suggested, but it is an "interpersonal activity" in the sense that our words have a wide reach—and effect—on others. All that said, Aiden also observed a similar trend to "just focus on the text" in literary studies. Aiden repeatedly noted that faculty members tried to rein in their curriculum with comments like, "This is way too controversial. You can't be doing this," or "Well this is in an English class; this [class] is more sociology." Responding to these comments, Aiden asked, "At what point do we draw the line?" Calling upon their own history of learning, Aiden added that they only wished they'd had such conversations in their undergraduate studies. Moreover, while Aiden's penchant for interdisciplinarity unnerved faculty mentors, Aiden noted that students were excited to see connections between their literature classes and their family studies classes. Moreover, Aiden suggested that "just focusing on the text" foreclosed students' ability to make connections to their lives. In the four case studies below, participants offer similar critiques of "just writing" and "just texts" narratives. Interrogating the Neutral Framing of LGBTQ Issues

164

Eight participants took issue with the pervasive expectation that lgbtq issues be framed as neutral or as pro/con debates. Some participants, for example, argued that pro/con debates limited students' ability to think beyond the status quo. To illustrate this point, Michelle brought up the slew of news reports about anti-gay pastors embroiled in "homosexual scandals." The risk of these pro/con debates, she said, is that they can get stuck in a "kind of popular discourse [where] . . . all religious leaders who are anti-gay are bad—or should we out them or whatever—or they're all gay." This approach, Michelle observed, didn't seem very "productive in terms of understanding the function of whatever it is you're talking about in a culture." Similarly, Will noted that pro/con debates also encourage students to think that the point of all discussions—and of all research—is to have the answer. What gets lost in the process is students' ability to ask larger questions about "why this issue is a problem, why people are disagreeing." At the end of the day, Will said, he wanted his students to "have the questions" and to allow themselves to remain uncertain. Pro/con arguments, in this regard, prevent students from asking larger questions about how and why lgbtq issues become "issues" in the first place. On the other hand, some participants noted that debates do have a limited value of getting students' ideas about lgbtq issues on the table. The problem boils down to the expectation of neutrality. For instance, while Trixie agreed that teachers "can't just allow students to say things on one side of the argument," she didn't believe that this somehow obviated a social justice stance on lgbtq issues. The point of allowing students' perspectives to flourish, rather, was so anti-lgbtq views didn't go underground. Trixie argued, "You have to have room for students to say all those things if they're ever going to get to some middle place." While not every student might change their mind, Trixie acknowledged, students still needed "to change the way they act and react, and treat other people, and the way they look at texts and the way they look at the media." In a similar light, Aiden noted that once students get to talking about lgbtq issues, it is imperative that teachers complicate binaristic arguments. Using gay marriage debates as an example, Aiden explained that when the only stances students can see are "for" and "against," queer perspectives remain at the margins of public discourse. Consequently, binary arguments strip students' field of vision with regard to whose lives are worthy of discussing at all. In short, both Aiden and Trixie note the human cost of neutral, pro/con debates about lgbtq issues. In the four case studies below, participants argue that pedagogical neutrality is also harmful insomuch as it ignores that we're never working with an even playing field when it comes to lgbtq issues in the first place. Questioning (Conservative) Christian Victim Narratives

165

Nine participants' narratives questioned the claim that (conservative) Christian students are a besieged minority in the classroom. Indeed, several participants depicted (conservative) Christian students (and parents) as a rather empowered constituency—pointing to their attempts to police the curriculum. For example, Michelle told me about a (conservative) Christian student who, upon finding Michelle’s response to the student's paper on abortion unsatisfactory, brought in a copy of the Bible and "trained it on [her] like a weapon." As Michelle moved through the room, the student adjusted the book so that the words "Holy Bible" were always facing her. When she confronted the student, he explained that it was his duty to remind her of God's views on women's sexuality. In a similarly troubling story, Aiden told me that they once received an email from the parents of an eighteen-year-old student enrolled in their literature course. The parents expressed concern that some course material addressed issues of sexuality and drug use, and in an appeal to the literary canon,73 they asked, "Shouldn't you be teaching Shakespeare?" As their email continued, however, the parents became more incensed; they decried Aiden's course as both immoral and biased. Both of these encounters were clearly moves to affect curricular change through direct confrontation. And in both cases, those involved acted upon the privileged assumption that classroom material was biased insomuch as it didn't reaffirm their particular worldview. In a similar vein, several participants connected (conservative) Christian students' sense of empowerment to the prominence of right-leaning political action committees, eager to assist students with pending lawsuits against liberal professors. Once again, Aiden told me about another white, heterosexual, male student in their course who threatened legal action for being oppressed both as a straight man and as a Christian. While Aiden noted that the student's complaint didn't materialize into an actual lawsuit, they did tell me that a colleague of theirs was currently being sued on similar grounds. Commenting on this phenomenon, Aiden talked about the vulnerability of many professors teaching in "programs with the word 'studies' after them." Universities were so afraid of lawsuits, they observed, that the easiest solution seemed to be gutting the programs altogether. Lynn's story bears a striking resemblance to Aiden's. When her (conservative) Christian student abruptly left her class during a discussion on gay marriage, Lynn told me, she was almost certain that the student left the room in an attempt to report her for misconduct. While Lynn told me she believed that her department would have supported her, she explained that she was nevertheless careful about how many lgbtq examples she chose to use in her classes. Legal concerns were ever-present with conservative right groups on campus, Lynn observed, and after a law professor was sued by conservative students on campus, "It made people think about what they

166

were saying in their classes." Once again, these stories trouble the larger claim made about the marginalized status of (conservative) Christian students. Clearly, when a group of students has conservative think-tanks and legal organizations at their disposal—waiting for a liberal infraction to occur—this throws doubt on the marginalized status of (conservative) Christian students. Indeed, the only way to feasibly support such a claim would be to disavow the connections between the classroom and the larger political climate. The idea of the (conservative) Christian student became a very real issue for Will, particularly as he reflected on a widely popular email thread posted to the rhetoric and composition-affiliated writing program administrator listserv. Recently, a listserv member posted a sympathetic screed to the WPA, noting her sympathy for the Georgia graduate student74 who was kicked out of her counseling program "after she made it known that she believed homosexuality was a personal choice" (Netter). Will noted the surprise at how many WPA listserv members came out with similar messages of support, claiming the Bible to be "real and true" and calling upon rhetoric and composition to take students' faiths seriously. Significantly, no one mentioned how this debacle might have affected the gay client denied counseling. Reflecting on his colleagues' vague call to "respect" (conservative) Christian students' beliefs, Will said: I don't believe for a second that you are oppressed as a Christian. . . . I think not being able to say what you feel like saying at a given moment in the classroom is not oppression. I don't think it is appropriate for any of my students to say whatever it is that comes to their minds, the first thing sometimes. It's not the best thing to say. It's not useful. It's not progressive. It's not thoughtful. It's not academic, and it's not appropriate discourse. We should think. That's what we do. The point Will raises here is significant: What exactly do we mean when we say "respect," and should all beliefs—even dehumanizing ones—be respected? Moreover, Will expressed a wry curiosity that listserv participants were so very concerned for the (conservative) Christian student. He wondered if they would have been equally as passionate about the religious beliefs of non-Christian students. Reflecting on his own classroom experiences, Will noted that when it came to addressing lgbtq issues, "No one in here asked me about Koran verses. There's nothing in here about the Torah I've been asked to deal with, no Native American spirituality I've been asked to address." The crux of Will's argument centers on (conservative) Christian students' cultural privilege. Adding a final comment about Christian privilege, Will said, "It's empowering to be listened to every time you bring up Jesus in class. It empowers that discourse.

167

And I don't think we've done a good enough job asking teachers about that. What that means." In the case studies below, four participants pick up on similar observations about what it should—and shouldn't—mean to respect (conservative) Christian students' beliefs. Reclaiming Social Justice Agendas at the LGBTQ-RD Related to this, seven participants questioned the expectation that teachers shouldn't have social justice agendas at the lgbtq-rd—claiming that this would be tantamount to disrespecting students' beliefs. Across the board, participants highlighted how this pedagogical narrative plays into (conservative) Christian claims to reverse discrimination. For example, Trixie noted how such neutrality narratives ultimately led to Tennessee's "Don't Say Gay" bill (HB229/SB049). The effect of this bill, Trixie said, flew in the face of the state's policy to teach diversity. Their assertion that teachers not speak about lgbtq issues effectively rendered lgbtq-identified students a non-population. Recalling her days training teachers in Tennessee, she added, "They were already hiding [lgbtq] books . . . in the library. A student had . . . to ask for them, which of course defeated the purpose. So I think there will be more teen centers popping up . . . because there are a number of Gay-Straight alliances [and] at that point their names are not even allowed; it doesn't make any sense." In the name of respecting (conservative) Christian parents' beliefs about sexuality, the lives of an already vulnerable student population become even more precarious. Speaking to this phenomenon in the college classroom, Aiden suggested that what was at stake at the lgbtq-rd wasn't simply fairness or unfairness with regard to (conservative) Christian ideology. The key point, Aiden observed, was that (conservative) Christian discourse was often used to dehumanize lgbtq-identified people. Moreover, widening the scope beyond (conservative) Christian students, Aiden observed a wider need to complicate students' understanding of religious- moral frameworks around issues of gender performance, gender identity, and sexuality. Citing their understanding of queer ethics, Aiden expressed the need to "take [students] out of the shoes they exist in" in order to reconsider how "what might be considered ethical to a normative individual, or even an LGBT person, might not necessarily be something that's ethically sound to someone else." Aiden's point didn't center on ethical relativism. Citing the criminalization of sex work as an example, Aiden explained that religious-moral frameworks contribute to "systemically- and institutionally- driven violence" against sex workers. The point, Aiden noted, is to help students see how religious discourse can "disenfranchise or dehumanize people." Returning once again to the WPA listserv comments, Will reflected on his own ethical quandaries at the lgbtq-rd. For instance, he told me about his experiences teaching children's

168

literature to education majors, noting the "mean and hateful things" that they said about lgbtq issues. As a parent, Will said that it "scares the shit out of [him]" to think that these future teachers might come into contact with his son. But as a teacher, too, Will said some ethical questions remain. While Will acknowledged that the wrong disciplinary response would be "to try and block their entry into the profession just because they are, in their junior year of college, not the human beings [he thinks] they should be," he added that English Studies teachers (particularly those who credentialize future teachers) don't consider often enough the ethical dimensions of their work. In part, he observed, this queasiness about disciplinary ethics stems from a desire to not be "heavy-handed and say, 'Well you have to believe what I believe.'" But at some point, he observed, a disciplinary line needs to be drawn. Drawing a like-race comparison to teachers in African-American studies, Will commented: I have to assume at some point, after the nineteenth century, we got past whether or not black people are human beings. I don't know how long that took—and for some people that's not still the case—but the discourse with African-American Lit doesn't start with personhood, right? If it happens, it's because the teacher brings up notions of the 3/5 or 1/5 or single drop, right? . . . So there's never a question in those classes: "Well, you know, the Bible says, 'Slaves obey your masters and maybe we should stay'"— it's like one crazy person who might bring that up. But still, there's this religious—this biblical discourse—that's troubling [when it comes to lgbtq studies]. The point Will makes here is simple: when religious discourse is used to dehumanize lgbtq people, that discourse needs to be interrogated. Moreover, Will added, if teachers are willing to engage the lgbtq-rd in their classes, they need to be willing to ask why they're willing to engage at this intersection. While teachers might claim that their willingness to engage this intersection stems from their liberal commitment to listen to others, Will said, "My guess is that there would be some hope that, like the racist or sexist student, we want to move them beyond that conversation somehow. I think we're more apt to say about racist and sexist students—that we want to move them out of that conversation—than we are with religious students. . . . And we're very uncomfortable saying that." Will concluded, "Is that okay? I think it's as okay as changing someone's racism." In the four case studies below, participants take up a similar need to stake a disciplinary claim to social justice agendas at the lgbtq-rd. While this thematic analysis presents broad themes across my data set, I am unable to illustrate how each of these themes overlap and play themselves out in the classroom. Perhaps more importantly, while thematic analysis allows me to create a conversation between participants, it

169

dampers my ability to illuminate how participants' critiques of pedagogical neutrality overlap with their intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd. For that reason, I return to the case study approach below. Case Studies In the following section, I present the last serial installment of Kami's, José's, Jo's, and TJ's stories. Though each of these participants explain how they (might) negotiate the lgbtq-rd, I do not intend these as "how to" stories. We are all working from different contexts, positionalities, and intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd. In the same way, the usefulness of these stories emerges from particular contexts. Because of their unwillingness and/or inability to compartmentalize themselves, and because of their unique intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd, these four participants were able to theorize from the margins of our oft-repeated pedagogical narratives. In attempting to embody participants' "cases" in the previous chapters, I hope to recreate some sense of the intimate encounters I experienced upon listening to participants' stories at the lgbtq-rd. My additional hope is that these efforts will make participants' critiques all the more difficult to discount. These stories, if we will hear them, make an ethical claim on us to reconsider the violences of pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd (and beyond). Kami's Story—What's Our Impact Going to Be? Kami had recently retired prior to our interview. In spite of the authority granted by her veteran status as a queer, feminist pedagogue and lgbtq activist, Kami presented herself as a collaborator of sorts. She expressed a willingness to acknowledge her own moments of uncertainty and to be curious about the pedagogical difficulties she encountered in her long career of teaching. During our interview, she offered up these difficult, uncertain moments as vignettes that we might think through together. Though Kami articulated her views on pedagogy as always in process, she nevertheless offered thorough observations about the lgbtq-rd—many of which highlighted the connections between her students' and her colleagues' expectations of pedagogical neutrality. As a consequence of her candid generosity, I also found myself more willing to disclose my own difficulties and uncertainties at the lgbtq-rd. And as I talked to Kami, I was especially forthcoming about how interview questions stemmed (in large part) from my own experiences. For that reason, our interview had a conversational quality—evident in the narrative that follows. Early on during our interview, I was heartened to discover that Kami and I held a shared vision of pedagogy as a site for social justice. Kami and I both centered our courses around a range of local social justice initiatives. This shared connection piqued my curiosity; I wondered if Kami and I also shared pedagogical difficulties in this regard. For instance, in spite of my commitment to

170

intersectionality, students habitually read my queer body as the sole text in the class. While this experience has been frustrating, in my nine years teaching, I have come to expect that a handful of students in every class will complain that the sole focus of my course is on lgbtq issues. As my faculty status has shifted from graduate student to a contract employee, these student complaints have become all the more frustrating, particularly because my contract hinges upon my teaching evaluations. With this in mind, I asked Kami whether or not she'd had similar experiences with her students. In response, she commented, "Oh, this is exactly what happened!" My pedagogical predicament had inspired Kami's first classroom story at the lgbtq-rd. Kami told me that when she taught her Composition 2 course using an intersectional framework—focusing on how discourse writes the body—students only remembered that Kami was a lesbian. Consequently, for students, the course became only about Kami's sexuality. To illustrate her point, she told me about how this hyper-focus on her sexuality led some of her students to willfully misread a unit on gender and gender identity. Particularly, her students projected their suspicion about Kami's queer sexuality onto a guest speaker that she had invited to class. Kami told me that she often asked her friend Donna to come to speak during their unit on gender and gender identity. During her presentation, Donna spoke to the class about her own experiences transitioning from male to female, about the legal and medical hoops that she had to jump through during this process, and (briefly) about drawing on her faith as a source of strength through this ordeal. One semester, Kami remembered, students were particularly angry about Donna's guest presentation. She also noted that some students "were more noisy than others," and two of the loudest students were sisters enrolled in Kami's class. Immediately after Donna's visit, Kami recalled, the two rushed to a Campus Crusade for Christ prayer tent located on campus: [T]hey were so angry with me. They went straight from my class to Campus Crusade for Christ. We have a tent there on campus; you can go in there and pray. And they went in there and made a big fuss about how I had forced them to listen to a man dressed in a dress come talk to the class, and there was no place for them in composition da, da, da. And they each wrote me this response that was all capital letters. . . . They said, "This is Composition 2. This is not the place for us to have to watch a man dress as a woman come talk to us. There's no place for this in composition. If we had known this was going to happen in class today we wouldn't have come. This is inappropriate. We feel like in this class we are talking too much about stuff that is nobody's business." They really talked a lot about, "This is nobody's business," and . . . "Well this class is about writing. What does this have to do with

171

writing?" you know, stuff like that. . . . So my response was just to simply state again what my friend Donna had talked about in class, the fact that she was not in fact a man dressed as a woman—she is a woman . . . and I said, "This is a writing class. I am offering you and inviting you to write about many different things. Gender is one of the things that we are focusing on. She came and talked about gender, and it's perfectly appropriate" . . . but . . . they were offended and thought that they should not have to be subjected to this kind of thing. . . . They had no idea trans people existed in the world, I don't think. So for a lot of my students . . . having my transgender friend come, and having to think about me in the classroom, and having to read some things, all they remembered was that I had forced them to read about and think about something they thought they should not have to think about. So yeah. Several things are striking about this story. Perhaps the most obvious here is the Christian privilege that undergirds this story. For one thing, the Campus Crusade for Christ prayer tent was available to her students on campus. Immediately after the lesson, her students went there to complain; they did not (it seems) go there to pray. They were very aware that the Campus Crusade for Christ prayer tent was an appropriate venue to air their grievances and formulate a narrative of victimization. It is also clear that Kami's students felt empowered enough to write their reflections to Kami in all caps—a form of shouting. In spite of the fact that they held no advanced degree or training in rhetoric and composition, they took it upon themselves to school Kami about appropriate and inappropriate material for the course, using their religious framework as a baseline for their curricular critique. Moreover, Kami's students seemed to experience the dissonance between their beliefs and Kami's course content as a personal attack, for which bare pedagogy was the only solution. Kami should have just focused on the writing. Kami is not alone in experiencing this kind of backlash from students. Indeed, Laurie Wood and Danielle Mitchell encountered similar assertions from (conservative) Christian students that they are victims twice over: not only did the presence of lgbtq course material discriminate against their religious beliefs but it also infringed upon their rights as students to acquire an education free of "bias." In another vein entirely, Kami's story also strikes a chord in the sense that her students' complaint mimics a different set of pedagogical narratives that advocate pedagogical neutrality as an appropriate solution for controversial issues. According to these narratives, a teacher should put her own personal beliefs aside, remember their true purpose in the classroom, and just teach writing (De la Tierra; Downs; Hansen). This "just writing" narrative is potent, precisely because it layers the oft-

172

repeated conservative claims that teachers should be objective, that politics are private, and that our job is to teach a discrete (and measurable) skill set. In our cultural climate, it is much easier to repeat these conservative talking points than it is to resist them—particularly since resisting them also requires coming up against the expectation that our political views fit into the frame of a sound-bite. Noting these connections, I asked Kami how she might formulate a response to this disciplinary trip wire. She responded: I agree that we teach writing . . . but students have to have something to write about . . . I used to say, "Write about whatever you want to." That's when I was at [another university]— we were trying to give students so much choice and so much ownership of what they did, so it was pretty much write about whatever you want to. As years went on . . . I really wanted to do some social justice work with the writing. . . . But we did everything you are supposed to do in Comp 2: you know, they did paraphrases, they did research, they did a summary, they did a rhetorical analysis, but they did those things on writing about identity of some kind. I think that's okay, because then they leave having learned something about themselves as writers— but also having learned something about themselves, which is not a bad thing. I get accused of being an Expressivist, which really irritates me, but I think my students come into class and they just don't know themselves very well. They haven't thought about how they came to be who they are. They haven't thought about how gender is part of their lives and what it means in their lives. They write these really superficial things about gender, and boys, and girls, and stuff . . . they haven't thought about their privilege mainly . . . so every aspect of identity we talked about turned out to be something about privilege. . . . So I really believe it's possible to focus on writing but choose things to write about that make a difference in other ways. Though there are many who would disagree with me, so, yeah. Two things strike me about Kami's response—the first of which is the uncanny similarity between her students' and her colleagues' critiques of her pedagogy. Both groups' critiques stem from the conservative assertion that Kami's curriculum is too personal. On the one hand, Kami's students collapsed the entire focus of her class to lgbtq issues. Once reined in by the rubric of sexuality, it became all the easier to claim that the course inappropriately focused on "things that are nobody's business." Her students resisted the politicization of identity by shrouding it in the personal. And, as her students claimed, the personal had nothing to do with writing. On the other hand, Kami's colleagues labeled her pedagogy "Expressivist," a school of pedagogy that emphasizes the writing process over the correctness of the writing product, and that similarly favors discovery of an

173

authentic self—as opposed to the self's implicatedness in larger frameworks of power. With the social-epistemic turn in rhetoric and composition, expressivism has become shorthand for an outdated, "touchy-feely" pedagogy. Kami's colleagues too, it seems, willfully misread her pedagogical approach. In their eyes, a focus on identity immediately became too personal, too lax on standards in the writing classroom. Given Kami's focus on power and privilege, this seems a curiously inaccurate characterization of her work. In both cases, it seems, Kami's students and her colleagues attempted to silence her social justice work in the classroom through re-narrating her focus on the personal- political along public/private lines. While one aspect of the "just writing" narrative stems from a conservative restriction on what is appropriately public, a second aspect of this narrative is rooted in a conservative appeal that students' personal freedom not be restricted. In disciplinary terms, Kami connects this to the assertion that students should be able to write about whatever they want to write about. This is a pervasive narrative in rhetoric and composition; it claims that the goal of composition instruction is to help students persuasively articulate their personal beliefs for the public sphere. In this pedagogical theory of deregulation, students embark on their own process of inquiry, fueled by self- interest, which makes their research all the stronger. Frequently missing in this equation is a consideration of how our persuasively articulated personal beliefs might harm others. In theory, while students are encouraged to consider multiple perspectives, this doesn't pan out in practice. As Kami noted, this hands-off approach to the classroom often encourages students to circumvent questions of power and privilege. Indeed, Kami noted that her students were happy to write uncritical narratives, claiming that they were "entitled to [their] own opinions." They were, however, unhappy to write about the personal-political—to critically examine how their simplistic narratives on gender (for example) might be informed by their own privilege and power. This was read as a personal attack, tantamount to discrimination. Kami had politicized their personal beliefs; she had broken the unstated protocol of neutrality. Hand in glove with this deregulation approach to writing pedagogy is the assertion that teachers should help students construct their arguments—no matter how teachers feel about them personally. Social justice becomes a personal preference. Doug Downs, for instance, chided himself for his angry response to his (conservative) Christian student's antigay paper. Looking back, he claims that he should have compartmentalized his beliefs and helped his student construct a more secular version of his anti-gay argument—one more persuasive to his secular audience. Indeed, Kami noted a similar expectation of neutrality among her colleagues. She commented:

174

I've had lots of conversations with colleagues who feel the need to be neutral and who feel that our students shouldn't know what our beliefs are. One thing that does not seem ethical to me is that . . . you just can't teach and be a neutral person; you can't do anything. You have to admit your subject position and what it means and help them look at theirs and what that means—you know? What are the consequences? In addition to pointing out the chimera of pedagogical neutrality, Kami speculated that the source of this stance stemmed from colleagues' fears of "offending somebody" or "being accused of having an agenda." But for Kami, the labor of pedagogy makes an ethical claim on teachers, which requires them to risk these accusations. In hiding behind pedagogical neutrality, Kami added, teachers run the risk of "put[ting] [students] in danger in some ways." Sometimes, what is at stake is much larger than a question of writing. During our interview, Kami told me a story that highlights both the consequences of belief and the ethical breaking point of "just writing" narratives. In one of her courses, a (conservative) Christian student submitted a work-shopped paper to Kami on the topic of gay rights. He began his paper with a series of questions, asking whether or not it was "ok to be homosexual" and whether or not they should "be allowed the same rights and benefits as a married heterosexual couple." In response to these open questions, the student longed for "the America of old," where a gay student "who was discovered to be gay by his classmates would probably get his ass kicked after class, if not killed, just because he was gay." The student went on to conclude that "this new America" was "devoid of its historical values and morals," evidenced in its embracing of "atrocities" like lgbtq equality. In looking at the student's peer review comments, Kami noted that the other students in his group "said nothing to him" about the violent nature of his argument. Kami, however, took issue with the student's "insinuation that gays should be singled out as deserving of violence and hatred." In her response to the student, she identified his language as hate speech, and she added that she "[didn't] want to have this in [her] class." Initially, too, Kami attempted to frame her critique of the student's paper as a matter of writing. She said, "You know, I was talking about all of the things you talk about: writing with support and considering audience." But this approach failed. Her student "never came to see that he had done something that was offensive and inappropriate." Kami's story reminded me of her response to my survey question about pedagogical concerns at the lgbtq-rd. I re-read Kami's answer to this question during the interview:

175

"How can I help [students] understand that they have a right to their beliefs but those beliefs cannot be supported in an academic endeavor? Is it possible for all students to feel safe? Should it be?" Her questions stood out to me because they got at the heart of pedagogical neutrality and disciplinary ethics. To maintain a social justice approach to the writing classroom, it isn't possible for all students to feel safe. And in lieu of her student's paper, it was clear to me that some students shouldn't feel safe—particularly because their views enacted a violence to others. That said, I also called upon Kami's survey answer because it was refreshing and provocative—given the current political climate in higher education, where charges of "indoctrination" and calls for students' academic freedom put a gag order on critical pedagogy. Knowing well the risks of going along with pedagogical neutrality, I asked Kami what kind of argument she might make to inspire and embolden colleagues to snap out of it. She replied: I think we have to think of our role as beyond just giving students experience with writing. I do think we have to think ethically about what our responsibilities are to these human beings in our classroom. And yes, I want them to be more confident, more fluent writers when they leave my classroom, but I also want them to—and I'm going to be sorry I said this—I want them to be better human beings, in some little tiny way, even if it's just because they're more aware of something because they've had to think about something they haven't had to before, because they've had to hold their tongues when they've wanted to dismiss or demean somebody, because they've had to listen when people speak. I don't know if that's a good answer, but I think our role has to be something beyond just teachers of writing. When you teach writing your students' lives are going to come up. Some teachers do everything they can to make sure that doesn't happen, but if it's not on the surface, it's underneath somewhere. And I think with anything we do: What's our impact going to be . . . ? Are students going to leave and never think about our class again, or are they going to be the same person that they were when they came to the class? I hope not. Wresting oneself from the stranglehold of pedagogical neutrality required a larger understanding of just what it is at stake in our teaching. Significantly, for Kami, resisting pedagogical neutrality also meant resisting the urge to compartmentalize the interpersonal aspect of teaching. As her answer indicates, we are never just teaching writing. We are also teaching ways of relating to other human beings, whose lives are surely influenced by the ways we read and write the world. Of course, Kami was also a realist, and she couched her response with the addendum, "I have no illusions about my wonderful abilities to inspire students to whatever. I don't want to give you that impression, because

176

I don't. The semester's not very long, etcetera, etcetera." But these realities didn't preclude not trying. Nevertheless, Kami added, she had to think of her role "as something beyond helping students to learn these writing skills and rhetorical skills." For Kami, that meant asking students to reflect critically on "who they [are]" and what "their place" and "impact [is] on the world around them." Kami's commitment to social justice, and her own refusal to compartmentalize, haunted her pedagogical theorizations. In turn, this haunting influenced her pedagogical practice. Toward the end of her career at Meadowlark Community College, Kami told me that she had begun to rethink her approach to rhetoric altogether. In particular, Kami questioned the encouragement students received "all through their academic life to write arguments and position papers," suggesting that this emphasis contributed to a rhetorical violence. She explained: I think it can be violent if you set out to change somebody or to prove something . . . and you often aren't willing to listen to everything that's out there. You're just looking for whether you support it. . . . There are whole classes, whole books, focused on argument. So I just don't do it. And I think all of my colleagues did it except me. And I don't know that that's a skill . . . Why aren't we teaching the skill of listening to other positions? While Kami noted that she was still sorting through the issues she had with argumentation, her points are nevertheless insightful. For Kami, it seems, an over-emphasis on persuasion stalls human relationships. Rhetoric becomes a zero-sum game, where students refuse to listen to each other and cherry-pick evidence to prove a point—regardless of the human cost. For Kami, this indifference to human relationships also seems built into writing assignments. Kami explained, "It seems like when you say to a student, 'Oh you can write about same-sex marriage and take a position,' then you're saying to them: Yeah, there's a respectable position that defends denying this whole group of people the right to get married. And there's not." Interestingly, Kami observed that she came to this conclusion after examining the debates surrounding California's Proposition 8. So much of this public debate struck a pedagogical chord for Kami—particularly its call for a fair and balanced approach to "all sides" of an argument. In listening to some of the dehumanizing arguments made in favor of Proposition 8, Kami said that it occurred to her that some issues have "no other side." Explaining this further, Kami added, "You don't have to 'agree to disagree' in a situation in which ethics is involved or when you are questioning the integrity of human beings." Just as there was no "other side" to arguments about "slavery," "child abuse," or "genocide," Kami argued that there is also no "defense of denying rights or oppressing people or discriminating against them." All of these scenarios question the humanity of another

177

person, and for that reason, Kami concluded, "we just can't even invite students to write about issues to which there is no other side." Explaining what this pedagogical stance might look like in practice, Kami noted that she avoided assigning argument papers and position papers. Using the example of same-sex marriage, Kami explained that the point of her assignments wasn't to "take a position saying it's right, or it's wrong, or whatever." Instead, she asked students to perform a discourse analysis on "all of the views," asking questions about ethics and ethos: "How [is the author] coming across to their readers? Do they look like a person that their reader would want to pay attention to? Are they honest? Are they choosing to do their work in an ethical way?" This was Kami's approach regardless of the student's topic. She added: I'm not a rigid teacher, but I'd say, "Your view is not going to come into this at the beginning. You're not going to have a thesis that says, 'This is the side; this is what should happen.' You're not going to have pieces like that. You're just going to present what's out there." . . . Now, I do give them permission at the end to state how they feel about everything once they've done all of the research. So at the end, sometimes they change their minds; sometimes they haven't. Sometimes they say, "Wow I didn't know there was so much stuff out there. I've thought about this; I've thought about this." So they do have the opportunity. But again it's not in using language that is hateful or violent. . . . But yeah, they have a really hard time with it. Most of them don't quite get there, and that's okay with me if they're working toward it—that's great. While she noted that "some of [her] colleagues would be horrified," she argued, "I don't think we should have to support students in writing stuff that promotes violence, discrimination, and oppression." For Kami, this approach stemmed from a disciplinary commitment to ethics—founded upon a collective accountability to others. Her assignments focused on listening, required actual research, and asked students to deeply reflect on the consequences of people's arguments. Taking seriously her commitment to her students and taking seriously the impact that her pedagogy might have on the world around her, Kami refused to tell the easy story of "just writing." Instead, she attended to "that which lingers on the margins of any story: what will have been said" (Britzman and Gilbert 83). But it is also important to keep in mind the resources that enabled Kami to linger on the margins of our contemporary pedagogical narratives. Like many of the participants I interviewed here, Kami refused to pretend that she lived and taught "in a world where queer people didn't exist."

178

This refusal made it impossible for Kami to inhabit a kind of pedagogical neutrality. She couldn't forget the consequences of discourse because she lived with them—and the people she knew and loved lived with them. Indeed, Kami knew firsthand that impossibilities at the lgbtq-rd were legion. They had dashed her lovely knowledge about teaching, about activism, and about family. Unable to turn away, she sorted through these ruins and (I believe) fashioned possibilities from impossibilities. José's Story—Well, Why Not? Because José had only recently begun to address lgbtq issues within the last year or so before our interview, he didn't have many standout stories at the lgbtq-rd. Of course, that didn't mean that he hadn't experienced the pressures of pedagogical neutrality. On the whole, José experienced this pressure in the form of student resistance to class discussions about race and/or sexuality. As I indicated in Chapter 5, Hudson students regarded José with suspicion—even upon seeing his name on their course schedules. From this initial impression, and upon encountering José's queer, brown body in the classroom, they "expected to talk about difference." Perhaps because of this expectation, José observed, students came to class with their guard up. While he attempted to deconstruct boundaries in the classroom, his students actively constructed barriers—between themselves and José, and between themselves and course material. In this regard, José noted three ways that students' expectation of neutrality functioned as the brick and mortar of their classroom barriers. At the most general level, José experienced the expectation of neutrality through students' defensive commentaries on the curriculum. Having taught both literature courses and composition courses, José believed that students' insistence that teachers "focus on the writing" stems from the same source as their insistence that teachers "focus on the novel." Both are moves to depoliticize the classroom; both insist on a form of bare pedagogy that disavows the human consequences that accompany the study of discourse. Honing in on his experiences teaching literature, such narratives were especially frustrating for José. Referring to SB 1070, he commented, "I'm looking at what's happening now in Arizona. It's not like I'm just 'sitting here looking at novels.'" Rather, literature was a "cultural object" for José—a reflection of and a commentary on the larger world around us. Indeed, we saw these connections in Chapter 6, as José drew parallels between a larger anti- immigrant climate and the rise of assimilationist, semi-closeted scholars like Richard Rodriguez. Of course, his students didn't want to talk about these connections. José observed students who had a very limited idea of what was relevant to the literature classroom. Largely, their concept of relevance began and ended with "material bound between covers of a book." They preferred a literalist reading of the novel, impervious to examinations of "the material conditions" that might

179

inform students' understanding of the text. Interestingly, students also applied this form of literalist reading when it came to interpreting course goals. Students insisted on the barest of learning outcomes. Explaining this, José commented: For [students] it's more about—especially in 112—"Let's talk about history. Let's talk about narrative." Yeah? Let's talk about the way that we enforce particular things. You think you're awesome, that you're in control, that you have agency. Oh, you're very confused. Let's talk about agency and who is actually deciding these stories for you. And then we go and read a historical novel . . . by . . . Rigoberto Gonzales: Crossing Vines. "Well, those are gay books!" And I'm like, the fact that you cannot imagine a gay farm worker—that's problematic. "Why?" He's picking fruit; that's fine. Not all queer people shop at the Pottery Barn and Banana Republic. I mean, I'm gay on a budget. I cannot do this. Right now I'm having those kinds of crises, and I'm like, this is the thing. Gay identities can be deployed in very different ways. So then they're, "Okay. Let's try to imagine that." [Nods.] Let's try to change the way we think about queer people. Queer people are not just Queer Eye for the Straight Guy or Will and Grace. There are other stories that you're not even imagining. Here, too, students' scope is very limited. Focusing on narrative meant focusing on form. Focusing on history meant the self-evident truths already decided for them in history books. In this case, students' limited understanding of "history" and "narrative" prevented their ability to imagine a gay farm worker in Crossing Vines—and that was indeed problematic. As José's vignette suggests, disrupting these limited, literalist readings are important. Not only do students need to have a sense of the social-historical context of a work—but they also need to have a sense that histories are often enforced. For José, ethical reading practices might begin with the realization that we don't have all of the answers. Moreover, this acknowledgement that history has already been decided for us invites us to make our own decision as readers: Will we allow ourselves to hear stories that imagine the other differently? José noted that another broad-level form of student resistance centered on questions of appropriateness. Commonly, students responded to lgbtq course material by asking, "Is the classroom an appropriate space for this kind of text?" These types of questions, José observed, arose from a place of epistemic privilege. Students articulated their sense of appropriateness based upon their white, heterosexual, and (conservative) Christian perspectives, and appropriateness became the exclusive property of this set of perspectives. Illustrating how students mobilized "appropriateness narratives" in his classroom, José recounted his experiences teaching Alicia Gaspar de Alba's novel

180

Sor Juana's Second Dream, which details the queer literacy practices of a seventeenth-century nun. He explained: They have a hard time— "Well, why are we talking about sex?" . . . Okay, here's a nun who is writing in seventeenth-century Mexico, who is having sex with the viceroy's wife in order to be able to have permission to write. Like this is crazy shit. Here is this engagement of people dealing with their bodies in order to access particular kinds of privilege—even when she's within the confines of the convent. That's crazy. I'm like, let's talk about the body and discourse. And they're like . . . "Well wait. Here's a nun. Why is she having sex? Two, why is she having sex with a woman? And three, why is she so invested in learning, especially in the 17th century?" And I'm like, "Um, because she's a badass. Like, that's why. Let's talk about this. . . . Before Virginia Wolf, here we have hardcore power lady, a Mexican nun writing these poems against people." And they just feel like, it's more of a queering of an understanding of religion. "But wait, no history of nuns that I know of would actually allow this." And I'm like, "Well?" And I'm not saying— I mean this is fiction. . . . I asked [students] to read an essay by theorist Octavio Paz, who argued that, "There's no way that Sor Juana would be a lesbian; this was a particular convention in a genre." Whereas like this Chicana writer is like, "No. What about the queer possibility?" And that's my question: What about the queer possibilities in our lives? You don't have to be gay, lesbian, bi, trans—whatever you want— to [achieve the] label queer. Because some [students] are like, "I'm not a lesbian." That doesn't mean you can't read this and enjoy it. You know, I have to read straight lit; I have to read it all the time and I'm sick of it. And so to them it's like, "So why are you throwing this at us right now?" . . . That is mostly the response I get. "Why should we read this in this classroom?" And I'm like, "Well, why not?" Two things are apparent in José's interaction with his students. First, students' sense of relevance and appropriateness hinges upon a one-to-one correspondence between their identities and the topics that they read in class. Indeed, José appears to point this out to students by joking about all of the times he's had to read straight lit. But more than that, students are also so focused on the appropriateness and the historical feasibility that a nun in seventeenth century Mexico might be having queer sex that they miss out on Alicia Gaspar de Alba's invitation to imagine the queer possibilities that surface when we entertain the idea that Sor Juana's queer letters weren't simply a matter of literary convention. Instead, students resisted the text, asking José why they should have to read the story. Seeing this as an opportunity, José responded with his own invitation to consider the

181

queer possibilities in the literature classroom: "Well, why not?" With this question, José offered students the space to consider just what was so threatening about a queer, hardcore Sor Juana that needed reigning in. This depiction of Sor Juana, and even the inclusion of lgbtq course texts, seemed to hit a nerve for some of José's (conservative) Christian students. For these students, queerness is "weird" and "unnatural." Here, too, José saw this resistant reading as an opportunity for reflection. But when he asked his students to consider how they arrived at their claims, they became defensive. José recounted how this conversation usually played itself out in the classroom: So Jesus is not going to be a called response to my questions, and also, saying that religion is the basis for reading the world is not going to work. That's an interesting clash. So they're like, "Well, as a Christian I don't agree with this." And I'm like, Well, but you don't have to; that's the magic of it. So I think that students typically, whenever they do disagree with a lot of the stuff, it's centered from a very religious-centric kind of resistance. . . . So when they say, "As a Christian . . . ," I'm like, Well let's change that. Let's say, "As a person who wears sweatshirts—how would you respond to this?" If you have the choice to pick an identity as to how you are going to respond to this, why Christianity, why religion specifically? Why conflate morality with religion? . . . Because I think that what I tend to show them is that you're making a choice as to what identity you choose to respond. I'm just interested as a teacher why you're choosing that one. . . . At one point they lose it: "You're just this brown person. You're anti-white, anti-America, anti-Jesus, anti-whatever." And I'm like, Yeah? I mean, I'm not anti these things. I'm not pro. And the thing is that I'm not going to organize my world based on this. . . . So then they just take it to, "Well, I do." So they resist, saying, "Respect me and the way that I view the world," but at that point you're also breaching the degree of respect when you choose not to even acknowledge mine. Two things strike me about this dialogue—the first of which is José's humorous analogy between Christian identification and identification as "a person who wears sweatshirts." During our interview, José added that, ideally, he tried to create an environment in his classrooms where students were allowed to loosen up. He explained that he didn't want students to spend "twenty minutes in silence" searching for "the right word." Instead, he encouraged students to muddle through the wrong words and figure out what's wrong about them—or whether or not they were so wrong at all. Given the kind of generosity José extended to students in this regard, he did not appreciate some of his students' attempts to use religion as a trump card to make injurious statements about lgbtq issues and then claim that critical examinations of those statements should be off limits.

182

Referring back to his analogy, José added, "It's more like me saying, 'If you can take the liberty of talking about race and sexuality in a very casual way, why can't I talk about something that you take seriously in a casual way? Why do we have to elevate our discourse in order to talk about religious things?'" The point of this comparison isn't to suggest that issues of respect are relative. Rather, he wanted to call students' attention to more generous ways of responding to others— keeping in mind that sometimes the things "people hold sacred . . . [aren't] always a divine savior." The second thing that strikes me about José's response is his emphasis on the ethical demands of responding to others. José wanted students to see that their deployment of the phrase "as a Christian"—alongside their assertion that queerness was weird and unnatural—was a purposeful choice to shut down relationships with lgbtq people. Students had a choice to respond differently. Reflecting on this interaction from his vantage point as a teacher, José added that when students make problematic statements like this in class, teachers also have a choice in the way that they respond. Indeed, José said that he was well aware of the ways teachers respond to such comments through silence—by "not elaborating on their comment or by moving to another point in the conversation." Noting that these practices are often used to avoid seeming biased, he added, "If that is unbiased teaching, then let me be biased." As scholars and teachers, he concluded, such pedagogical neutrality undercuts all of our lessons to students about the power and the consequences of discourse. José's rejection of pedagogical neutrality seems to stem from his development of a refusal to compartmentalize. Rather than distance himself from students' resistant reactions to course material, José practiced an embodied pedagogy: He was the gay man "on a budget," asking students to reconsider how their literalist understanding of history made it impossible for them to imagine a working-class, queer farmworker. He was the teacher who confronted heterosexual privilege by joking about all of the times he had read "straight lit." He was the "recovering Mormon," who poked fun at his "cosmopolitan experiences" as a queer, brown teen growing up in rural Texas. In response to his students' attempts to siphon themselves off from course material by setting up barriers, José deconstructed his own barriers—offering himself up as a text that made ethical claims on his students. Indeed, José's pedagogical practice evidences that he wasn't "just sitting there looking at texts." For José, we are always reading the world, and because of this, there is always a chance that we might come to read the world more generously. As a teacher, José practiced this generosity in refusing a literalist reading of student resistance. José was well aware of how the intersections of race,

183

sexuality, and religion could collide in ways that seemed impervious to change. The frustrations alone might have made it tempting to ask, Why do we have to discuss this intersection in this class? José's answer to that question was, "Well, why not?" In this way, his story is its own invitation to reconsider the queer possibilities in our own pedagogical practices. Jo's Story—Where Will You Draw a Line in the Sand? While Jo encountered the lgbtq-rd in her classrooms at Hudson, throughout our interview, she called upon her time at Banting to narrate these experiences. Jo returned to Banting not because of the intensity of her encounters but rather because of the honest quality of her encounters there. During our interview, Jo asked me to "write a dissertation where people can't just dismiss [her story] as an unusual case." Jo argued that those "unusual cases usually aren't so unusual," adding that we simply "like to call them that to tell ourselves a nicer story." Part of telling that nicer story meant depicting "the backward South" as the last bastion of anti-lgbtq religious discourse. In Jo's estimation, religion and sexuality interact well beyond the cultural borders some progressive academics create to convince themselves that the lgbtq-rd might not matter. Citing her Hudson students, Jo noted that their views were just as frequently informed by (conservative) Christian beliefs. The only difference was that her Hudson students had been well-versed in the upper-middle-class mores of academe. Jo added that in spite of the nuanced theories that might claim otherwise, when it came to everyday academic praxis, politics were personal, beliefs were irrelevant, and differences were erased. Recollecting her early teacher training at Hudson, Jo commented, "I think part of the professionalization process requires you to distance yourself from earlier experiences, earlier versions of self. Learning how to be a teacher involved a kind of forgetting . . . in order to become 'a professional'—'a scholar'—'secular.'" The irony of professionalization for both graduate and undergraduate students, Jo added, was that the expectation that one compartmentalize proliferates pedagogical impossibility. In asking our students to "divide themselves up," Jo said, we reaffirm the idea that "you shouldn't mess with a student's belief—as if you could pull belief from rhetoric, as if you could just take that apart." In real time, Jo argued, rhetoric and belief interanimated in all public discussions of lgbtq issues. The boundaries between students' intellectual, metaphysical, and emotional worlds were permeable. By operating as if students could and should compartmentalize, our pedagogies encourage the source(s) of students' anti-lgbtq views to go underground. Not only did teachers encourage belief to go underground, Jo added, but some also assisted students in the dishonest process of

184

repackaging their anti-lgbtq beliefs as if they weren't religious at all. Reflecting on this practice, Jo observed: If some students are ultimately repackaging religious discourse in order to make secular arguments, to what extent is religious discourse allowed to operate and proliferate under the guise of secular discourse? I think this gives religious discourse a kind of power. . . . It perpetuates the power of religious discourse by allowing it to operate as if it were not a discourse, by making it off limits in terms of critique, interrogation, etc. In contributing to the idea that religious beliefs do not matter—or worse still—that they are untouchable, Jo believed that we not only contribute to pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd but (at a broader level) we also spin disciplinary narratives within a tangled web of contradiction. To illuminate the potentially negative consequences of ignoring belief, Jo shared another encounter at the lgbtq-rd. Jo returned, once again, to her experiences at Banting. In this scenario, Jo explained, her students were giving brief "works-in-progress reports" to the class about their final research papers, saying, "This is what I found, this is what I'm saying." The point was to make the process more collaborative, and she hoped other students would get involved by recommending sources and by helping their peers sort through the arguments undergirding their research. It was in this context that a student presented her anti-lgbtq argument on adoption, which was based upon the "hard evidence" she collected that proved "a child does better with a mother and a father." Immediately, the class shifted into a heated argument—primarily between the presenting student and another one of her friends also enrolled in the course. Jo recalled the crux of their disagreement: But the person doing this report was really close friends with another student in class who just took offense. And this student basically countered, "No! How can you be my friend, knowing that I grew up in a single parent household, and make this argument? How can you even go there?" And that's where you get the response, "Well . . . I did official research, and I found hard evidence that proves that you need a man and a woman to raise a healthy child, and because of this, gay adoption is wrong." . . . [Her friend replied,] "Where did you get that evidence? Tell me about that evidence you found." What the student had yet to acknowledge until this heated exchange, Jo said, was that all of her sources were from religious right websites. While Jo expressed frustration that the student had

185

overlooked course guidelines for locating reputable sources, she also acknowledged the student's possible confusion since a name like "the Family Research Council—that sounds official." All that said, Jo also recalled how the student's argument quickly revealed its religious roots once her peers began to challenge the crux of her argument. At that point, "she fell back on, 'Well . . . the Bible tells us that homosexuality is a sin. Therefore, gay people can't raise kids because they're morally deficient. They're sinners.'" Commenting on her student's admission, Jo said, "This is something you wouldn't have seen had we not had this discussion in class. Her argument would have just masqueraded as [secular]." Of course, her student's admission was also revealing on another level, too. Jo also called my attention to the student's conflation between gayness and sinfulness. She said that this was common in her classes—even with students who were ultimately challenging anti-lgbtq arguments. To illustrate this point, Jo relayed this particular class's response to her student's discriminatory stance on adoption rights: My students began to take offense with her stance on gay adoption, seeing her evidence as an affront to single-parent households. So the issue of sexuality became smaller than the idea of disrespecting people's family situations. . . . Then the response came up once again—as with my previous story: "Well, you know, there's somebody I know who does this immoral act. But is one sin greater than another. . . . You say that gay people are sinful, but the Bible says that there is no great sin—that sin is sin." And for some reason it always seemed to be about sex outside of marriage: "So therefore, if a girl's sleeping with a guy she's not married to, that's a sin too. But would it be wrong for them to adopt?" So they were imagining these scenarios in terms of heterosexuality, sinful heterosexual behavior. While Jo acknowledged her students' attempt to take up for lgbtq rights, she also made a point to highlight the manner in which students offered this support. Students not only minimized their peer's anti-lgbtq stance but they also granted their peer's assertion that lgbtq people were morally deficient sinners. Reflecting on this, Jo commented, "The means do matter as much as the ends." Keeping these ends in mind, Jo intervened. She argued that it would be "misguided" to not intervene or to simply assume that reducing an entire group of people to a sinful act wouldn't "have some type of consequence." In these situations, Jo believed, teachers have an ethical obligation to intervene, not only for (potential) lgbtq students in the classroom, but also because—on a discursive level—leaving these arguments unchecked "does a violence."

186

Given Jo's previous attempts not to "rock the boat," my curiosity was piqued. I asked her to elaborate on how she arrived at this boat-rocking stance. Answering my question, Jo began, "I'll admit that I've definitely taken a [neutral] stance toward rhetoric in the past that I'm more inclined to distance myself from now." She added that this transition away from neutrality took place after her encounter with David, the violently phobic staff worker at Banting. Jo also noted that, in preparation for our interview, she had returned to the blog she wrote (years before) after this terrifying encounter. She told me that she wanted to share a portion of it with me because she believed it illustrated a turning point in her pedagogical and personal life: I'll just read the first part of it . . . just one of the lines: "In class, I prefer diplomacy, a space where I can be Democrat, Republican, gay, straight—whatever it takes to make eighteen- year-olds complicate what they think they believe." I think that says a lot about the way I used to approach the classroom—that I kind of wanted to be this chameleon. For so long, Jo told me, she had attempted to blend in as a way to survive. Part of not rocking the boat meant adopting the norms of pedagogical neutrality, a practice that caused Jo to feel more like "a scholarly machine instead of a person and a scholar." After her encounter with David, this strategy of compartmentalization stopped working. Jo explained, "It's a chilling thing to watch yourself just sitting there and smiling, saying nothing as someone's words erase you." Because her interaction with David happened around the same time as this classroom encounter at the lgbtq-rd, Jo began to see that her response to David was not so unlike her usual responses to students at the lgbtq-rd. Moreover, Jo observed that her students' anti-lgbtq arguments weren't so dissimilar from David's. Both arguments, she explained, were based upon the premise that lgbtq people were morally deficient and thus undeserving of civil rights—or in David's case, undeserving of the right to live. She commented, "It was just like the universe was saying LOOK AT THIS." In listening to the universe's directive to "look at this," Jo said, it really began to sink in that the people in her life—including her colleagues and mentors—expected her to not only erase herself but to teach students to erase themselves and erase others as well. This realization caused Jo to draw a line in the sand. Speaking of this transition, Jo said, "Now I would say that there is a time to speak up and be the voice that says, 'Okay . . . what are the consequences of what you're saying right now?'—not just 'Let's problematize everything'—because our field loves to 'problematize.'" Jo added that her pedagogical transition also led her to acknowledge that "we all have agendas in the

187

classroom and fundamental ideas that guide our pedagogies." Jo said, "Here is mine: I don't believe that rhetoric is a neutral tool." In this regard, Jo critiqued some common disciplinary guidelines for responding to students' anti-lgbtq religious perspectives. While Jo acknowledged the multiple stressors involved in negotiating these encounters at the lgbtq-rd, she indicated that this stress was only exacerbated by the vague imperative that teachers should "respect students' beliefs . . . students' right to their own language . . . students' literacies that they bring with them into the classroom." Jo certainly agreed that dismissiveness wasn't the answer, particularly because this response only pushed students' motives underground. The problem for Jo hinged upon what she saw as uncritical responses to students' religious literacies, which began and ended with "'Look at this great thing that you know!'"—all the while suggesting that any attempt to interrogate or alter students' views would be "disrespectful." She explained: When I say I value religious literacy—I think to value a discourse, to value a literacy, is to be willing to interrogate it and call it into question . . . for the purpose of creating new knowledge. If new knowledge, new insights, new perspectives aren't coming out of something, there's a problem there, and you're not truly valuing it. . . . Should we look at things like the relationship between religious literacy and power? Absolutely. Should we question these things? Absolutely. Should there be a point when as a teacher you step in and make statements that call into question religious discourse that questions the humanity of others, repeatedly and uncritically? Absolutely. . . . To value religious discourse, I think, you can't read the Bible when you're a teenager in church, assuming that now that you've read the book you have all the answers to the universe. Nor can you adopt a perspective and then tap into that perspective—unchanged—and quote from the same texts—unchanged—well into adulthood. There's no growth there. I think that this is how many people view religious discourse as this kind of unchanging, all-knowing discourse. And, no doubt, this is how some people use religious discourse. Like I said, people oftentimes repeat the same clobber passages from the Bible, uncritically, to the point that their anti-lgbtq arguments . . . are predictable. To allow students to just repeat the same old, "The Bible says that homosexuality is a sin. Period."—no interrogation, no new knowledge made, no new perspectives offered—this is not valuing religious discourse. Here, Jo highlights the tension between teachers' desire to respect students "in every way that [they] possibly can" and the desire to value "the things we believe in the field . . . about the relationship to

188

language and reality—the world that is created when you write, when you repeat, an argument." While this tension isn't going away any time soon, Jo concluded that there's a problem when teachers are willing to compromise their sense of disciplinary ethics in the interest of allowing "a space where students can say whatever they want to—'It's their right!'" To concede this ground reduces "complex notions of rhetoric . . . into tools." Jo highlighted a similar move toward pedagogical neutrality in the encouragement to respond to anti-lgbtq, religious arguments by "just focusing on the writing" or by "focusing on the audience instead of the ideas." Returning to her student's paper as a case in point, Jo explained that the problem with her student's paper wasn't simply a matter of audience; it was also about the dehumanizing nature of her argument. Had Jo taken the advice, so frequently offered, to respond to the student's paper as if "arguments [were] as flexible as audiences—and it's that simple," Jo said that she would have also reaffirmed for students (and for herself) the common notion of rhetoric as "disingenuous fluff." Related to this, Jo also took issue with what she perceived to be a single-minded focus on persuasion. Indeed, Jo recalled this brand of neutrality play itself out more than once in colleagues' and mentors' comments like, "Hey, I'm going to support this student who is writing this [antigay] paper . . . in that I'm going to help them package their claim in the most persuasive language possible." But Jo wasn't willing to take this approach with her student's paper on adoption— particularly because she had seen too many times how debates about lgbtq issues turned into debates about the morality of lgbtq people, and then to the validity of lgbtq people. Employing this kind of pedagogical neutrality would have required "allowing a student to un-see the humanity of lgbtq people." It would have also required Jo to un-see her own humanity. On another level, Jo believed that this neutral approach to the lgbtq-rd evidences larger disciplinary problems. Jo perceived this as a clash between her discipline's stated commitment to ethics, on one hand, and her discipline's recommendations for pedagogical practice on the other. She explained: I think there's a real tension, because I believe most rhetoric and composition people would say . . . that rhetoric has an ethical component. I'm thinking of the history of rhetoric and debates over whether . . . we [are] teaching students about "the good" while we are teaching them how to analyze, create, and reflect upon discourse. I think this question is as old as the field, and it's still alive. Me? I tend . . . to think you can't take rhetoric away from questions of ethics. . . . If rhetoric writes our identities, if it's a discursive relationship among people—

189

and here I'm offering up the way I view rhetoric—what type of rhetoric worth its salt is built upon a claim that fundamentally questions the humanity (something that simple!) of other individuals? You can't add fluff to a claim like this. You need to revisit the claim itself and problematize the assumptions that guide it. . . . At the end of the day, even if you're teaching a composition class, you're not just teaching paragraphing; you're not just teaching how to write a thesis statement. These things are related to ideas. These things are related to—I guess—the world. I'll say it again: poetic world-making. There are some worlds that should be created through discourse, and there are some worlds that shouldn't be created through discourse. The crux of Jo's argument is worth restating. Pedagogical neutrality causes teachers to lose sight of their responsibility for the worlds they create with their pedagogies. It causes teachers to lose sight of the human cost of pedagogical neutrality—of how our pedagogies make a world unbearable for others to inhabit. In the conclusion of our interview, Jo suggested that the tensions at the lgbtq-rd had pedagogical implications beyond English Studies—that this intersection might function as a mirror for higher education in general. Commenting on this, she said, "We like to think of education as this really progressive thing . . . [but] a lot of times, we're very conservative in academia." Returning once again to her experience at Banting, Jo said that it should give us pause when a person has to make a like-race analogy to get self-avowed allies to grasp that lgbtq students' lives are in danger. Speaking from a more recent experience at Hudson, Jo said that it should also give us pause when a student submits an anti-lgbtq position paper bearing an uncanny resemblance to anti-Semitic arguments, and yet the teachers charged with evaluating the student's writing sample are nevertheless reluctant to rank that student's portfolio poorly. Reflecting on these scenarios, Jo observed, "In society, we've figured some things out . . . anti-Semitism: not cool. Racism: not cool. But the jury's still out when it comes to lgbtq people." When it comes to this constituency, Jo said, "We're still debating gay marriage, gay adoption, the existence of lgbtq people—the validity of these human beings." Our reluctance to intervene, she suggested, says less about a desire to be evenhanded and more about a desire for "political safety." Unwilling to draw a line in the sand and risk something of ourselves, we may be waiting for the rest of the world to adjudicate the humanity of lgbtq people. TJ's Story—Who Are We Becoming? As I mentioned previously, TJ was the only participant I interviewed to explicitly teach at the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice. While TJ was able to engage at the lgbtq-rd so freely because of

190

his privileged positionality and because of his location in a rhetoric and writing program known for its social justice work, this didn't exempt him from having to work to make the case for teaching at this intersection. TJ told me that graduate students at Syracuse were invited to teach their upper-division rhetoric and writing classes in line with their research interests. Because this upper-division course was a general education requirement for students at Syracuse, TJ told me that the course was already on the books. As it stood, the course description invited an intersectional focus on "nationality, sexuality, gender, and class." What was missing from this equation for TJ was religion and spirituality—and so he appealed to have these aspects of identity added to the course description for his section of the course. Making this change was important for TJ because he was interested in developing a course that examined how race, class, gender, nationality, and sexuality interanimated in public deployments of religious and/or spiritual discourse. In planning for his course, TJ intended for one unit in this course to explicitly address the lgbtq-rd, but he also told me that he planned to assign materials at this intersection throughout other course units as well. But getting some of his colleagues to sign onto this plan meant having lengthy discussions about how the study of religion and spirituality were relevant to the intersectional focus in this rhetoric and writing class. Reflecting on their anxieties, TJ commented: One of the things that is so interesting is that a lot of my writing teacher friends think about religion not as a space of rhetoric—in the sense that it's often seen and enacted publicly as this space that deals with absolutes, that are not themselves rhetorically constructed. And [they did] not know how to talk about that dimension of identity, or that realm of discourse, in ways that foreground . . . rhetoric . . . [as] central to any conversation about that space. And so, in that way, there is hesitancy about "Well, how do you do that then? TJ's point is important. His colleagues were not wary of his sustained focus on the lgbtq-rd. Rather, their reservations centered on whether or not it was possible to talk about religion and/or spirituality without dealing in absolutes. Of course, this was one of the very assumptions that TJ was invested in complicating. For TJ, beliefs were always formed through rhetoric. As I mention in Chapter 6, TJ believed that one of the potential violences of religious discourse comes when people take as a given that it deals in absolutes from the beginning of time. This is when religious discourse functions as a bludgeon. After TJ's request was approved, he told me that he worked closely with a mentor to "invite . . . resistance in lots of different ways." The key suggestion that TJ's mentor offered him, he

191

recalled, was to anchor the course around contemporary deployments of religious and/or spiritual discourse in various publics. Illustrating such contemporary examples during our interview, TJ told me that the first time he taught the course was around the time that President Obama had invited (conservative) Christian pastor Rick Warren to give the blessing at his inauguration. While this invitation may have been a political olive branch to disappointed conservative voters, it had the (perhaps) unintended consequence of isolating many lgbtq and ally people who had voted for Obama and volunteered during his campaign for the presidency. This was precisely the kind of tension, TJ told me, that he wanted his students to examine in class, and so he assigned students to read statements about this fallout authored by the White House and by the Human Rights Campaign. TJ encouraged his students to interpret these texts as "two very different positions about this very public text." Highlighting more of a social justice connection at the lgbtq-rd, he also showed students video clips of SoulForce activists at Liberty University. These lgbtq- and ally-identified protestors trespassed Liberty University's campus (where they were barred) and performed a "die in" to express solidarity with closeted queer students on the campus. Upon seeing these clips, TJ said students' first response indicated that they were "put off." Particularly, he remembered students' confusion about why a queer student would desire "to be part of a community that in some way doesn't want them." Initially, students believed that neither of these examples had much to do with them. But TJ saw this resistance as an opportunity to help students consider how they were "also actors and players involved" in these events. He wanted students to think about "where and how they aligned themselves" and how students' alignments could also "shift or move." At a larger level, too, TJ encouraged students to consider the possibilities for "transformation"—of communities, of individuals' consciousness, and of the culture as a whole. He invited students to envision ways that religious and/or spiritual discourse might be deployed to enable "new ways of being" in the world that were "more general" and potentially more "welcoming for queer desire at some point." In general, TJ reflected, encouraging these types of reflections required creating a climate that wasn't dismissive of students' religious and spiritual literacies but that also encouraged students to entertain uncertainty. TJ told me that while he valued students' literacies, he would rather have them work from the premise that they didn't have the full story than to work from prejudicial views about the lgbtq-rd. While TJ said that he hadn't yet experienced (conservative) Christian resistance in his class, he welcomed it as an opportunity for dialogue. Too often, he reflected, teachers seemed to approach such resistance by labeling (conservative) Christians as problem students. While he

192

acknowledged that these students might mobilize religious discourse in opposition to the lgbtq-rd, TJ said that such resistances also offered the possibility for "talking about discourse communities, the limits of them, what they enable, how they form, who gets to be in them, how people get read as being in them or not being in them." Regardless of the student's positionalities, TJ had designed his course to provide students "with the opportunity to say, 'I think maybe a bit differently now than I did early on.'" TJ's description of course goals was initially stunning to me—particularly as I reflected on some of the resistances I had experiences along the way in my own research process. I explained to TJ that while I experienced a variety of apprehension about my project, I had more than once been asked to answer the panicked question, Well, what if you change a student's beliefs? TJ noted that he had yet to encounter this line of questioning. But when I asked him, during our first interview, how he might respond he commented: "The response I want to give—and I haven't figured out how to say it in a way that is acceptable—is that—'Well, what else would we be doing besides potentially inviting students into other ways of being in the world that change them from the person they were prior to that encounter?'" Citing Marshall Alcorn's critique of social-epistemic rhetoric, TJ noted that we don't often enough consider the emotional, "subject changing" aspects of our work. Tying this to curricular development, TJ added that so much of what we understand about our work is limited to "quantifiable" outcomes like "students will demonstrate rhetorical knowledge…." But TJ suggested that this vision wasn't enough. He believed that teachers also needed to consider how the rich, interpersonal work of teaching also included un-measurable questions like "What are the kinds of people that we want students to become?" In a follow-up interview, TJ offered a more pointed response to the assertion that we shouldn't change students' beliefs about lgbtq issues. He commented, "Hate or complicity with hate doesn't get a pass because it comes carrying a Bible passage. Bigotry can be wrapped up in prayer, but it's still bigotry. Beliefs are arguments; they can be changed—and sometimes they should be." TJ articulated this response as a matter of disciplinary ethics, and to aid his point, he drew from Jacqueline Jones Royster's CCCC Chair's Address during which she spoke of "the need to not commit soul murder on our students." Making clear his assertion that pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd was a form of soul murder, TJ added: This point was made in the context of valuing marginalized students' home languages and cultures. But isn't it also soul murder against LGBT students when there are never LGBT

193

issues or characters represented in course readings—or when heteronormative statements go without comment? . . . When beliefs create a culture of death—a culture that makes suicide seem like an option preferable to life—beliefs need to change. People—children, for Christ's sake!—are dying because of the beliefs operative in this culture about LGBT folks. And sometimes these deaths happen inside us. . . . As "Just writing" teachers, we can and must help rescue the perishing and care for the dying. This is a powerful point. When we insist that all views are equally valid, or when we claim that (conservative) Christian students' anti-lgbtq beliefs must be "equally" respected, we ignore the ways that these beliefs make life unlivable for lgbtq people. This type of neutrality contributes to a culture of death. In light of the devastating consequences of neutrality, TJ added that cordoning off the lgbtq-rd as a "controversial topic," and/or insisting on neutral, pro/con framings, sounds "so shallow and small—insulting almost—when we're talking about students trying to grapple with, to understand and respond to, whole ways of being in the world. For TJ, pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd flourishes, in part, because of a larger narrative that teachers should "just" teach writing. Such an understanding of writing, he added, expresses "a very particular ideological view of literacy at the service of the capital market." This understanding of writing overlooks the fact that discourse circulates "in contexts . . . filled with and created by ethical agents, who move back and forth between the roles of audience and rhetor." Citing his mentor Eileen Schell, he articulated a vision of Just writing—a vision of rhetoric and writing that highlights our accountability to others. All writing issues—including focuses on effectiveness and persuasion—TJ added "are rhetorical issues, and rhetoric is about ethics and responsibility." The point of rhetoric and writing courses isn't to circumvent tense intersections but to engage them, and to encourage students to ask themselves who they are becoming as they read and write the world. Moreover, TJ believed that this question also applies to teachers. Reflecting on this at the lgbtq-rd, he said: My work cannot be value neutral; my goal cannot be to help people become more effective homophobes or racists, to enable folks to more persuasively argue for injustice. Words and claims do have consequences, and part of our job is to work with students as they imagine— or experience—their discourse traveling across audiences to hurt or help others, to support or subvert the status quo—or to do all these things at once. In TJ's estimation, pedagogical neutrality isn't an expression of fairness so much as it is an expression of injustice. Neutrality never does nothing—it maintains a violent status quo. Giving a nod

194

to his commitment to "stand on the right side of history," TJ connected his observations of just writing by referencing the legendary historian and activist Howard Zinn. He concluded, "Your rhetoric can't be neutral on a moving train." *** In the narratives above, I hope to "give voice" to a larger theme that cut across all nine participants' interviews, in one way or another. To a certain extent, these findings might have seemed a bit obvious. On some level, I'd wager that many of us truly believe that discourse is laden with ethical consequences. On some level, too, I imagine than many of us believe that pedagogy cannot be neutral. What participants' stories illuminate, however, is the disconnect between our theoretical understanding of the ethical implications of discourse and the very interpersonal (and intrapersonal) business of theoretical praxis. I don't believe that this disconnect is an oversight. Countless progressive activists have identified critical education as a prerequisite for achieving social justice. The threat that critical education might unsettle systematic injustice is very real. This is why, during the course of history, EuroAmerican have attempted to bar women and people of color from acquiring anything beyond a rudimentary education. It is also the reason why Christian missionaries stole the children of indigenous first peoples from their homes and enrolled them in schools where they were forced to unlearn their culture, their history, and their language (Stromberg). The threat of transformative education was also the impetus for the enforced segregation of schools, and it is also the current motive undergirding the de facto segregation through illegally funding public schools through property taxes (Lipsitz). It is also the reason why working-class students are shepherded through technical schools, based upon the premise that such students think with their hands and not with their heads (Rose). In our contemporary neoliberal context, claims of pedagogical neutrality flourish as a way to chip away at social justice and stifle pedagogical ethics through claims that all students are equally oppressed (Searls Giroux). In this topsy-turvy landscape, white, heterosexual, (conservative) Christian students emerge as the "true victims" of our education system—thus necessitating "protections" like Arizona's move to ban Ethnic Studies programs, Tennessee's prohibition on even mentioning lgbtq perspectives (HB229/SB049), and Horowitz's campaign to legislate the Academic Bill of Rights. The point of participants' narratives above isn't to somehow flip the table and render all privileged students villains—though neoliberal narratives have often taken up this claim to neutralize and/or co-opt the language of critical pedagogy. Rather, participants' stories evidence that while

195

there are no hierarchies of oppression, systematic oppression is nevertheless a reality we must face. Indeed, they indicate that our pedagogies are rife with oppressive contradictions that facilitate the "soul murder" of students and teachers alike. Not only does pedagogical neutrality encourage us to erase ourselves and others but it also siphons us off from ethical relationships. In response to this violence, participants reclaim social justice pedagogies as an invitation into new ways of being in the world. Contrary to neoliberal claims, the point of these pedagogies isn't to box in those with social privilege (indeed, in some form or another, most of us have it). Rather, it is to proliferate human relationships instead of shutting them down. This invitation extends to teachers as well. Like our students, this new way of being may require that we risk something of ourselves. In my conclusion, I revisit some of the risks participants highlighted in their encounters at the lgbtq-rd. Taking participants' imperative that we not compartmentalize, I refuse to establish a comfortable distance to my study by suggesting implications for future research. Instead, I use the conclusion as a space to reflect on the implications for our future selves.

196

Conclusion

Getting Schooled Again: Notes on "Doing Justice" at the LGBTQ-RD

I hadn't planned on writing about the lgbtq-religious junction. In fact, I could have gone on for many more years experiencing those deer-in-the-headlights moments that I described for readers in my introduction—had it not been for the students in my Literature and Sexuality class. Before that point, I had suffered through countless moments of religious-based heterosexism and cissexism in the classroom. Though painful, I considered it an occupational hazard. To teach as a queer person, to teach lgbtq topics even, one had to survive the lgbtq-rd. But the students in this particular class got me thinking about survival and the lgbtq-religious junction in an altogether different way. Without the thought-provoking questions students raised at this intersection, I might not have come face-to-face (so soon anyhow) with the realization that engaging the lgbtq-rd was indeed a matter of survival. In part, I arrived late to this realization because I had the benefit of "coming out" in my late twenties, in graduate school. I offered no tearful confession to religious-minded friends and family; I simply started dating women. But more than that, I didn't understand the importance of the lgbtq- religious junction because my position in the academy had insulated me from the brunt of havoc that conservative Christian discourse wreaks on most lgbtq people's lives. Consequently, it hadn't occurred to me that the education I was providing students with regard to lgbtq issues did them precious little good (especially for those committed to social justice) in a public sphere where stealth "family values" discourse is the lingua franca to even begin to be heard on topics concerning gender, gender expression, gender identity, and sexuality. To be blunt, my students were getting creamed out there—and they let me know it. Though I didn't have the answers for my students at the time, the urgency and sincerity of their questions haunted me enough that I took up the lgbtq-rd as my research topic. After awhile, I began to wonder why colleagues in English Studies didn't seem to talk about this intersection more. Conversations in the hallway alone let me know that people were grappling with the lgbtq-religious junction in their classrooms. And since there wasn't much out there by way of pedagogical scholarship, I figured that my study would go right to the source: I'd talk to English Studies teachers about their experiences at this intersection.

197

Broadly speaking, I hoped this study might allow me to theorize flexible pedagogical tactics for negotiating the lgbtq-religious junction. I was particularly taken with the idea of tactics,75 a concept inspired by scholars like Michel de Certeau, Paula Mathieu, and Chela Sandoval. I very much liked, for instance, Mathieu's definition of tactics as seized opportunities deployed in a contested space (16). And I imagined these tactics playing out very similarly to Sandoval's notion of differential consciousness working like "the clutch of an automobile, the mechanism that permits the driver to select, engage, and disengage gears in a system for the transmission of power" (58). In this way, I hoped teachers might shift gears more easily and more smoothly, choosing tactics that might best help them negotiate the lgbtq-rd based upon their unique situations. This is where the flexible aspect of flexible pedagogical tactics came in. As I've mentioned throughout this project, I knew well from my own experiences how teachers' pedagogical circumstances influenced how they were able (and unable) to negotiate this intersection. I headed into this project with a three-pronged approach—looking for tropes, traps, and tactics. Assuming part of the difficulty of navigating this juncture had to do with the unexpected nature in which the lgbtq-rd surfaced in the classroom, I thought it might be useful to catalogue the various ways students deployed religious discourse in lgbtq contexts. In presenting these as tropes, I hoped teachers might be able to prepare for whatever came at them in the classroom. Related to this, I also wanted to get a sense of teachers' experiences in the classroom, paying particular attention to the traps they had encountered at the lgbtq-religious junction. I imagined that discussing these pitfalls might give readers a sense of what to avoid in their own classrooms—how not to engage at this intersection. But more than all this, I was also interested in tactics—solutions for critically and ethically engaging at the lgbtq-rd. A betting woman, I figured there were bound to be teachers out there who'd found ways to successfully navigate this often frustrating pedagogical intersection. *** By now the reader may have gathered that I'm not much of a gambler. I couldn't accomplish the study I describe above because it didn't mesh with the data I was given—and thankfully so. First, it turns out that the lgbtq-rd arises in fairly predictable ways in the classroom. Students overwhelmingly deploy religious-moral discourse as a way to exempt themselves from critically examining lgbtq issues—or to object to discussing such topics in the first place. Moreover, students' religious-moral appeals mimic the family values rhetoric circulating in various U.S. publics. In fact, I was struck by the continuity among participants' descriptions of religious discourse in the classroom.

198

Much to my chagrin, I discovered just how much students preferred the phrase God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. These arguments were, in short, "old hat" for my participants. However unsurprising students' religious tropes were at the lgbtq-religious junction, I faced the unhappy surprise that there was no magic solution to be had at this intersection. In fact, in spite of its predictability, participants expressed an enormous amount of anxiety and frustration when it came to the lgbtq-rd. While I approached the post-survey interviews as a way to "get answers," many of my participants seemed just as interested in my thoughts and experiences at the lgbtq-religious junction as I was in theirs. Some participants like Aiden were simply thrilled to have someone to talk to about these experiences. Reflecting on their participation in my study, Aiden commented, "Sometimes the people who do this stuff feel so alone." Even Kami, who had a considerable amount of teaching experience under her belt, told me that it wasn't until after reading my write-up of her stories that she was able to fully understand her pedagogical approach to the lgbtq-rd. In practice, the interviews felt much more like a collective working through. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me had to do with how much participants' stories weren't about the classroom. Going in, I imagined that participants' richest stories would describe their successes and missteps in navigating the lgbtq-rd. Obviously, participants did share their classroom experiences with me, but our conversations frequently turned to considerations outside of the classroom. While engaged in the interviews, I hadn't really noticed how much this was the case until after I had transcribed the audio files. For example, participants wanted to talk about how their sense of professional and pedagogical (dis)empowerment stemmed from their social locations and their institutional rank. Not surprisingly, participants with more minoritized positionalities also bore the brunt of tense classroom situations at the lgbtq-rd. Worse still, participants' sense of empowerment was further compromised by their experiences of institutional violence— demonstrating that teachers are only as strong as their support networks. Over and over again, participants' stories were also peppered with reflections on their own intimate encounters at the lgbtq-religious junction. Participants' experiences at the lgbtq-rd outside the classroom shaped their understanding of pedagogical (im)possibility at this intersection. But it is not accurate to say that participants' negative experiences outside of the classroom simply soured their response to this intersection inside the classroom. While some of their stories were indeed traumatic (some of them traumatic for me to write), remarkably, participants used these stories as a way to engage the lgbtq-religious junction—not avoid it. In fact, their intimate encounters at this intersection served as a launching point for considering pedagogical ethics in general—and for

199

interrogating the all too common narratives about what we ought to be doing in the English Studies classroom. Moreover, it was through this very lens that participants were able to critique the pressure they experienced (from students, parents, colleagues, administrators, etc.) to approach the lgbtq-rd in allegedly neutral ways. At first, when I began the work of coding my interview data, the importance of these themes wasn't as apparent to me. Initially, I was frustrated. I thought I had somehow managed to ask the wrong questions. I wondered how I would begin to find the answers I was looking for. Slowly, I realized that I was looking for the wrong kinds of answers. I had erroneously assumed that my job was to "solve" the lgbtq-religious junction or to simply make it easier to navigate in the classroom. But judging from my participants' stories, that isn't the real issue. What's really at stake here are the everyday pressures that bear down on teachers, which make critical and ethical negotiations of the lgbtq-rd seem impossible. These pressures—stemming from political, disciplinary, institutional, emotional, and embodied contexts—strong-arm (some) teachers into thinking that their only viable option is to perform pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq- religious junction. In short, my participants politicized our conversations about pedagogy in a way not commonly encountered in English Studies journals—where the focus (if it is to be understood as relevant) must remain on "the classroom." In contrast, they used the lgbtq-rd as a touchstone to reflect on the political landscape of higher education in general. *** As a researcher, these findings leave me with the difficult task of offering a conclusion that does justice to participants' stories, while also providing some possible steps forward for readers interested in addressing the lgbtq-religious junction in socially just ways. I have my work cut out for me. For instance, to focus my conclusion solely on the classroom implications of my research would be a form of "selling out." Pedagogical tactics alone cannot even pretend to be a panacea for the systemic injustice that participants document in and around academic cultures. In another vein, to focus exclusively on higher order institutional/national politics surrounding the lgbtq-rd would be a form of "copping out" for those readers who seek concrete actions for addressing this intersection in their classrooms. My research, after all, began with an earnest pedagogical question—and as I've already mentioned, skirting questions of how we might do justice at the lgbtq-religious junction would continue to disadvantage lgbtq and ally students who are "getting creamed" in public spheres that trade in conservative Christian discourse as a precursor to being heard on questions of gender identity, gender performance, and sexuality.

200

Building from James Porter, Patricia Sullivan, Stuart Blythe, Jeffery Grabill, and Libby Miles's "Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change," I acknowledge that offering critique isn't enough. Instead, I offer critique alongside an "action plan"—one that considers the material and discursive conditions of institutional spaces76 (613). I agree with Porter et al.'s assertion that, regardless of whether or not wholesale institutional change is possible, it is important for those of "us"—graduate students, adjuncts, contract workers, tenure-track professors, tenured professors, and administrators—committed to social justice to gum up the mechanisms of oppression as much as we are able (611). But here is where my vision of socially just action necessarily differs: First, given that many participants requested that I not "patronize" readers by offering them "prescriptive" solutions, I must state more humbly that my main goal here is to begin a larger dialogue. My discussion below will be incomplete, not only because I'm speaking from a limited social location—as a contract employee and as a white, working-class, (cis)genderqueer byke—but also because I cannot speak to the material/discursive conditions of every institution of higher education. Nevertheless, my survey and interview data provide a good place to start such a discussion. What I offer below is a beginning, if you will, that I hope readers will build from, consider, and challenge. Second, I advocate a vision of critique/activism that precedes and exceeds the institution. The actions I offer below begin at the level of the individual, extend to the classroom, continue in addressing institutional spaces, and close by articulating the actions necessary in the larger political landscape if socially just pedagogies at the lgbtq-rd are to become viable. Finally, my vision of critique differs from Porter et al. in the sense that I understand despair as both an appropriate and productive response to oppressive institutions. This is particularly the case for those of us who occupy multiple subordinate social groups; in these circumstances, feelings of political agency are fleeting at best. In this environment, it is crucial to give voice to despair. Indeed, it was often through articulating such feelings that participants were also able to give voice to the discursive, material, and emotional conditions that made addressing the lgbtq-rd feel impossible. Despair, unlike apathy, is not antithetical to action. Rather, despair hangs onto the idea of social justice; it longs to upend oppression while fully knowing that the deck is stacked. For that reason, I advocate "unproductive" feelings (e.g. despair, disgust, rage, and the like) because they disrupt institutional homeostasis. Voiced collectively, the "bad feelings" we harbor toward our profession

201

might offer the possibility of stubborn resistance. And it is in the spirit of stubborn resistance that I offer a tentative outline for doing justice at the lgbtq-religious junction. "Doing Justice"—What Does it Mean? Before I can articulate what it means to do justice at the lgbtq-religious junction, I have to consider the larger question of what it means to "do justice" more generally—and that is a huge question. And as I sit here trying to articulate a burning desire for justice in the face of the overwhelming feelings of helplessness I normally feel, I can't help but think about the sociopolitical contexts surrounding my writing. In the weeks surrounding my defense, the Supreme Court overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), extending the federal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples in states where such marriages are already legal and leaving the rest of the nation in legal limbo (Peralta). And while this decision was considered a victory, I cannot help but think of the scores of lgbtq people for whom this decision was underwhelming to say the least. In fact, as organizations like Queers for Economic Justice point out, marriage is far from the minds of most folks who do not have access to gainful employment, who can be fired from their jobs at will, who can be denied housing, who have no access to healthcare, who can be deported, who cannot employ the basic civil right of unencumbered voting, or who cannot move through space without fearing for their safety. It is important to know that, in the days before they overturned parts of DOMA, the Supreme Court also gutted Section 4 and declawed Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, provisions which were meant to ensure that people of color weren't turned away from the polls in states with pernicious histories of voter intimidation (Liptak). The ink on the SCOTUS's minority opinion had hardly dried when Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia pushed through previously blocked Voter ID laws and worked to further gerrymander blue-leaning districts (Rhodan). It is also important to know that, during the time of my writing, the story of Kenneth Furr had only just begun to make waves on social media sites. Furr, a Washington, D.C., police officer, was given a slap on the wrist—"three years of supervised probation, a $150 fine, and 100 hours of community service" to be precise—after getting drunk, soliciting a transgender woman for sex, and when rebuffed, firing "five shots into the car where [she] and [her] friends were sitting" (Chibbaro). In part, this story's circulation was tied to another devastating injustice: the vigilante neighborhood watch volunteer, George Zimmerman, was acquitted after profiling an unarmed black teenager,

202

Trayvon Martin77, stalking him, provoking an altercation with him, and shooting the teen through the heart (Brown Dianis). News of Trayvon Martin's murder and George Zimmerman's acquittal also brought attention to the story of Marissa Alexander, an African-American woman who was sentenced to twenty years in prison for firing a warning shot so that she might escape her abusive ex-husband. Both Alexander and Zimmerman's cases hinged upon the controversial "stand your ground" laws that allow would-be victims to fight back with lethal force instead of fleeing (Coalition to Stop Gun Violence). However terrible these ALEC- and NRA-inspired laws may be, the travesty here is that a "stand your ground" defense worked for Zimmerman, who claimed to fear for his life against an unarmed Trayvon Martin, but it didn't work for Alexander—even after her abusive husband claimed in a deposition that she never fired at him and that had she not fired a warning shot he would have likely beaten her again (Sloane). This is just a sampling of the "kairotic moments" in which my writing is situated. So what can it mean to do justice? And how can I answer this question through the numbness of forever seeing justice on an unreachable horizon? *** Doing justice, first, might mean letting go of the narratives of equality, tolerance, and inclusion. The fact of the matter is that the histories of oppression and social stratification produce a society in which we cannot be equal. And in the face of this social fact, it is perverse to claim that all of us ought to be treated equally—"regardless" of race, ethnicity, class, gender, gender identity, ability, citizenship, religion, or sexual orientation. More often than not, this narrative insists on an ideal that doesn't exist so that it can excuse what would otherwise be considered blatant oppression in practice. The fact of the matter is that calls for tolerance willfully forget who is doing the tolerating and who is merely being tolerated—that these roles are never reciprocal. The fact of the matter is that it does little good to be included in a system that refuses to overhaul the litany of privileges it extends to Christian, white, upper-middle class, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender, natural-born citizens of the U.S. on the backs of people who do not identify as Christian; on the backs of people of color; on the backs of working-class people, working-poor people, and poor people; on the backs of disabled people and elderly people; on the backs of lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and transgender people; and on the backs of transnational workers, asylum seekers, and other undocumented people in the United States.

203

Doing justice requires a wholesale transformation of oppressive systems. Doing justice demands that we not distract ourselves with whether or not the glass is half full or half empty but instead ask—loudly and repeatedly—who gets to pour the glasses and what's in the water in the first place. Doing justice requires that those of us who have privilege—be it white privilege, class privilege, male privilege, cisgender privilege, heterosexual privilege, Christian privilege, citizenship privilege, and so on—must educate ourselves so that we acknowledge "the faces"78 of oppression and leverage our privilege to disrupt oppression whenever we encounter it. Doing justice means recognizing that oppression functions on multiple levels: interpersonal, institutional, and cultural. Doing justice means recognizing that whether such oppression is explicit or implicit, intentional or unintentional, its effects are nevertheless harmful. Moreover, since those of us who occupy (often multiple) privileged social groups benefit from this oppression, we are the ones responsible for dismantling oppression—not those from minoritized social groups (Johnson 73). Doing justice means being honest with ourselves about the socially dominant positionalities we occupy. It means recognizing that those unearned privileges allow us to move through space on the backs of those who occupy socially subordinate positionalities (Johnson 8). Doing justice means coming face-to-face with Howard Zinn's now famous quote that "You can't be neutral on a moving train" (11). In other words, doing justice means that unless a person from a socially dominant group is actively working to dismantle systems of oppression/privilege, they are part of the problem. Doing Justice: Addressing the LGBTQ-RD in English Studies In what follows, my hope is to initiate dialogue about what it might mean to do justice at the lgbtq-religious junction in and around English Studies. It is important for me to say at the outset that pedagogical research at this intersection is only beginning. My major intervention has been to draw the lgbtq-rd to readers' attention as a matter of importance, to detail the ways in which the English Studies pedagogical archive has attempted (in large part) to circumvent this intersection, and through the stories of the people I interviewed, to describe the institutional, emotional, and disciplinary roadblocks that make doing justice at the lgbtq-religious junction so difficult to accomplish in the first place. I say this to emphasize that doing justice at the lgbtq-rd will require more research, more dialogue, more action, and more risk. As the graphic illustrates in figure 13, I have organized the following sections around four sites where we might do justice at this intersection: the self, the classroom, institutional spaces, and the larger political landscape of the United States. In each section, I begin by using participants'

204

stories as a launching point for thinking about doing justice, and working from these stories, I speculate on other related avenues wherein we might do justice at the lgbtq-religious junction. Relying on the value those in English Studies place on active reading, I encourage my audience to question, qualify, brainstorm, and add to the provisional frameworks I provide.

Political Landscapes

Institutional Spaces

Classroom

Self

Figure 13. Sites of "Doing Justice" at the LGBTQ-RD As I mention above, each of us as readers approaches this research from a different positionality vis-à-vis our institutional rank and membership in various social groups. What this means, in practice, is that not everyone will be able to take the same risks at the lgbtq-religious junction. Notice that I didn't say "willing." I believe that there is a distinction to be made between that which inconveniences us or causes us to lose standing in the name of social justice and the risks that might compromise our humanity and jeopardize our physical/emotional/financial safety. As I mention above, agents of justice must reflect on their social location and be honest with themselves about the risks they are able to bear. While I believe it is important to call out privilege in the name of justice, the facts of intersectionality and the complexities of the human spirit also require a tempered generosity in not policing how our compatriots do and do not elect to do justice at the lgbtq-rd. That is, of course, not a "get out of jail free" card for those who want to un-see their complicity in systems of privilege and oppression. Doing Justice to the Self Doing justice begins with the self. As teachers, we bring our positionalities, our funds of knowledge, and our previous and ongoing intimate encounters at the lgbtq-religious junction into

205

the classroom whether or not we acknowledge it. Not only do these factors shape how teachers imagine pedagogical (im)possibility at this intersection, but if they don't reflect on these factors, some teachers may ultimately advocate approaches to the lgbtq-rd that have oppressive consequences. Those of us invested in addressing the lgbtq-religious junction in critical and ethical ways might begin by doing justice to ourselves in the following ways: • Reflecting on our own intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd • Engaging in research to help us think about the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice • Assessing honestly the privileges available to us that we can leverage at the lgbtq-rd • Engaging in self-care as we navigate the lgbtq-rd. To flesh out these actions, I return to the stories participants share in Chapters 5–7. Reflecting on Intimate Encounters. Teachers’ intimate encounters at the lgbtq-religious junction matter. As shown in Chapter 6, transference and countertransference are inevitably going to play at an intersection like the lgbtq-religious junction. While English Studies scholars have written more generally about emotion's role in students' lives—or more generally about the role of emotion in teaching—less time is spent reflecting on how teachers' intimate encounters at this junction influence their pedagogies. If we put teachers' intimate encounters on the back burner, we’re cutting off from the discussion important contexts and stories that are necessary for understanding and approaching the lgbtq-religious junction. As readers saw in Chapter 6, sometimes it can be easy at the lgbtq-rd for teachers to conflate—intentionally or unintentionally—resistant students with resistant friends, partners, and family members. We see this, for example, when Will discusses the hypothetical conservative Christian student alongside his experiences with his sister, who has been encouraged by her church community not to ask hard questions about her religious beliefs. As a result, this hypothetical Christian student becomes Will's sister. Neither want to question; both become frustrating. Will is not alone in making these associations. I'd wager that many readers have made similar unconscious connections. Indeed, this becomes easy to do because teachers are so infrequently asked to elaborate on their intimate encounters, which in turn leads to a scenario where these intimate encounters haunt teachers' pedagogical responses at the lgbtq-rd yet remain unexamined. Part of doing justice at the lgbtq-religious junction, then, might mean thinking through these intimate

206

encounters so that we can carve out space between our students and the "intimate relationships" our students evoke for us. In creating that space, teachers allow their relationships with resistant students to become something else—perhaps something more hopeful. We allow students the possibility for change. It is also important to point out that teachers' intimate encounters can be a resource in the classroom. This is certainly the case with TJ, who draws from his intimate encounters with his religious community to create course material that engages the lgbtq-rd in critical and ethical ways. In contrast, Kami's story also shows readers that giving voice to painful intimate encounters at the lgbtq-religious junction can do valuable work. Kami, for instance, was very candid in saying that she had a difficult time addressing the lgbtq-rd in the classroom, and she was very cognizant that this had much to do with her relationship to her family. Still, in sharing these narratives, Kami was able to do justice at the lgbtq-rd by illuminating the weak spots in English Studies pedagogical scholarship—for instance in recognizing the ethical failure of framing lgbtq issues as pro/con arguments in the classroom. While this didn't surface during my interviews, dealing with intimate encounters at the lgbtq- rd is also just as important for hetero-cisgender teachers who are not sure whether or not they understand themselves as allies. For instance, as I note in Chapter 4, a few respondents used the write-in portions of my survey to express what it was like to grow up in conservative Christian homes and receive anti-lgbtq messages. Many of these participants mentioned that, as a result, they had a difficult time knowing how to respond to the lgbtq-rd. This, I believe, is a necessary first step. In thinking through these intimate encounters, such respondents begin the work of sensitizing themselves to their potential biases. These are, of course, only a handful of examples, but I hope that they illuminate for readers how reflecting on their intimate encounters might be a powerful (though solitary) act of doing justice. Researching the LGBTQ-RD. Building from the previous section, I argue that researching the lgbtq-religious junction can also be a form of doing justice to the self. For instance, the hetero- cisgender teacher who finds hirself uncomfortable addressing the lgbtq-rd because of hir upbringing in a conservative Christian community might engage in critical theological scholarship that takes up the lgbtq-rd from a social justice perspective. I say this because whether or not such teacher subscribes to Christian beliefs and whether or not this teacher logically knows that lgbtq people (as a social group) are "good people deserving of rights," those earlier anti-lgbtq religious narratives still

207

linger as an implicit what if (e.g. "What if lgbtq people really are sinful and thus undeserving of rights?" "What if lgbtq people really are choosing a depraved lifestyle?"). In returning to this narrative scene from theological positions of social justice, this hypothetical teacher might be able to undo a great deal of hir discomfort when it comes to dealing with lgbtq issues or the lgbtq-rd in particular. For some lgbtq-identified teachers, engaging in research at the lgbtq-rd as a means to do justice to the self may look a bit different. Doing justice might mean reading theological scholarship that deconstructs the ways the Christian Bible has been wielded as a weapon against lgbtq people. Here again, whether or not this lgbtq teacher subscribes to Christian beliefs is not the issue. Rather, consuming such scholarship can empower this teacher to have some sense of the conservative Christian arsenal and how (if they choose) to disarm it. Consider, for example, participants like Trixie, who explained that knowing the Bible allowed her to be taken seriously by her conservative Christian students and to not feel flustered when students deployed "clobber passages" in class discussions. Similarly, Jo also mentioned engaging with theological scholarship so that she could have a better sense of biblical exegesis, the complexities of translation, and so forth—all of which allowed her to understand that conservative Christian, anti-lgbtq arguments are hardly as self-evident as they initially seemed. While I do not claim that engaging in such research will make volatile classroom conversations at the lgbtq-rd any more palatable, it may reduce the frequency of deer-in-the-headlights moments at this intersection. Assessing Privilege. While it may seem counterintuitive to claim this, another way to do justice to the self at the lgbtq-rd is to honestly assess our privilege. In his book, Power, Privilege, and Difference, Allan Johnson points out that while acknowledging privilege makes many folks who hail from socially dominant groups defensive, it doesn't have to be that way. To paraphrase Johnson, having privilege doesn't make someone a bad person (39). While it is true that people who occupy a privileged social group—like cisgender people for instance—are able to move through space at the cost of transgender and genderqueer people (obvious in many things, like access to health care, access to consistent legal documentation, or access to bathrooms and locker rooms), this doesn't mean that all cisgender people are jerks. What it does mean, is that folks with cisgender privilege must leverage their socially dominant position in order to dismantle systems that privilege them while oppressing trans and genderqueer people. It is also important to keep in mind intersectionality while assessing privilege. Just because a teacher might occupy a socially subordinate position vis-à-vis hir sexuality doesn't mean that ze isn't

208

privileged in other ways. Readers might recall, for instance, Will's social location as a white, cisgender, gender normative, gay, southern male teaching in the South. During our interview, Will was very candid about the amount of leverage that his privileged positionalities afforded him in the classroom. Will understood that his students were less apt to question him as a white, southern, cisgender male teaching in the South, and he leveraged that privilege to ask students to think through their own privilege at the lgbtq-rd—particularly when it came to unchecked Christian privilege. Capitalizing on his own dominant social locations, Will leveraged his privilege toward socially just ends. While all of my participants were forthcoming about their privilege, TJ presents a particularly interesting case. As a white, heterosexual, cisgender, gender normative, Christian male, TJ hailed from multiple dominant groups. Part of doing justice for TJ meant not only being honest about that privilege but also not allowing himself to buy into the lie that he couldn't properly negotiate intersections like the lgbtq-rd because he wasn't lgbtq-identified. Indeed, during our interview, TJ talked about the importance of having an affinity toward lgbtq communities. As an ally for social justice, TJ deployed his privileged positionality to teach at the lgbtq-rd— doing so in ways that his colleagues from more minoritized positionalities mightn't have been able to accomplish. Instead of believing that only lgbtq people could effectively speak about the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice (a lie which places the burden of challenging oppression onto an already minoritized group), TJ began the work of educating himself. To teach at this intersection, TJ had to do his homework—not just when it came to the lgbtq-religious junction but also in terms of understanding the nuances of heterosexism, cissexism, racism, sexism, Christo-normativity and the like. While these are only a few examples, I hope that they illustrate how honestly assessing and leveraging social privilege is a form of doing justice to the self. The alternative—wallowing in privileged "guilt"—is not only ineffective but ultimately works to sustain unjust systems. Engaging in Self-Care. Another form of doing justice to the self at the lgbtq-rd is engaging in self-care. For those in minoritized positions—perhaps specifically lgbtq-identified teachers—this means knowing and respecting your own limits—including being able to say "no" to students and to colleagues. We see this, for instance, in Michelle's assertion that—while she will address religious discourse in the classroom—she will not discuss the Bible because it is "clearly homophobic." We also see self-care in José's refusal to be a native informant to his students, who ask him offensive things about Mormon culture (e.g. how many moms he had).

209

It is also worth noting that ideas of self-care will not be uniform across members of a minoritized social group. Some teachers, for instance, may see speaking out as a form of self-care. For instance, in the face of feeling erased, Kami spoke out against her colleague's blatant heterosexism. Because methods of self-care are individually chosen, it is important for those in minoritized communities to do justice by not policing their peers when they do choose to speak out. It is important to remember that for some, speaking out against oppression can be just as powerful a form of self-care as refusal or disengagement. While there are certainly exceptions to the following blurb, practicing self-care might look different for hetero-cisgender allies negotiating the lgbtq-rd. For those with more privileged positionalities, practicing self-care in this scenario really does begin with recalling intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd—and perhaps acknowledging the oppressive messages that they may have internalized through their home literacies. Practicing self-care also includes educating oneself on the mechanisms of privilege and oppression, acknowledging privilege, and understanding that hailing from a privileged social group doesn't make someone a "bad person." Practicing self-care at the lgbtq-rd means not allowing oneself to wallow in privileged guilt. It requires learning the distinction between selfishness and self-care and being willing to leverage privilege to upend oppression at the lgbtq-rd. Finally practicing self-care means being able to forgive yourself for making mistakes; the key is to learn and grow—and most importantly—to keep on fighting for social justice. *** In the spirit of extending this conversation about what it might mean to "do justice to the self," I have included a list of resources for readers in Appendix D for thinking not only about the inner workings of privilege and oppression but also for thinking about the lgbtq-rd in critical and ethical ways. A handful of these sources were cited by participants in their interviews. As I mentioned earlier, this is a living document, one that I hope might help readers collaborate and brainstorm with others as they add to it. Doing Justice in the Classroom As I've discussed earlier, the lgbtq-rd is too often presented as a trap of opposing social groups, with lgbtq students at one end and religious students on the other. In this equation, negotiating the lgbtq-rd becomes a zero sum game that asks which subset of students teachers value more. Creating this binary assumes that, as a social group, lgbtq students profess no religious beliefs and that all cisgender, heterosexual students express only oppressive religious beliefs. Such a rubric also leaves out students who—regardless of positionality—identify as atheist, agnostic, or spiritual.

210

Moreover, this zero sum game denies that oppressive beliefs, whether or not they are religious, still ought to be challenged in the sense that belief discourses have very real consequences for people’s lives. Thus, doing justice at the lgbtq-rd means treating this intersection as we might any other question of justice in our classrooms (e.g. gender justice, racial justice, class justice, and so forth). Doing justice means that we create a framework for students that considers the lgbtq-religious junction in light of questions of privilege and oppression. In that light, those of us invested in this intersection might begin doing justice in the classroom in the following ways: • Resisting narratives of pedagogical neutrality at the lgbtq-rd • Developing courses more broadly around questions of social justice in order to make it easier to address the lgbtq-rd more specifically • Researching scholarship surrounding the lgbtq-rd in other disciplines • Taking inventory of our options for responding to anti-lgbtq religious discourse in socially just ways • Responding with generosity—to our students and to ourselves—when we navigate the lgbtq- rd in our classrooms. Resisting Pedagogical Neutrality. Throughout, I have tried to make the case that teachers should approach the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice. I have argued that, while they may seem evenhanded, "neutral" approaches to the lgbtq-rd are ultimately oppressive in the sense that they sidestep questions of power and privilege. Narratives of neutrality also traffic in oppression through repetition of the idea that all ideas are equally valid. As TJ claims in Chapter 7, whether or not anti- lgbtq statements are couched in religious belief does not give them any more credibility. Such claims (religious or not) are invalid precisely because they dehumanize lgbtq people. I imagine that a relatively small number of English Studies teachers would actually set out to dehumanize lgbtq people through their pedagogical practices. Rather, I imagine that many English Studies teachers would like to think of themselves as fair, and I'm sure a modest population would even consider themselves lgbtq allies. The problem here is not a matter of intentions so much as it is a matter of vigilance. Pedagogical neutrality has many faces, and many of them seem like old- fashioned, common sense. This is precisely what makes pedagogical neutrality so difficult to root out. Following the lead of participants, I argue that part of "doing justice" at the lgbtq-rd requires taking

211

an inventory of these "faces" of neutrality, exposing them, and following them through to their logical consequences. The most common of these are as follows: o Agenda Bogeyman: i.e. "Teachers shouldn't push their agendas on students" o Default Student: i.e. "A teacher's job is to assist all students, and this includes not attacking students' religious beliefs" o Bare Pedagogy: i.e. "Though I may be annoyed by oppressive deployments of religious- moral discourse, I must ultimately remember that my job is to just teach ______" o Compartmentalization: i.e. "Though I support lgbtq issues, it is important to set aside my personal beliefs in the classroom." First, in thinking through narratives of the "agenda bogeyman," readers might recall Kami's claim that all education has an agenda. The real question, she argues, isn't whether teachers have an agenda but what kind of agenda teachers have. Drawing out Kami's observation, I'd add that pedagogical neutrality pushes an oppressive agenda on students—one that teaches minoritized students to second-guess their experiences of discrimination, one that coddles students from socially dominant groups into never having to question their privilege, and one that robs all students from having access to a critical framework for thinking about the consequences of how they read and write the world. "But is this fair to all students?" narratives of the "default student" ask. This is a tricky one to answer, because, as I have tried to demonstrate throughout, questions such as these tend to characterize the hetero-cisgender student as an everyman. This construction is more than unfair; it reflects an oppressive form of epistemic privilege. Still, even if a teacher were to avoid such missteps, the question of how not to "attack" a conservative Christian student's beliefs remains. It is helpful, I think, to return to Jo's call for a robust understanding of what it means to "respect" students' beliefs. In Jo's estimation, respecting students' beliefs means taking them seriously enough to question them in the first place. This is a helpful distinction to hold onto. Of course, "bare pedagogy" narratives attempt to sidestep such critiques by paring down questions of what teachers ought to be doing in the English Studies classroom (or any classroom). These narratives claim that English Studies' primary goal is to just teach writing, to teach critical reading, and so on. These claims can be persuasive in an economic depression where a manufactured, anti-intellectual backlash has been deployed to slash departmental budgets across higher education. Bare pedagogy is allegedly safe, but it is certainly not just. In addition to guaranteeing a deskilling of English Studies as a discipline, which reduces teachers' jobs to

212

introducing students to academic discourse, shepherding students through logical appeals, and checking grammar. Certainly, English Studies does address these things, but as an overwhelming number of participants confirmed, teachers do much more—and they must do more than bare pedagogy. As José, TJ, and others point out, discourse has world-making potential, and as such, teachers have the ability to open up the possibility of a more socially just world—or foreclose this kind of possibility. Clearly, doing justice at the lgbtq-rd requires the former over the latter. This is a lot of responsibility, and one way to distance oneself from the responsibility is to compartmentalize. Indeed, in Chapter 4, readers may recall the frequency with which survey respondents claimed that though they supported lgbtq social justice, they put these personal beliefs aside in the classroom. But just as students are responsible for the discourses they employ, so are teachers. It may be helpful, at this juncture, to reflect on Jo's observation in Chapter 7, where she argues that pedagogical neutrality (in the guise of fairness) gives legitimacy to a world where lgbtq people—by virtue of the fact that some people find them immoral—are routinely denied rights and are routinely denied the human right to move through space with the expectation of safety and human dignity. This is the world that neutrality brings into being; teachers who employ neutrality around lgbtq issues are complicit in that oppression. In resisting the urge to compartmentalize, we are also less apt to participate in injustice. Developing Courses around Social Justice. While resisting pedagogical neutrality is a necessary first step in "doing justice" in the classroom, the hard work has only begun. In fact, some of my participants didn't realize how pervasive neutrality narratives were until they tried to teach without them. This left participants in the position of rebuilding their courses from the ground up, and while their curriculums differed, many framed their courses to address questions of power, privilege, and oppression. For instance, rather than relying on textbooks' and popular media's usual pro/con discussions of lgbtq issues, participants like Kami took the time to find readings that framed lgbtq issues within a social justice perspective. As a way to avoid pedagogical neutrality, participants like Jo completely reframed major course assignments. For example, rather than assigning students to write position papers, she asked them to locate a public issue that mattered to them (e.g. marriage equality, GMOs, Occupy Wall Street, etc.); identify common appeals and warrants in these public discussions; examine how power, privilege, and oppression operated in these discussions; and then reflect on the ethical and material consequences of such discussions. These approaches certainly took a lot of work, which sometimes meant retrofitting pre- existing curriculums or bucking them entirely. Still, overhauling their pedagogies to focus more

213

broadly on social justice helped participants tremendously when it came to navigating the lgbtq- religious junction. When the lgbtq-rd surfaced in volatile ways, for example, it became easier for these teachers to respond to students by asking them to consider their anti-lgbtq statements in light of larger course themes. As a consequence, they were less apt to be accused by a disgruntled, socially conservative student of unfairly singling them out. In a more positive light, these overhauled curriculums were also beneficial in that they provided students with a vocabulary for thinking about discourse in critical and ethical ways. Hypothetically speaking, social justice pedagogies would certainly be a boon for lgbtq and ally students who struggle to respond to "family values" rhetoric in various publics. Moreover, it is also important to note that these social justice curriculums didn't come at the expense of course goals. Rather, it facilitated them. Indeed, participants like Aiden, who adopted these curriculums, found that students were much more engaged with course material—which in turn improved their ability to reach course objectives. Doing justice (at the lgbtq-rd and beyond) has its fringe benefits. Researching the LGBTQ-Religious Junction. Addressing the lgbtq-rd is nerve wracking. It can become especially stressful when students draw from scripture to support their points, since the chance that an English Studies teacher might also be a biblical scholar is unlikely. Indeed, as Lynn pointed out during her interview, the very last thing that a teacher wants to do is be bested in class by a student citing scripture to support their phobic views. While these anxieties surfaced during my interviews, participants also acknowledged that avoiding the lgbtq-rd wasn't the answer. Instead, many participants researched this intersection so they might be able to engage students in discussions of the lgbtq-rd. In looking for resources, participants turned to published literature in queer studies, religious studies, and theological studies. Some participants, for instance, felt that it was useful to have a long- view of religious history so that they might understand how contemporary religious attitudes towards sexuality are produced.79 In a similar light, participants who were most comfortable engaging at this intersection had taken it upon themselves to research the "clobber passages" often used against lgbtq people. These sources provided participants with alternate understandings of religious texts, along with a better understanding of the political contexts that inform the translation and interpretation of scripture.80 Finally, participants also sought out research to help them understand the contemporary political clash between religious conservatives and lgbtq activists.81 Like my participants, I advocate researching the lgbtq-rd as a form of doing justice. While we can't predict how students will take up this intersection, having research on our side allows us to

214

engage in robust, academic conversations with students. This is an important intervention because robust conversations are sorely needed at this intersection. Too often, the lgbtq-rd is considered only in terms of personal beliefs, when in fact conservative Christian discourse shapes the parameters of many aspects of public life in the United States. In educating ourselves at this intersection, teachers can equip themselves and their students with critical literacies to navigate Christo-normative publics. Taking an Inventory of Responses to the LGBTQ-RD. While resisting neutrality, planning socially just curriculums, and researching the lgbtq-rd will certainly aide teachers, preparation is another important form of doing justice at this intersection. As Chapter 4 evidences, the lgbtq-religious junction is fairly predictable. For example, survey respondents noted that students most often employed religious discourse in lgbtq contexts to question the validity of lgbtq issues. Moreover, participants' interviews in Chapters 5–7 confirm that such students repeat conservative Christian talking points that frequently circulate in U.S. publics: "Marriage has always been between a man and a woman," "Children do better with a mother and a father," or another favorite, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" I could add to this list, but the key here is less about family values tropes as it is thinking through the multiple options teachers have available to them. I emphasize this strategy because teachers come from different social locations, and a one-size approach never works, but more than that, not every pedagogical situation a teacher experiences will be the same. Some scenarios are more conducive to robust conversations at the lgbtq-rd. Other times, a teacher may feel particularly tired and thus have less energy to expend. Whatever the case, preparation helps. To illustrate what some of these options may be, I've chosen the most commonly referenced one-liner across participants' stories: "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!" As the reader can see from figure 14, there are a number of ways that a teacher can respond to this statement without taking a pedagogically neutral stance. A teacher might, for example, respond to such a statement by historicizing the text—the Book of Genesis and its creation stories. In this scenario, it might be fruitful to point out the variety of creation stories in the Abrahamic traditions—not to mention the various translations of these stories, some of which are much less self-evidently heterosexual. The point here is not to "play the Bible game" but to disrupt the student's monolithic reading of a text. Another option would be to address the way privilege functions in a statement such as this. For example, harkening back to Will's story, a teacher might consider asking their student to reflect on why their particular understanding of God (let alone their belief in God) should get to function like a policing mechanism for a diverse

215

audience of students and teacher. Related to this, it might also be pertinent to ask students as a whole to reflect on the material consequences this utterance creates for lgbtq people when, as a social group, they are believed to be "not real" or "not godly." Depending on time constraints, it may also be useful for the teacher to demonstrate how discourses of perversion have been deployed throughout history to justify genocide, colonialism, chattel slavery, and other forms of violence.

Discussing Privilege

Reviewing Assignment Historicizing Goals the Text "It's Adam and Eve, not Adam and Examining Steve!" Discussing Emotions Consequences

Employing Logic

Figure 14. Responding to Anti-LGBTQ Christonormative Discourse There are, of course, responses to this utterance that don't require much specialized knowledge at the lgbtq-rd. A teacher might, for example, employ a logical analysis of the phrase, "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." For instance, one might ask the student how they can be sure that God didn't make Steve after all. In another vein, if the student seems to accept the premise that the only socially acceptable products of society are things that God created, we might openly wonder whether it is acceptable to wear clothes, drive cars, or take antibiotics (since by the student's logic, illnesses are God-given). Another approach would be to acknowledge the affect behind such a declarative statement. If the situation allows, a teacher might ask the student to quietly reflect (free-write even) on what it is about the existence of lgbtq people—or the notion that this social group of people might be considered natural—that produces such anxiety. And a final option—one that works best when courses are structured around social justices—would be to refer the student back to the guidelines of the course or the particular assignment at hand. To be sure, there are other strategies for addressing the lgbtq-rd, and in the spirit of collaboration, I encourage readers to take up this exercise where I have left off. The key here is that

216

taking such an inventory of responses helps teachers, in the heat of the moment, to avoid the pitfalls of pedagogical neutrality—which is an admittedly tempting place of retreat. But more than that, preparation is also helpful insomuch as it might prevent teachers from getting flustered and losing their tempers with a student—though again, losing one's temper isn't always a bad response. Responding with Generosity. Regardless of the care that teachers take in approaching this intersection, the lgbtq-religious junction is rife with affect—for students and teachers. Rather than sidestep affect, which may be an unrealistic (if not harmful) goal, I argue that readers might take participants' lead in acknowledging and wading through the classroom's emotional current. Such attentiveness to emotion allows teachers to practice empathy toward their students and toward themselves. Participants weren't unwilling to compromise their pedagogical commitments to social justice, but this didn't preclude that they couldn't also acknowledge the emotional lives of their students. For many participants, this meant understanding that while certain lgbtq issues might be "old hat" to a seasoned teacher, these same issues might seem intimidating (if not threatening) in their newness to students. Indeed, participants developed empathy toward students by acknowledging their own intimate encounters at the lgbtq-rd. In realizing that they too were once students who grappled with the lgbtq-rd, often imperfectly, they were able to practice more patience. For instance, José came to the conclusion that the classroom might be one of the only places students have to critically discuss the lgbtq-rd. Similarly, Jo was able to rethink the common assertion that students who bring up religiously conservative arguments do so simply to resist discussions of lgbtq issues. While not willing to let oppressive statements go unchallenged, the way Jo approached her pedagogical interventions was certainly mitigated by her understanding that students might genuinely be trying to figure things out. For TJ, teachers always have the option to honor students for who they are becoming—even if their intent was indeed to shut down class discussion. In approaching pedagogy as a leap of faith, he was not only able to locate opportunity for dialogue in the face of resistance but he was also able to envision a classroom where critical interrogation becomes an opportunity for self-transformation (rather than an opportunity for admonishment). But the practice of empathy doesn't stop there. In acknowledging the emotional aspect of teaching, participants were also able to be kinder to themselves. While participants believed that teachers must vigilantly guard against pedagogical neutrality, they also acknowledged that pedagogies are necessarily imperfect. Sometimes, when negotiating intersections like the lgbtq-rd, patience might

217

be hard to come by and teachers might respond to students in the heat of the moment in ways that they wish they could take back. For whatever reason, teachers might also slip into the pedagogical neutrality they hoped to avoid. Other times, the labor of working with resistant students may feel so frustrating that teachers attempt to avoid the lgbtq-rd altogether. None of these scenarios ought to signify failure. Nor do they mean that teachers have to punish themselves to the point of guilt or inaction. In granting themselves the room to experience the unhappy moments of pedagogy, they might discover the opportunity for growth and self-transformation. As Kami so thoughtfully reflected, the best teachers always remain students. Learning never stops. Certainly, participants' stories cannot encompass all of the possible circumstances readers may experience in their classrooms. That said, they still offer the beginnings for thinking about "doing justice" at the lgbtq-rd in the classroom. There is still much work to be done at this intersection in terms of developing assignments and choosing readings that might encourage a social justice approach at this intersection. My hope is that readers will be able to use Appendix D as a launching point for a more robust conversation toward this end. Doing Justice in Institutional Spaces The most significant finding of my research is this: institutions of higher education have no shortage of passionate and committed teachers, but too often, they squander this talent by failing to provide teachers with adequate resources and hospitable environments. Heading into this project, I wondered how teachers might address potentially volatile intersections like the lgbtq-rd, but I came face-to-face with the fact that teachers—particularly lgbtq-identified teachers—were having a difficult time even addressing lgbtq issues because they had no institutional support. They were, for the most part, on their own. As I discussed in Chapter 5, the more marginalized participants were, vis-à-vis their social locations and institutional ranks, the less likely they were to have support and the more likely they were to experience various forms of hostility, both in the classroom and in other institutional spaces. Participants' stories in this regard were sobering. Aside from everyday resistances and micro- aggressions, several participants shared their experiences of more overt forms of violence perpetrated by their students, colleagues, and staff members. Recall, for instance, Kami's fear for her physical safety during interactions with a hostile male student, Aiden's experience of having a faculty member shout "Fuck you!" at them, José's frustration at the lack of a substantial response from the administration after repeated instances of anti-lgbtq violence occurred on his campus, or Jo's account of having a staff member make death threats against lgbtq students and her colleagues'

218

disturbingly apathetic response. I argue that these experiences have everything to do with the lgbtq- rd inside and outside the classroom; addressing issues at the lgbtq-rd will continue to be difficult unless those we challenge and dismantle oppressive, institutional practices and policies that make doing justice so difficult in the first place. Working from participants' stories, I argue that we might begin to change oppressive institutional and disciplinary cultures by understanding ourselves as agents of change—accountable to others for our actions and inaction, for our awareness and ignorance, and for our willingness and unwillingness to hear critiques of oppressive systems in which we are culpable. The actions I offer below call upon those with various forms of institutional privilege to leverage their power in the name of doing justice. In that light, "we"—graduate students, adjuncts, contract instructors, assistant professors, associate professors, and administrators—might begin doing institutional justice in the following ways: • Engaging in and/or developing lgbtq-ally programming geared toward administration, faculty, and staff • Valuing research that takes up lgbtq issues as a matter of social justice • Acknowledging and challenging practices and policies that contribute to a hostile environment for lgbtq-identified faculty, staff, and graduate students. Engaging in and/or Developing LGBTQ-Ally Programming. Doing justice in institutional spaces might begin by engaging in and developing better lgbtq-ally programming. As I mentioned in Chapter 4, many of my survey participants indicated that the resources available to them on campus were severely lacking when it came to lgbtq issues. Indeed, in the write-in portions of the survey, some participants indicated that the resources that were available to them were either non-existent or poorly developed. These responses were echoed by interview participants. Will, for example, noted that while the training programs available to faculty were well-meaning, they were developed by administrators who weren't interested in asking for input from faculty. In a similar light, Aiden critiques the administration for providing programming that shirked institutional responsibility for creating hospitable and safe climates by insinuating that it is the responsibility of already minoritized students and staff to create and maintain "safe spaces." Finally, José critiqued the resources available at his campus for being so rigidly defined and rarely intersectional in focus, resulting in lgbtq services that articulated a mostly white and upper-middle class experience. But by far the biggest concern expressed by participants was that the resources that did exist focused more on the needs of students and rarely on the needs of lgbtq faculty, staff, and graduate students.

219

Given the hostile work environments participants describe, a key part of doing justice in institutional spaces would mean developing and engaging in programming geared toward hetero and/or cisgender members of the administration, faculty, and staff. The impetus of this programming, if participants' accounts are any indication, should be less focused outward on lgbtq experiences and more focused inward—asking those going through the training to study how heterosexual and cisgender privilege (and heterosexist and cissexist oppression) operates at interpersonal, institutional, and cultural levels. Instead of placing the burden to create safe spaces on the backs of lgbtq workers, socially just programming would provide trainees with concrete actions to act as allies—whether that's employing techniques for listening to the grievances of lgbtq workers, whether it's providing trainees with tactics for speaking out against interpersonal cissexism and heterosexism, whether it's providing trainees with resources for ongoing self-education with regard to lgbtq issues, or whether it's asking trainees to consider how policies and practices on campus might create a hostile environment for lgbtq workers. Ideally, these training programs ought to be required of all administrators, faculty, and staff. Even those who identify along the lgbtq moniker need to understand how to be better allies to their lgbtq-identified peers. But the key focus shouldn't be asking lgbtq people to become native informants for their hetero-cisgender allies. In this regard, it is up to administrators with institutional pull to create programming that is actually useful toward upending oppressive cultures on campus. This is an important thing to keep in mind because those often charged with the responsibility of facilitating such programming are vulnerable staff members in lgbtq services—who are often hired to tow the party line of the institution, not to buck it. Valuing LGBTQ Research. In spite of the popularity of queer theories, it is still risky for scholars who engage in lgbtq-related research. Though it wouldn't seem to be the case, it is harder for these scholars to land good jobs or do things like secure tenure. In large part, this has to do with institutional conditions that devalue lgbtq-related research. The hostile climate toward lgbtq scholarship guarantees that intersections like the lgbtq-rd will seem impossible to negotiate. For that reason, one way of doing justice is to invest in research that takes up lgbtq issues—particularly projects with a focus on social justice. On the smaller side of things, doing justice might mean requesting that our university libraries purchase books that take up lgbtq issues as a matter of social justice. In the same vein, faculty members might also do justice by using university funds to invite such scholars to visit campus and present their work. Both of these actions give credence to scholars who have staked

220

their careers on investigating unpopular topics. This form of doing justice is especially helpful to emerging scholars, who might not yet have secured a full-time job, let alone tenure. On a larger level, doing justice might mean initiating a conversation about what fields and/or types of research are valued and devalued by our institutions. This topic came up several times during my interviews with participants. For example, Will mentioned seeing his post-tenure years as the time to engage in scholarship that mattered to him. His comment, while only in passing, speaks to an all too common sentiment that lgbtq-related scholarship is superfluous to departmental and/or institutional needs, and as a consequence, many scholars who would otherwise want to take on lgbtq-related topics feel that they must wait until they are tenured. To address this situation, tenured faculty members and administrators must work to re-evaluate their attitudes toward lgbtq-related scholarship so that engaging in this important work doesn't threaten a scholar's career. Broader still, doing justice at the lgbtq-rd might mean that administrators ensure adequate funding and support for programs—like women's, gender, and sexuality studies, for instance—that are on the front line when it comes to producing important lgbtq scholarship and offering invaluable support to lgbtq and ally students. As Aiden noted in their interview, "studies programs" are all too often the first on the chopping block when budget cuts come into play. This isn't simply a numbers game, as other programs (like my home field of rhetoric and composition) are often flush with cash because they are seen as valuable to the university. It might also be important to understand the discipline of English Studies itself as an institutional site for doing justice. For example, those involved with academic journals might consider ramping up their support for lgbtq-related research. This might mean including a special issue on lgbtq-related topics (like the lgbtq-rd). Or, in more everyday contexts, doing justice might mean ensuring a fairer system of peer review so that those lgbtq scholars who buck popular disciplinary beliefs (e.g. pedagogical neutrality) do not find their ideas censored. Finally, members of professional organizations within English Studies might go a long way in doing justice by developing a vision statement on professional ethics that resists disciplinary neutrality and instead articulates standards in light of social justice. In so doing, these organizations offer a safety net for members of their profession who find themselves having to choose career safety over their desire to address lgbtq issues (and other important social issues) as a matter of social justice. With this in place, a teacher who finds hirself besieged by unsupportive colleagues and administrators—as was the case with Kami—might find support for hir curricular choices in the standards stated by hir professional organization.

221

Changing Policies and Practices that Contribute to a Hostile Environment for LGBTQ Workers. A key part of doing justice requires acknowledging the policies/practices that contribute to hostile environments for lgbtq workers and then putting in place sincere efforts to upend them. While making these kinds of changes is always a group effort, it is especially important for those who occupy privileged positionalities—vis-à-vis their social location or their institutional rank—to take on a greater responsibility toward this end. Creating environments that are safer and more hospitable cannot fall on the shoulders of lgbtq workers—especially those workers who are further vulnerable thanks to their status as temporary staff, adjuncts, contract workers, or graduate students. To transform unjust cultures, heterosexual and cisgender allies are key. Likewise, tenured faculty and administrators with job security must become key players in this task. A key way to upend oppressive cultures in higher education begins at the interpersonal level. First, heterosexual and cisgender colleagues need to educate themselves about the micro-aggressions they may be sending to their lgbtq colleagues and subordinates. For example, readers may recall how Will's heterosexual colleagues not only put him in the position of being the spokesperson for all lgbtq people but they also forced him into a corner, asking him to agree with them that heterosexism and cissexism just weren’t an issue on their campus. The fact of the matter is that if hetero and cisgender colleagues have questions about lgbtq culture or experience, they need to educate themselves. (The good news is that, as academics, they have a wealth of resources right at their fingertips in the library and on the Internet.) If hetero and cisgender allies really are curious about the climate on their campus, they must be willing to have frank discussions of climate issues and institutional structures of oppression. Moreover, lgbtq colleagues should not be asked to speak for the group, nor should they be cornered into denying oppression that exists. Readers might also reconsider Jo's experience at Banting University. Jo was sitting in her office with her heterosexual, cisgender office mate when a staff member came into their office and made veiled threats about his God-given right to shoot lgbtq students. The first failure on the part of Jo's colleague is that she never made an offer to report this incident. Moreover, when Jo approached her office mate and other heterosexual-cisgender colleagues about this incident, they became incredulous because this staff member was "such a nice guy." Rather than offering concern for Jo or the numerous lgbtq students on campus, her colleagues were unwilling to report this threat of violence because they didn't want to get this staff member—a friend to them—in trouble. This incident is most certainly illustrative of the line between selfishness and self-care. Jo's colleagues should have, without question, reported this staff member—even if it cost them a friendship.

222

Moreover, they should have followed up on their report until this staff member was fired, but instead, the staff member is still employed at Banting University. Pointedly, hetero and cisgender colleagues cannot call themselves allies unless they are actually willing to do the work of being an ally. The work of upending oppressive institutional cultures also needs to be accomplished at the departmental level. More specifically, those responsible for developing departmental practices and policies need to reevaluate them for implicit hetero- and cissexist impulses. For example, those with departmental pull would do well to reconsider the evaluation protocols they use for determining tenure and promotion. The reader may recall Lynn's story of how her department chair suggested to her, in a veiled manner, that having a queer theory course on her CV may compromise her ability to get tenure. Regardless of the chair's intentions, this sends out a clear signal that queer scholarship is suspect, that queer labor is expendable, and that hetero and/or cisgender administrators are not going to go to bat for their lgbtq-identified colleagues. Will mentions a similar issue during his interview, explaining that departments should evaluate how they do and do not articulate "need" in their job calls. Teasing out Will's statement, it is important for those who determine departmental needs not to rush to judgment when considering the application materials of those who specialize in lgbtq-related research. In spite of the fact that these applicants are just as trained in, say British literature or digital rhetoric, all too often these applicants are understood as only being able to teach lgbtq-related courses. Put another way, those faculty members who sit on job committees need to pay attention to whether hetero-/cissexism causes them to discount the qualifications of lgbtq applicants. It might be worth it for search committee members to ask themselves whether or not they would, for instance, claim that an applicant whose research focused on ancient Greek and Roman rhetorics was also "too specialized" to teach courses in, say, research methods or rhetorical theory. Finally, upending oppressive cultures is also an institutional responsibility. Here, the key players for enacting change include presidents, provosts, deans, department administrators, and tenured faculty members. Obviously, it is important for these actors to be educated about what policies they already have in place to protect lgbtq students and lgbtq faculty and staff. As evident in my survey results, though many faculty and administrators reported their belief that their universities were lgbtq-friendly, many respondents reported having little to no idea what policies were (and weren't) in place at their institution. Obviously, when these policies aren't on the books, it is the responsibility of those with institutional leverage to put those protections in place.

223

But beyond the existence of such lgbtq protections on paper, follow-through is just as important. Indeed, many of my survey and interview participants lamented that these policies were more symbolic than anything else. Consider, for example, José's complaint that when repeated anti- lgbtq attacks happened on (and off) campus, the university's response was lackluster at best. Or consider my colleague I discussed in Chapter 7, who received hate mail for putting on an lgbtq film festival. Rather than supporting their dedicated faculty member by reprimanding the offending students, the university refused to hold the students accountable for their actions under the student code of conduct because one of the students in question threatened a lawsuit. My point here is this: university presidents, provosts, deans, and administrators fail their lgbtq students, staff, and faculty when they shirk their responsibility to actually use the policies that might protect these vulnerable populations. And if agents with such institutional pull are reticent to leverage their privilege to protect lgbtq students, faculty, and staff, some soul-searching is in order. Doing Justice in Larger, Political Landscapes In the previous sections, I have talked about "doing justice" to the self, in the classroom, and in institutional spaces, but however much we attempt to accomplish at our colleges and universities, higher education does not exist in a vacuum. Much of the difficulty in negotiating the lgbtq-rd has to do with larger political frameworks that narrate both lgbtq issues and higher education in a derisive light. For that reason, "doing justice" at the lgbtq-rd requires engaging in activism beyond the academy. In that light, "we"—as graduate students, adjuncts, contract instructors, tenured and tenure-track professors, administrators and as activists and concerned community members—might begin doing justice in the following ways: • Initiating non-academic conversations about the neoliberal attack on public education • Joining and taking part in local/national lgbtq organizations • Organizing for better working conditions for all employees in higher education. Initiating Non-Academic Conversations about Neoliberalism. One of the first things we can do is continue to engage in public discussions about the neoliberal assault on higher education. As I discussed in Chapter 1, fiscal and social conservatives have joined forces to dismantle public education and privatize it. By and large, this task has been accomplished by using multicultural programing as evidence of the "excess" in higher education. We see this, for example, in Lisa Duggan, Edward Ingebretsen, and Laurie Wood's accounts of finding their lgbtq courses/programming at the center of a rightwing media circus decrying the abuses of higher education. While heterosexism and cissexism certainly play a role in fueling the attacks, it is also

224

worth noting that what makes lgbtq courses and programming seem so outrageous is the implicit warrant that this "excess" is also "immoral"—"sinful" even. Conservative Christo-normativity is a (silent) partner in this neoliberal assault. In turn, this moral outrage becomes all the justification needed for conservative trustees to tighten the purse-strings of an institution, cut programs, and/or reduce the number of tenure-track jobs. To be sure, it is important for those of us in higher education to discuss the public value of things like tenure and academic freedom, but I believe that we must also begin to defend lgbtq programming/courses/curricula on ethical and moral grounds as well. By doing this, educators are less apt to be so easily backed into a corner by neoliberal discourse, and we also remove a powerful trump card from our adversary's arsenal. Joining and Taking Part in LGBTQ Organizations. To the extent that we are able, it is also important for those of us committed to doing justice to get involved with local and national lgbtq organizations. There are many important organizations out there like Southerners on New Ground; Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network; Queers for Economic Justice; and the National Gay and Lesbian Taskforce, for instance. Getting involved might mean "following" these organizations on Facebook or Twitter and staying informed of local/national developments in lgbtq issues. Getting involved might also mean signing petitions, calling representatives, or volunteering time/money when these groups mobilize to achieve their various goals. Other times, doing justice might be as simple as attending a potluck for a local lgbtq group and meeting other lgbtq people and their allies. This work is crucial. The more voices there are for lgbtq social justice, the harder it becomes for conservative Christian and/or "family values" groups to peddle anti-lgbtq discourse that makes it so difficult to engage at intersections like the lgbtq-rd in the first place. Eventually, with a broad coalition of allies, it will become much more difficult for anti-lgbtq groups to claim that the discriminatory policies they advocate are divinely ordained. It will become clearer, as TJ put it, that bigotry wrapped in prayer is still bigotry. Finally, another way of doing justice will mean fighting for better protections for lgbtq workers in general and for workers in higher education in particular. Better working conditions are essential for making it easier to navigate the lgbtq-rd in our classrooms. For example, readers might recall Laurie Wood's accounts of student resistance in her classroom and the anxiety it produced when students reported her because it is perfectly legal in the state of Utah to fire an lgbtq-identified person. In fact, it is perfectly legal in twenty-eight states to fire someone for being lgbq-identified, and it is perfectly legal in thirty-four states to fire someone for being trans-identified. For that reason,

225

doing justice means that all of us must do our part to ensure that the Employee Non-Discrimination Act is passed and that the provisions in ENDA are trans-inclusive. Organizing for Better Working Conditions in Higher Education. Beyond pushing specifically for protections for lgbtq workers, another part of doing justice at the lgbtq-rd requires pushing for better conditions for those working in higher education. Faculty, staff, and graduate students are not unionized at many universities, colleges, and community colleges. As a consequence of this, faculty members have little leverage to protest when their universities adopt conservative policies like David Horowitz's Academic Bill of Rights, which (as I've mentioned earlier) functions like a gag order on critical pedagogy. These policies make it nearly impossible to address the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice without leaving the teacher open for attack. As professionals, it is crucial that we have a voice in how our institutions operate, and without the guarantee of collective bargaining (or the threat of a massive strike), it is simply too easy for university trustees to bypass faculty senate votes/recommendations and push through oppressive policies. Doing Justice at the LGBTQ-RD: Why We Should Care I have elaborated, on a variety of levels, what it might mean to do justice at the lgbtq-rd, and as much as possible, I have tried to provide concrete actions that readers might take toward this end. I emphasize now, as I did at the beginning, that the conversation at the lgbtq-rd is only beginning and that the actions I'm offering are necessarily incomplete. I invite readers to continue this dialogue. As a working-class, genderqueer byke, and as a person who has witnessed the devastation of religious violence, it is difficult for me to attempt to persuade people to believe that this intersection matters—because it matters to me like breathing matters. My ability to have a life that is livable—as a person and as a teacher—hinges upon the ability to address, challenge, and, hopefully, one day change the persistent, insidious, conservative, religious ideologies that narrate me and the other lgbtq people I know and love as immoral, as worthy of violence, and as disposable. I came to this intersection asking a pedagogical question: How can teachers in English Studies address the lgbtq-religious junction in critical and ethical ways? I have already argued that the way to accomplish this pedagogical task is for teachers to treat the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice. I've also already explained some of the benefits of addressing this intersection for readers, but I want to close by explaining how negotiating the lgbtq-rd as a matter of social justice benefits students. Certainly, addressing the lgbtq-rd in critical and ethical ways would benefit all students, including conservative Christian students who hold anti-lgbtq beliefs. It is a valuable thing to be

226

asked to consider others' perspectives, to engage in critical thinking, and to reflect on the consequences of how we read and write the world. But I don't want to focus on these things right now. I want to focus on the lgbtq-identified students in particular—students similar to the ones enrolled in my Literature and Sexuality class. Many of these nineteen- to twenty-year-old students were only just learning in college how to see themselves as worthy human beings—how to see themselves as people who were not disposable. But for many of them, as soon as they left my classroom, or any other so-called "safe space" on campus, their humanity was called into question once again. Though they sought them from me, I had no tools to offer my students when they asked how they might respond to a conservative Christian discourse that made their lives so unlivable. What these students brought home for me was that having the tools to address this intersection really is a matter of survival. How we choose to address this intersection in our classrooms has profound consequences. Students' lives are in our hands. It's difficult to write such a phrase, because it sounds so pithy. Students' lives are in our hands. But it's not trite. Not at all. To illuminate this point, I would like to close by sharing just how very real that phrase became to me when I discovered (too late) that a friend of mine had slipped through my hands. I met Ben when I was a Ph.D. student; he was in undergrad. Ben was a friend of my then girlfriend, Christy. They met at an lgbtq student organization at Kent State. Upon learning that she liked blue, clicky pens, Ben showed up to the next meeting with a bundle of them arranged like a bouquet of flowers. He was always a joy. Ben loved Mountain Dew and David Bowie. He claimed to belong to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. He adored the Rocky Horror Picture Show. In fact, he once proudly told me that he delivered a monologue from the cult classic in his college speech class. But by the time I met Ben, he didn't attend Kent State anymore. When Ben lived on campus, he was repeatedly bullied because of his sexuality. His peers broke into his dorm room, urinated on his belongings, and wrote "fag" on his walls. In response to this repeated bullying, the administration's response was to evict Ben from the dorms because he was considered a suicide risk. To reiterate: It was Ben who was punished—not the students who saw Ben as so disposable that they could dehumanize him. And to some degree, the administration must have agreed with this assertion, because they disposed of him too. Not too many years later, Ben did commit suicide.

227

In the brief note that he left behind, he apologized to his family for not being the kind of man they expected him to be. While I cannot know his motivations, I do know that Ben was lonely and that he was estranged from his family. I know that when he came out to his father as bisexual, his father pulled a gun on him. In this moment, it seems, his father must have felt that there was something so fundamentally flawed about Ben that he was willing to dispose of his son. This sense of being disposable carried over to Ben's funeral. Huddled in pews together, Ben's queer friends and I looked on as a pastor completely re-narrated Ben's life—erasing everything queer, everything beautiful, about him. And at the end of the ceremony, I tasted bile in the back of my throat as the pastor made a veiled allusion to Ben's sexuality, hoping that God would "forgive his sins in death." The great "sin" here, I believe, is that those of us who occupy privileged positionalities don't have enough courage to speak out against this monolithic discourse that pretends to be above reproach—when it is literally killing people. The great "sin" is that some of us fail to recognize lgbtq people's humanity enough to even care. I have been reticent to mention Ben's story. I've written so many drafts of this conclusion, to the point of writing myself in circles, but the circle always came back to Ben. This has never really surprised me; I took on this project because of Ben. I took on this project because too many people saw my friend as disposable. I took on this project because, at so many different moments, Ben's life was in someone else's hands and those people failed him—certainly his family, certainly the church, but also institutions of higher education. I can't speak for his family. I can't speak for the numerous church representatives who worked to create a world that ultimately became unlivable for Ben. But I can speak as an educator, and I think we can (and must) do better by the Bens of the world. We owe them justice.

228

Works Cited

Ahmed, Sara. Queer Phemomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006. Print. Alexander, Jonathan. Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies. Logan: Utah University Press, 2008. Print. - - - - . "A 'Sisterly Camaraderie' and Other Queer Friendships: A Gay Teacher Interacting with Straight Students." The Teacher's Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy. Eds. Diane Freedman and Martha Stoddard Holmes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 161–177. Print. Alexander, Simone James. "Walking on Thin Ice: The Il/Legitimacy of Race and Racial Issue in the Classroom." The Teacher's Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy. Eds. Diana Freedman and Martha Stoddard Holmes. Albany: State University of new York Press, 2003. 105–118. Print. Alcorn, Marshall. Changing the Subject in English Class: Discourse and the Constructions of Desires. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2002. Print. Baez, Benjamin and V. Darleen Opfer. "Ideology and Educational Policy: An Analysis of the Religious Right." Educational Policy 14.5 (2000): 2007. 582-599. Print. Baldwin, James. Giovanni's Room. New York: Dial Press, 1956. Print. Banning, Marlia. "The Politics of Resentment." JAC 26.1/2 (2006): 67-101. Print. Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. 3rd ed. New York: Manchester University Press, 2009. Print. Barton, Ellen. "Inductive discourse analysis: Discovering Rich Features." Discourse Studies in Composition (2002): 19-42. Blumenfeld, Warren. "Christian Privilege and the Promotion of 'Secular' and Not-So 'Secular' Mainline Christianity in Public Schooling and in the Larger Society." Equity & Excellence in Education 39 (2006): 195–210. Print. Boler, Megan. Feeling Power: Emotions and Education. New York: Routledge, 1999. Print. Bowleg, Lisa. "When Black + Lesbian + Woman ≠ Black Lesbian Woman: The Methodological Challenges of Qualitative and Quantitative Intersectionality Research." Sex Roles 59 (2008): 312-325. Print. Boswell, John. Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Print. Bracher, Mark. "Teaching for Social Justice: Reeducating Emotions Through Literary Study." JAC 26.3/4 (2006): 463-512. Print. Braun, Virginia and Victoria Clarke. "Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology." Qualitative Research in Psychology 3 (2006): 77-101. Print. Brennan, Thomas J. "A Tale of Two Comings Out: Priest and Gay on a Catholic Campus." Modern Language Studies 34.1/2 (2004): 66-75. Print. Britzman, Deborah. "Is There a Queer Pedagogy? Or, Stop Reading Straight." Educational Theory 45.2 (1995): 51-65. Print. Britzman, Deborah. Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998. Print. Britzman, Deborah. "Some Psychoanalytic Observations on Quiet, Ordinary and Painful Resistance," International Journal of Leadership in Education 13.3 (2010): 239-248. Print.

229

Britzman, Deborah. The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions. New York: State University of New York Press, 2009. Print. Britzman, Deborah and Jen Gilbert. "What Will Have Been Said About Gayness in Teacher Education?" Teaching Education 15.1 (2004): 81–96. Print. Brooten, Bernadette. Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Print. Browne, Kath. "Selling My Queer Soul or Queerying Quantitative Research?" Sociological Research Online 13.1 (2008): n.pag. Web. Brueggemann, Brenda Jo and Debra Moddelmog. "Coming Out Pedagogy: Risking Identity in Language and Literature Classrooms." The Teacher's Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy. Eds. Diana Freedman and Martha Stoddard Holmes. Albany: State University of new York Press, 2003. 209–233. Print. Burack, Cynthia. Sin, Sex, and Democracy: Antigay Rhetoric and the Christian Right. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. Print. Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkley: University of California Press, 1961. Print. - - - - . A Rhetoric of Motives. New York: George Braziller, Inc., 1955. Print. Butler, Judith. Giving an Account of Oneself. New York: Fordham University Press, 2005. Print. - - - - . Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. - - - - . "Which Politics?" Profession (2009): 89–93. Print. Byington, Eleanor and Barbara Frey Waxman. "Teaching Paul Monette's Memoir/Manifesto to Resistant Readers." College Literature 24.1 (1997): 156–181. Print. Carter, Shannon. "Living Inside the Bible Belt." College English 69.6 (2007): 572-595. Print. Carter, Stephen. L. The Culture of Disbelief. New York: Anchor Books, 1994. Print. Chavez, Karma. "Beyond Complicity: Coherence, Queer Theory, and the Rhetoric of the 'Gay Christian Movement.'" Text and Performance Quarterly 24.3/4 (2004): 255–275. Print. Chibbaro, Lou. "Probation for D.C. Cope in Trans Shooting Case." Washington Blade. 11 January 2013. Web. 16 July 2013. Clarke, Eric. Virtuous Vice: Homoeroticism and the Public Sphere. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Print. Collins, Patricia Hill. Black Sexual Politics: African-Americans, Gender, and the New Racism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Print. Condit, Celeste. "Theory, Practice, and the Battered (Woman) Teacher." Teaching What You're Not: Identity Politics in Higher Education. Ed. Katherine Mayberry. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 155–173. Print. Crenshaw, Kimberle. "Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics." The University of Chicago Legal Forum (1989): 139–67. Print. Cromwell, Jason. "Queering the Binaries: Transsituated Identities, Bodies, and Sexualities." The Transgender Studies Reader. Eds. Susan Stryker and Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006. Print. Crowley, Sharon. Toward a Civil Discourse: Rhetoric and Fundamentalism. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1996. Print. Cushman, Ellen. "The Rhetorician as an Agent of Social Change." College, Composition, and Communication 47.1 (1996): 7-28. Print. De Certeau, Michel. "The Practice of Everyday Life: 'Making Do' Uses and Tactics." Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistics Turn. Ed. Gabrielle Spiegel. New York: Routledge, 2005. 217–27. Print

230

De la Tierra, Tatiana. "Coming Out and Creating Queer Awareness in the Classroom: An Approach from the U.S.-Mexican Border." Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies, Politics. Eds. William Spurlin. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. 168-90. Print. Dianis, Judith Browne. "Zimmerman Verdict is a Clarion Call for the Nation to Grapple with Racial Injustice." The Huffington Post. 13 July 2013. Web. 16 July 2013. DiGangi, Mario. "Shakespeare's Sexuality: Who Needs It?" Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies, and Cultural Politics. Ed. William Spurlin. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. 147–67. Print. Di Leo, Jeffrey R. "Shame in Academe: On the Politics of Emotion in Academic Culture." JAC 26.1/2 (2006): 221-234. Print. Downs, Douglas. "True Believers, Real Scholars, and Real True Believing Scholars: Discourses of Inquiry and Affirmation in the Composition Classroom." Negotiating Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Elizabeth Vander Lei and Bonnie Lenore Kyburz. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2005. 39–55. Print. Duggan, Lisa. The Twilight of Equality? Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics, and the Attack on Democracy. Boston: Beacon Press, 2003. Print. Ellsworth, Elizabeth. "Why Doesn't this Feel Empowering? Working through the Repressive Myths of Critical Pedagogy." Harvard Educational Review 59.3 (1999): 297–324. Print. Feinberg, Leslie. Trans Liberation: Beyond Pink and Blue. Boston: Beacon Press, 1998. Print. Fetner, Tina. How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008. Print. Social Movements, Protest, and Contention, Volume 31. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Print. Fox, Catherine. "Reprosexuality, Queer Desire, and Critical Pedagogy: A Response to Hyoejin Yoon." JAC 26.1/2 (2006): 244-253. Print. Freedman, Diane and Martha Stoddard Holmes. The Teacher's Body. New York: State University of New York Press, 2003. Print. Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1970. Print. Gaspar de Alba, Alicia. Sor Juana's Second Dream. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2007. Print. Garver, Eugene. "How Can a Liberal Listen to a Religious Argument? Religious Rhetoric as a Rhetorical Problem." Perspectives, Contexts, Particularities. Ed. James Boyd White. Notre Dame: Notre Dame Press, 2006. Print. Giroux, Henry. Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed. Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008. Print. Gonzales, Rigoberto. Crossing Vines. Normal: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003. Print. Green, Jamison. Becoming a Visible Man. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004. Print. Guest, Deryn, Robert Goss, Mona West, and Thomas Bohache. The Queer Bible Commentary. London: SCM Press, 2006. Print. Habermas, Jürgen. Between Naturalism and Religion: Philosophical Essays. Trans. Ciaran Cronin. Malden: Polity Press, 2008. Print. Hansen, Kristine. "Religious Freedom in the Public Square and in the Composition Classroom." Negotiating Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Elizabeth Vander Lei and Bonnie Lenore Kyburz. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2005. Print.

231

Heller, Craig. "A Paradox of Silence: Reflections of a Man Who Teaches Women's Studies." Teaching What You're Not: Identity Politics in Higher Education. Ed. Katherine Mayberry. New York: NYU Press, 1996. 228-37. Print. Herman, Didi. The Antigay Agenda: Orthodox Vision and the Christian Right. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997. Print. hooks, bell. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge, 1994. Print. Horowitz, David. "In Defense of Intellectual Diversity." Chronicle of Higher Education 50.23 (2004): B12. Web. Ingebretsen, Edward. "When the Cave is a Closet: Pedagogies of the (Re)Pressed" Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies, Politics. Ed. William Spurlin. Urbana: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. 14-35. Print. Jakobsen, Janet. "Why Sexual Regulation? Family Values and Social Movements." God Forbid: Religion and Sex in American Public Life. Ed. Kathleen Sands. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 104–23. Print. Jakobsen, Janet and Ann Pellegrini. Secularisms. Durham: Duke University Press, 2008. Print. - - - - . "Getting Religion." One Nation Under God?: Religion and American Culture. Eds. Marjorie Garber and Rebecca Walkowitz. New York: Routledge, 1999. 101–114. Print. - - - - . Love the Sin: Sexual Regulation and the Limits of Tolerance. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Print. Sexual Cultures: New Directions from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. James Alexander, Simone. "Walking on Thin Ice: Il/legitimacy of Race and Racial Issues in the Classroom." The Teacher's Body: Embodiment, Authority, and Identity in the Academy. Eds. Diane Freedman and Martha Stoddard Holmes. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 105–118. Print. "Jennifer Keeton, Anti-Gay Counseling Student Who Refused Remedial Training, Lawsuit Dismissed." Huffington Post. 27 June 2012. Web. 16 February 2013. Johnson, Allan. Privilege, Power, and Difference. 2nd ed. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2006. Print. Johnson, E. Patrick. "'Quare' Studies or (Almost) Everything I Know About Queer Studies I Learned from My Grandmother." Sexualities and Communication in Everyday Life: A Reader. Eds. Karen Lovaas and Mercilee Jenkins. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2006. 69-86. Print. Johnston. Lynda. "Surveying Sexualities: The Possibilities and Problems of Questionnaires." Practicing Cultural Geographies. Eds. Alison Blunt, et al. London: Arnold Johnson, 2003. 122- 138. Print. Jordan, Mark. The Ethics of Sex. Malden: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. Print. New Dimensions to Religious Ethics. Kaplan, Amy. The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. Print. Karamcheti, Indira. "Caliban in the Classroom." Teaching What You're Not: Identity Politics in Higher Education. Ed. Katherine Mayberry. New York: New York University Press, 1996. 215–37. Print. Keating, AnnaLouise. Teaching Transformation: Transcultural Classroom Dialogues. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007. Print. Killerman, Sam. (In press). The Social Justice Advocate's Handbook: A Guide to Gender. Kopelson, Karen. "Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; or, The Peformance of Neutrality (Re)Considered As a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance." College Composition and Communication 55.1 (2003): 115-146. Print. Kornegay, EL. "Queering Black Homophobia: Black Theology as a Sexual Discourse of Transformation." Theology and Sexuality 11.1 (2004): 29–51. Print.

232

Kumashiro, Kevin. Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Anti-Oppressive Pedagogy. New York: Routledge Falmer, 2002. Print. - - - - . The Seduction of Common Sense: How the Right Has Framed the Debate on America's Schools. New York: Teachers College Press, 2008. Print. L Word, The. Showtime. January 18, 2004–March 8, 2009. Television. Lather, Patricia A. and Christine Smithies. Troubling the Angels: Women Living with HIV/AIDS. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997. Print. Leathers Dively, Ronda. "Censoring Religious Rhetoric in the Composition Classroom: What We and Our Students May Be Missing." Composition Studies 25.1 (1997): 55-66. Print. Lauter, Paul. "'Political Correctness' and the Attack on American Colleges." The Radical Teacher 44 (1993): 34–40. Print. Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998. Print. Lorde, Audre. Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde. 2nd ed. Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007. Print. Lugg, Catherine. "One Nation Under God? Religion and the Politics of Education in a Post-9/11 America." Educational Policy 18.1 (2004): 169–187. Print. - - - - . "The Religious Right and Public Education: The Paranoid Politics of Homophobia." Educational Policy 12.3 (1998): 267–283. Print. Luhmann, Susanne. "Queering/Querying Pedagogy? Or, Pedagogy is a Pretty Queer Thing." 141–55. Ed. William Pinar. Queer Theory in Education. Mahwah: L. Erlbaum Associates, 1998. Studies in Curriculum Theory. Print. Macgillivary, Ian. "Religion, Sexual Orientation, and School Policy: How the Christian Right Frames Its Arguments." Educational Studies 43 (2008): 29–44. Print. Magolda, Marcia Baxter. Authoring Your Life: Developing an Internal Voice to Navigate Life's Challenges. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing, 2009. - - - - ."Students' Epistemologies and Academic Experiences: Implications for Pedagogy." Review of Higher Education 15.3 (1992): 265-87. Print. Malinowitz, Harriet. Textual Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Students and the Making of Discourse Communities. Portsmouth: Boynton Cook Publishers, 1995. Print. Marinara, Martha, Jonathan Alexander, William Banks, and Samantha Blackmon. "Cruising Composition Texts: Negotiating Sexual Difference in First-Year Readers." College Composition and Communication 61.2 (2009): 269-296. Print. Marshall, Joanne. "Nothing New Under the Sun: A Historical Overview of Religion in U.S. Public Schools." Equity & Excellence in Education 39 (2006): 181–194. Print. Mathieu, Paula. Tactics of Hope: The Public Turn in English Composition. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc. 2005. Print. Mayberry, Katherine. Teaching What You're Not: Identity Politics in Higher Education. New York: NYU Press, 1996. Print. Meem, Deborah T., Michelle A. Gibson, and Jonathan Alexander. Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications, 2010. Print. Messer-Davidow, Ellen. "Manufacturing the Attack on Liberalized Higher Education." Social Text 36 (1993): 40–80. Print. McCrary, Donald. "Womanist Theology and Its Efficacy for the Writing Classroom." College Composition and Communication 52.4 (2001): 521-552. Print. McKenna, George. The Puritan Origins of America Patriotism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007. Print. Micciche, Laura. "Emotion, Ethics, and Rhetorical Action." JAC 25.1 (2005): 161-184. Print.

233

- - - - .Doing Emotion: Rhetoric, Writing, and Teaching. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2007. Print. Miller, Keith and Jennifer Santos. "Recomposing Religious Plotlines." Negotiating Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Elizabeth Vander Lei and Bonnie Lenore Kyburz. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2005. 63–83. Print. Miller, Richard. "Fault Lines in the Contact Zone: Assessing Homophobia in Student Writing." Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English. Ed. William Spurlin. 234-252 Print. Miller, Susan. Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Print. Mitchell, Danielle. "I Thought Composition Was About Commas and Quotes, Not Queers: Diversity and Campus Change at a Two-Year College." Composition Studies 36.2 (2008): 23-50. Mogul, Joey, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock. Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 2011. Print. Mohanty, Chandra Tapalde. Feminism Without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity. 3rd ed. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003. Print. - - - - ."On Race and Voice: Challenges for Liberal Education in the 1990s." Cultural Critique. 14 (1990): 179-208. Print. Guzmán, Isabel Molina. "Contesting Borders of the Imagined Nations: The Frame of Religious Marginalization in Grassroots Conservative Discourses about Sexuality in Public Education." Journal of Communication 27.1 (2003): 29–48. Print. Liptak, Adam. "Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act." New York Times. 25 June 2013. Web. 16 July 2013. Munoz, Manuel. The Faith Healer of Almond Avenue. Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 2007. Print. Murray, Ross. "Ohio Teen Sues School District for Prohibiting 'Jesus Is Not a Homophobe' T- Shirt." Glaad. 4 April 2012. Web. 27 May 2013. Netter, Sarah. "Georgia Student Sues University Over LGBT Sensitivity Training." ABC News. 27 July 2010. Web. 16 February 2013. Peralta, Eyder. "Court Overturns DOMA, Sidesteps Broad Gay Marriage Ruling." NPR.org. 26 June 2013. Web. 16 July 2013. Pérez-Huber, Lindsay. "Disrupting Apartheid of Knowledge: Testimonio as Methodology in Latin/o Critical Race Research in Education." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 22.6 (2009): 639–654. Print. Perkins, Priscilla. "'A Radical Conversion of the Mind': Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and the Metanoic Classroom." College English 63.5 (2001): 585-611. Print. Phillips, Kathy. "Billy Budd As Anti-Homophobic Text." College English 56.8. (1994): 896-910. Pitt, Alice and Deborah Britzman. "Speculations on Qualities of Difficult Knowledge in Teaching and Learning: An Experiment in Psychoanalytic Research." International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education 16.6 (2003): 755-776. Print. Pohlhaus, Gaile Jr. "Wrongful Requests and Strategic Refusals to Understand." Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science (2011): 223-240. Porter, James E., et al. "Institutional Critique: A Rhetorical Methodology for Change." College Composition and Communication 51.4 (2000): 610-642. Print. Pratt, Mary Louise. "Arts of the Contact Zone." Profession 91 (1991): 33–40. Print. Priest. Dir. Antonia Bird. Perf. Linus Roache, Tom Wilkinson, and Robert Carlyle. BBC, 1994. Film. Prothero, Stephen. Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know—and Doesn't. New York: Harper Collins San Francisco, 2007. Print. Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Bravo. July 15, 2003–October 30, 2007. Television. Queers for Economic Justice. "Beyond Same-Sex Marriage: A New Strategic Vision for All Our Families and Relationships." Queers for Economic Justice. 26 July 2006. Web. 16 July 2013.

234

Rand, Lizabeth. "Enacting Faith: Evangelical Discourse and the Discipline of Composition Studies." College Composition and Communication. 52.3 (2001): 349-367. Print. Reiff Hill, Mel and Jay Mays. The Gender Book [Rough Draft]. 2011. Web. 17 May 2013. Rhodan, Maya. "States Eye Voting Obstacles in Wake of High-Court Ruling." TIME. 5 July 2013. Web. 16 July 2013. Rich, Adrienne. "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying." Heresies: A Feminist Magazine of Art and Politics. Pittsburgh: Motheroot Press, 1977. Ritchie, Stephen and Donna Rigano. "Researcher-Participant Positioning in Classroom Research." Classroom Studies in Education 14.6 (2001): 741-56. Print. Rogers, Jack. Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality, Revised and Expanded Edition: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church. Louisville: Westminster Knox Press, 2009. Print. Rooke, Alison. "Queer in the Field: On Emotions, Temporality, and Performativity in Ethnography." Queer Methods and Methodologies: Intersecting Queer Theories and Social Science Research. Eds. Kath Browne and Catherine Nash. Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2010. 149-60. Print. Rorty, Richard. Achieving Our Country: Leftist Thought in Twentieth-Century America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998. Print. Roskelly, Hephzibah and Kate Ronald. Reason to Believe: Romanticism, Pragmatism, and the Teaching of Writing. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. Print. Royster, Jacqueline Jones. "When the First Voice You Hear Is Not Your Own." CCC 47.1 (1996): 29-40. Print. Rubin Erdly, Sabrina. "One Town's War on Gay Teens." Rolling Stone. 2 February 2012. Web. 27 May 2013. Sandoval, Chela. Methodology of the Oppression. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000. Print. Sands, Kathleen M. God Forbid: Religion and Sex in American Public Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print. Searls Giroux, Susan. "Playing in the Dark: Racial Repression and the New Campus Crusade for Diversity." College Literature 33.4 (2006): 93–112. Print. Seidman, Irving. Interviewing as Qualitative Research: A Guide for Researchers in Education and the Social Social Sciences. New York: Teachers College Press, 1998. Print. Sloane, Amanda. "Who is Marissa Alexander?" HLN. 16 July 2013. Web. 16 July 2013. Smart, Juanita. "Frankenstein or Jesus Christ? When the Voice of Faith Creates a Monster for the Composition Teacher." Negotiating Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Elizabeth Vander Lei and Bonnie Lenore Kyburz. Portsmouth: Boyntown/Cook, 2005. 11-23. Print. Smith, Ann. "Queer Pedagogy and Social Change: Teaching Lesbian Identity in South Africa." Lesbian and Gay Studies and the Teaching of English: Positions, Pedagogies, and Cultural Politics. Ed. William J. Spurlin. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 2000. 253-271. Print. Somerville, Siobhan. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Print. - - - - ."Queer Loving." GLQ: A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies. 11.3 (2005): 335-370. Print. Spurlin, William. "Theorizing Queer Pedagogy in English Studies after the 1990s." College English 65.1 (2002): 9–16. Print. Stafford, Katrease. "EMU Resolves Case of Julea Ward, Former Student Kicked out of Program for Declining to Counsel Gay Client." AnnArbor.com 10 December 2012. Web. 16 February 2013. Stein, Arlene. Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Print.

235

Stenberg, Shari. "Liberation Theology and Liberatory Pedagogies." College English 68.3 (2006): 271- 290. Print. - - - -. "Teaching and (Re)Learning the Rhetoric of Emotion." Pedagogy 11.2 (2011): 349-369. Print. Stryker, Susan. Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Studies, 2008. Print. Sullivan, Patricia and James Porter. Opening Spaces: Writing Technologies and Critical Research Practices. Westport: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1997. Print. Tannen, Deborah. The Argument Culture: Stopping America's War of Words. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999. Print. Thelin, John. A History of American Higher Education. 2nd ed. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011. Print. Tierny, William. "On Method and Hope." Power and Method: Political Activism and Educational Research. Ed. Andrew Gitlin. New York: Routledge, 1994. 97–115. Print. Trainor, Jennifer Seibel. "From Identity to Emotion: Frameworks for Understanding and Teaching Against, Anticritical Sentiments in the Classroom." JAC 26.3/4 (2006): 643-655. Print. Vander Lei, Elizabeth. "Coming to Terms with Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom." Negotiating Religious Faith in the Composition Classroom. Eds. Elizabeth Vander Lei and Bonnie Lenore Kyburz. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook, 2005. 3–10. Print. Wallace, David L. "Transcending Normativity: Difference 'Issues' in College English." College English 68.5 (2006): 502-530. Print. Warner, Michael. The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. Print. Weems, Lisa. "Troubling Professionalism: Narratives of Family, Race, and Nation in Educational Reform." Dangerous Coagulations: The Uses of Foucault in the Study of Education. Eds. Bernadette Baker and Katharina Heyning. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2004. 225–260. Print. Weston, Kath. "Forever Is a Long Time: Romancing the Real in Gay Kinship Ideologies." Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. Eds. Sylvia Yanagasko and Carol Delaney. New York: Routledge, 1995. 87-110. Print. Wiegman, Robyn. American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. Will & Grace. NBC. September, 21 1998–May 18, 2006. Television. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977. Print. Winans, Amy. "Queering Pedagogy in the English Classroom: Engaging with the Places Where Thinking Stops." Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture. 6.1 (2006): 103–122. Print. Wood, Laurie. "Not a Hero: Confessions of a Dangerous Homo." Cultural Studies 19.4 (2005): 430- 438. Print. Worsham, Lynn. "Going Postal: Pedagogic Violence and the Schooling of Emotion." JAC 18.2 (1998): 213-45. Print. "WPA-L Listserv, The." Council of Writing Program Administrators. Charlie Lowe and Quinn Warnick. Web. 16 February 2013. Yoon, Hyoejin K. "Affecting the Transformative Intellectual: Questioning 'Noble' Sentiments in Critical Pedagogy and Composition." JAC 25.4 (2005): 717-759. Print. Young, Iris Marion. Justice and the Politics of Difference. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990. Print. Zinn, Howard. You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. Boston: Beacon Press, 2002. Print.

236

Appendix A

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS FLIER

"Getting Schooled: Teaching at the Intersections of Religious Discourse & LGBTQ Issues"

WHO: English Studies graduate students, adjuncts, and professors who are committed to addressing lgbtq issues in the classroom and who have also experienced (in one form or another) the intersection of lgbtq issues with religious discourse. All insight regarding approaches to lgbtq pedagogies is welcome.

WHAT: Upon consent, participants will to complete an online survey that addresses their experiences with the intersection of lgbtq issues and religious discourse in the classroom. Surveys will take approximately forty-five minutes to an hour to complete. Participants may also choose to include their contact information on the survey, indicating that they are also willing to participate in an hour-long, online interview (via Skype, email, or chat).

WHEN: The online survey is up and running through October 2010. Interviews can be scheduled any time through December 2010.

GOALS: This study is part of a dissertation project, and your input will help fill a critical gap in queer pedagogical scholarship. This research seeks to understand how English teachers can strengthen their pedagogies by acknowledging, anticipating, and examining the rhetorical force of religious discourse in lgbtq contexts.

BENEFIT: There is no compensation for this participation. However, your valuable input will help strengthen existing scholarship queer pedagogical scholarship, which may in turn assist your own pedagogical endeavors. Secondly, if you request to be identified in this research, participation may add to your professional notoriety and might potentially open up professional opportunities/connections for you.

CONFIDENTIALITY: Unless requested otherwise, all comments will remain confidential, and you and your affiliated institutions will be given pseudonyms.

CONTACT: For more information or to participate in the study, please email Gina Patterson ([email protected]), Ph.D. Candidate at Miami University of Ohio. Dr. Michele Simmons ([email protected]) is the faculty advisor for this dissertation research. Miami University's IRB board has approved this project;

237

you can identify this research by protocol number 09-442. If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please call the Office of Advancement of Research and Scholarship at 529-3600 or email at [email protected].

238

Appendix B

ENGLISH STUDIES SURVEY CONSENT FORM

"Getting Schooled: Teaching at the Intersections of Religious Discourse and LGBTQ Issues"

Research Description The purpose of this research is to understand how instructors who teach lgbtq issues experience, anticipate, and engage (or not) with religious discourse when it arises in the classroom. My aim is to interrogate the gaps in existing pedagogical theory and to work toward a provisional set of pedagogical theories, methods, and tactics that might address this gap and foster respectful/critical thinking in and outside of the classroom. All survey materials will be used to create a provisional picture—attending to both similarities and differences—of the issues that arise in the classroom when religious discourse intersects with LGBTq issues.

Research Details Upon consenting, you will be asked to complete one forty-five-minute online survey. Because these surveys have write-in answers, you may choose to give as little or as much information as you choose. Or, at the end of the survey, you may elect to leave your contact information for a follow-up interview. If you leave your contact information, I will email you with information with regards to the interview; I will not use your contact information for any other purpose.

Confidentiality Please keep in mind that if your intention is to obscure your identity in the survey, your answers shouldn't contain any identifiers that might link you to you to the data. Moreover, all comments will remain confidential, and you and your affiliated institutions will be given pseudonyms. Moreover, all information shared with the researcher is confidential. No third party will have access to your responses. This is a secure survey site, approved by Miami University's IRB board. After October 2010, the survey site will be dismantled. To reiterate, if you leave your contact information, expressing interest in giving a follow-up interview, the researcher will not use it for any other purpose.

Although every effort will be done to ensure confidentiality of your responses, you should be aware that all Internet- based communication is subject to the remote likelihood of tampering from an outside source. IP addresses will not be investigated and data will be removed from the server.

Benefits and Potential Risks While there is no compensation for participating, some may take satisfaction in knowing that their insight might strengthen existing pedagogical theories—which might benefit them in the future. Potential for risk is limited, but the following items must be considered. First, pedagogical moments may cause anxiety for participants. If you are too uncomfortable to continue the survey you may stop at any time—with no negative consequences. Secondly, participants who identify as lgbtq and are not "professionally out" might, depending on their circumstances, face adverse consequences if inadvertently "outed." Please consider using your personal or non-work computer/email address when filling out the survey. Computer activity at professional institutions may be monitored, and professional email is likely to be monitored.

239

To Participate If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the researcher before participating. If you understand and agree to the terms above, please click on the link below that reads, "I consent to the above terms, I am over eighteen years old, and I understand that my participation is voluntary." Clicking on this link counts as your signature consenting to participate. Afterwards, you will be directed to the survey.

Contact Information For more information or to participate in the study, please email Gina Patterson ([email protected]), Ph.D. Candidate at Miami University of Ohio. Dr. Michele Simmons ([email protected]) is the faculty advisor for this dissertation research. Miami University's IRB board has approved this project; you can identify this research by protocol number 09-442. If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, please call the Office of Advancement of Research and Scholarship at 529-3600 or email at [email protected].

240

Appendix C

FOLLOW-UP SURVEY INTERVIEW CONSENT FORM "Getting Schooled: Teaching at the Intersections of Religious Discourse and LGBTQ Issues"

Research Description The purpose of this research is to understand how instructors who teach lgbtq issues experience, anticipate, and engage (or not) with religious discourse when it arises in the classroom. My aim is to interrogate the gaps in existing pedagogical theory and to work toward a provisional set of pedagogical theories, methods, and tactics that might address this gap and foster respectful/critical thinking in and outside of the classroom. All survey interviews will be used to create a provisional picture—attending to both similarities and differences—of the issues that arise in the classroom when religious discourse intersects with lgbtq issues.

Research Details Upon consenting, you will be asked to engage in one hour-long interview with the researcher. All interviews will take place online via Skype, email, or chat. Pending your consent, speaking interviews will be audio recorded. In these interviews, I will ask you to expand upon your survey answers and possibly theorize with me, as participant-collaborator, with regard to how queer pedagogues might account for the LGBTq-religious junction in the classroom. For the research write-up, you may elect to obscure your identity with a pseudonym; you may also elect (for the purposes of recognition) to your their real name.

Confidentiality All information shared with the researcher is confidential. No third party will have access to your responses. All information shared with the researcher via email, chat, or Skype will be transcribed to a word processing document and saved on an external hard drive. Only the primary researcher will transcribe data. After transcription, all information linking participants to their responses will be destroyed. Unless expressly requested otherwise, you will be given a pseudonym, and any data that could potentially be used to identify participants will be given a pseudonym. (You may choose your own pseudonym and fictional details, if desired.)

Potential Risks and Benefits While there is no compensation for participating, some may take satisfaction in knowing that their insight might strengthen existing pedagogical theories—which might benefit them in the future. Participants who expressly wish to be identified in the research write-up might (upon possible publication of this research) be recognized professionally for having contributed to this project. Obviously, there is no guarantee in this regard. All participants who give interviews and whose views are expressed in the write-up will be given access to the research, once the dissertation is defended and before it is published in any professional venue.

Potential for risk is limited, but the following items must be considered. First, pedagogical moments may cause anxiety for participants. If you are too uncomfortable to continue the survey you may stop at any time—with no negative consequences. Secondly, participants who identify as lgbtq and are not "professionally out" might, depending on their circumstances, face adverse consequences if inadvertently "outed." Please consider using your personal or non-work

241

computer/email address when filling out the survey. Computer activity at professional institutions may be monitored, and professional email is likely to be monitored.

To Participate If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the researcher before participating. If you understand and agree to the terms above, please send me an email that reads, "I understand the terms of this research, I am over the age of eighteen, I understand that my participation is voluntary, and I agree to participate." I will then send you a confirmation email and ask for you to schedule an interview time/date that works for you. If you elect to be interviewed via Skype technology and wouldn't mind being audio-recorded for the purposes of transcription, please also include the statement, "I agree to be audio-recorded" in addition to the statement of consent above.

242

Endnotes

1 For further discussion, see the section on key terms in this chapter. 2 Mary Louse Pratt coined the term "contact zone" in her 1991 article, "The Arts of the Contact Zone." According to Pratt, contact zones refer to "social spaces where cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power, such as colonialism, slavery, or their aftermaths as they are lived out today in many parts of the world" (34). 3 Susan Stryker defines the term cisgender/cissexual as a correction to the phrases "nontransgendered" or "nontranssexual." According to Stryker, "the idea behind the terms is to resist the way that 'woman' or 'man' can mean 'nontransgendered woman' or 'nontransgendered man' by default" (23). More specifically, being cisgender means that you identify with the sex/gender combination assigned to you at birth. Cisgender people belong to a socially dominant group. By and large, cisgender people move through gendered spaces with relative ease because (borrowing from Allan Johnson's phrasing) they get to write the rules of gender and have those rules stick (33). Some gender justice activists include under the trans* umbrella those folks whose gender expression flouts the rigid, binaristic expectations of gender. (See, for example, Sam Killerman's The Social Justice Advocate's Handbook: A Guide to Gender or Mel Reiff Hill and Jay Mays's The Gender Book.) I do not adopt the same philosophy, because I believe that trans* identity and queer gender expression aren't mutually inclusive. Certainly, those people whose gender expression queers the rigid expectations of gender may be regularly policed—even in ways that make them targets for violence. Nevertheless, they also benefit from cisgender privilege in numerous ways—like the ability to use restrooms (or locker rooms) without fear of violence, the ability to receive basic healthcare without being subjected to an offensive, impromptu psychological evaluation, the ability to navigate the legal system with the confidence that all of their identifying documents will line up, etc. 4 Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed links pedagogy with social justice. In this work, he argues against the banking method of education and instead advocates a "problem-posing education" based upon the circumstances of students' lives (71). 5 See also Susanne Luhmann's argument that teachers should understand "ignorance and knowledge not as mutually exclusive but as implicated and constitutive of each other" (150). 6 In the summer of 2012, Keeton's case against Augusta University was dismissed (Huffington Post). In December 2012, Eastern Michigan University made a $750,000 settlement with Julea Ward (Stafford). The point of these lawsuits, according to Ellen Messer-Davidow, isn't so much to win the cases as it is to pressure public universities into accommodating oppressive views in the name of respecting diversity and protecting students' (not teachers') academic freedom. 7 There is a rich history of critical pedagogues who have challenged the notion that education could ever be neutral. In her famous book Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom, bell hooks discusses the need to break through the "collective academic denial and acknowledge that the education most of us had received and were giving was not and never is politically neutral" (30). 8 For further clarification of why I limit my study to (conservative) Christian discourse—and why I have opted to focus on religious discourse instead of religious beliefs—please read the sections Religious Discourse and (Conservative) Christian Discourse below. 9 For further clarification of why I limit the focus of my research to English Studies, please read the section on English Studies below. 10 In her article "Beyond Complicity: Coherence, Queer Theory, and the Rhetoric of the 'Gay Christian Movement'" Karma Chavez critiques Christian groups like Soulforce for their un- interrogated white privilege, for their un-interrogated class privilege, and for their homonormativity.

243

Chavez takes particular issue with Soulforce's reliance on the argument that homosexuality is biologically determined, which leads her to question whether or not Soulforce would defend those who might choose to be "nonheterosexual" (270–271). 11 In The Ethics of Sex, Mark Jordan calls for readers to see sexual pleasure as "God's echo that the world is good" (162). In the last chapter of his book, he compares prayer to masturbation and sadomasochism (167–168). 12 In lieu of such tensions, it is not uncommon for a person to identify as lgbt and not be invested in queer issues. As Lisa Duggan and Michael Warner have noted, a sizable portion of lgbt people seek assimilationist gains and are invested in maintaining boundaries of "normalcy," so long as they are also allowed to participate in hetero-/homo-normative publics (Duggan 55; Warner, Normal 39). Jason Cromwell and Jamison Green have noted similar trends toward normativity in trans communities, although this is complicated by the constraints of an oppressive medical discourse that all but requires a trans-normative performance to receive access to various social services (Cromwell 411–12; Green 45). (See also Butler's Undoing Gender 57-101 and Feinberg's Transliberation 79-87.) To make matters more complex, it is also possible that one may identify as fairly normative in practice and still be passionately invested in queer politics. Ironically too, there are also those who might self- identify as "queer" and yet in practice maintain oppressive ideologies, in a variety of different contexts, that limit who might have access to a livable life. 13 This is not to say that the pro-family, anti-lgbt movement does not also have Catholic support. However, as Didi Herman and George McKenna have argued, the roots of U.S. civil religion are Protestant—and up until fairly recently have also been anti-Catholic (Herman 10; McKenna 336). 14 There are two exceptions to this rule: In those cases where I am citing scholars who have elected to use a different term in their own scholarship (e.g. fundamentalist, evangelical, etc.), I will default to their chosen terminology. Similarly, in referring to participants in my study, I will honor their chosen identifications (e.g. Southern Baptist, Episcopalian, etc.). 15 Didi Herman makes a similar argument in The Antigay Agenda (6). 16 For example, in focusing on far right groups like the Westboro Baptist church, we risk obscuring less vitriolic forms of religious-based oppression as kinder and perhaps more reasonable. 17 Certainly, Christianity isn't monolithic. Some denominations advocate for gender justice and sexual justice. Support for lgbtq issues also exists in rogue pockets of even (conservative) Christian sects. Indeed, my work here does not discount individual Christians or Christian communities that are committed to issues of social justice. And while I question Christian-type discourses taken up for anti-LGBT and trans-/homo-/hetero-normative purposes, I do acknowledge the space between an oppressive discourse and an oppressive person. Indeed, if I believed that people who take up oppressive discourses were themselves always already oppressive then this work would be rather pointless. 18 In "One Nation Under God? Religion and the Politics of Education in a Post-9/11 America" Catherine Lugg demonstrates how (conservative) Christians have used the rubric of multiculturalism to claim that everything from evolution to sex education in public schools is a violation of their religious freedoms (179–181). Similarly, Ian Macgillivaray's study of (conservative) Christian activism in public education suggests that these groups deploy the discourse of equity as a way to deflect from the fact that the antigay policies they purport are themselves discriminatory (40). See also Opfer 89–90; Guzmán 35. 19 Warren Blumenfeld's "Christian Privilege and the Promotion of 'Secular' and Not-So 'Secular' Mainline Christianity in Public Schooling and in the Larger Society" discusses Christian privilege

244

more broadly, but he also examines the Christo-normative imperative in U.S. public schools (198– 199). 20 In his book The Seduction of Common Sense: How the Right Has Framed the Debate on America's Schools, Kevin Kumashiro describes neoliberalism as an emerging ideology that "values competitive markets and the freedom of individual choice within them, and devalues governmental or cultural attempts to redistribute resources of accountability" (36). Kumashiro lends his focus to the emergence of charter schools in primary and secondary public education. For a historical overview of neoliberalism, see Henry Giroux's discussion in Against the Terror of Neoliberalism: Politics Beyond the Age of Greed (150–56). 21 In her book, Duggan examines a case where conservative trustees at SUNY used a Women's Studies conference dealing with queer issues as an excuse to fire the standing university president and install a more "business-friendly" president who would axe the budgets of queer and multicultural programming (20–31). 22 Pedagogical approaches like these serve as a case in point for scholars like Harriet Malinowitz, Celeste Condit, and Simone James Alexander, who critique the tendency in some pedagogical scholarship to figure "the student" and "the teacher" in vague ways that sidestep questions of asymmetrical power and privilege in the classroom. In the context of the United States, (conservative) Christian discourse has also been used to justify the oppression of women, people of color, and people who rely on government welfare programs to survive. 23 Kenneth Burke, for instance, argued in The Rhetoric of Religion that religious narratives shape the landscape of intellectual thought in powerful though unacknowledged ways. Reflecting on the political landscape of the United States, Jürgen Habermas revised his theory of political deliberation to acknowledge the relevance of religious discourse. Just as religious interlocutors should translate their arguments for a secular audience, he maintained, so should secular interlocutors be required to translate their arguments for a religious audience (139). In a similar vein, Sharon Crowley examines the difficult rhetorical situation faced by political progressives in the United States, who must find a way to advocate for social justice in a political landscape that overwhelmingly favors (conservative) Christianity. If they are to remain politically relevant, Crowley asserts, progressives must get over their squeamishness when it comes to making emotional, moral appeals—lest they risk ceding a further rightward shift in political discourse (7). 24 A limitation of scholarship that makes a case for religious discourse in the classroom is that it often operates from a Christo-normative context. As a result, (conservative) Christianity becomes the unstated, foundational principle of morality. Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini reference a similar trend in the United States, where Christianity becomes the unstated force not only behind moral judgments but also behind a sense of "American-ness" (Jakobsen and Pellegrini, Love the Sin 13). One of the aims of my dissertation so far has been to expose the Christo-normative influence in public education—one that seems to operate in this brand of composition scholarship. The way this scholarship conflates religious belief with Christian belief (and Christian belief with conservative Christian beliefs) should give us pause. 25 Vander Lei uses the term religious faith to denote the very personal ways that religion circulates in the classroom (6–7). While I agree that religious discourse tends to circulate as a sense of "personal belief" or "spiritual feeling," I have steered away from this term because of its tendency to sidestep questions of power and privilege—which are so important to my work at the lgbtq-rd. 26 For example, in "Religious Freedom in the Public Square and in the Composition Classroom," Kristine Hansen asks how teachers can help students practice "the rhetorical arts" but do so in ways

245

that don't make students "feel they must deny or trivialize their religious beliefs" (25). I address this trend in more detail below. 27 For example, in her article, "'A Radical Conversion of the Mind': Fundamentalism, Hermeneutics, and the Metanoic Classroom" Priscilla Perkins agrees that fundamentalist students aren't easy to teach. Still, she critiques the field in saying, "Though they are white, black, Latino, Asian American, live in every part of the United States, and come from many economic background, (conservative) Christian students share enough similarities of social practice and belief to comprise a cultural group of sorts. As such, they are one of the only cultural groups openly and comfortably disparaged by many otherwise sensitive writing teachers in the country" (586). This is just a sampling of assertions that (conservative) Christian students are victimized in the classroom. I address this in more detail below. 28 Perkins uses the terms evangelical, fundamentalist, and (conservative) Christian interchangeably when referring to students. 29 Rand uses the terms Evangelical Christian and Christian interchangeably when referring to students. 30 To support her argument, Rand draws from Stephen Carter's The Culture of Disbelief, which claims that religion is unfairly trivialized in U.S. publics. 31 Complicating the connections that (conservative) Christian discourse shares with Civil Rights discourse, scholars like E.L. Kornegay highlight the way white supremacists have historically relied on "a biblical interpretation infused with sexual deviancy and blackness" to justify their oppression of black people (35). According to Patricia Hill Collins, the Black Church challenged white supremacist Christian discourse by cultivating a "politics of respectability [which] basically aimed for White approval" (72). Though this strategy may have accomplished minor gains for the Civil Rights Movement, she argues, the discourse of respectability continues to marginalize (working-class) Black women and LGB African-Americans31 (72–75). See also Kaplan (40–42); Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock (1–19); Sommerville (15–38); and Wiegman (43–78). 32 This claim can seem a bit confusing. How can scholars make the claim that (conservative) Christianity challenges racism, sexism, and classism? The short answer is by cherry-picking specific sects (or even churches) of Christianity. For example, one could cite President Jimmy Carter's vocal support of women's rights within the Baptist Convention. One could also cite Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s campaign to end racist and classist oppression, often mobilizing Christian discourse to do so. In spite of the fact that there are exceptions to the rule within Christianity, this does not abdicate scholars' responsibility to take the long view and reflect on its long history of bolstering racism, classism, and sexism. 33 A reminder to readers: Though other scholars distinguish between them, Perkins uses the terms evangelical, fundamentalist, and conservative Christian interchangeably when referring to students. 34 Students were assigned Rich's essay "Women and Honor: Some Notes on Lying." 35 In the same essay, Rich writes: "Women's love for women has been represented almost entirely through silence and lies. The institution of heterosexuality has forced the lesbian to dissemble, or be labeled a pervert, a criminal, a sick or dangerous woman, etc. The lesbian, then, has often been forced to lie, like the prostitute or the married woman." 36 Of course, Phillips' students don't really come close to interrogating their peer's claim. In severing the link between sexuality and race as immutable characteristics, this student is attempting to prove that lgbtq people are not a "suspect class" and are thus not eligible for protection under the law. Siobhan Somerville's article "Queer Loving" does an excellent job making a case for the legal enfranchisement of lgbtq people without relying on "like race" analogies.

246

37 Though I cannot guess at the authors' intentions here, it is entirely possible that their characterization of religious discourse may have been an oversight. As I've stated, the focus of their article was to critique pro/con arguments, and their treatment of religious discourse seems to be a sidebar. Indeed, this characterization of religious discourse as an irreconcilable question of values seems at odd with some of the authors' published work. For example, in the close of his study of literacy and sexuality, Literacy, Sexuality, Pedagogy: Theory and Practice for Composition Studies, Jonathan Alexander makes a call for examining the role of religious discourse more closely. It could be, in this light, that the authors could have qualified their statements on the lgbtq-rd a bit more than they have here. As it stands, however, their treatment of religious discourse in lgbtq contexts seems to suggest that navigating this intersection can only derail classroom conversations. 38 This is Ingebretsen's term for a voiceless gay person. 39 Young argues that we cannot fight oppression without having a clear understanding of how oppression works. In Justice and the Politics of Difference, she outlines the five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (48–65). This work is important, because it challenges the ideas circulating in the popular imagination, which limit oppression to overt forms of violence. In a later chapter of this work, she details the ways in which people from dominant social groups exhibit embodied, oppression behavior, for instance, "in their gestures, a certain nervousness that they exhibit, their avoidance of eye contact, the distance they keep" (123). This explication of micro-aggression is also crucial when it comes to understanding participants' experiences of institutional violence in higher education. 40 In Privilege, Power, and Difference, Johnson builds from Peggy McIntosh's claim that "privilege exists when one group has something of value that is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to, rather than because of anything they've done or failed to do" (21). A key takeaway in my research is the notion of epistemic privilege, a concept Johnson uses to describe the luxury of not having to notice one's privilege or its devastating effects (22). This concept is also crucial to my work, because even folks who identify as lgbtq and/or ally might not fully acknowledge how their privilege allows them to navigate institutional spaces differently. 41 While Duggan's examination focuses on the effects of neoliberalism in higher education (specifically with regard to lgbtq and/or multicultural programming), it is important to clarify here that Giroux and Kumashiro have limited their efforts to charting the neoliberalism in secondary public education. Nevertheless, their work is important here, because we are seeing similar strains of neoliberal discourse in higher education. 42 Johnson developed this term to critique queer theory's white, upper-middle-class epistemic privilege that tends to produce disembodied research (71). 43 Just as an example, scholars like Ellen Cushman and Paula Mathieu studied the literacy practices of oppressed communities. Both scholars articulate reciprocity through lending their expertise to assist participants in day-to-day forms of resistance, through sharing the profits from the research publication, or through more everyday forms of reciprocity, like giving participants a ride to and from appointments (Cushman 1517; Mathieu 95–113). 44 Pat Sullivan and Jim Porter's vision of feminist methodology also includes producing research that benefits participants. They argue that research "is itself an act of rhetoric," involving the co- construction of meaning with participants and colleagues (13). 45 For example, in his article "A 'Sisterly Camaraderie' and Other Queer Friendships: A Gay Teacher Interacting with Straight Students," Jonathan Alexander mentions a straight male student who confronts him about his spiritual well-being after he learns that Alexander is gay. In all, however, he comments that he was "surprised by how infrequently [his] queerness negatively affected students'

247

perceptions of [him] as an instructor" (175). Byington and Waxman 157; De la Tierra 184; Phillips 905–906 give similar accounts, where they narrate (conservative) Christian students' objections to lgbtq course material/teachers as an exception to the rule. 46 For example, Shannon Carter's "Living Inside the Bible Belt" article seems to suggest that (conservative) Christian students' struggles to acclimate to academic discourse communities is unique to the South (571–72). Similarly, Laurie Woods's “Not a Hetero: Confessions of a Dangerous Homo” suggests that the resistance she experiences in the classroom has to do with teaching at a public university in Utah, which has a high population of Mormon students (432). To be sure, place matters, and my intention here is not to discredit this. Rather, I am suggesting that it may also be important to clarify that (conservative) Christian students' resistance can happen anywhere—and that rather than being a regional issue, this resistance is related to a national discourse that privileges (conservative) Christianity. See also Mitchell 23–27 and Perkins 587. 47 Lisa Duggan defines homonormativity as "a politics that does not contest dominant heteronormative assumptions and institutions, but upholds and sustains them, while promising the possibility of a demobilized gay constituency and a privatized, depoliticized gay culture anchored in domesticity and consumption" (50). 48 In the write-in portion of this question, participants reported that the following topics also seemed to prompt discussions of the lgbtq-rd: representations of lgbtq relationships (particularly "explicit" ones) in literature and pop culture; hate crimes and legislation; nonmonogamy/polyamory, sex work (including porn), sex clubs and public sex acts, in vitro fertilization, transgender embodiment, medical & mental health policies, intergenerational dating, BDSM/leather topics, youth or adolescent sexuality (including sex education); and DADT. 49 Cindy Burack claims that the success of such Christian-type discourse comes in large part from its ability to package a sectarian message in a values-based, secular language—which often goes unrecognized as religious, per se, and often is not acknowledged as Christian in particular (Burack 5– 7). 50 For example, Sharon Crowley argues that the academic Left too often cedes moral arguments to the Right, and as such they lose credibility in the eyes of the public. If the Left is to successfully compete, she claims, they must devise ways respond to and compete with the increasing popularity of Christian fundamentalist discourse (7). 51 Deborah Tannen also discusses the need to move past pro/con debates in The Argument Culture. 52 The response rate for this question is 58/64. 53 There are a number of Queer Studies publications that take up the lgbtq-religious junction. For example, Cindy Burack's Sin, Sex, and Democracy and Didi Herman's The Antigay Agenda study (conservative) Christian discourse in lgbtq contexts. More broadly speaking, Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini's Love the Sin and Kathleen Sands's (edited collection) God Forbid study the way Christo- normativity shapes public perceptions about lgbtq issues, reproductive freedom, religious freedom, etc. 54 The response rate for this question about resources is 64/64. Multiple responses per respondent are possible. Write-in answers included the following: workshops, LGBT students/research participants, Queer Theory course (x2), None (x3). 55 Response rates varied. 59/64 participants replied to questions about how frequently they taught courses exclusively on lgbtq issues and how frequently they taught lgbtq related course material. 58/64 participants responded to the question about how frequently they "outed" themselves to students as either lgbtq or ally. Finally, 60/64 participants responded to questions about how frequently they challenged homophobia, transphobia, and gender normativity in the classroom. And

248

60/64 participants responded to the question of how frequently they developed assignments that allowed students to engage with lgbtq issues. Participants could choose from the following answers: never, almost never, sometimes, almost always, and always. 56 The response rate for the question about participants' concerns addressing the lgbtq-rd is 52/64. This checkbox question included a write-in option and the following categories of concern: legal, ethical, religious, disciplinary. Multiple answers were possible. 57 Certainly, there are exceptions when it comes to people who are worried about their safety. 58 While it is true that visiting professors are also evaluated on the basis of their university service, teaching is weighted more heavily, and the quality of our teaching is exclusively measured by student evaluations—the means scores of which must be displayed prominently in our year-end reports. 59 For clarification, the No Hate on My Campus rally was organized by Erin Douglas, a then Ph.D. Candidate and faculty advisor to Spectrum, the undergraduate lgbtq and ally group. Students from The Crucible (a student-run multicultural magazine) spearheaded a town hall meeting on the same day of the No Hate rally to discuss the racism evident in Ghetto Fest. Many of the people who attended the town hall meeting were also encouraged to attend the No Hate rally. Panelists—some students, some faculty, and some members of the administration—encouraged those attending the town hall meeting to also attend the No Hate on My Campus protest, as a broad coalition to challenge racism, heterosexism, and cissexism at the university. 60 The Teacher Training Coordinator "supervises all new TAs during their first year teaching in the writing program" (TJ). 61 Chandre Tapalde Monhanty claims that the practice of decolonizing education requires "taking seriously the different logics of cultures as they are located within asymmetrical power relations[,] . . . understanding that culture, especially academic culture, is a terrain of struggle (rather than an amalgam of discrete consumable entities)[, and developing] a critical analysis of how experience itself is named, constructed, and legitimated in the academy" (196). 62 I cannot, for example, help but think of the experience I recount in Chapter 3, where a respected faculty member attempted to physically intimidate me after hearing about the scope of my research project. 63 I've pulled this passage from the preface of The Very Thought of Education: Psychoanalysis and the Impossible Professions, a book which highlights the connections between Deborah Britzman's work as a teacher and as a psychoanalyst. The full quote reads: "Many of us who teach, whether in compulsory school settings, in the university, or in psychoanalytic institutes, consciously accept the fact that the work of education is as difficult for us as it is for our students, that a great deal of what occurs in seminars and classrooms seems beyond conscious reach, that in the midst of unfolding pedagogy, more often than not, we become undone." 64 Raymond Williams coined the term structures of feeling to describe "the organizing principle by which a particular view of the world, and from that the coherence of the social group which maintains it, really operates in consciousness" (23). 65 According to Megan Boler this same binary assigns emotion "as women’s dirty work, and then is used against her as an accusation of her inferior rationality” (43). K. Hyoejin Yoon makes a similar observation that "certain emotional dispositions are gendered masculine and raced white, and for those reasons are less likely to be perceived as emotional" and are thus seen as valid (733). 66 Britzman observes a similar phenomena in another study with teacher-participants. She describes their stories as conveying "an uncanny estrangement and timelessness," that "like dreams . . . have an unfinished feel, as if important details have fallen away" ("Painful Resistance" 243).

249

67 In her book Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning, Deborah Britzman defines "passion for ignorance" as a willful ignorance maintained to support a person's particular truth. 68 In her article, "Students' Epistemologies and Academic Experiences: Implications for Pedagogy," Marcia Baxter Magolda advocates relational approaches to pedagogy, in contrast to objectivist models of pedagogy. She contends that, "When students feel valued, involved (by their definitions), and able to relate to teachers, and when they felt that teachers related to them, they were most satisfied and perceived themselves as learning more effectively" (286). 69 On one hand, churches like AME have roots in social justice, particularly in terms of fighting against racist and classist oppression. That said, theorists like Patricia Hill Collins critique the way Black Churches have historically preached "a politics of respectability, especially regarding marriage and sexuality because they recognized how claims of Black promiscuity and immorality fueled racism" (108). As a result of this particular narrative, a condition of belonging for many Black LGBT people includes closeting themselves (109). 70 I constructed the phrase "radical hospitality" as a nod to the following passage in The Very Thought of Education: "Being responsible for one's emotional experience opens an existential dimension, what Derrida (1994) called justice, or 'hospitality without reservation'" (41). 71 See discussion of neoliberalism in Chapter 2. 72 In her article "Wrongful Requests and Strategic Refusals to Understand," Gaile Pohlhaus, Jr. makes a similar observation, claiming that minoritized people shouldn't be "called to understand something that only makes sense from within patterns and practices that hold oppressive power relations firmly in place and that actively prevent . . . [the minoritized audiences] asked to understand from calling attention to this fact" (231). 73In "Shakespeare's Sexuality: Who Needs It," Mario DiGangi analyzes similar complaints—not just from parents but also from public figures, like New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who criticized Georgetown University for "'dissing' . . . timeless classics [like Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Milton] and replacing them with the dogmatic, jargon-filled offerings of the 'race and gender brigade'" (152). 74 See commentary in Chapter 2. 75 Mathieu borrows the term based upon Michel De Certeau's distinction between strategies and tactics. In distinction to strategies, which he claims are easier to manipulate when a person has power, De Certeau defines tactics as those mechanisms of resistance available to people who are less empowered (222–24). 76 According to the strictures of Porter et al.'s definition, my project doesn't "count" as institutional critique in the sense that I am not situating my critique in a particular place (612). Moreover, Porter et al. also contend that true institutional critique must demonstrate, in the write-up, how the study has changed an institution (628). My study cannot accomplish this, though I do believe that my research practices have allowed some participants to think more carefully about their institutional environments. For example, some ally-identified participants told me that before taking my survey they were unaware of what anti-discrimination policies were (and weren't) on the books at their institutions. I also believe that, were I to publish this study, various readers would recognize (through participants' stories) how they may have been complicit in various forms of institutional violence. 77 Trayvon Martin's murder is hardly unique. In recent years, young, unarmed black teens like Kimani Gray, Kendrec McDade, Orlando Barlow, and Oscar Grant have been murdered

250

by police officers. According to Judith Browne Dianis, "All of these young men were unarmed and in almost all of the cases the officers were exonerated and returned to the beat." 78 Young argues that we cannot fight oppression without having a clear understanding of how oppression works. In Justice and the Politics of Difference, she outlines the five faces of oppression: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence (48–65). 79 For example, Bernadette Brooten's Love Between Women claims that ancient prohibitions of lesbianism are linked more to secular sexism than religious mores. In contrast, John Boswell's Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality suggests that the Christian church hasn't always had a unified anti-gay stance, and that in fact ancient prohibitions against homosexuality may have been motivated based more on politics than on religious mores. In The Ethics of Sex (as well as in his other works) Mark Jordan explains the history of the term "sodomite," debunking the assumption that the term has always been a stand-in for "the homosexual." Finally, in "Queering Black Homophobia: Black Theology as a Sexual Discourse of Transformation," E.L. Kornegay links racist pathologies of black people as sexually perverse to its biblical roots in an Old Testament story of the curse of Ham. 80 There are probably a good many works that question the transparency of "the clobber passages," a phrase commonly used to refer to prohibitions against homosexuality in the Bible. Among these works are Mark Jordan's The Ethics of Sex and Deryn Guest, Robert Goss, Mona West, and Thomas Bohache's The Queer Bible Commentary. 81 For instance, Cindy Burack's Sin Sex and Democracy, Didi Herman's The Antigay Agenda, and Janet Jakobsen and Ann Pellegrini's Love the Sin all explore anti-lgbtq, conservative Christian discourse in contemporary U.S. publics. From a different angle, Tina Fetner's How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism considers lgbtq and conservative Christian activists as opposing social movements that wield influence on each other. Finally, Arlene Stein's Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture explores the emotional motives of everyday anti-lgbtq activists.

251