Louisa Allen – författare

Queer Studies and Education: An International Reader explores how the category queer, as a critical stance or set of perspectives, contributes to opportunities individually and collectively for advancing queer social justice within the context and concerns of schooling and education. The collection takes up this general goal by presenting a cross-section of international perspectives on queer studies in education to demonstrate commonalities, differences, uncertainties, or pluralities across a diverse range of national contexts and topics, drawing a heightened awareness of heterodominance and heteropatriarchy, and to conceptualize non-normative and non-essentialist imaginings for more inclusive educational environments.Collectively, the chapters critically engage with heteronormativity and normativity more generally as a political spectrum, over a broad range of formal and informal sites of education, and against a backdrop of critiques of liberalism and neoliberalism as the frameworks through which "achievable" social change and belonging are fostered, particularly within educational settings. Taken together, the chapters assembled in Queer Studies and Education invite researchers, scholars, educators, activists, and other cultural workers to examine the multiplicity of contemporary (international) work in queer studies and education with readers' interpretations of queer's deployment across the chapters forming the compass for which to arrive at fresh insights and forms of queer critical praxis.

Moving beyond the traditional focus on curriculum and pedagogy, this volume explores hidden dimensions of sexuality education in schools and how sexual meanings are produced. Challenging the standard understandings of sexuality education, Allen discusses how students’ knowledge of sexualities is often learnt outside the ‘official’ school curriculum in informal spaces such as the sports field, gym locker rooms and peer groups. By employing visual methods and analysing student photo-diaries, Allen’s original book captures a sexual culture of schooling that allow readers to literally ‘see through young people’s eyes.’ Introducing theoretical ideas in relation to queer theory and ‘new’ feminist new materialisms, this volume calls for a re-conceptualization of how sexuality comes into being at school, in order to take account of its material, spatial and embodied elements.

Pleasure and desire have been important components of the vision for sexuality education for over 20 years. This book argues that there has been a lack of scrutiny over the political motivations that underpin research supportive of pleasure and desire within comprehensive sexuality education. In this volume, key researchers in the field consider how discourses related to pleasure and desire have been taken up internationally. They argue that sexuality education is clearly shaped by specific cultural and political contexts, and examine how these contexts have shaped the development of pleasure’s inclusion in such programs. Via such discussions, this volume incites a re-configuration of thought regarding sexuality education’s approach to pleasure and desire.

This authoritative, state-of-the-art Handbook provides an authoritative overview of issues within sexuality education, coupled with ground-breaking discussion of emerging and unconventional insights in the field. With 32 contributions from 12 countries it definitively traces the landscape of issues, theories and practices in sexuality education globally.  These rich and multidisciplinary essays are written by renowned critical sexualities studies experts and rising stars in this area and grouped under four main areas:Global Assemblages of Sexuality EducationSexualities Education in SchoolsSexual Cultures, Entertainment Media and Communication TechnologiesRe-animating What Else Sexuality Education Research Can Do, Be and BecomeImportantly, this Handbook does not equate sexuality education with safer sex education nor understand this subject as confined to school based programmes. Instead, sexuality education is understood more broadly and to occur in spaces as diverse as community settings and entertainment media, and via communication technologies. It is an essential and comprehensive reference resource for academics, students and researchers of sexuality education that both demarcates the field and stimulates critical discussion of its edges.  Chapter 2 is available open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

Pleasure and desire have been important components of the vision for sexuality education for over 20 years. This book argues that there has been a lack of scrutiny over the political motivations that underpin research supportive of pleasure and desire within comprehensive sexuality education. In this volume, key researchers in the field consider how discourses related to pleasure and desire have been taken up internationally. They argue that sexuality education is clearly shaped by specific cultural and political contexts, and examine how these contexts have shaped the development of pleasure’s inclusion in such programs. Via such discussions, this volume incites a re-configuration of thought regarding sexuality education’s approach to pleasure and desire.

Moving beyond the traditional focus on curriculum and pedagogy, this volume explores hidden dimensions of sexuality education in schools and how sexual meanings are produced. Challenging the standard understandings of sexuality education, Allen discusses how students’ knowledge of sexualities is often learnt outside the ‘official’ school curriculum in informal spaces such as the sports field, gym locker rooms and peer groups. By employing visual methods and analysing student photo-diaries, Allen’s original book captures a sexual culture of schooling that allow readers to literally ‘see through young people’s eyes.’ Introducing theoretical ideas in relation to queer theory and ‘new’ feminist new materialisms, this volume calls for a re-conceptualization of how sexuality comes into being at school, in order to take account of its material, spatial and embodied elements.

This book aims to explore what queer thinking and new materialist feminist thought might offer the field of sexuality education. It argues that queer theory in education might be queered further by drawing on feminist new materialism and extending itself to subjects beyond sexual and gender identities/issues, including a focus on ‘things’.

This book aims to explore what queer thinking and new materialist feminist thought might offer the field of sexuality education. It argues that queer theory in education might be queered further by drawing on feminist new materialism and extending itself to subjects beyond sexual and gender identities/issues, including a focus on ‘things’.

What is it like to have a baby in climate crisis?This book explores the experiences of pregnant women and their partners, pre- and post-birth, during the catastrophic Australian bushfire season of 2019-20 and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic. Engaging a range of concepts, including the Pyrocene, breath, care and embodiment, the authors explore how climate crisis is changing experiences of having children. They also raise questions about how gender and sexuality are shaped by histories of human engagements with fire.This interdisciplinary analysis brings feminist and queer questions about reproduction and kin into debates on contemporary planetary crises.

What is it like to have a baby in climate crisis?This book explores the experiences of pregnant women and their partners, pre- and post-birth, during the catastrophic Australian bushfire season of 2019-20 and the subsequent COVID-19 pandemic. Engaging a range of concepts, including the Pyrocene, breath, care and embodiment, the authors explore how climate crisis is changing experiences of having children. They also raise questions about how gender and sexuality are shaped by histories of human engagements with fire.This interdisciplinary analysis brings feminist and queer questions about reproduction and kin into debates on contemporary planetary crises.

This book seeks to re-envision the purpose and pedagogy of sexuality education, disrupting its conventional instrumental and health related aims.