Wayne J. Martino – författare

This book advances a broad constellation of critical concepts situated within the field of queer studies and education. Collectively, the concepts take up a cross-section of scholarship that speaks to various political, epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical concerns. Given the ongoing global centrality of sociocultural and political developments related to the topic of LGBTQ in the twenty-first century, the concepts in this volume and the issues raised by each contributor will have wide international appeal among researchers, scholars, educators, students, and activists working at the intersection of queer studies and education.

This book focuses on queering texts with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and/or transgender (LGBT) themes in collaboration with students - young to young adult – and their teachers - both pre- and in- service. It strives to generate knowledge and deeper understandings of the pedagogical implications for working with LGBT-themed texts in classrooms across grade levels.

The contributions in this book offer explicit implications for pedagogical practice, considering literature for children and young adults, and work in elementary school, high school, and university classrooms and schools. They give insights on exploring how queer and trans theories might inform the teaching and learning of English language arts with great respect to people who live their lives beyond hegemonic heternormativity and cisnormativity. They provide wisdom on how to provoke, foster, and navigate complicated conversations about sexuality, queer desire, gender creativity, gender independence, and trans inclusivity. In addition, they show how all of these are informed by an epistemological and ontological understanding of gender embodiment as a process of becoming. They offer insights into how queer and trans theories, as informed and driven by trans, non-binary and gender diverse scholars themselves, can move all of us beyond LGBTQ-inclusivity and inform reading, discussing, teaching, and learning in all of the classrooms and school contexts where we live and work.

This volume was originally published as a special issue of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.