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Comprised of seven intergenerational dialogues, this article brings together emerging and established scholars to query into the future of queer literacy research. Addressing generational shifts in queer method(ologie)s, these dialogues advance epistemological, ontological, and ethical research quandaries related to queer and trans studies today. Holding implications for literacy research broadly, this article presents queer futurity as a research approach for addressing some of our field's most pressing concerns.

Schools are often hostile places for trans students, but I explore teaching and learning in a classroom that foregrounds LGBTQ people and in a school that actively strives to minimise cisnormativity. In this ethnographic teacher research project, I, a cisgender queer white woman, taught and studied an LGBTQ-themed Literature course at a U.S. grassroots charter school for the arts. I studied student work, interviews, and class discussions to learn about the experiences of three students-- a trans man, a gender fluid/non-binary student, and a 'feminine male.' I found that these students benefitted when space was made for them, trust was established with their teacher and classmates, they were treated with respect, they were provided texts that resonated with them, and they were given opportunities to bolster their self-confidence. Moreover, I found it was important to understand these students holistically, not solely in terms of gender, and to prioritise their pleasure.

This study draws on in-depth interviews in which Jared, a queer trans man and high school arts teacher, grappled with what it means to him to be an activist to explore how his conceptualizations of queer activism have been supported and limited by LGBT-inclusive and queering discourses and to consider other discourses that might better represent and facilitate the teacher's activist intentions. Together, Jared and I reflected on three periods of his life. In high school, as a lesbian and then a dyke, Jared wrote himself into the world as an activist in ways that were clearly identifiable and aligned with LGBT-inclusive discourses. In college, as someone who identified as butch dyke, trans butch, or gender queer, Jared wrote himself into the world as an activist in ways that were strongly aligned with queering discourses. Then, as a graduate student and teacher, Jared identified as a queer trans man and his activism was more aligned with humanizing discourses. As such, Jared has written and rewritten himself into the world as an activist in different ways and different contexts, each of which accomplish different but valuable work in the world.

School‐based supports, such as LGBTQ+‐themed curriculum, invite opportunities for challenging oppression with respect to gender and its intersections with other identities such as sexuality and race. However, more understanding is needed regarding how literacy educators might leverage these opportunities. This article describes how intimacy, oppressive actions, and activism functioned in relation to one another in an LGBTQ+‐themed literature course at a grassroots public charter high school for the arts in a mid‐sized Midwestern city. The larger study, from which this article is derived, is a hybrid of ethnography and practitioner inquiry. Therefore, this study draws on field notes, transcribed video recordings of class, transcribed audio recordings of interviews, and student assignments related to a young adult novel. Our analysis of gendered power relations suggests that oppression can hinder intimacy, intimacy can hinder activism, but intimacy can also foster activism. With the goal of leveraging opportunities to challenge gendered oppression, we argue that students and teachers must navigate intimacy and intersecting structures of oppression to enact activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Every student in our public schools should have opportunities to learn about differences in gender and sexuality, just as they should learn about the world's differing cultural traditions, religious practices, and political systems. Such knowledge about human differences is, the authors argue, a basic requirement for active citizenship in a diverse, pluralistic, and equitable society. A description of an LGBTQ+ literature course, taught by one of the authors, illustrates what this can look like in practice.

With recent decades showing an increase in educational literacy scholarship attending to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, and Queer (LGBTQ) people and texts with LGBTQ themes, we sought to extend this scholarship through examining collaborative composition for public audiences beyond a classroom and school. We explored these composing practices through our ethnographically informed qualitative study of a semester-long LGBTQ-themed literature course for high school juniors and seniors, which we cotaught and coresearched. Ultimately, we found, through collaborative composing for public audiences, students and teachers in the LGBTQ-themed literature course had opportunities for interrogating oppressive values. When students and teachers shared vulnerability in that they shared responsibility for oppressive values, they embraced these opportunities. However, when students and teachers failed to share vulnerability but, instead, imposed it on a single individual, they squandered these opportunities. These findings underscore the importance of sharing vulnerability when working to interrogate oppressive values through collaborative composition for public audiences.

Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT), or are perceived as such, often suffer from neglect and abuse in schools. School personnel typically ignore the issues of LGBT youth in the academic curriculum and in extracurricular activities (Gray, 1999; Owens, 1998). Youth perceived as LGBT are often called derogatory names, harassed, or physically abused (Eaton, 1993; Gray, 1999; Human Rights Watch, 2001; Owens, 1998; Rofes, 1995). This neglect and abuse hinders the education of these youth, as suggested by the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN) 2001 nationwide school climate survey of 904 LGBT youth across the United States. According to the GLSEN report, 68.6 percent of these youth felt unsafe in their schools because of their sexual orientation, and 45.7 percent felt unsafe because of their gender expression (Kosciw, 2001). As a result, 31.9 percent had skipped a class, and 30.8 percent had missed an entire day of school in the month prior to the survey. Based on these findings, Kosciw (2001) concluded that the heterosexism and homophobia these young people experienced in schools hindered their academic learning. More specifically, heterosexism and homophobia in schools impede both LGBT students' literacy work (environments that cause students to feel alienated or insecure create an inhospitable climate for writing) and the identity work (LGBT students have little opportunity to explore their identities while heterosexism and homophobia work to make homosexualities invisible in schools). In this article the author examines the literacy and identity work in which lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) youth engage in an out-of-school context. She studied Story Time, a literacy group in a Philadelphia youth-run center, for LGBTQ youth called The Attic. The LGBTQ youth with whom she worked used their reading and discussions of texts in Story Time to validate their identities and to envision ways in which they might work against heterosexism and homophobia.

This study examines LGBT-inclusive and queering discourses in five recent award-winning LGBT-themed young adult books. The analysis brought scenes of violence and sex/love scenes to the fore. Violent scenes offered readers messages that LGBT people are either the victims of violence-fueled hatred and fear, or, in some cases, showed a gay person asserting agency by imposing violence on a violent homophobe. In contrast, sex and/or love scenes offered readers more nuanced messages about LGBT people. In some sex/love scenes, LGBT people are isolated by homophobia, internalized, or otherwise. In others, though, LGBT people are able to connect better with those who love them as a result of their unlearning or removal of transphobia and/or homophobia. If books with scenes of violence and sex/love are prohibited, then messages about how people connect to and distance themselves from one another by knowing and loving themselves are lost. We argue that teachers and librarians must understand the discourses that shape how they read and discuss LGBT-themed literature and know how to help students navigate these in ways that challenge but do not damage readers; this paper can facilitate such efforts.

This paper retrospectively examines a collection of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* (LGBT)-themed books discussed by lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans*, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) and ally students and teachers across 3 years of an out-of-school reading group. Through a textual content analysis of a sub-set of these books, we examine what queer literature looks like, identifying qualities it shares, and considering particular resources and possibilities it offers readers that are distinct from the broader category of LGBT-themed literature.

Scholars have argued for reading and discussing children's and young adult literature containing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and/or questioning (LGBTQ) characters and related themes with youths. Yet, we know very little about how to do this among LGBTQ people and their allies. This study examined 18 transcripts of talk from a literature discussion group of 32 adolescents and adults, including the authors, using 24 texts over three years in an LGBTQ youth center. The goal was to identify the nature of the talk and the ways it was liberatory and/or oppressive. A Foucaultian analysis of the talk, combined with ethnographically collected information, was conducted, identifying discourses, uses, and ways of operating to reveal possibilities and limitations of LGBT-inclusive and queering discourses. Findings suggest a complex, reciprocal process among texts, talk, and context in which no discourse is monolithically liberatory or oppressive. Complementary and competing discourses in conversation with each other around diverse texts and in complex contexts, however, provide opportunities for conflicts and potential for change. (Contains 3 notes, 3 tables, and 1 figure.)

This commentary focuses on the shortcomings of LGBT-inclusivity by concentrating on the problem of heteronormativity and the promise of intersectionality. The authors do so with a deliberate focus on adolescents and adults engaging in literacy practices, construed broadly, in both in-school and out-of-school contexts.

This article reviews Driver's monograph, "Queer Girls and Popular Culture: Reading, Resisting, and Creating Media," reporting on queer girls' active engagement with television characters, films, lesbian magazines, online communities, and music. She explores the consequences of their engagements with these media on their lives and their understandings of popular culture and themselves.

The authors' belief that using LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender)-themed literature in schools is possible and necessary, coupled with students' sense that either it cannot or is not being done, prompted them to write this article. While the authors are sympathetic with students' perspectives, and agree that examples are limited, such work is happening and has been documented in scholarship. One goal of this article is to bring that scholarship together to showcase what is happening in classrooms. A second, related goal is to trouble this scholarship and consider how work around LGBT-themed literature in classrooms may be limited by the context of school. Through analysis of these studies, the authors identify limitations and constraints relative to "positioning" of readers and texts, the acknowledgment and uptake of "pleasure" around these readings, and issues of "politics" and "power" that shape engagements with LGBT-themed literature in schools. Finally, drawing from work in out-of-school, queer-inclusive communities, the authors suggest ways of opening up spaces in classrooms to a range of reading positions and work around texts that offer more possibilities for young people to become readers of LGBT-themed literature in schools and to work with adults against homophobia and heterosexism. (Contains 2 notes.)

This article reviews scholarship that represents urban students who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. It draws on empirical examples to illustrate prominent themes across this scholarship, including the homophobia they experience, the impact it has on their academic performance, and the activism it sparks. Finally, it considers implications for urban educators working with queer youth, specifically, the need to understand and be prepared to address multiple social and cultural issues that intersect with sexual and gender identities.

Earlier research positioned queer students as victims, and more recent scholarship positions them as agents. This study works to recognize and learn from the multiple subject positions of these youth by documenting subtleties regarding the experiences and negotiations of gender rules and regulations. When youth claim multiple subject positions, they are better able to identify, name, and work against oppression. Educators need to strive to make schools spaces where all students can engage in story lines that position them, and in which they position themselves, in multiple and variable ways so that they are more able to work for social change. (Contains 6 notes.)

In this article, the author offers guidelines to teachers on shaping pedagogy and classrooms in ways that include and value the experiences and learning of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning (LGBTQ) students. In order for teachers to create a context in which gender trouble can happen without violent consequences, they need to recognize their own prejudices and reflect on the ways that these prejudices might impact their teaching of LGBTQ and gender-nonconforming students. (Contains 4 endnotes.)

The authors argue for teaching queer-inclusive English language arts (ELA). They report on a study that surveyed high school personnel across the United States, revealing that very few people in charge of ELA curricula value such inclusion. In response to these findings, the authors offer "images of the possible" in which texts and methods that could be used in queer-inclusive ELA curricula are suggested. They advocate for teaching ELA that represents diverse people, including those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning, in a range of positionalities, as both insiders and outsiders in various texts. Such a curriculum is one way for all high school students to experience themselves amid "otherness," or to experience the "other" in their midst. It is the vehicle for, and the echo of, a varied and varying society--a thesis-antithesis dialectic that eschews synthesis. In order to accomplish this, teachers must educate students to examine and experience the multiple and mutable constituents of identity and culture, of which sexuality is a critical, but hardly constant, constituent.

This article focuses on the ways in which a small group consisting mostly of Black queer youth makes sense of their use of language to assert agency in a world that is often heterosexist, homophobic, ageist, and racist. The author draws from the work of Gee and Anzalda to identify what youth call Gaybonics, as a Borderland Discourse that is intertwined with Ebonics. The author and youth worked together in a youth-run center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youth to analyze the ways that these youth engaged in Gaybonics to elicit pleasure and subvert oppression, and, when their borders were violated, they shifted from this discourse to another to retaliate against hatred. When youth analyzed their use of Borderland Discourses, they came to understand the ways that they engage in such discourses to position themselves as agents and the power they can (and cannot) access by engaging in various discourses. The author asserts that youth need opportunities to explore such access to power through language, particularly in the margins, as conceptualized by hooks. Finally, the author calls for work with youth that not only supports their assertion of agency but also their efforts at activism.

Explores literacy performances as a way for students to empower themselves and effect social change. Describes a literacy group called Story Time in a youth-run center for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and questioning youths. Concludes that literacy performances are a way into opportunities for social change for any marginalized reader and writer. (PM)

Throughout this essay, we invite you to reflect on yourself and your understandings of adolescent literacy as we review the Handbook of Adolescent Literacy Research and Meeting the Challenge of [...]