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COPYRIGHT 2005 Caddo Gap Press
Back in the late 1980s, as a student teacher of English as a Second Language (ESL) to immigrants, refugees and international students in the United States, I was eager to read something, anything, to help me think through the intriguing teaching dilemmas that often arose when the topic of (homo)sexual identities became foregrounded in classroom interactions. But extensive searching through language education literature yielded almost no acknowledgment that a range of sexual identities even exists, either within or beyond the classroom; the world represented in the literature was one in which straight people--albeit from various national, cultural, and linguistic backgrounds--were interacting only with other straight people. Turning to the more general education literature, I found a handful of publications on lesbian/gay/bisexual matters, but little serious attention to addressing these matters in classrooms characterised by a mix of cultural perspectives and linguistic fluencies and disfluencies; this constructed world was one in which fluent (usually 'native') speakers (of English)--albeit lesbian, gay and bisexual, as well as straight--were interacting mostly with other fluent speakers, usually from the same (Western, English-speaking) country. The dearth of literature on teaching in a 'contact zone' environment (1) that was simultaneously transnational, transcultural, multilingual and multisexual spurred me to write about my own teaching experiences.
Three classroom narratives were published in the statewide newsletter of what was then my local teachers' association. (2) Even though these narratives were written fifteen years ago--by a very inexperienced teacher--and were not intended as a form of narrative-inquiry research (Clandinin & Connelly, 2000), I re-present them here because it seems that gay or queer discourses still tend to be considered 'foreign' within teaching contexts that readily engage transnational themes or cohorts (and conversely, that transnational discourses and cohorts still tend to be considered 'foreign' within teaching contexts that readily engage gay or queer themes). The aim of this paper is to spark discussion and debate about two over-arching questions: What might it look like to think queerly and transnationally--in tandem--about teaching, and what modes of inquiry can provoke new thinking on these sometimes contentious matters, among multiple audiences?
By 'thinking queerly about teaching,' I mean finding ways to acknowledge the range of sexual identities (lesbian, straight, gay, transgender, bisexual, and so on) that is circulating in public discourses beyond the classroom, and among teacher and student cohorts in the classroom. But I also mean finding ways of grappling with and interrogating sexual-identity discourses and their effects. Thus I am using the term 'queer' in two ways: to summarise the lengthy phrase 'lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,' but also "to protest, or at least blur, clear-cut notions of sexual identity" (Nelson, 1999, p. 374, following Warner, 1993). Thinking queerly about teaching, then, means not just 'including gay people' but prompting inquiry about the cultural and linguistic production of sexual identities in day-to-day practices and discourses (Nelson, 1999, following Britzman, 1995). In language classes, given the emphasis on facilitating communication, interaction, and participation, it would seem particularly important to find ways of incorporating, and analysing, sexual identity discourses that are in wide circulation beyond the classroom (see Nelson, 2004a). But queer approaches to pedagogy will be of limited usefulness unless they take into account the changing demographics and identity theories accompanying wide-scale migrations (see Nelson, 2004b).
By 'thinking transnationally about teaching,' I mean recognising the "unprecedented levels of immigration and displacement" that are rapidly reconfiguring education contexts (Suarez-Orozco, 2001, p. 345), so that even 'mainstream' classes are coming to resemble second-language classes in terms of linguistic/cultural heterogeneity. But the point of thinking transnationally is not just to teach in ways that 'include people from other countries'--it is to engage and question the ways in which foreignness gets constructed, and to recognise the dynamic mix of allegiances and affiliations that characterises cultural and national identifications and disidentifications in these times of globalisation (see, e.g., Mandaville, 2001). The pedagogic aim, in other words, is to "represent the diversity of postcolonial societies ... whilst simultaneously challenging a fixed and...
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