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Introduction

The Critical Praxis of Queer Memoirs in Education

sj MILLER AND NELSON M. RODRIGUEZ

 

When we initially conceived the idea for Educators Queering Academia: Critical Memoirs, it came from a space of remembering. As tenured queer educators not only did we want to remember those who forged diverse paths that have created the conditions for many of us in the present to be able to do queer work in academia, we also wanted to honor their tenacious and indomitable spirits. Their efforts, to be sure, have been formative for us in so many impactful ways that we were called to archive as many of our queer educational histories as possible that demonstrate diverse lineages and intersectionalities. From this perspective, we reached out to at least several dozen queer educators, including former, current, those new to the profession, and even those still yet-to-come, to share with us the ways in which they have queered, are queering, or will queer academia. What we compiled represents a cross-section of memoirs of those who responded to the call.

For this book, we utilize “queer” as an umbrella category referencing lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and emerging categories (LGBTI+), as well as work specifically in queer theory arising out of poststructuralism and the postmodern turn in sexuality studies. We recognize that embedded in this usage are theoretical and political tensions between identitarian and non-identitarian approaches to thinking about...