Abstract
This essay explores reading for renewal as queer pedagogy. Within the context of lesbian and gay literature courses, professors can teach students and themselves how to pull stories—beautiful, celebratory stories—out of the bits and pieces of stones of self-hatred and of suffering. If readers of gay and lesbian texts are to resist homophobic discourse, then they must not only train themselves to recognize signs of queerness within even the most oppressive of narratives, but also seek out those texts whose discussions of narrative theory and identity politics promote queer visibility. Reading for renewal—that is, locating “a place” of transformative possibility either within the text or within the experience of reading the text within the classroom—is, the author argues, integral to practicing a queer pedagogy.
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Breen, M.S. “Falling into a Place”: Reading for Renewal as Queer Pedagogy. International Journal of Sexuality and Gender Studies 3, 233–244 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023295016377
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1023295016377