Introduction

Abstract

In Critical Concepts in Queer Studies and Education: An International Guide for the Twenty-First Century, contributors were invited to advance a key concept as a basis for reflecting on their engagement with queer studies and education. The idea was derived from an inaugural issue of TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly in which the authors developed keywords or concepts for a twenty-first-century transgender studies. In a similar vein, but in relation to queer studies and education, the contributors here also developed concepts that take up a cross section of scholarship, and which speaks to various political, epistemological, theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical concerns. We felt that the “concepts approach,” with its accessible and non-imposing format, a distinctive element of the volume, would add to the book’s breadth of coverage, including the wide range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches taken up across the chapter essays. In addition, we conceived of the tactic of deploying a concept as a heuristic means by which to provide some insights into a mapping of the field—both epistemologically and methodologically—in terms of creating a space for reflecting on the limits and possibilities of queer studies in education for the twenty-first century. In no means did we conceive of this endeavor as a totalizing project for determining the limits of queer studies or its after-queer tendencies in education (Talburt and Rasmussen 2010). Rather, we understood this heuristic approach as providing a window on thinking about recurrent themes and tendencies in queer thinking and research in education, particularly in light of the critiques that have continued to surface about its political efficacy and antinormative relevance (Wiegman and Wilson 2015; Eng et al. 2005; McKee 1999; Jagose 2009; Noble 2006).