Teaching Queer: Radical Possibilities for Writing and Knowing

by Stacey Waite

Teaching Queer looks closely at student writing, transcripts of class discussions, and teaching practices in first-year writing courses to articulate queer theories of literacy and writing instruction, while also considering the embodied actuality of being a queer teacher. Rather than positioning queerness as connected only to queer texts or queer teachers/students (as much work on queer pedagogy has done since the 1990s), this book offers writing and teaching as already queer practices, and contends that the overlap between queer theory and composition presents new possibilities for teaching writing. Teaching Queer argues for and enacts “queer forms”—non-normative and category-resistant forms of writing—those that move between the critical and the creative, the theoretical and the practical, and the queer and the often invisible normative functions of classrooms.

Genres: Language, Nonfiction, Teaching

208 pages, Paperback

Published March 31, 2017

About the author

Stacey Waite was the winner of the 2004 Frank O'Hara Prize for Poetry for her first chapbook entitled Choke, as well as the 2006 Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest for her chapbook Love Poem to Androgyny. She lives with her partner in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where she studies Tai Chi, searches for old clay roof tiles and walks through Frick Park with her greyhound, Rohen. She has been teaching writing and gender studies courses at the University of Pittsburgh for the past four years, including such courses as Queer Theory, Writing and Consciousness, Fieldwork with the Body, and Sexuality and Representation. Her poems have appeared most recently in Poet Lore, Nimrod, 5AM, West Branch, Chiron Review, and Pearl. She enjoys tending to the ficus tree, ridding the yard of dead pine needles, and sweeping the front porch.

Reviews

[Amanda · Rating 3 out of 5]

For a book that focuses heavily on queer rhetoric, it's surprisingly applicable. Waite uses her own methods of alternative composition practices within the book, and this delineation from a standard formatting actually serve as a pretty helpful example on how her theories can be used, and how effective they will be.

[Matt Sautman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Teaching Queer is an immensely readable compositional theory text, resembling in many ways the kind of accessible writing present in works by Anzalduá and Villanueva. While this book targets teachers of rhetoric and composition, there is value in this book for anyone interested in or familiar with queer studies and wants to consider how the field
intersects with pedagogy.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

There is much to admire in this book. Stacey Waite's prose is clear, self-reflective, and engaging. She responds to student writing thoughtfully and respectfully. And she values openness in both teaching and writing.

Unfortunately, I feel that Waite's line of thinking in the book tends to circle in on itself without really moving very far forward. She closes by pretty much repeating the same questions that she begins with—How is teaching queer? How is writing queer? How is teaching writing queer?—but without really showing how those questions have gained depth and resonance. I suspect that Waite might be annoyed (or amused) by my response, since she explicitly advocates a "circular" style of writing—and I am not arguing for a linear claim-and-warrant style of writing. But I don't feel like I close the book with a significantly different response to the questions she asks than I began it with.