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Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University
In Poor Queer Studies Matt Brim shifts queer studies away from its familiar sites of elite education toward poor and working-class people, places, and pedagogies. Brim shows how queer studies also takes place beyond the halls of flagship institutions: in night school; after a three-hour commute; in overflowing classrooms at no-name colleges; with no research budget; without access to decent food; with kids in tow; in a state of homelessness. Drawing on the everyday experiences of teaching and learning queer studies at the College of Staten Island, Brim outlines the ways the field has been driven by the material and intellectual resources of those institutions that neglect and rarely serve poor and minority students. By exploring poor and working-class queer ideas and laying bare the structural and disciplinary mechanisms of inequality that suppress them, Brim jumpstarts a queer-class knowledge project committed to anti-elitist and anti-racist education. Poor Queer Studies is essential for all of those who care about the state of higher education and building a more equitable academy.
264 pages, Paperback
Published March 6, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 30, 2020
I really loved this! ...except that part in the introduction where Toronto is listed as just another example of an American city with an elite expensive school where Rich Queer Studies is located. Americans either ignore Canadian scholarship altogether (where all universities are public and cost between $7-$2.5k/year depending on the province), or somehow make Canadian cities American when it's convenient to the argument being made. lol
Also, shout out to Erica Rand (mentioned in book), Sue Houchins (not mentioned in book), Charles Nero (not mentioned in book) for holding it down doing poor queer black studies at Bates!
Also, shout out to Erica Rand (mentioned in book), Sue Houchins (not mentioned in book), Charles Nero (not mentioned in book) for holding it down doing poor queer black studies at Bates!
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September 28, 2021Required reading for my Writing Seminar on socioeconomic class and sexuality. Brim argues that we should incorporate class-encoded pedagogies into the field of queer studies to counter the elitist scholarship production which dominates the academy.
April 7, 2020
Fantastic book from a professor of Queer Studies at the College of Staten Island, a deeply underfunded part of the CUNY system, and yet, as Brim argues, incredibly queer. He uses the state of underfunded infracture failing, the complexities of the long transit into the univeristy, the changes the presence of a child in the class calls forth, ways texts like Counternarratives reveal the unnaturalness of the usual white-straight canon, etc., to build a compelling and coherent vision of what Poor Queer Studies can be, without (as Rich Queer Studies does) claiming it's the only vision possible.
The whole book is great (apart from some stage setting at the beginning), but what I want to focus on is a particular argument about work. The traditional university conversation is about how the increasing corporatization of the university means students are increasingly treated as consumers, and about how this means the university is solely thought of as a way of training workers for the economy. The Liberal Arts ideal is typically contrasted with this, as preparation for something like "good citizenship."
Brim counters this easy narrative by asking us to look at how at his school, far poorer and non-white than the elite schools, students are already workers. A university cannot keep the world out unless it is so loaded with money that it can create a bubble of privelige. And more interestingly, it shouldn't try to - through stories of how students take Queer Studies outside, to their homes and jobs, Brim makes us consider seriously the question of how other jobs, not just that of Queer Studies professor - can be queered. After all, as he points out, universities have always provided job training - it's just the job being trained for usually is academic.
Such a shift is complicated (as he admits), and might smack to some self-styled radicals as too close to compromise and complicity. But he forces reflexivity onto such critics, since "the radical act of positioning oneself beyond politics must fail to be consistent, even if only in that the “under” is imagined from over, from above, from a place of authority." It's the very hierarchical disciplinarity that's allowed theorists in resource-rich departments to assume a persona of purity that allows them to keep the world out. Brim cannot start there, he needs to take his bearings from where he actually is.
What would it take to help people queer their outside-lives? Illustrative examples he provides include information about laws and form filling and histories of labour (where queer and non-queer workers collaborated). You can also invite a publisher of a prominent black gay male anthology, to both understand what it takes for such stories to get out and what obstacles existed, and to understand how publishing works (and the digital skills needed to create posters for the event are transferrable too). Office workers and librarians can be valuable queer allies too, and where else could they get the knowledge and skills they'll need?
Of course, there's plenty of complications he's sensitive to, and his argument is far more expansive than what's summarized here, but this really makes me rethink that way I've (unfortunately) bought into traditional formulations of the question of work and the role of the univeristy and teaching, so I'm a massive fan of this intervention. In addition, this has been the only book in Queer Theory I can remember reading where I've taken it seriously as a text, and not just as a fun-but-ultimately-unserious piece of writing, so more of this, please.
The whole book is great (apart from some stage setting at the beginning), but what I want to focus on is a particular argument about work. The traditional university conversation is about how the increasing corporatization of the university means students are increasingly treated as consumers, and about how this means the university is solely thought of as a way of training workers for the economy. The Liberal Arts ideal is typically contrasted with this, as preparation for something like "good citizenship."
Brim counters this easy narrative by asking us to look at how at his school, far poorer and non-white than the elite schools, students are already workers. A university cannot keep the world out unless it is so loaded with money that it can create a bubble of privelige. And more interestingly, it shouldn't try to - through stories of how students take Queer Studies outside, to their homes and jobs, Brim makes us consider seriously the question of how other jobs, not just that of Queer Studies professor - can be queered. After all, as he points out, universities have always provided job training - it's just the job being trained for usually is academic.
Such a shift is complicated (as he admits), and might smack to some self-styled radicals as too close to compromise and complicity. But he forces reflexivity onto such critics, since "the radical act of positioning oneself beyond politics must fail to be consistent, even if only in that the “under” is imagined from over, from above, from a place of authority." It's the very hierarchical disciplinarity that's allowed theorists in resource-rich departments to assume a persona of purity that allows them to keep the world out. Brim cannot start there, he needs to take his bearings from where he actually is.
What would it take to help people queer their outside-lives? Illustrative examples he provides include information about laws and form filling and histories of labour (where queer and non-queer workers collaborated). You can also invite a publisher of a prominent black gay male anthology, to both understand what it takes for such stories to get out and what obstacles existed, and to understand how publishing works (and the digital skills needed to create posters for the event are transferrable too). Office workers and librarians can be valuable queer allies too, and where else could they get the knowledge and skills they'll need?
Of course, there's plenty of complications he's sensitive to, and his argument is far more expansive than what's summarized here, but this really makes me rethink that way I've (unfortunately) bought into traditional formulations of the question of work and the role of the univeristy and teaching, so I'm a massive fan of this intervention. In addition, this has been the only book in Queer Theory I can remember reading where I've taken it seriously as a text, and not just as a fun-but-ultimately-unserious piece of writing, so more of this, please.
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October 3, 2020Ugh. An incredibly insightful, crucial book, weighed down by its lack of specific examples and its hyperfocus on what it wasn't –– The author finally got around to using workable and specific examples of Poor Queer pedagogy late in the book, after spending innumerable pages talking about the epistemological stance he was *not* taking. I want insight into what Poor Queer Studies *is,* not be re-told what I know about academia's failure to center alternative forms of knowledge-production.
This could be the foreword/introduction to a book truly digging into the meat of Poor Queer Studies. Indeed, I hope that someone writes that book soon!
This could be the foreword/introduction to a book truly digging into the meat of Poor Queer Studies. Indeed, I hope that someone writes that book soon!
February 27, 2021
little kid making their barbies kiss..the barbies are queer studies and labor organizing <3
a perspective i was really needing, written by a professor of queer studies at the College of Staten Island, an open enrollment & primarily working-class school, part of the CUNY system
reading this book has centered the importance of meeting queer people where they're at, which is often lost in the theorizing coming out of academia, particularly rich academia
a perspective i was really needing, written by a professor of queer studies at the College of Staten Island, an open enrollment & primarily working-class school, part of the CUNY system
reading this book has centered the importance of meeting queer people where they're at, which is often lost in the theorizing coming out of academia, particularly rich academia
March 14, 2022
This was a cool book to read especially after taking one of Matt’s classes at CSI in which he talks about the themes discussed in this book. His writing is brilliant and it was nice to read something by someone you know!!!
June 29, 2022
I enjoyed reading about the potential for Poor Queer Studies (PQS) to queer how I show up in different rooms. I am very grateful for the class analysis presented-I plan to re-read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews