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Queering Pedagogy: Pleasure, Resistance, and Self-Definition

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Queer theory challenges more than just traditional content—it offers a transformative lens for questioning the very methods, norms, and power structures that underpin teaching. Queering Pedagogy: Pleasure, Resistance, and Self-Definition invites educators to disrupt authority, normativity, and control in the classroom, embracing instead the liberatory potential of playful exploration, collaborative learning, and self-definition. By weaving queer theory into both content and method, participants will learn how to amplify student agency, destabilize oppressive norms, and re-envision education as a space of curiosity, joy, and radical possibility.

Queer theory challenges more than just traditional content—it offers a transformative lens for questioning the very methods, norms, and power structures that underpin teaching. Queering Pedagogy: Pleasure, Resistance, and Self-Definition invites educators to disrupt authority, normativity, and control in the classroom, embracing instead the liberatory potential of playful exploration, collaborative learning, and self-definition. By weaving queer theory into both content and method, participants will learn how to amplify student agency, destabilize oppressive norms, and re-envision education as a space of curiosity, joy, and radical possibility.

Key Focus Areas

  1. Queer Theory as Method

    • Understand how queer approaches to knowledge—prioritizing fluidity, questioning “neutrality,” and embracing uncertainty—can reshape teaching practices.

  2. Pleasure & Resistance

    • Explore classroom strategies that celebrate curiosity, joy, and mutual discovery, harnessing these elements as forms of resistance to restrictive norms and hierarchies.

  3. Centering Self-Definition

    • Learn to disrupt conventional authority by cultivating student self-definition, collaborative authority, and reciprocal engagement in course design and classroom interactions.

Who Should Attend

  • K–12 & Higher Ed Instructors
    Seeking to integrate queer perspectives into pedagogy, not just curriculum, to create more inclusive, student-driven experiences.

  • Curriculum Developers & Instructional Coaches
    Looking to deconstruct one-size-fits-all teaching norms and foster more fluid, experimental educational methods.

  • DEI & Equity Teams
    Ready to push beyond standard “inclusion” efforts, weaving radical critiques of power and normativity into everyday teaching.

  • Activists & Community Educators
    Interested in blending resistance practices with the joy and creativity of queer theory across workshops, trainings, or movement spaces.

Learning Objectives

  1. Revisit & Revise Authority

    • Examine how traditional hierarchies in the classroom can be unsettled, shifting from lecturer-based instruction to more co-created, dialogic models.

  2. Embrace Fluidity & Joy

    • Cultivate lesson plans and facilitation techniques that foreground experimentation, delight in the unknown, and creative subversion of “standard” learning outcomes.

  3. Prioritize Self-Definition

    • Design activities and institutional practices that encourage students to define their own identities, learning goals, and means of participation—empowering them as co-authors of knowledge.

Why It Matters

Queering pedagogy isn’t just about adding queer content to a syllabus—it’s about challenging the deep-seated norms that shape how we learn, teach, and assess. When educators center pleasure, resistance, and self-definition, classrooms transform into sites of liberation rather than compliance. Students become active collaborators in knowledge production, reclaiming autonomy and discovering new ways to engage the world. Such a radical reframe not only honors queer ways of being and learning, but also fosters a broader culture of empathy, equity, and collective empowerment.

Is This Workshop For You?

  • Feeling constrained by rigid academic structures and traditional power dynamics?
    We’ll discuss how queer theory can disrupt hierarchies and encourage genuinely shared authority among educators and learners.

  • Seeing how standardized assessment and one-directional instruction stifle creativity, experimentation, or critical thought?
    Learn methods for infusing pleasure, play, and imaginative exploration into every aspect of your teaching.

  • Curious about how “queering” a classroom can go beyond content changes to rework pedagogical methods themselves?
    We’ll explore practical strategies to dismantle normativity, re-center curiosity, and honor diverse ways of knowing.

  • Ready to harness joy as a form of resistance, pushing back against oppressive systems inside and outside the classroom?
    This session offers fresh approaches for mobilizing celebration, community, and co-creation in your educational practice.

If any of these questions resonate, Queering Pedagogy: Pleasure, Resistance, and Self-Definition is your roadmap to transforming teaching into an experience that is collectively shaped, vibrantly inclusive, and boldly liberatory.