Reaction on WRITING INQUEERIES: BODIES, QUEER THEORY, AND AN EXPERIMENTAL WRITING CLASS
by Jennifer DiGrazia, Westfield State College & Michel Boucher University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

This readings is based on a very important pedagogy which has been somehow neglected and
is still now being neglected by the majority. Though it’s importance is explicitly high, it has
been overlooked always. This reading is all about queer theory. Queer theory is a field of
critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of the fields of queer studies and women
studies. This theory includes both queer readings of texts and the theorization of queerness’
itself.

In this reading, the authors tried to give an overview of queer pedagogy and shared their own
experiences implementing this pedagogy in first-year composition class. This pedagogy
indicates a classroom that is based on the theme Queer. The authors tried to make people
aware of the importance of our diverse community and they also showed how we can
implement queer in writing. The paper is really interesting. It shows you on your face how on
the name of equality and equity, we have been discriminating and how this field of diverse
community has been left understudied.

We can’t choose our sexuality but what would be my identity, that’s really up to me. You
can’t perceive my sexuality by my appearance. This reading is advocating exactly the same
thing, the authors stated “we came to understand that there was something important to our
students about naming and representing self, even if that self is multiple and ever-changing,
and that writing queerly could enable such a process" (40). Thus they took the initiative to
implement this idea in education. Since the classroom is a place of identity construction, this is
the place where identities are created and shaped. The authors assumed teaching queerly
means teaching fluidity, then it makes sense that to teach queerly you have to focus around the
intersections of identity, so that the writing classroom becomes "a place to (re)create identity
categories and (re)imagine possibilities for self-representation" (28).

Writing classes help students to (re)think, (re)imagine. They offered practical applications in
the classroom which give the authority for the classroom. This authority is more likely to
shifting the power balance towards the students, so they could look “to themselves and each
other as sources of authority” and balance power enough that students could “work with
various forms and genres and see writing as a tool or representing what they discovered”. (31)
And this is what we want to establish in our composition classroom. So, they argued why
can’t we implement this pedagogy in FYC classroom then?

To implement this pedagogy, the authors also had to create content and effective theory. That
was somewhat challenging for them too. The first thing they had to specify is what is queer
and how that can be identified from the academic perspective because there can be multiple
ways to mention that. However they incorporated traditional elements of writing course in
their writing which included multiple drafts, peer response, individual conferences etc.
However, their ultimate objective was to bring this notion under consideration as they
mentioned “ We hoped that, through writing, students could articulate realities and
perspectives that lacked representation or that have been castigated as “abnormal” or
“unnatural.” Ultimately, we hoped that the intersection between queer and writing would be
mutually constitutive.”(27) The queer text they assigned for readings that mainly targeted the
audience to make them acknowledge the contingency of norms.

we can use queer theory in a writing classroom as a way to explore and challenge the various
identities that we as students and scholars embody and the power that accrues to them.
They arranged their major projects in a way that encouraged the students to represent
configurations of identity that were lived and/or felt but not yet articulated. They were
motivated to represent them as writers and they were encouraged to write about their own
identities.(29) “One who uses words, cultural styles, bodies, social ideology, gesture, acts of
resistance, and a variety of other cultural practices and artifacts as a means to write him/
her/hirself into everyday life and communicating his/her/hir ideas to others” This was the
the main objective of their very first assignment sheet to encounter, "to acknowledge yourself
first."

The course was credited as pass/ fail. There was no grade point for it. Some might pass or
fail. That also aroused some confusions among themselves at some point. Because they
didn’t even know how their students were going to take it.

My thought: Introducing this concept in FYC can be great and how they presented in their papers was
really amazing. But when you are planning to implement this as a theme in your class that
will be somehow troublesome. Probably in name of inclusions, we will exclude others.
However, we can talk about this in class or dedicate a few classes for this concept. Because
our classrooms are best places to shape identities and acknowledge all the identities. We can
discuss the challenges they have and how they are accepting those and how we should look at
those but making this a whole theme for classroom would not be a good idea, I assume.
This pedagogy is something interesting to read and it's really important to facilitate these
ideas in classroom for some discussion, but it's not that much easy to plan each and
everything targeting this concept. This might allow students to face themselves with their
own reality. Writing under this approach would make them think of the audience in a more
critical sense. Many of the topics that seem common or usually addressed would come to a
second-place. Students who classify themselves as queer might experience more trouble and
a deeper reflection than other students considering that they might expect more judgment
from the audience depending on the topics.

​