On Teaching and Learning, Queer Theory, and Risk

In my first-ever statement of teaching philosophy, which I recently rediscovered, I open with the following assertion: “My pedagogy is inspired by the unsettling, risky, and anti-identitarian theories and practices of queer studies.” Indeed, queer theory has shaped me as both a person and a scholar: it helped me understand myself as an undergraduate, transformed my graduate studies, and continues to influence my research and teaching. It strikes me, though, that “risky”—in the context of the classroom—means something different to me today than it did when I first drafted that sentence.

“Queer” is a deliberately opaque and elastic term that resists definition and challenges “normal.” I’ve long been interested in what queer theorists do with the concept of “risk,” in particular the psychoanalytic education scholar Deborah Britzman. According to Britzman, the act of reading (in its broadest sense) is “always about risking the self, about confronting one’s own theory of reading, and about engaging one’s own alterity and desire.” In other words, when we encounter new—other, strange—forms of knowledge in the classroom, we are “risking” who we believe ourselves to be in the world, and beginning to imagine new ways of understanding ourselves and our relationships to others. Reading, in this queer sense, is more so about undoing or unscripting existing forms of knowledge than it is about creating new ones.

Today, in the context of intensifying queer- and transphobia in Alberta and beyond, “risk” feels different—weightier—than it did all those years ago. In June of this year, I participated in a roundtable at the annual Conference of the Children’s Literature Association about teaching gender and sexuality in our current political moment. The context: one of our colleagues had been fired from a university in Texas for facilitating a class on gender in children’s literature. For many of my colleagues, the risks of this work had become material, not just intellectual. Including visibly queer and trans texts on a course outline suddenly felt dangerous, and our impulse to protect our queer and trans students, colleagues, and selves tugged against the unsettling risks that queer pedagogy invites. So, we asked ourselves: how might we still

• Think about and resist how we, our students, and institutions script “normal” and “abnormal” classroom practices?
• Maintain space for “risking the self”?
• Challenge the way we and our students read, together?

Regardless of whether you teach queer and trans topics and texts in your classes, I invite you to consider these questions alongside me. Something I find myself thinking about a lot, particularly since this conference, is how queer theory has been less interested in certain kinds of visibility than in scratching at how (and why) knowledge is constructed. We might think about how “queer” can shape not only what is on our course outlines, but how (and why) those course outlines get made. Perhaps we have “normal” assessment or design practices that could be unscripted to provide students with more space to take intellectual and creative risks; elsewhere, for example, I’ve thought about ungrading as a kind of queer pedagogy.

At the same time, risk isn’t evenly distributed in our classrooms. Many of our students and colleagues take risks simply by showing up as themselves. Opening space for risk, then, also means noticing who is carrying it, and sharing that weight where we can. Queer theory encourages curiosity about those things we often take for granted. How might we, in our classrooms, challenge ourselves to engage thoughtfully with risk, and open space for our students to do the same?

References

Britzman, Deborah. Lost Subjects, Contested Objects: Toward a Psychoanalytic Inquiry of Learning. State University of New York Press, 1998.

Mason, Derritt. “Episode 10: What is Queer Pedagogy? With Harper Keenan,” April 24, 2024, in 3QTL: Three Questions about Teaching and Learning, 39:47, https://taylorinstitute.ucalgary.ca/resources/podcast/3qtl#harper-keenan.

Mason, Derritt. “The Queer Pedagogy of Ungrading.” Journal of Cinema and Media Studies: Teaching Media 10 (2), 2025. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/18261332.0064.708/--queer-pedagogy-of-ungrading?rgn=main;view=fulltext.