Research in the Teaching of English Nov 2023

The Queer Temporalities of (Im)Possible School Futures: Transness, Christian Epistemologies, and Racial Anxiety in a Secondary Classroom

Ryan Schey

Abstract

Drawing on a yearlong ethnography I conducted at a public, urban, comprehensive high school in the midwestern United States, in this article I analyze a classroom instructional conversation about gender and trans identities in a sophomore humanities (grade 10) course that combined English language arts and social studies. In the conversation, youth constructed temporalities (i.e., relationships among pasts, presents, and futures) that were out of sync with the temporalities sanctioned by the school. In doing so, they drew on ideologies about gender, religion, race, sexuality, and class. Yet different youth offered futures that were incommensurate, particularly because they clashed over whether temporalities were rigid, fixed, and unchangeable or fluid, variable, multiple, and thus open to change. Being out of sync signaled possibilities, but not guarantees, of more just futures and suggested a need for literacy educators and researchers to rethink the roles of (un)certainty, (in)stability, and (non)linearity in classroom instruction with respect to sexual and gender diversity. In making this argument, I integrate queer and trans theorizations of temporality and futurity with adolescent queer literacies scholarship, specifically the concept of literacy performances.

Journal
Research in the Teaching of English
Published
2023-11-01
DOI
10.58680/rte202332789
Open Access
Closed
Topics
qualitative research race and writing

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (3)

  1. Mirra et al. (2025)
    Editors’ Introduction: Freedom is a Strong Seed: Transforming Civics through En…
    Research in the Teaching of English
  2. Schey (2025)
    Composing Time in a Secondary U.S. Classroom: (Not) Challenging Ideological Pol…
    Written Communication
  3. Compton-Lilly (2023)
    Conceptual Review: Finding Time: Opening Up Conceptions of Time in Literacy and…
    Research in the Teaching of English

Cites in this index (1)

  1. Blackburn (2003)
    Exploring Literacy Performances and Power Dynamics at The Loft: Queer Youth Rea…
    Research in the Teaching of English
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CrossRef global citation count: 6 View in citation network →

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