The Spaces In Between

Over Thanksgiving break I read Teaching Queer by Stacey Waite which was a perfect book to read given the almost-end-of-the-semester slump/exhaustion that starts to set in at this point in the academic year. Mid-November is also often the time when I feel that my students are not learning anything and that I have failed as a professor. (I know this isn’t true–but when I am tired, and they are tired, it can sometimes feel that way!)

Reading Teaching Queer was a refreshing reminder that there is always room to grow in regards to my pedagogy, and that when I get stuck, there are folks out there who I can learn new tips and ideas from. Waite’s book gave me renewed energy when I returned to the classroom after break, and reminded me that there is a rich selection of pedagogy texts to draw inspiration from as I look for new ways to engage my students. (I think I might start a tradition of reading pedagogy over Thanksgiving–last year I read Teaching with Tenderness by Becky Thompson, which was also fantastic!)

One chapter from Teaching Queer was particularly interesting to me because it challenged the idea that talking and verbal discussion is the best way to measure participation in the classroom. Waite challenges the way that the academy privileges extroversion and asks about how silence in a classroom might be queer, especially in spaces that value speaking. I have often told my students that active participation is not just speaking, it also includes engaged listening, and taking notes, and non-verbal body language, and yet, it is still easier to feel that students are engaged with they are speaking.

Waite acknowledges that breaking silence has been an important part of queer and feminist activism. She cites Audre Lorde’s essay “Silence into Action,” where Lorde wrote about the importance of speaking even when one is afraid, because “your silence will not protect you.” She also discusses the importance of breaking silence around stigmatized identities, and oppression, and the value of slogans like silence = death during the AIDS epidemic. But still, she asks, even if we can understand speaking out as radical in relationship to writing or protest, within the classroom, might it be silence that is queer/radical? A pedagogy that values silence, she argues, would leave more space and time for quiet reflection, and opportunities to think, and she suggests giving more opportunities for free-writes where students can respond with pen and paper, instead of verbally.

The theme of breaking silence has been a big one in my LGBTQ Identities and Communities class. When we talked about the AIDS epidemic, we discussed the importance of slogans like “silence = death.” The week before Thanksgiving we read the above mentioned article by Lorde, “Turning Silence into Action,” and watched Be Steadwell’s film Vow of Silence. One of the main characters, the Apocathary, tells the protagonist, “Only truth can break your silence.”

And then, on our first day back from Thanksgiving we discussed the Black Lives Matter movement, and the importance of white LGBTQ folks speaking up against the violence that POC and black LGBTQ folks are facing. Students also watched Marlon Rigg’s film Tongues Untied over break, and this film also addresses the topic of silence, as both oppression, and also sometimes safety.  In one of the spoken word poems, the speaker says, “Silence is my shield. It crushes…Silence is my sword, it cuts both ways…No-one will save you but you. Your silence is costly.” In another, the speaker discusses staying silent in high-school, “quiet and safe inside” himself. 

Thinking about all of these texts and previous class discussions about silence, alongside Waite’s queer perspective of silence in the classroom, I began this first class after Thanksgiving with a free-write, asking students:

“How is silence oppressive?” AND “How (or when) might silence be freedom?”

Students had some fantastic responses. They brought up previous discussions about the AIDS crisis and how devastating the government’s silence about the disease was. They brought up the importance of speaking up against injustice, and argued that silence is oppressive when it upholds the dominant culture’s norms. They said silence is oppressive when people are not allowed to speak their truth. However, they also noted that silence might be protection or survival or a form of safety. One student commented that it might be protest or resistance, for example if someone refuses to say the pledge of allegiance, or refuses to give up their religious beliefs, even in the face of oppression.

My students had some really great thoughts to share. And they were also really tired, more tired, it seemed, than before Thanksgiving Break. I was grateful to have read Stacey Waite’s text because it meant that I was able to lean into their quietness and to not put pressure on class to be particularly responsive or exuberant or outgoing. It meant that I was okay with the silences and the moments when students needed to think, and didn’t feel the need to immediately jump in with another question. And given their exhaustion, I am glad that I had decided before class to incorporate more free-writes into my lesson plan, as suggested by Waite. The free-writes gave students an opportunity to take time to reflect, and to write something before they were asked to share their thoughts with the class.

(The other free-write we did was about the line from Tongues Untied, “we are worth wanting each other.” This sparked a discussion about how we value particular bodies over others, how we can grow desire for ourselves and others, and the importance of loving each other.)

We are on the home-stretch of the semester, and I am grateful for Waite’s invitation to think about silence as part of  queer pedagogy. In these last few weeks of the semester, I want to make sure that my students and I are connecting with each other and with the texts, that we are thinking and reflecting deeply, and that we are also pausing sometimes to just breathe.

Featured image: Photo by Hannah Olinger on Unsplash.