The Spaces In Between

A Note on Writing in a Pandemic: 2020 was a hard year in terms of writing and research. I am still working on an article on drag kids and Desmond is Amazing, which I started at Amherst College in 2018. Moving, starting a new job, and dealing with a pandemic have all affected my productivity. As I wrote in my 2020 review post, the fall was TOUGH for me. And these are not normal times. We are all dealing with stress, uncertainty, grief. And some of us are dealing with more than others, as many studies have pointed out, the pandemic is affecting women academics, especially those with children, very differently than men. And I think it is important to acknowledge those conditions, and to push against particular narratives of productivity in these times.

That said, I am very excited to announce that my chapter in an anthology that has been in progress for years is finally coming out this Spring! I also managed to write and submit a Teaching Note to Radical Teacher this summer, which was accepted and will be published in their next issue. And this December I was invited to contribute to another anthology on LGBTQ+ children’s books by someone that I met at a conference years ago.

Check out more about each project below!

Three Upcoming Publications:

1. One of the activities that I have done in my LGBTQ Studies courses involves creating a panel of straight students who answer questions from The Heterosexual Questionnaire. It has been a great way to talk about privilege and heterosexism, and the ways that queer folks are required to validate their sexuality in ways that straight folks are not. This summer, I decided to write a Teaching Note and submit it to Radical Teacher as I wanted to share this interactive activity with others. I published my poetry and a Teaching Note with Radical Teacher in 2019 (see more here), and had a great experience with the editors. And I often return to this journal to see what folks are teaching, and especially appreciate their Teaching Notes and poetry section. I am very excited that my Teaching Note was accepted and will published in their #119 issue.

2. Two years ago, at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, I met Jennifer L Miller, who presented “Picturing Queerness: A Study of Queerness in Children’s Picture Books” on a panel called “Disrupting Hegemonic Social Imaginaries in Children’s Culture.” I wrote about her presentation, as well as my own thoughts on the book “Julian is a Mermaid” in this blog post.

This past December Jennifer reached out to me about a new project she is working on: an anthology about LGBTQ+ children’s literature, and invited me to contribute. The anthology includes literary scholars, folks working in education, history, and gender studies, and critical race studies. It will examine both representations of queer and trans adults, especially books about families with lgbtq parents, and also books with lgbtq, and/or gender non-conforming kids.

Given that I have been writing about children drag performers, I decided to look and see what has been published in terms of representations of drag, and discovered that quite a few books were published in 2020! So, I will be writing a chapter on representations of drag in children’s picture books.

Here is the abstract for my chapter:

Drag shows have been a part of LGBTQ+ culture for over a century but have primarily been seen as events for adults. However, television shows like RuPaul’s Drag Race, and events like Drag Queen Story Hour, have introduced drag to children. And in 2020, several children’s books were published about drag: The Hips on the Drag Queens Go Swish, Swish, Swish, Auntie-Uncle: Drag Queen Hero, Be Amazing: A History of Pride, RuPaul Charles People of Pride Board Book, and Tabitha and Magoo Dress Up Too. This chapter draws on scholarship within the fields of queer theory and childhood studies, with a focus on queer temporality, and the concept of the child/adult binary, to analyze the representations of drag in these texts. Ultimately I will explore what these books teach children about the performance of gender, the idea of “being yourself,” and the history of Pride and drag queen activism. 

3. Finally, a chapter that I wrote a few years ago will soon be published by Palgrave in Queer Youth Histories, edited by Daniel Marshall. It is called “The ‘New” Trans Child” and examines representations of trans children in television documentaries.

Ultimately I argue that while children are beginning to gain access to new identity categories, we see the continuation of many historical narratives of queer and gender-nonconforming children within these media representations. Transgender children are still pathologized, and defined by childhood innocence and the need for protection.

I am excited to finally have this work out in the world, although it feels a bit dated in some ways, given that I did most of the writing in 2016/2017. In particular, I wish I could have engaged more with Jules Gil-Peterson’s book “The Histories of the Trans Child” which came out in 2018. But that is the nature of academic publishing, and as I argue in the chapter itself, many of the narratives around these kids are ones that we have seen before.

Type-writer Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash