The Spaces In Between

My research broadly focuses on LGBTQ families and children. I am particularly interested in the ways that we understand children’s gender and sexuality. Children are coming out at younger and younger ages, claiming identities that were previously considered to be adult subjectivities, and shifting our very understanding of queerness and transness. As children are living more openly and expressing themselves more freely, families are navigating a new kind of parenting, and children are experiencing a different type of LGBTQ childhood.

Currently titled “Camping It Up” my latest research project examines the ways that LGBTQ summer camps contribute to identity formation for LGBTQ campers and LGBTQ counselors. I am particularly interested in analyzing the way that the camps provide a space for LGBTQ intergenerational relationships, and how these spaces create a sense of community at camp and beyond. I am currently working on a chapter for The Routledge Companion to Gender and Childhood about camps as gendered spaces, and I will begin ethnographic work at an LGBTQ summer camp outside of DC in summer 2025. 

My dissertation Life Uncharted: Parenting Transgender, Gender-Creative, and Gay Children (2016), examines the experiences of families who are raising children that break normative ideas about gender, sexuality, bodies and desires. Drawing on media analysis, ethnographic research online and at conferences, and interviews with families, I analyze and evaluate the complex realities and temporalities that these parents and children experience, as they navigate public and private spaces, go to school, celebrate family holidays, make legal name changes, debate medical decisions, and more. I argue that parents engage in anticipation work, trying to manage their children’s identities and plan for the best possible future, while also trying to live in the present moment. The children’s lives I am studying are still unfolding, and their parents, professionals, and researchers are making their best guesses and creating knowledge based on what is currently known, even as the field continues to shift under our feet.