Sumara, Dennis and Brent Davis. “Interrupting Heteronormativity: Toward a Queer Curriculum Theory”

Sumara, Dennis and Brent Davis. “Interrupting Heteronormativity: Toward a Queer Curriculum Theory.” Curriculum Inquiry, 29(1999): 191-208.

In accordance with queer theory, Sumara and Davis are interested in examining the intertwining relationship of sexuality and curricular relations.  While, they contest, “queer” work in curricular theory has been happening all along, it is important to parallel the work of contemporary queer theory in disrupting heteronormative thinking. Queer curriculum theory is not interested in merely examining queer identities, but instead troubling the relationship between curriculum and sexuality as well as sexuality and knowledge, examining the heterosexual closet along with its construction and adherence, and investigating experiences of desire, of pleasure and of sexuality to interrupt common belief discourse.  Queer curriculum serves both the ends of social justice as well as truncated questions that curricular theory already raises.

Area Cluster: 102 Comp/Writing Program & 103 Theory

Methodology: “literary anthropology”—an interpretive activity where the relationships among memory, history, and experiences of subjectivity are made available for analysis; case study

Valuable Citations: Eve Sedgwick, Michel Foucault, Deborah Britzman, Michael Warner

Money Quote$:
Queer theory does not ask that pedagogy become sexualized, but that it excavate and interpret the way it already is sexualized- and, furthermore, that it begin to interpret the way that it is explicitly heterosexualized (192).

Because these curriculum artifacts [shared readings] were (as is typical of these forms) presented as information rather than as beginning places for critical inquiry into what might constitute experiences of sexuality and sex, Gina (and a number of her classmates) seemed unable to represent anything other than the usual cultural myths about sex and sexuality-particularly myths about what counts as sex (only intercourse, it seems) and as sexual partners (opposite sex only) (199).

To put it crudely, heteronormativity creates a language that is “straight.” Living within heteronormative culture means learning to “see” straight, to “read” straight, to “think” straight (202).

And, following Warner, we are not interested in promoting queer curriculum theory as a theory about queers but, rather, are interested in showing how all educators ought to become interested in the complex relationships among the various ways in which sexualities are organized and identified and in the many ways in which knowledge is produced and represented (203).

As explained by Foucault, a heterotopia is an event structure in which things not usually associated with one another are juxtaposed, allowing language to become more elastic, more able to collect new interpretations and announce new possibilities (205).