The Cultural Politics of Queer Theory in Education Research

The Cultural Politics of Queer Theory in Education Research represents the editors’ intention to disrupt cycles of thinking about the place of queer theory in educational research. The book aims to encourage dialogue about the objects and subjects of queer research, the forms of politics incited by the use of queer theory in education, and the methodological approaches used by scholars when queer(y)ing.

The contributions to this book come from those who find queer theory problematic, as well as from those who continue to see a productive place for queer research in education, however that may be defined. The editors have collected contributions that attend to the boundaries that are placed around queer research in education by researchers themselves, and by peers, ethics committees, funding bodies and university and government bureaucracies. Considering how key researchers in gender and education identify with, or deliberately distance themselves from, queer theory, this collection grapples with the contemporary cultural politics of doing queer theoretical work in different education spaces and places. In short, it seeks to disrupt what people think they already know about the ‘place’ of queer theory in education. This book was originally published as a special issue ofDiscourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.

Christina Gowlett is a Lecturer in Curriculum Studies at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia, having recently moved from the University of Melbourne where she held a McKenzie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship. Her research entails the use of post-constructionist research methodologies, especially the use of Judith Butler. Her current project explores the structure of senior schooling curriculum and the way in which secondary schools ‘guide’ students with their post-schooling aspirations.

Mary Rasmussen is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. Her principal research areas are sexualities, gender, and education. She is the author ofBecoming Subjects: Sexualities and Secondary Schooling (Routledge, 2006), and the co-editor ofYouth and Sexualities: Pleasure, Subversion and Insubordination in and out of Schools(Palgrave, 2004). She also has a forthcoming monograph with Routledge, entitledProgressive Sexuality Education: The Conceits of Secularism. She is on the editorial board of the JournalSex Education (Routledge), and, with Professor Louisa Allen, she is also editor of the first Handbook of Sexualities Education (forthcoming).