Early in the semester we wrote our educational biographies to better understand who ALL we are as Queer Studies students.
Throughout the semester we kept returning to the question of language. As we describe below, we chose to speak primarily as a collective in this final project, while highlighting individual voices.
This is the sidewalk outside our Queer Studies classroom, where the magic happens.
I. Our Educational Biographies: A Look Into How We All Got Here
II. Our Collective Languages
I. Sharing our personal stories of how we got to CSI with each other made us realize that not many of us planned to come here or wanted to. A common denominator for why we ended up here was financial reasons and convenience. As a CUNY, tuition rates are relatively cheap and for the majority of us that live on Staten Island, our commute to campus isn’t very long. Many of us have jobs and some have children. While CSI may not have been our dream school, we’re here because it fits our needs.
“I am a full-time mother of my 2-year-old son, work full time 40+ hours a week, and am a full-time student. My free time is very limited.”
Some of us had desires to go to more prestigious, more expensive colleges, but have seen others we know attend these colleges and were left with overwhelming debt. Deciding that we did not want to be in debt over a college degree, we settled for CSI. Now that we are here we realize that CSI is not as bad as we originally thought and has great opportunities and programs, but it is very underfunded.
“The knowledge gained at my small, underfunded CUNY school will allow us to change the lives of many.”
As a queer studies class, many of the students are queer themselves, intrigued by the title of a class we never knew could exist. Other students joined this class as allies, many of whom expressed that they were interested in taking this course as future educators, social workers, and parents. We hope to take the lessons we learn in this class to our jobs and homes, so that we can provide safe spaces for members of the LGBTQ+ community.
“Taking courses that normalize and spread awareness on queer and minority based issues has saved my life, and has motivated me to share my version of queer pedagogy to those who know that they need it, and to those who don’t know that do.”
While many chose to be in this class, for some it fulfilled a requirement for our degrees or was simply the only class left that we could take. While we came to this class for many different reasons, we hope to take all that we learned here and apply it to our everyday lives and careers.
II. We chose to use a collective voice for this website because as CSI students we realized that a lot of our experiences and situations are similar. Although we want to maintain an overall collective voice, there may be some instances when we choose to break away from that voice and highlight one student’s specific experience. This website is intended to be used by other CUNY students and it would be more beneficial if we steered away from academic language. We hope that by using everyday language we can prompt further discussions and thoughts, rather than complicating our topics with academic language.
“This class has not only taught me the rich history behind the LGBTQ, but it also changed my perspective in so many ways”
In discussing the language of queer studies, we spoke on how the vocabulary we use is an essential part of queer pedagogy. While we agreed that we prefer not to censor the language we use, sometimes it is necessary. Our class was full of so many different cultural backgrounds and languages, some even incorporated their knowledge of different languages into our class projects and educated our peers. Language looks different and sounds different to everyone, which also changes the way queer pedagogy is taught by different cultures.
“It is important to be educated on matters that are pertinent in my own community, whether that be as broad as the general queer/LGBT community, or as sometimes isolating as being transgender in an area like Staten Island.”
Many students in this course are aspiring educators and would like to incorporate queer ideas into their curriculum, creating the challenge of teaching queer theory to younger audiences. In these instances, some words may have to be censored and we may not be able to teach certain curriculums in K-12 classrooms that we can in adult classrooms. Taking language into consideration is an essential part of queer studies as it helps us think about who we teach and translating queer ideas into low-risk language for people who may not at first be able to hear what we have to say.
