Framing a Curriculum of Queered Performance(s): Problematizing the Language of "Tolerable" Queerness within Mainstream Classrooms

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration of expressions and representations of heteronormalized gender and sexuality discourses constructed by a group of students and educators involved in a pilot program at an eastern Ontario vocational high school. These performances of stereotyped queer identities or experiences overpower and silence the performances of identities outside the norm. Moreover, by defining what queerness is through a heterosexual frame, mainstream curricula defines what is acceptable (in education), and what is perceived as unwanted deviant queerness. Within this study I will reiterate the students' and educators' responses, reactions and opinions on a range of queer issues, and through autoethnography and currere methodologies, I will analyse my past and present reactions to queerness within the classroom in order to inform pedagogical strategies that one could possibly approach issues of heteronormalization in the future.