"Rainbows in the Past Were Gay": LGBTQ in the WC

Date

2013

Authors

Rihn, Andrew J.
Sloan, Jay D.

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In their 2009 article “The Queer Turn in Composition Studies: Reviewing and Assessing an Emerging Scholarship,” Jonathan Alexander and David Wallace describe the state of LGBTQIA/queer studies in the field of rhetoric and composition. They note the “inclusion of articles and essays on queerness often pales in comparison to inclusion of material on race and gender” (317), and while this queered literature is “emerging,” it remains “spotty at best” (302). The same can be said, we believe, for similar scholarship in the field of writing centers. Prefiguring our own feelings, they write Although we are proud to participate in a scholarly and pedagogical tradition that takes diversity seriously, we also feel a profound sense of disappointment each time we read the latest book or journal article in which a theorist or researcher whose work we respect takes on the knotty questions of how identity issues such as gender, race, and class affect the teaching and learning of writing but fails to address sexual identity or, in many cases, even to acknowledge it in passing (301).

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