Queering critical literacies: disidentifications and queer futurity in an afterschool storytelling and roleplaying game
English Teaching: Practice & Critique
ISSN: 1175-8708
Article publication date: 2 September 2021
Issue publication date: 23 November 2021
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to describe the critical literacies of high school students engaged in a youth participatory action research (YPAR) project focused on a roleplaying game, Dungeons and Dragons, in a queer-led afterschool space. The paper illustrates how youth critique and resist unjust societal norms while simultaneously envisioning queer utopian futures. Using a queer theory framework, the authors consider how youth performed disidentifications and queer futurity.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is a discourse analysis of approximately 85 hours of audio collected over one year.
Findings
Youth engaged in deconstructive critique, disidentifications and queer futurity in powerful enactments of critical literacies that involved simultaneous resistance, subversion, imagination and hope as youth envisioned queer utopian world-building through their fantasy storytelling. Youth acknowledged the injustice of the present while radically envisioning a utopian future.
Originality/value
This study offers an empirical grounding for critical literacies centered in queer theory and explores how youth engage with critical literacies in collaboratively co-authored texts. The authors argue that queering critical literacies potentially moves beyond deconstructive critique while simultaneously opening spaces for resistance, imagination and utopian world-making through linguistic and narrative-based tools.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to thank the youth participating in the D&D YPAR project, as well as Antero Garcia, Patricia Enciso, Sarah Beck, Beth Krone, the NYU Interaction Analysis Lab and the anonymous reviewers for their sage feedback on earlier drafts.
Citation
Storm, S. and Jones, K. (2021), "Queering critical literacies: disidentifications and queer futurity in an afterschool storytelling and roleplaying game", English Teaching: Practice & Critique, Vol. 20 No. 4, pp. 534-548. https://doi.org/10.1108/ETPC-10-2020-0131
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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