Proposal 2nd Draft -- Still needs work

This still needs work, but here is a draft of my paper proposal:

One of the things I was most excited about when I entered graduate school was that, for the first time in my life, I was going to get to teach, to be the one at the head of the classroom. Four or five years later, I’m still just as excited about teaching in the university setting. But, increasingly, issues associated with sexuality have come into play as regards myself and my place and purpose as a college teacher. As a gay man, should I be at all concerned with the problematics of sexuality in relation to the fact that I am the one in the position of authority now in the classroom? In other words, am I obligated to, in effect, come out to my students just because I am a gay man? Should my sexuality have any effect on the education my students receive from me? Shifting the focus just a bit, do I have an obligation to other GLBQT people—past, present, and future—to be open and honest about my sexuality in the classroom? To do what I can as a gay educator in the college environment to change things, hopefully for the better? If I were to attempt to queer the composition classroom(s) I am responsible for, how would I go about doing so? What would the texts I use in the classroom look like? What methodologies and pedagogies would I employ? What would be the goals and purposes of a queer composition classroom?

In “Rhetoric on the Edge of Cunning; Or, The Performance of Neutrality (Re)Considered As a Composition Pedagogy for Student Resistance,” Karen Kopelson argues for suspect [as regards, for example, race, gender, sexuality] individuals who are also in teaching positions to play their cards as close to their vests as possible when it comes to resistant composition students (and for Kopelson, all undergraduate students are resistant to writing instruction). In other words, Kopelson does not advocate a teacher’s coming out, if you will, to his or her students in the composition classroom. Even if teachers’ pedagogical aims are far from neutral and far from being depoliticized, the personal investments of said teachers need not be made manifest in the classroom.

As compelling as Kopelson’s insights are, I find Didi Khayatt’s approach to the idea of coming out in the classroom—as detailed in the article: “Paradoxes of the Closet: Beyond the Classroom Assignment of In or Out”—in which she argues that coming out in the classroom allows teachers to reinforce and support their students (no matter where they fall within the sexuality spectrum), to be a role model for all students (not just their fellow gay and lesbian students), to participate truly and wholeheartedly in the project of unsettling the dominance of heterosexuality, to prevent the continued institutionalization of homophobia and, to put themselves on the line for what they believe in.

Other scholars, including Edward J. Ingebretsen, Harriet Malinowitz, and David L. Wallace also deal with the pragmatics and the problematics of professors coming out in the composition
classroom. These individuals, unlike Kopelson, advocate teachers being open and honest about sexuality and its attendant issues with their students. But what happens after the professor comes out? How can said professor continue to queer the composition classroom beyond that milestone?

This seems to be the gap in current queer composition theory. As such, what I propose to do in this paper is to sketch out what kinds of readings and assignments could be used to teach students about rhetoric—as a form of persuasion—and discourse in a meaningful way that is in touch with contemporary issues. For example, if teaching students how to produce a Summary and Response paper (one of the first papers done in ENG 101 at UNLV), how would such an assignment look if the primary readings for it were coming out narratives written by lesbians and gay men? Perhaps a corollary assignment could be having students write a coming out narrative of their own—even if they identify as straight. What would a Definition paper assignment look like if that assignment were focused on marriage? Such an assignment would ask students not only to define marriage, but to explain how/why they would define it in such a way. Texts that could be used might include the proposed DOMA (Domestic Marriage Act) amendment to the United States Constitution, or something more local, like Nevada’s Constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Analyzing such texts as rhetorical and discursive products and how they affect people in the so-called real world would provide an incomparable education in composition. It would also allow for Queer Theory (with a capital Q and a capital T) to be brought into the composition classroom in a meaningful and productive way.