A confluence of experience led to my interest in this project--an investigation of ways to "queer the curriculum"--but the foremost among these is undoubtedly my love of literature. The now famous documentary "Waiting for Superman" depicted a number of troubling problems, but the most resonant of these to me was the hard fact that my generation will be the first in decades to be less literate than the preceding generation. The implications of this statistic--as they relate to the achievement gap, to the future of the American economy, to America's dominance in global politics--trouble me as they would any citizen engaged in making his or her country a better place. Their resonance with me, however, was slightly more personal. How, I asked, could someone miss out on the ideas, the emotions, and the cultural significance of the works I treasure so much and study so intently?
In that question, I found something of my answer--what if the ideas, emotions, and cultural significance of these works simply aren't valuable or relevant to those who are forced to study them? I've heard my father say loudly he never read another classic of American literature after being force-fed The Scarlet Letter, and I can come up with plenty of anecdotal evidence that his experience with that novel is not uncommon. The ethos of the distinctly American Protestant work ethic and Puritan moral system aside, what is the intrinsic value of a Puritan woman from colonial America publicly castigated, what referent does that novel have in a world that has been through the sexual revolution?
The answer, of course, is that the novel has plenty of value from a variety of standpoints, particularly a feminist investigation of power structures in colonial America. The operative word in the above sentence being "standpoint," I have come to consider how centrist American literary curricula has become. Even so-called "multicultural works" like Things Fall Apart are taught with an ethnocentric, imperialist bent--a fact less surprisingly if you consider that the vast majority of teachers are white and female.
My response to my original question, then, is not a hackneyed sermon about the value of literature or the importance of the written word to Our History--but instead an investigation of how to make the monolithic Our (Literary) History into a proliferation of stories, relevant to their readers and utile in combating the growing achievement gap. My ulterior motives of inspiring in students a love for the medium of the written word just happens to dovetail nicely with the statistically, politically sound goals of improving student achievement.
So I begin my work, grounded in the principles of Queer Theory. My investigation is not sexual, but instead one which seeks to identify and pierce the "center" which imposes order on literary curricula. Once that is accomplished, I will compile a series of "canonical" poems and show how they can be made relevant by tying them to inquiry-based learning with the goal of opening up multiple culturally and linguistically relevant stories. Along the way, I hope to hone my close-reading abilities, expose myself to issues in curriculum development, and assemble a workable anthology of poems with readings that violate the "normal" interpretation and open up literary possibilities.
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