Chapter 3: Pedagogical Femme Sensibilities: Teaching Gender and Sexuality Studies Through Queer Affect and Embodiment

My journey toward femme has been resplendent with pedagogical pleasures. Engaging the language of Chloe Brushwood Rose and Anna Camilleri (2002, p. 13) and Rhea Ashley Hoskin (2017, p.13) above, I trace femme “trappings,” “complications,” and “queer potentiality,” through a series of ruminations on identity, pedagogy, and performativity in the classroom. In this chapter, I draw upon the work of Laura Harris and Elizabeth Crocker (1997), characterizing femme as a flexible yet “sustained gender identity” (p. 1). I resist defining the borders and boundaries of femme in this work, rather, each participant shares femme identity, expression, and sensibilities in their own words. I reflexively include my own articulation of femme to the conversation. As a queer potentiality and organizing principle for this inquiry, femme is a dynamic queer identity that shapes pedagogies through affective practice. I explore how this group of pedagogues navigates the intersections of femme gender expression, race, class, religious identification, and body size in the classroom and on campus.