Chapter 8: Queering Education: Killing-Joy and Nurturing-Hope in a College Classroom

The idea to write letters to each other as a book chapter was not, at its inception, completely theorized or thought through. It was not the result of long conversations about style and the epistemic limits of social science methods. It was not, audibly, a means to think about form or aesthetics. It came, instead, out of refusal. We both wanted to contribute to this volume, but, and given the political and our personal historical moments, we also felt that the ideas we wanted to think through would have been better served by something a bit more personal in a world that felt encroachingly dehumanistic. Susan was on a leave and away from campus, so writing letters to each other seemed to have the possibility to be affectively cathartic and situationally pragmatic. That is how we became pen-pals.