Academically literate/Queerly literate

Abstract

This paper will outline how queer theory can inform academic literacies (AL) practice concerned with negotiating the inside/outside status of widening participation cohorts in university. In particular, it will consider the usefulness of some queer theory strategies for enabling non-traditional students without uncritically assimilating them in to dominant discourses. It outlines queer theory strategies of ‘doubled vision’, ‘strategic essentialism’, and ‘analysis interminable’ and demonstrates how these were operationalized in the design of an online academic literacies unit for social science students from diverse backgrounds. These non-assimilating, but simultaneously enabling, strategies are considered to be both ethically desirable and practically useful.