Let Me Be Professionally Queer: Experiences of Queer, Feminine Subjectivities in LGBTQIA+ Advocacy Roles in American Higher Education

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Date
2021
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of Alabama Libraries
Abstract

With the growth of LGBTQIA+ services as a functional area in Student Affairs has come an influx of research relating to best practices for promoting LGBTQIA+ inclusion, support, and sense of belonging on college campuses (Kortegast & Van der Toorn, 2018; Sanlo, Rankin, & Schoenberg, 2002). Despite the growth in this field of practice and research, there is still little inquiry into the work life and conditions of individuals serving LGBTQIA+ populations on college campuses. In addition, there is tangential research that suggests that a significant percentage of people working in LGBTQIA+ advocacy and support roles on college campuses embody feminine subjectivities because these roles tend to require significant care giving and emotional labor from staff (Kortegast & Van der Toorn, 2018; Pritchard & McChesney, 2018).This intersectional, qualitative study seeks to better understand the experiences of queer people with feminine subjectivities serving LGBTQIA+ populations in their college or university. Through a queer, feminist, intersectional lens, this study uses qualitative interviews and autoethnographic data to investigate the experiences, working conditions, and identity-based nuances of the day-to-day labor of queer people with feminine subjectivities in LGBTQIA+ advocacy in American higher education. Specifically, this study considers the ways in which concepts of invisible labor, chosen family and kinship, trauma, marginalization and discrimination, and varying levels of institutional support effect how queer LGBTQIA+ advocacy practitioners with feminine subjectivities navigate institutional spaces and experience their roles on campus.

Description
Electronic Thesis or Dissertation
Keywords
advocacy, feminine subjectivities, higher education, LGBTQIA
Citation