'Engage in fruitful digression': Professor wants her students to 'question — or queer — everything'
A student and professor who had previously taught classes together are now collaborating to examine how queerness can be applied in teaching environments.
Specifically, the two are researching 'queer pedagogy,' claiming to have already applied much of what they intend to research in their own instruction.
Sue Scheibler, an associate professor of film, TV & video games at Loyola Marymount University, is collaborating with one of her students on “The Queer Classroom: Rethinking Power in Pedagogy.”
Scheibler told the Loyolan that the goal of their project is to encourage students to “engage in ‘fruitful digression,’ that seeks to question — or ‘queer’ — everything.”
The research project aims to “rethink the relationship between faculty and students” through the application of “queer theory and queer pedagogy, education, anti-colonial,” and “anti-capitialist pedagogy,” the university outlet reports.
Scheibler and the student, Harrison Hamm, had previously taught a course together called “Queer Television” as well as a freshman seminar tired “On the Technological Sublime.” Hamm is a senior pursuing a women’s and gender and screenwriting double major.
Hamm describes one of the courses he taught with Scheibler as a combination of “television studies, media theory, queer theory, and gender studies to explore queerness in television series and scholarship.”
[RELATED: LMU teaches profs the ‘Alphabet Soup of Sexual Orientation’]
Scheibler also teaches a course on video games where she asks students to “work together to design games that tackle social justice issues, then pitch their creations to one another for constructive criticism.”
Speaking with the Loyolan, Hamm and Scheibler stated that they identify as “minoritized educators”, asserting that their identity influences how they interact with subject material and their students.
“Deconstructing typical student-faculty power dynamics” form the basis for their research, they explained.
[RELATED: California says two Catholic universities must pay for abortion]
LMU is affiliated with the Catholic Church which views homosexuality as “intrinsically immoral and contrary to the natural law.”
In addition to holding a doctorate in Critical Studies, Scheibler also has advanced degrees in Philosophy of Religion and New Testament Studies.
Campus Reform reached out to Scheibler, Hamm, and Loyola Marymount University for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.
