Queer Critical Media Literacy and Possibilities for Counterhegemonic Pedagogy

Abstract

In this paper, the author considers the analysis of representation and the production of media as two generative pedagogical practices in which queer critical media literacy can give students tools to read and produce society and texts in counterhegemonic ways. Queering critical media literacy generates theoretical and practice-oriented interventions that can focus students’ and teachers’ attention on representation and production, including the reproduction of cisnormativity and ableism as well as their critiques. Engaging with multimodal texts through queer critical media literacy affords students and teachers creative possibilities for reading and producing queer texts, for queering the form of a text, and for queering the genre of “assignment.” Such creative production skills and critical thinking skills serve students for a lifetime while nurturing their processes of identification, representation, and critique – powerful counterhegemonic tools that can be useful in response to anti-queer sociopolitical tensions in public education.