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Sykes research projects
- 1. Heather’s Research Projects CTL 1018 Ontario Institute for Studies in Educatoon University of Toronto
- 2. My research seeks to understand problems of social exclusion and discrimination in physical education and sport. My early graduate research focused on the exclusion of First Nations cultural content in physical education curriculum. Since then, the major theme of my research has been to understand issues related to sexuality and colonialism in physical education and sport. This has involved studying how homophobia affects physical education teachers, and their approaches to teaching, in two major life history projects. I have also studied the social exclusion of sexual and gender minorities in a range of sporting contexts such as high school sport, the Gay Games and the Olympics. My last project explored the interlocking effects of heterosexism, transphobia, ableism and body shape/size discrimination in Canadian physical education. Currently I’m exploring the impact of sport mega-events, such as the Olympics and the PanAm Games, and how activists organize to resist these mega-events.
- 4. METHOLODOGY Critical Participatory Research • First Nations vs. Ministry of Education curriculum content • First Nations students as curriculum developers • Local, traditional knowledge • Elijah Smith (1973) Together Today for our Children Tomorrow • Wilfred Carr & Stephen Kemmis (1986) Becoming Critical • Patti Lather (1991) Getting Smart
- 5. CURRICULUM My doctoral research then shifted to using queer theory to understand how homophobia operates in physical education and sport. Turning the closets inside/out (1998) Same-sex desires of lesbian PE teachers (2003) Teacher responses to homophobic speech (2004) Transgender & transsexual policies (2006) Homophobia, transphobia & fat Phobia (2011) Homo-nationalism in curriculum studies (2011)
- 6. METHODOLOGY • Autobiography as curriculum • Madeline Grumet • William Pinar • Teachers’ Life History • Lesbian Oral History • Audre Lorde
- 8. 1994-98 Lesbian & Heterosexual Teachers
- 9. 1999-2002 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Teachers
- 10. PRAXIS Performed Ethnography Drama education Anti-homophobia education • Life history interviews • Dramatic script • Live performance • Video of live performance
- 11. PRAXIS Perform-ing Ethnography Watch performance, then discussion Read one teacher’s life history ‘Wearing the Secret Out’ Select excerpts from life history Group of students: Discuss responses to life history Relate to their own experiences Prepare a skit or script Performance by groups
- 12. 2004-08 Sexuality, Transgender, Body Size
- 14. CURRICULUM Racializing Queer Desire • In schooling as a ‘white space’ • Black and asian gay students ‘make use of’ white male teachers as object of desire • While resisting racist discourses about ‘black’ and ‘asian’ masculinity • Hybrid identifications of ‘love and loathing’
- 15. CURRICULUM Theme #3 Sexuality/Gender in Fat Phobia A certain amount of baggage (Johnathon) • Men can ‘have’ fat without ‘being’ fat Fascist standards of Church Street (Moe) • Fatness decreases sexually desirability in gay male culture Men can take up more space (Karen, Sammy-Jo) • Butches & masculine women ‘have’ fat in queer women’s communities
- 16. CURRICULUM Ethical Encounters with Queerness • Normative imaginaries • Psychic defences against an ‘Other’ • Teacher education as ethical encounter with phobic imagination • Kevin Kumshiro (2002) • Teaching within crisis • Jose Munoz (1999) • Queer of color disidentifications
- 17. EDITORIAL Homonationalism • Queering theory in curriculum studies • Logics of white supremacy • Settler colonialism • Postcolonialism • Homonationalism
- 18. 2010-2013 Gender Justice & Anti-Globalization
- 19. De/Colonizing Sport Here is a concept map of my current research project Homonationalism Book Chapters Western Imperialism De/Colonizing Space, Place -Territory OLYMPICS chapters Sport & SPORT chapters Olympics Settler Colonialism Education Theoretical Frame Genocide Militarism Decolonization Capitalism Western Imperial Western London Olympics melancholia Imperialism Sport for English Defense League Development & Peace East End Gay Pride Homonationalism Homonationalism Vancouver Olympics Settler colonialism Settler colonialism Israeli Gay Games Pride House Pinkwashing Sochi Olympics Decolonization Decolonization Egypt Circassian Genocide Ultras Soccer
- 20. CURRICULUM White supremacy & homonationalism • 3 logics of white supremacy • Andrea Smith (2006) • Homonationalism • Jaspir Puar (2010) • Jin Haritaworn (2010) • Settler colonial studies • Christine O’Bonsawin (2010) • Scott Morgensen (2010) • Racial melancholia • Paul Gilroy (2005)
- 21. PRAXIS Ontario Curriculum Heritage & Citizenship • identify concrete examples of how government plays a role in contemporary society and of how the rights of groups and individuals and the responsibilities of citizenship apply to their own lives. • research and report on concrete examples of how the three levels of government work together to meet challenges or perform tasks (e.g., in responding to crises, in organizing Olympics or World Fairs/ Expositions)
Hinweis der Redaktion
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- My work about transphobia exposes how everyday talk and practices about binary gender – that is, ‘male’ and ‘female’ as taken-for-granted, somehow natural and normal categories – is a form of discrimination, one that schools and educators have only recently started to take seriously. In my book, I discuss several ways transphobia operates: One, In the gendering of curricula and school subject areas– this plays out in specific ways in physical education - but it aslo permeates early childhood education, and the ways that other school subjects are gendered, such as literacy, science and math. Trans people involved in this project also emphasized how important the built environment of schools are, especially access to gender neutral washrooms. I gather students held a ‘gender flush’ event on campus last year to make the female and male washrooms open to all, with an art display to boot. This is a radical strategy, as such it is an indicator of where the insitutional discourse about trans access is. I’d be interesting in hearing more about where the conversation is at, especially among critical educators & students, about trans access and transphobia in Eugene schools. For me, the pedagogical question in dealing with gender diversity and trans people is why does gender diversity often provoke anxiety and agression; rather than support and celebration. This is, for me, a psychic question about how we learn, and then to unlearn, to encounter queerness and difference.
- Adam Phillips (1997) invites us to wonder what we use other people for and how other they are. This most recent work into how gay-identified students ‘make use of’ their teachers goes beyond simplisitic ideas about role modelling or affirming fixed racial identities. Gerald identified as black, male and queer, he described his school as a really ‘white space’ where he saw himself as ‘intellectual’ while refusing to be ‘one of those black bodies that plays basketball’ Gerald had deeply ambivalent memories about a teacher who taught him both phys ed and math. Here ’s this masculine white body that’s fit, so in this white space, he had the kind of body I desired… but as a math teacher, the intellectual in me despised him. ’ In contrast, Kevin who identified as a gay South Asian guy, resisted the stereotype of ‘wimpy, nerdy’ Asian masculinity by dissolving the boundaries between being either muscular or intellectual. He formed strong identifications with his white phys ed teacher who had both a ‘jock image and a nerdy geek image’, he was tall and muscular yet also a very intellectual person. Kevin felt that because this white teacher brought together two very different ways of being masculine, it allowed him to become both muscular and intellectual as an asian gay man. Both these student of color talked about how they ‘made use’ of these white teachers to form their sexualities, while also resisting stereotypes about how to be a black or asian gay male. This presents a more complex picture about racialing queerness in schools, but also reinforces the layered emotional work students of color have to do in white spaces…even when learning about desire. As Kevin said, “in trying to achieve balance I’m creating imbalance. I not settling down into the equilibrium I intended to…”
- The difficulties fat students experience in physical education are compounded for many people because fat subjectivities are, as Sara Ahmed (2004) explains, constantly negotiated in terms of multiple racialized, classed and sex/gender identities. In her recollections of dodgeball, Sarah described how: There was no effort on the part of the teacher instead of playing dodge ball - where obviously the couple of ‘sporty guys’ are going to pick off the ‘fat lazy girls’ - Here, normative masculinity is linked with athleticism, whereas fatness is correlated with femininity and laziness. This enduring association between fatness and laziness is a gendered and racialized construction, underpinned by the need to contain and vilify threatening, polluting fluids of female reproductivity. Johnathon recalled having fat on particular parts of his body, which he describes as being “not defined” rather than subscribing to the identity-category “fat”. He went on to articulate a gendered construction of fatness in which men can have fat without being fat whereas women cannot (Bordo, 1993). Johnathon: For men, men can have certain amounts of baggage in a kind of simplistic sense and not be viewed as being fat or whatever. Within mainstream gay male culture, however, it is generally more difficult for gay men to have fat in the same way. Gay men, such as Jean-Paul, are confronted with a far more limited range of acceptable and desirable body sizes due to the “cult of male beauty” arising from the aestheticization of fit male bodies in consumer and gay cultures (Monaghan, 2005). Here Jean-Paul describes the “fascist body standards of Church Street”, which is in the centre of Toronto’s gay men’s community: I think there is, increasingly, a defined body type that is very muscular and lean. It requires one to spend a great deal of time working at the gym, eating properly and taking steroids if necessary. In this pursuit in the perfect body, if you don't fit into this category, then you're not sexually desirable. Fat bodies may be slightly more accepted within queer women ’s communities, especially when associated with butchness and female masculinity. Sammy-Jo, who identifies as a queer dyke, feels she has more latitude to be overweight as a queer woman than when she identified as a straight woman: “I feel there is more room as a queer woman to fit a little outside the norm with my body”. Similarly Karen, who described herself as queer with a “complicated” gender identity told us how “exploring more of my butchness, my stereotypical masculine traits have helped me become more comfortable with my size because guys are allowed to take up space, right? but women are not supposed to” However, the claim that female fatness is more easily constructed in conjunction with female masculinity or queerness in physical education settings needs to be cautiously examined in relation to the intense transphobia and homophobia of those contexts. Karen wasn ’t able to openly embrace her masculinity while she at school. Scout, who has been “thin” and “overweight” at different periods in her life, described changes in her body size in multi-faceted relations to her racial identity as “poor white trash” Q: Would you say physical education has influenced how you feel about your body? Scout: Dramatically... Dramatically It shaped a perspective of what bodies should look like - what desirable bodies should look like. They should be white, and they should be blonde, and they should have blue eyes, and they should have tits out to here, and a heart shaped ass, and you know legs that go on for miles. It [physical education] was formative because it was the precursor to regiment and denial. So, yeah, it played a major role but in a disciplinary way. Her narrative only provides a very partial sense of how Scout articulated the complexity of changes in her body size, from “thin” when she was involved in gymnastics and then later becoming “fat” in relation to her sexed identity. Scout recalled “growing up without knowing she was an intersexed girl” and was deeply frustrated by the lack of knowledge or recognition about being intersexed “because there was no mirror for me. Both Scout and Karen talked about how their bodies occupied space in relation to their marginalized sex/gender identities. Being intersex was unintelligible within Scout ’s school context who said “it was really hard to negotiate my space” as a student. Being butch at school was transgressive and risky for Karen who, by “exploring more of my butchness”, has become more comfortable taking up space with her size as an adult. But, even as the underlying associations between fatness and femininity construct more potential to be fat and butch rather than gay and fat, intersex and gender minority students such as Scout and Karen face particular challenges when negotiating their fat subjectivities at school.
- In my role as Co‐Editor of the journal Curriculum Inquiry I expanded my understanding about current debates in many areas of curriculum studies—ranging from literacies to social studies, from place‐based education to postmodernism. I sent to the search committee a recent editorial where I aruge that conversations about sexualities, LGBT and queer issues in curriculum studies are, all too often, complicit with logics of white, Western supremacy. This is more than pointing out that too many studies that use queer theory focus on the experiences of white people, For me it means queering the way intersecting forms of oppression work within a system of white supremacy. Recently, Jasbir Puar (2007) introduced the notion of a homo-nationalist gay subject. Puar details the collusion between homosexuality and American nationalism produced through United States discourses about a “war on terror,” homeland security, and post 9/11 forms of citizenship. She refers to calls for patriotic inclusion by U.S. gay, lesbian and queer subjects as “homo-nationalism.” These patriotic U.S. gay subjects—soldiers, firefighters and even teachers—become symbolically and commercially valuable to the U.S. state of “exception” and military imperialism. Puar explains how homo-national U.S. queer subjects are clearly defined against, in order to reinforce the logic of, the Other-as-terrorist, who has now become the abject, strange queer subject. Puar’s analysis specifically deals with U.S. forms of gay homo-nationalism as other to the Islamaphobic, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab figure of a “queer terrorist.” The concept of homonationalism also applies to myriad other ways by which “gay subjects” gain legitimacy within the nation-state.
- My current research project is looking at how these homo-national ways of being lesbian and gay are fitting in with systems of whitenes. I ’m looking at community‐generated knowledge about settler colonialism and gender justice issues and then to link this to reconceptualizing citizenship education. I ’m interviewing activists to learn how they are working on gender justice issues. Methodologically, this is my way of connecting with critical discourses about gender justice generated as ‘knowledge from below’, with various anti-globalization movements.
- In this project, I am using settler homo-nationalism to examine how lesbian and gay claims to be included at the Vancouver Olympics, which resulted in three “pride houses” for athletes and spectators, have been lauded as showcases for Canadian multiculturalism and tolerance. Yet,, there was no connection or solidarity between the pride house organizers and the Indigenous protests against holding the Olympics on unceded First Nations land. Thus, the new gay sporting subjects, those who had access to the pride houses, continued the Canadian settler narrative about First Nations’ absence in Vancouver and on Whistler mountain, despite very visible No Olympics on Stolen Land indigenous protests. This line of research has direct application to citizenship education, as a case study of how indigenous sovereignty and the pride houses might be taught in social studies courses, as an example of a decolonizing approach to multiculturalism and same-sex issues.
- Right now, my graduate students and I are exploring how white supremacy – or homonationalism - in lesbian and gay diversity initiatives is emerging in different colonial contexts - Canada, Russia, England and Korea We are exposing how lesbian and gay groups at the Vancouver Olympics had antagonistic relations to the First Nations convergence ‘No Olympics on Stolen Land’, revealing white settler colonial views about land ownership and queer rights. We are also looking at the involvement of lesbian and gays in right‐wing, anti-muslim groups in Europe, and how this differs in the UK and Germany. These are all forms of white LBGT politics which have convivial, friendly relations to both nationalism and neoliberalism.