Transliteracies: Designing for gender fluency and transmedia literacy in the elementary classroom

• Main Author: McWilliams, Jenna M
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: ProQuest Dissertations & Theses 01-01-2015
• Subjects: Elementary education; Gender studies; LGBTQ studies
• ISBN: 9781321576498; 1321576498

This dissertation is about transforming the social in order to achieve increased support for those who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, intersex, and asexual (LGBTQIA), but it is equally about dismantling misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia so that all people, regardless of their sexual or gender identity, can be free. Cultural expectations about gender are folded into, for example, the spoken and tacit rules for how women and men, girls and boys, should dress and carry their bodies and engage with others and make decisions about relationships, family, and careers. These expectations are also implicit in larger symptoms of cultural dysfunction, as in ongoing efforts to silence, bully, intimidate, and threaten women who speak up against sexism in video games and other popular media, as well as in cultural messages about masculinity that lead male-identified people to distance themselves from their emotional experiences and to engage, often unreflectively, in aggressive and sometimes violent behavior toward others. Despite overwhelming evidence that binaristic views of gender are insufficient for describing the spectrum of identities and range of gendered experiences that constitute daily life, the fiction of the gender binary persists. In America, all children are assigned one of two genders at birth and they are surrounded by and begin to internalize binaristic assumptions about gender, gender norms, and gender appropriate behavior within the first few years of their lives. These binaristic assumptions not only work against the best interests of those children and adults who identify as transgender or gender variant, but they also constrain all individuals' opportunities to explore and develop their intellectual, emotional, vocational, and social identities. At the core of this dissertation is an intervention designed to support late elementary (4th and 5th grade) students in challenging the fiction of the gender binary. Working with performance-based activities, projects that called for students to critique, appropriate and remix gender-focused transmedia narratives, and written and oral reflections on personal experiences with gender, the study aimed to support the development of trans*literacies: the skills, practices, and beliefs needed to negotiate and challenge gender norms across multiple media platforms. Drawing on queer and transgender theory, transmedia theory, and sociocultural and poststructuralist theories of literacy, learning, and identity, this study aims at contributing to a growing body of research on teaching about gender diversity in the formal classroom and at offering insights into how to support learners in developing more reflective forms of gender expression as they move toward adolescence.