Quortne. R. Hutchings

As graduate students navigate multiple simultaneous pandemics, higher education has been a site of exacerbated ideologies especially harmful to Black graduate students. Research has taught us that ...

Gender and sexuality mediate all facets of social life but can be complex to study empirically. Ideas about gender and sexuality are often contested. They are always contextual and implicated in systems of power in ways that intersect with other axes of social life like race, class, and Indigeneity. Queer and trans theoretical perspectives may help researchers attend to complexity, fluidity, and power in studies of gender, sexuality, and culture. These perspectives call on researchers to be reflexive about their positionalities and consider how their work relates to broader struggles against injustice. Emerging literature shows how queer and trans methods and methodologies work against positivist assumptions of objectivity and knowability. Rather, they lean into the messiness, intimacy, and eclectic nature of all research and call for intersectional and interdisciplinary ways of knowing.