ABSTRACT

Drawing on autotheoretical methods, this insightful volume explores how LGBTQ+ scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners exist within and negotiate an insider/outsider paradox within higher education, highlighting issues of affect, legibility, and embodiment.

The first of a two-volume series, this book foregrounds the experiences of LGBTQ+ higher education scholars and practitioners in the United States as they navigate cisheteronormative culture, structures, practices, and policies on campus. Through theorization of contributors’ lived experiences in relation to identity and the concept of queerness as being, the volume posits queer identity as embodied resistance and demonstrates how this plays out within an insider/outsider paradox. An innovative theoretical framing, this text artfully exemplifies how queer and trans people exist simultaneously as both insider and outsider in university communities and deepens understanding of how critical narratives might inform institutional transformation and drives toward equity. The book then looks to the future, discussing implications for research and practice, using the lessons learned from the chapter authors.

Embellished with a plethora of diverse firsthand contributions and innovative scholarship, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of queer and trans studies, student affairs, gender and sexuality studies, and higher education, as well as those seeking to understand the experiences of LGBTQ+ higher education scholars and practitioners as they navigate central tensions in their practice.

chapter 1|15 pages

Introduction

Unpacking the Insider/Outsider Paradox and the Concept of Queerness as Being

chapter 2|11 pages

It Has Occasional Costs to Your Soul

Ministering to LGBTQIA+ Communities in Higher Education

chapter 3|11 pages

Persistence

Finding Support for LGBTQIA+ Identities in the Field

chapter 4|10 pages

Doubling-Down

Emotional Double-Burdens in LGBTQ+ Professionals' Practice

chapter 5|11 pages

Promises of Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity

A Conversation of Cruel Optimism Between Two Feminist Queer Latinas

chapter 6|12 pages

We Got Work to Do

Testimonios of Queer Black and Latinx Practitioner-Scholar-Advocates Navigating the Insider/Outsider Paradox Within the Ivory Tower

chapter 7|9 pages

So, How Exactly do I “Bring my Full Self” to the Profession?

Queer, Latino, and Undocumented in Student Affairs

chapter 8|10 pages

Unapologetically Trans, Apologetically Masculine

A Paradox of Uncertainty

chapter 9|9 pages

An Outsider Within

Navigating the Internal Insider/Outsider Paradox

chapter 10|13 pages

Caricature of the Queer Hegemony

Reflections on Institutional Prestige, Career Advancement, and Community

chapter 11|9 pages

Cripping the Insider/Outsider Paradox

The Experiences of a Disabled, Queer, Non-Binary Educator

chapter 12|11 pages

Impressions of the (Gay and Autistic) Scholar in the Glass

An Emerging Academic's Journey

chapter 13|14 pages

Too Queer for the Country, Too Country for College

It's Hard to Find Home as a Queer, Rural Kid

chapter 14|11 pages

Finding our Place … Again

An Autoethnography of Sexually Minoritized Mid-Level Practitioners Beginning Doctoral Studies

chapter 15|15 pages

The InBetweeners

Queer and Allied Insider/Outsider Experiences and Perspectives from Higher Education in an Evolving Ireland

chapter 16|12 pages

Conclusion

Insights on the Insider/Outsider Paradox as LGBTQ+ Scholars and Practitioners