​These critical memoirs speak across generations of queer educators and scholars; collectively their work highlights an array of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches.

​As snapshots in time, the memoirs can be taken up as archive and studied in order to gain perspective on the issues facing queers in the academy across various intersections of identities related to ethnicity, culture, language, (a)gender, (a)sexuality, (dis)ability, socio-economic status, religion, age, veteran status, health status, and more. 

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With a queer identity comes a positioning that is both already troubled and continuously troubling, as we see in this breathtaking new collection of memoirs of educators queering academia. Miller, Rodriguez, and colleagues share their own life stories and professional journeys that are at once moving and arresting, haunting and joyful, as they both deconstruct and collectivize. Read this book and be prepared to queer your own engagement with academia and to be present with and grateful for such movement as it unfolds.

• Kevin Kumashiro, Professor and Dean of the School of Education, University of San Francisco; Author of Troubling Education: Queer Activism and Antioppressive Pedagogy

Queer cultures are often caught between the desire to know and an ambivalence about confessions. This collection gives us an opportunity to peel back the veneer of professionalism to read academics' accounts of themselves, while also knowing hat their theoretical and research work is probably chiding us for our curiosity. This text makes for a delightful conundrum as well as a variegated staging of queer differences.​
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• Cris Mayo, Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Director of the LGBTQ Center, West Virginia University; Author of LGBTQ Youth Education: Policies and Practices

A must read anthology for scholar activists who are committed to hearing the seldom-heard voices of those in the 'chorus' sharing what it means to be queer in the culture and trajectories of academic life. These activist scholars engage in truth telling and testifying talk about queering the academy in ways that lift us all to new heights of understanding the personal and the political embodiment related to the struggles for affirmation and equity.
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• ​Cynthia A. Tyson, Professor, Department of Teaching and Learning, The Ohio State University, author of Studying Diversity in Teacher Education​

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table of contents

Foreword & Introduction

Foreword
Jen Gilbert 
 
Introduction: The Critical Praxis of Queer Memoirs in Education
​sj Miller and Nelson M. Rodriguez 

Part 1: Queer Paranoia: To Risk or Not to Risk

Chapter One
Contingent Labor, Contingently Queer - Adam J. Greteman 

Chapter Two
Queer Paranoia: Worrying About and Through a Queer Dissertation Study- Summer Pennell 

Chapter Three
Reconciling the Personal and Professional: Coming Out From the Classroom Closet - Ryan Burns and Janet D. Johnson 

Part 2: Queered Tensions: Beyond the Academy

Chapter Four
Remaining Stubbornly Faithful: What Queering Academia Does to Queer Teacher-Scholars - Sara Staley and Bethy Leonardi 

Chapter Five
Inside. Out. Queer Time in Midcareer - Michael Borgstrom 

Chapter Six
How I Met Foucault: An Intellectual Career in, Around, and Near Queer Theory - Kristen A. Renn ​

Part 3: Queering Academic Spaces: Renarrating Lives

Chapter Seven
​From Doctoral Student to Dr. Sweetie Darling: My Queer(ing) Journey in Academia
Nelson M. Rodriguez 

Chapter Eight: Working With and Within: Weaving Queer
Spaces With Cycles of Resistance 69 Jenny Kassen and Alicia Lapointe 
Chapter Nine: Adopting a Queer Pedagogy as a Teaching Assistant 79 Stephanie Anne Shelton 
Chapter Ten: Sanctioning Unsanctioned Texts: The True Story
of a Gay Writer 91 Michael Wenk 

Part 4: Misrecognition: From Invisibility Into Visibility

Chapter Eleven
(Un)becoming Trans*: Every Breath You Take and Every ...  - sj Miller 

Chapter Twelve
Queering the Inquiry Body: Critical Science Teaching From the Margins - Kerrita K. Mayfield 

Chapter Thirteen
Intersectional Warrior: Battling the Onslaught of Layered Microaggressions in the Academy - Darrell Cleveland Hucks 

Chapter Fourteen 
Undone and (Mis)Recognized: Disorienting Experiences of a Queer, Trans* Educator - Erich N. Pitcher 

Part 5: The Political Is Personal ​

Chapter Fifteen
Slam Dunk on Tenure? Not So Fast ... - Catherine A. Lugg 

Chapter Sixteen
Queering South Mississippi: Simple and Seemingly Impossible Work - Kamden K. Strunk, Douglas R. Bristol, and William C. Takewell 

Chapter Seventeen
Smear the Queer: A Critical Memoir - Scotty M. Secrist 

Chapter Eighteen
“I heard it from a good source”: Queer Desire and Homophobia in a South African Higher Education Institution - Thabo Msibi

Part 6: Queered All the Way Through 
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Chapter Nineteen
A Profound Moment of Passing - David Lee Carlson 

Chapter Twenty
Being Queer in Academia: Queering Academia - Dana M. Stachowiak 

Chapter Twenty-One
The Constant in My Life - William F. Pinar