Abstract
Contemporary research has shown rural communities to be places with diverse identities and ideologies, disrupting much of the mainstream images of rural spaces as isolated, White, monocultural, and conservative. However, the persistent tendency to imagine racial inequality and queer life as urban contributes to the invisibility of intersectional struggle. Drawing from Critical Pedagogy, Black geographies, Black Queer Studies, and Mobility Studies, this study examines the collective educational experience and storytelling of Black rural queers in a Metro-Rural community in the Upper Midwest. Using an autogeographic approach, building from auto-ethnography and archival praxis reveal how the spatial structures that reproduce educational unfreedom reinforces Black rural queer isolation and invisibility and how Black rural queer counter spaces such as the cafeteria, library and athletic field emerge as sites of collectivity and care. This exploration of Black rural queer educational place-making has pedagogical implications for educators, scholars, and organizers with regard to a pedagogy that centers the sense of place of these youth at the intersections of multidimensionality and wellness.
Methodological Approach
Qualitative
DOI
https://doi.org/10.60808/wrkm-pv83
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Joubert, E. (2026). Sissies at the Cafeteria Table: Toward a Queer Black-town Sense of Place, Education and Life. Journal of Queer and Trans Studies in Education, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.60808/wrkm-pv83
1
Included in
Education Commons, Gender and Sexuality Commons, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies Commons
