This paper is for the "Rural Queerness" special session.
Purpose
This project explores the personal and professional experiences of LGBTQ+ faculty and staff working at a land grant institution and living in a rural community. Through a qualitative study, we offers insights into how institutions might provide more intentional support and initiatives for LGBTQ+ faculty and staff, and in particular, those located in rural communities. By better understanding the ways in which LGBTQ+ professionals navigate the challenges of isolation in order to thrive within rural spaces, thereby defying metronormative (Halberstam, 2005) narratives that paint urban spaces as the only safe and liberatory places for queer peoples, this study provides guidance on how similar institutions also located in rural landscapes might better recruit and retain queer faculty and staff.
Theoretical Framework and Methods
Drawing from feminist poststructural (FPS) approaches to critical discourse analysis (e.g., Allan, 2008; Weedon, 1997) as our methodology, while rooted in queer theories of rural space (e.g., Clare, 2012; Gray et. al., 2016; Gray, 2007; Halberstam, 2005) as a theoretical framework, we explore how dominant discourses of place and space, as well as metronormative narratives of LGBTQ+ futurity, inform the lives, work, and perspectives of rural queer faculty and staff. In order to understand the impact of these dominant discourses, we conducted one hour interviews with faculty and staff at a land grant institution, located in a rural college town in the Pacific Northwest. Building upon feminist poststructural critical discourse analysis, we define discourses as “dynamic constellations of words and images that are actively reinforced, resisted, and reconstituted” (Allan, 2008, p. 6). Dominant discourses often operate as taken-for-granted norms within society, which produce specific lived realities and material impacts (Allan, 2008). Following the interviews, we transcribed the conversations and then utilized MAXQDA to code our conversations and identify recurring themes.
Preliminary Findings
While this project is ongoing, we have identified a few preliminary findings. A recurring theme that often shaped the experiences of LGBTQ+ professionals was a sense that while happy in the rural space, friends and family living in urban or suburban spaces often projected concern for their safety and fulfillment. This consistent concern, which was imposed upon them caused several participants to feel a sense of abnormality, as if they must be operating under an illusion, or that if they truly felt content, there must be something wrong with them. Within their work at a land grant institution, some individuals, particularly those who were in long-term monogamous relationships felt that the institution was quite supportive and ultimately treated them just like any other employee, providing health benefits to their married spouses and children. Yet, other individuals who were not in long-term relationships or who claimed a more anti-assimilationist politic in their queer identity, were frustrated in the way that the institution only validated and supported homonormative conceptions of family. These experiences and narratives illuminate the ways in which LGBTQ+ identity is diverse and how heteronormative (and homonormative) discourses discipline individuals in particular ways within rural spaces.
