The child as epistemic figure: (im)possibilities for gender and racial justice in a secondary classroom

Abstract

ABSTRACT Thinking at the nexus of epistemic injustice, childhood studies, transgender studies, and gender and racial justice in literacy education, this article illustrates how curricular engagement with questions of age, gender, race, and power can simultaneously complicate and flatten knowledge about power relations. Drawing from a yearlong ethnography inquiring into how students and teachers read, wrote, and talked about gender and sexual diversity at a Midwestern U.S. high school, this article presents two illustrative ethnographic cases from a co-taught sophomore humanities course (grade 10) combining English language arts and social studies, cases featuring students writing about the child as an epistemic figure. The implications of this argument suggest the importance of educators questioning rather than naturalizing ageist power relations through their pedagogical techniques and curricular representations, which in turn can challenge or reify broader age-based epistemic injustices undergirding anti-trans and racist legislation and policy in and beyond the United States.