The Queer Art of Writing: (Re)Imagining Scholarship and Pedagogy Through Transgenre Composing

While digital composing is a pertinent topic in recent and current research, there are few resources in rhetoric and composition that discuss the intersections of art and writing. “Transgenre” composing refers to work that crosses the boundaries of traditional genres and, specifically, this project focuses on transgenre work that contains both elements of art/image and text/writing. This research project uses arts-based and queer methodologies to examine transgenre composing and the ways it can help scholars and teachers rethink their composing practices and pedagogical approaches to writing. Traditionally, the print, alphabetic document has been privileged and valued in academic settings over other composing forms, but arts-based and queer approaches provide lenses through which to (re)examine these traditional academic practices and (re)imagine them so that unnecessary barriers and over-simplified binaries are broken down. This project also utilizes textual analysis, interviews (from authors who have published transgenre compositions), and collage as methods and open coding and reflection as data analysis tools. In employing these methods and methodologies, this project works to (re)imagine traditional academic norms, advocate for the use of art in writing, and promote creative-critical scholarship for artists, writers, scholars, and teachers of writing