Teaching sex, queering 'youth'? Thinking about education through sexularism and homonationalism. Lecture series of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies, University of British Columbia, Canada. 2010-10-13

In political debates, ‘children’ and notions of ‘the best interest of the child’ are used to dramatize and limit societal negotiations of sexuality and sexualities (Pellegrini, 2009). At the same time, “There has been a tendency amongst those who research marginalized youth to view social groups or identities as fixed units of analysis” (Loutzenheiser, 2007). With my presentation, I will engage notions of ‘youth’ with Joan W. Scott’s concept of sexularism (Scott, 2009) and Jasbir K. Puar’s problematization of homonationalism. Scott’s sexularism is a reflection that of secularism’s cultural indebtedness to specifically gendered Christian cultural histories and frameworks. Homonationalism addresses how queer subjects actively enter into the imaginary of the nation, and how the nation is using its imagining of queer communities in the intensification of power (Puar, 2007). How can these concepts help in reading and analysing education frameworks, and in analysing notions of ‘youth’