Queer Advocacy in Rural Southern Schools: Educators Navigating Being (Not) From There

Answering calls from recent literature reviews of scholarship at the juncture of rural education and queerness to move beyond deficit narratives and take up more complex theorizations of space and place, this article considers the complexities of K-12 teachers’ queer educational advocacy in relation to both rurality and region. Drawing from a two-year study that combined practitioner inquiry and ethnography, the article focuses on teachers in rural Southern schools, examining how they described the dynamics of being from or not from the community where they taught mattered for their queer advocacy. Our findings suggest the intertwined importance of both the epistemic and relational as part of teachers’ activist placemaking. In order to make these arguments, we draw from theorists challenging the notion that space and place are neutral backdrops and who instead suggest they are ongoing practices and thus open to being made and remade in ways that are more just and affirming for queer people and practices.