Matt Brim, Associate Professor of Queer Studies and English, has written a new book titled Poor Queer Studies: Confronting Elitism in the University, published by Duke University Press (2020).
Poor Queer Studies shifts the academic field of queer studies away from its familiar sites of elite education and toward poor and working-class people, places, and pedagogies. Brim shows how queer studies also takes place beyond the halls of prestigious colleges and flagship universities: in night school; after a three-hour commute; in overflowing classrooms at no-name colleges; with no research budget; without access to decent food; with kids in tow; in a state of homelessness.
Drawing on the everyday experiences of teaching and learning queer studies at the College of Staten Island and CUNY, Brim outlines the ways the field has been driven by the material and intellectual resources of those institutions that neglect and rarely serve poor and minority students. Poor Queer Studies jumpstarts a queer-class knowledge project committed to anti-elitist and anti-racist education. https://www.dukeupress.edu/poor-queer-studies
