Educating With Intersectionality: A Push for Queer Literature in the High School Classroom
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Authors
Regan Elliott
Issue Date
2026
Type
Language
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Abstract
The title of my research thesis is “Educating with Intersectionality: A Push for Queer Literature in the High School Classroom”. My presentation is an interdisciplinary thesis which blends English and Education studies. Reflecting on my high school education, I deduced that my school district did not offer any guided readings about queer people. Upon further reflection, I saw that this lack of inclusivity had limited my education by repeatedly exposing me to only one type of narrative. With this knowledge, the goal of my research was to determine a way to advocate for the integration of queer literature into the public high school classroom. My research was guided by the theories of Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, pedagogist Emily Style, and American civil rights activist Kimberlé Crenshaw. After researching and then combining the thoughts of these three scholars I concluded that incorporating queer literature into public school curriculum benefits all students, and the best way to do this is to prioritize queer literature that emphasizes intersectionality (Crenshaw’s idea that people belong to more than one identity). According to Piaget, children in the stage of late adolescence are at what he coined the formal operation stage. At this age, roughly 16-18 years old, teenagers develop two misconceptions of reality: the imaginary audience and the personal fable. This thesis specifically details how the personal fable affects teenagers' perception of the world and the positive impact that queer literature which emphasizes intersectionality can bring to teenagers in the formal operation stage. My research findings led me to the conclusion that challenging the personal fable, or the teenager’s idea that they are the most complex being in the world, can be done through introducing complex characters, namely those that represent the LGBTQ community. Rather than presenting teenagers with literature that only depicts one type of character, introducing characters with a range of identities challenges the personal fable by supplying the teenager with the knowledge that they aren’t alone in feeling like the most complicated or unique being on the planet.