Tales From Camp Wilde: Queer(y)ing Environmental Education Research

Abstract

This paper questions the relative silence of queer theory and theorizing in environmentaleducation research. We explore some possibilities for queering environmental educationresearch by fabricating (and inviting colleagues to fabricate) stories of Camp Wilde, a fictionallocation that helps usto expose the facticity of the field’s heteronormative constructedness. Thesestories suggest alternative ways of (re)presenting and (re)producing both the subjects/objects ofour inquiries and our identities as researchers. The contributors draw on a variety of theoreticalresources from art history, deconstruction, ecofeminism, literary criticism, popular cultural studies,and feminist poststructuralism to perform an orientation to environmental education researchthat we hope will never be arrested by its categorization as a “new genre.”