Queer Communication

	A
1	The Queer Communication Library
2	bit.ly/queer-cs
3	Communication Science University Of Amsterdam * A Work In Progress *
4	Announcements • We need your help! Read below, get started adding resources, bookmark our link, and share with others! • Visit the Visibility Analysis sheet to help identify knowledge gaps. • Read more about our approach to interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, and decolonisation here. • Visit our sister library at VU Pride, with a growing collection of over 700 queer books. Content Warning • The resources included in this library may reference sensitive topics including sexism, homophobia, transphobia, bullying, harassment, discrimination, violence, health status, identity, and more.
5	Background Queer (i.e., LGBT+) people exist around the globe. We occupy space throughout various communities and institutions, including universities, corporations, governments, the media, and more. Our presence is linked to a history of marginalisation, disenfranchisement, and misrepresentation, including within higher education. Institutional barriers often exclude queer themes from mainstream curricula and dominant paradigms. Simultaneously, our perseverance in light of these barriers contributes to a strong culture and scientific philosophy known as queer theory. This extends beyond themes that deal exclusively with queer people to focus on systems of “othering” that perpetuate power struggles under a dominant (i.e., cisgendered, heterosexual, patriarchal) perspective of social science. We must also continue to elevate the plight of those “doubled others” who have overlapping identities and are most frequently excluded in research settings and early branches of theory. We believe this should concern all communication scientists, who strive to understand how (all) humans communicate.
6	Purpose & Relevance As the top-ranked programme in the world, students and researchers who study communication science at the University Of Amsterdam should focus on inclusive communication. There are mentions of minority communication concerns or alternative (e.g., feminist, racial, indigenous, non-Western, etc.) perspectives throughout the department, but these examples are limited. As a research programme, this perpetuates a paradigm that excludes those “others” from academic inquiry. On a practical level, a lack of exposure to queer literature fails to inspire future research that may amplify the voice and plight of queer subjects, themes, or researchers. A review of published master's theses on the UvA Scritpties database reveals only seven studies by communication science students dealing with queer topics, far less than the research output for other social and behavioural sciences. Our project aims to serve as a case-study for building more inclusive communication by first focusing on queer communication. This is by no means an exhaustive overview of all "others" that should be studied and discussed, nor does it serve as a systematic mapping of the field.
7	Mission Our project aims to address this knowledge gap by creating a grassroots, crowd-sourced, open-access repository of communication (science) resources that emphasise queerness. These resources would be suitable to include across the department, helping to further diversify education for future generations. This can be done by creating a new course focused exclusively on queer communication or by integrating these resources across existing courses and assignments. As a general resource, the library will also be available to those wishing to learn more about queer communication and can serve as a starting point for a larger discussion on diversity in communication research. This is a bottom-up approach, which is far from an exhaustive solution, but we hope that the contents of our library can serve as one step in the right direction!
8	How To Help There are two main ways to help. First, we need resources added to the list. You can do this by visiting the different sheets at the bottom of this workbook and making entries. It’s helpful to be as complete as possible and preserve the formatting of our library. Each column heading contains an explanatory note that can be displayed by hovering over the black triangles in the upper right corner. Any resource that focuses on queer communication through its framework, methods, positionality, or implications is suitable to include. Secondly, we need this resource shared and bookmarked to encourage more submissions and highlight its value as a living resource.
9	Instructions & Advice There are several ways to find research and assess its quality. A good place to start is with a simple database search or a deeper dive into research articles and popular texts. When searching, it can be helpful to try out different terminology: queer, LGBT, gender, sexuality, etcetera. It can also be helpful to think about how popular communication theories can be revisited with a queer lens. You may look for a list of topics in course manuals or your previous research as a good starting point. You can do this by searching up “crisis communication" AND "transgender employees” or “health communication" AND "gay men” among a host of other combinations. Most of the information we want to collect can be copied right from an article. Abuse will not be tolerated!
10	• To keep our list easy to navigate, we suggest you Paste Values Only to preserve our formatting. (Edit => Paste Special) • We use APA7 formatting for titles, separate keywords with commas, and include the surnames names of authors and intials. • For resources with more than six authors, please include the first three followed by "et al." to save space. If no authors are identifiable, use the publisher or put Various. • If keywords are not provided, please add a few based on your own judgement. • Old entries will be protected from editing to preserve the security of our library. To make changes to a protected range, please leave a comment. • Try to link to English resources for our international colleagues when possible.
11	Project Team Mark O’Neill [They/Them] Founder & Leader Mathilde Bastiansen [She/Her] Margarete Schweinitz [She/Her] Dalis Robinson [She/Her] Erica Boyce [She/Her] Juhani Ilves [He/Him] Join us! Have you been adding a lot of sources or helping to share this? Please contact us below to be credited. We would also like to thank the following supporters for their endorsement of our project: Alumni Supporters Lotte van der Woerd [She/Her] Programme Committee: CS Timothy Dörr [He/Him] Ombudsstudent: GSC Ashraf Daoud [He/Him] Ombudsstudent: CS Olga Maria Żukowska [She/Her] Student Representative: MSc Corporate Communication Giulia Ferrarese [She/Her] Student Representative: MSc Entertainment Communication Angela Low [She/Her] Individual Supporters Machiel Keestra [He/Him] FNWI: Diversity Officer Marieke Brand [She/Her] FMG: Diversity Officer Anneke van der Werf [She/Her] ASVGay '21: Chair Michiel Baas [He/Him] Department Of Anthropology: Lecturer Laurens Buijs [He/Him] Department Of Social Sciences: Lecturer Anna Wallis [She/Her] Department Of Sociology: Junior Lecturer Tessa Trapp [She/Her] Inter: CSR Representative Sam Atherton [She/Her] Inter: FdR Representative Valerie Bou Rjeily [She/They] Inter: Head Of Policy Jakob Thomsen [He/Him] Inter: Ambassador Hugo Steven Christof Kapteijn [He/Him] Inter: Treasurer Louisa Theunissen [She/Her] Inter: Secretary Institutional Supporters UvA Pride Student Pride NL UvA Chief Diversity Officer & Team ASVA Student Union Amsterdam United Central Student Council '21 FMG Faculty Student Council '21 In Press Medium Magazine Student Couch Purple Friday
12	Contact Admin
13	Updated June 26 2024 16:00 CET • Formerly The Queer Reading List Project
14	* Disclaimer: This is an independent initiative and is not a formal resource of the Communication Science Department.