Up Schitt’s Creek? Comedy as a slantwise pedagogical encounter with queerness

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dc.contributor.authorHenry, Seánen
dc.contributor.authorBryan, Audreyen
dc.contributor.authorNeary, Aoifeen
dc.date.accessioned2025-06-06T13:50:59Z
dc.date.available2025-06-06T13:50:59Z
dc.date.issued2023
dc.description.abstractBackground: Pedagogical approaches to learning about LGBTQI+ themes and experiences remain a largely understudied topic in teacher education. This is partly due to anxieties around exploring these themes in nuanced and sensitive ways, with many teacher educators feeling ill-equipped to navigate the complexities of exploring so-called “difficult knowledge.” Purpose: In response to this, the purpose of this paper is to offer reflections on the pedagogical value of comedy for exploring such themes and experiences in teacher education, focusing especially on the situational comedy (sitcom) Schitt’s Creek. We turn to comedy given our interest in the capacity of comedic modalities to offer “slantwise” pedagogical encounters with LGBTQI+ themes and experiences, that is, nonaffronting encounters that resist damage-centered narratives of LGBTQI+ people and are open to multiple queer futures. Research design: In exploring how the sitcom offers teacher educators and student teachers these kinds of encounters, we provide a reading of three episodes of Schitt’s Creek through a “queer utopian” lens. We analyze a purposive sample of episodes from the series that speak directly to LGBTQI+ themes and experiences. We accompany this analysis with prompts for teacher educators to use in discussing these episodes in the teacher education classroom. Conclusions: We suggest that the sitcom offers teacher education an opportunity for student teachers and teacher educators to access a queer utopianism that can be encountered not only in the specifics of Schitt’s Creek’s plotlines, characters, and/ or settings, but also, perhaps more primarily, through the affective dimensions of watching the sitcom itself. The piece comes to a close with some thoughts on the significance of comedy for exploring the relationship among affect, education, and social justice more generally.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionPublished versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationHenry, S., Bryan, A. and Neary, A. (2023) 'Up Schitt’s Creek? Comedy as a slantwise pedagogical encounter with queerness', Teachers College Record, 125(10), pp.81-101. https://doi.org/10.1177/0161468123121931en
dc.identifier.doi10.1177/01614681231219317en
dc.identifier.endpage101en
dc.identifier.issn1614681en
dc.identifier.issued10
dc.identifier.journaltitleTeachers College Recorden
dc.identifier.startpage81en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/17617
dc.identifier.volume125
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherTeachers College, Columbia Universityen
dc.rights© 2023, Teachers College.en
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
dc.subjectAffecten
dc.subjectQueer pedagogyen
dc.subjectQueer utopiaen
dc.subjectSchitt’s Creeken
dc.subjectTeacher educationen
dc.subject~Education - Journal Articles~en
dc.titleUp Schitt’s Creek? Comedy as a slantwise pedagogical encounter with queernessen
dc.typeArticle (peer reviewed)en
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