“We Don’t Have to Take Things so Seriously”: Humor, Queer Livability, and Homonormativity for a Rural English Language Arts Teacher

Extending and challenging existing research about LGBTQIA+ life in rural educational contexts, this ethnographically informed qualitative study describes how Lulu—a white, cisgender, queer secondary English language arts teacher in a rural, public school in the Midwest—discursively constructed the functions of her humor with respect to teaching, queerness, and their interrelations. Drawing on social theorizations of humor, particularly queer theorizations of humor, this article argues that Lulu described her humor as having three functions: building relationships, facilitating learning, and opening possibilities for queerness. These findings illustrate tensions in that Lulu leveraged humor to build a livable, joyous career in which she was able to thrive as an out, queer person and teacher. However, her humor reinforced hetero- and homonormativities with respect to whiteness and assimilationism. These findings suggest that a queered understanding of normativity and humor can offer multiple paths forward for queer educators in and beyond rural English language arts classrooms.