Performing “A Constellation of Moments”: Navigating Queer Mentorship through Collaborative Found Poetry
(Performance submitted to the Central States Communication Association 2027)
Abstract:
This performance explores navigating queer mentorship as a dynamic, relational practice that unfolds across and beyond institutional boundaries. Drawing on collaborative autoethnography, we examine a mentor–mentee relationship that shifts into friendship, co-authorship, and mutual transformation. Methodologically, we engage in a dialogic in-depth interview grounded in radical honesty and found poetry to trace the affective and embodied dimensions of our connection. Situating our work within the constraints of heteronormative academia and broader sociopolitical pressures, we navigate queer mentorship as a form of movement—across power differentials, across identities, and across ways of knowing. Rather than seeking resolution, this project dwells in the tensions of complicity and resistance, illuminating how relational encounters create possibilities for care, accountability, and worldmaking. Ultimately, we argue that queer mentorship moves not toward fixed outcomes, but through moments of connection that reimagine what it means to teach, learn, and be with one another now and in the future.
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