This chapter highlights the major themes presented in this volume. It also offers a glimpse into LGBTQ issues in organizational settings that remain underrepresented in adult, continuing, and higher education.

At the invitation of UNESCO in 1997, more than 1,500 representatives of governments and non-governmental organizations attended the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V) in Hamburg, Germany. They laid out a strategy for lifelong learning that omitted rights for lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender, Two Spirit, and…

Explores the emancipatory and oppressive roles adult education plays in the gay community. Demonstrates that mainstream adult education reproduces heterocentric assumptions, social relations, and beliefs, disenfranchising gay discourse. (SK)

Fugitive knowledge constructed outside the dominant discourse by gay and lesbian people is distributed through networking and is the basis for learning to transgress in social contexts. Popular adult education is essential to the process of knowledge construction and dissemination. (SK)

The Campus Climate Research Group at the University of Georgia conducted a survey to explore safety and acceptance issues for lesbian, gay, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) students at the university. The findings are based on 82 questionnaires returned form 223 surveys distributed to the LGBTQ community in fall 2001. The research results indicate…

HIV and AIDS are complex events that offer numerous opportunities for adult education. However, mainstream education on this issue has often not been relevant to a number of subpopulations, including sex workers. This chapter explores sources and content of HIV/AIDS education in the sex work industry (including art and the Internet) and suggests…

This chapter looks at what it is like to be queer in organizations, with an emphasis on adult and continuing education providers.

In this paper we provide a North American perspective as we explore the formation and comprehension of queer knowledge in adult education and in larger sociocultural contexts. We consider the need to position queer in adult education mindful of how queer is historically and currently positioned in culture and society. In doing so, we articulate…

This chapter explores how theory, activism, and practice around sexual orientation and gender identity come together, as viewed through the lens of queer critical postmodernism.

Adult educators can use historical, cultural, and theoretical queer knowledges to build an alternative pedagogy focused on three themes. The first is engaging queer history and queer studies to transgress adult educational space. They can be used to construct and affirm a transgressive notion of queer as normal that counters a historical notion of…