Collectively we are socially located in multiple spaces: we are African American, Xicanx ¹ , white ² settler/colonizer; we are trans/non-binary, cis women, and cis men; we are queer and nonqueer; we are disabled and nondisabled; we are 25–52 years of age; and we are (previously) unpublished and published. We know one another intimately within a pedagogical environment. We are all participants in the early years of a Masters in Music Therapy (MMT) program at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania in the USA. Susan Hadley holds the official “educator” title for this program; however, we recognize that we are all teachers and all learners in relationship to each other. In this social justice oriented MMT program, we render normative hegemonic understandings strange and challenge one another to “queer” our collective educational processes by subverting hierarchical relationships, sharing knowledge outside classroom settings, creatively maximizing financial and disability related accessibility of the program, challenging discrete categorizations of people and musics, and emphasizing visceral and emotional ways of knowing. The impetus to bring queer theory into the program and into our pedagogy was student initiated. It was no wonder that queer theory entered our discussions and became incorporated into our curricula materials as we had Candice Bain in our first cohort of students. Candice was the lead author for the first article with a focus on queer theory in music therapy (Bain, Grzanka, & Crowe, 2016) and was a co-author on the second major article of significance on queer theory in music therapy (Boggan, Grzanka, & Bain, 2017). Candice’s familiarity with and passion for queer theory inspired many of us to delve into these concepts and to become excited by them. Through our engagement with queer theory, we began to question so much of what we had previously taken at face value. As we queered our understandings and our practices we began a process of queering the education process itself.

Our intentionally destabilized education process in the MMT program serves as a foil to our past educational experiences, highlighting the problematic rigid categories typically imbued within mainstream music therapy education. Over the past two years, we have repeatedly asked ourselves and one another: Which knowledges are upheld as standard in music therapy pedagogy, and which are understood as auxiliary or unacceptable? Whose ways of knowing does music therapy pedagogy reinforce, and whose are rendered insignificant or incorrect? How do we understand socially constructed identities? How does this impact our understandings of ourselves and those with whom we work? Which identities are inscribed into the pragmatics of auditioning, attending university, interning, and becoming certified as a music therapist in the United States? Using our experience in the SRU MMT program as a foundation, we envision a radically queer music therapy pedagogy that deconstructs binary hierarchies (teacher/student, music therapy/not music therapy, therapist/client, man/woman, cis/trans, enabled ³ /disabled, white/BIPOC, and so on) and embraces liminality for a more inclusive and just field.

People of marginalized identities tend to be underrepresented in those who are music therapists, yet overrepresented in those with whom music therapists work (often referred to as clients, patients, service users). According to the American Music Therapy Association Workforce Analysis (2013), music therapy professionals are overwhelmingly white (88.4 %), cisgender (98.9 %) women (87.1 %). Lack of data representing disability, sexuality, and class demographics further reflects an assumption of dominant identities in the profession. Conversely, descriptions of those with whom we work in music therapy, listed in the Workforce Analysis as “populations,” reflect a person’s diagnosis or perceived problem as the defining feature of those with whom music therapists work. Of 522 practitioners, only thirteen (2.5 %) indicated that they worked with “nondisabled” clients. Only seven out of AMTA’s thirty-eight “population” descriptors categorized clients in terms not defined explicitly in terms of diagnosis (e.g. “music therapy students,” “school-age children”), indicating that the professional organization encourages practitioners to define those with whom they work in terms of diagnoses (e.g. “autism spectrum disorders,” “hearing impaired”) by default. Further, many music therapists in the United States work with people defined implicitly by racialized and class-related factors such as “at-risk youth” and “forensic populations.”

This demographic data yields two revelations: 1) overrepresentation of dominant identities indicates that systemic barriers prevent people with minoritized/marginalized identities from entering and staying in the music therapy profession, and 2) because of these barriers, those with whom music therapists work overwhelmingly do not have access to “self-relevant role models” in music therapy (Covarrubius & Fryberg, 2015). Covarrubius and Fryberg (2015) referred to “self-relevant role models” as people who shared subjugated identities with those they served, using the example of Native American teachers working with Native American middle school students. They found self-relevant role models to have a significant impact on students’ sense of school belonging and academic performance, even when delivering the same messages as ethnically ambiguous or white role models. This indicates that therapists and educators’ identities matter, and those with whom we work in educational settings and in music therapy settings may respond more readily if more music therapy educators and music therapists reflect their marginalized identities (see Hadley, 2013).

We believe that music therapy pedagogy is a crucial site through which power relationships based on the binary opposition (defined below) of therapist/client (dominant identity = therapist, subjugated identity = client) and others are inscribed. Thus, one aim of a queer music therapy pedagogy is a more diverse and representative field, in which the knowledges and practices of those with whom we work are reflected in music therapy educators and practitioners.

Before we discuss ways of queering music therapy pedagogy, it is important that we provide definitions of some key terms and describe what we mean by queering pedagogy. However, in line with queer theory, we invite readers to generatively expand or informatively challenge these understandings. The term “queer” has been used as a noun (as a slur), an identity, an adjective, and a verb. It originated as a slur used against people who did not fit rigid binary understandings of gender (man/woman) and sexuality (heterosexuality), but it has been reclaimed in many ways, largely through the rich development of queer theory. As an identity, it is an umbrella term for those whose genders and sexualities have been minoritized or marginalized. As an adjective, it has come to describe the non-normative. As a verb, it means to destabilize or deconstruct rigid or fixed categories and to render normativity strange. Walker (2015) listed a task of [neuro]queering to include engaging in intentional practices to “‘undo’ one’s cultural conditioning toward conformity and compliance with dominant norms, with the aim of reclaiming one’s capacity to … full expression” (para 12, #5). In line with these understandings, queer theory, while having gender and sexuality as the starting points for thinking about aspects of power and hegemony, expands questions/understandings/challenges of binary oppositions and normativity into arenas beyond gender and sexuality.

It is also important to consider whether queering is a response to hegemony of a certain sort or whether the fluidity of human variability precedes hegemonic identity categories and thus queering is now a restorative process. Both could be true. As Yancy stated:

If we understand gender, race, disability, sexuality, and so on as social constructions, then we can assume that these social constructions served a function to provide clearly distinct categories of “difference” for the sake of maintaining a social order that supports certain hierarchies. Human differences have always existed on a continuum and always will and have been responded to differently in different contexts. However, hegemony, as enacted through colonization and what bell hooks (1994) refers to as imperialist white supremacist capitalist patriarchy, rigidly imposes binary and formal categorizations of alterity, epistemologically disappearing more fluid and plural ways of understanding human variability. Given this, we understand queering not simply as a critical response to hegemonic normative structures, but as a process of acknowledging, embracing, and celebrating complex fluid understandings of human lived pluralities that have always existed. As Simone de Beauvoir (1989) might say, we are not born, but rather become normatively fixed. Hence, we come to learn that some identificatory categories are deemed “right” while others are perceived as “strange” or “not fitting.” Over time, as our expectations vis-à-vis questions of identity undergo processes of sedimentation, we do not critically call into question the existing social arrangements that exclude various identities. The familiar becomes unnoticed. We only notice what has been deemed strange, especially as it stands out against a background of normativity. And it is in our attempt to make sense of “strangeness” that we delegitimize those who don’t align with our fixed categories. The process of queering, then, is to disorient or disalign our perceptions, to render the familiar unfamiliar. Once we have created a non-hegemonic, non-normative space within which a greater welcoming of variability occurs, the normative structure that gives rise to a false and problematic binary, that is, “strange” versus “familiar” or “deviant” versus “natural,” we can more effectively move from toxic exclusionary social ordering to radical inclusivity.

We understand queer pedagogy as a species of critical pedagogy. Critical pedagogy grows out of critical theory as developed through the Frankfurt School (a group comprising thinkers such as Herbert Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, Walter Benjamin, and Erich Fromm) and “is concerned with the idea of a just society in which people have political, economic, and cultural control of their lives” (Aliakbari & Faraji, 2011, p. 77). It is not limited to classroom and educational settings and has the aim of creating a more just and equitable society. Critical pedagogy is perhaps most associated with Frantz Fanon, a pan-Africanist revolutionary from Martinique, and Paulo Freire, an educator and philosopher in Brazil, both of whom emphasized the need to provide the poor and oppressed with an education which was anticolonial and both of whom wrote foundational texts in critical pedagogy (Fanon,1961/1963; Freire, 1970/2000). A central tenet of critical pedagogy is that education is a political act; that is, how we are taught (pedagogical approach), who we are taught by (representation), what we are taught (theories, texts, music, discourse, language used), and even if we are taught at all (being taught to read, for example, was withheld from enslaved Africans across the diaspora and the poor in Brazil in order to maintain oppressive relations of power), are all politically laden and most often reinforce existing power relations. Freire critiqued what they ⁴ referred to as the banking system of education (the predominant system of education in the developed world) in which teachers have all the knowledge which they deposit into the passive student receptacles. Freire contrasted this with a dialogical, problem posing model of education, shifting the idea of students “being objects of education to subjects of their own autonomy and emancipation” (Aliakbari & Faraji, 2011, p. 77). Freire stressed education as praxis involving reflection and action, interpretation and change, where all involved (those in roles traditionally assigned as teachers and students) are knowing subjects and where teachers are also learners and learners are also teachers, the relationship reciprocal and fluid.

Critical pedagogy involves developing critical consciousness, raising awareness of inequities, critiquing capitalism and class domination, becoming aware of the ways that what we take to be everyday experiences are actually problematic, refusing to accept practices that produce and perpetuate systems of oppression, and revealing hidden political assumptions in what has become perceived as the natural order of things, with the aim of building a more just society (Brookfield, 2005; Giroux, 1992,, 2003; Giroux & McLaren, 1992; hooks, 1994; Kincheloe, 2005). Critical pedagogy is understood as an emancipatory practice, a way to transform one’s life conditions (Aliakbari & Faraji, 2011), a practice of freedom (hooks, 1994).

Queer pedagogy in some ways has developed from critical pedagogy, and in some ways challenges it. Smith (2013) described a goal of queer pedagogy as unsettling “deeply held assumptions about the recognition of identities [even LGBTQQ2SIA+] and social justice” (p. 468). In other words, Smith wants to render strange or trouble the very notion of fixed identity categories. In addition, Smith (2013) challenges our understanding of social justice by suggesting that when we work towards rights we are affirming the conditions of a “civilized center” which are saturated in dominant narratives of capitalism, patriarchy, white normative supremacy, heteronormative supremacy, cisnormative supremacy, and ableist normative supremacy. That is, rights- and inclusion-focused social justice efforts may work toward including people within structures that are inherently problematic rather than exposing the ways in which these systems of ordering society that we have come to normalize are not normal or natural. In this way, queer pedagogy calls into question “the conceptual geography of normalization” (Britzman, 1995, p. 152) and requires us to move from fixed, static categories and definitions of normalcy (Zacko-Smith & Pritchy Smith, 2010) by deconstructing rigid normalizing categories and socially constructed hierarchical binary relations.

Binary categories or binary opposites are two related terms or theoretical concepts that are defined in opposition to one another. Rather than mutually exclusive opposites, these are structurally related, most often with one having dominance over the other for example, white/Black, teacher/student, knowledgeable/ignorant, enslaver/enslaved, man/woman, male/female, straight/gay, healthy/sick, enabled/disabled, normal/abnormal, and so on. Binaries seem normal and natural where they are socially agreed upon, but they are constructed through discourse and are context specific (Linville, 2017). Queer pedagogy challenges our unquestioning acceptance of such binary oppositions (Bey & Washington, 2013). Linville (2017) urged us to “queer the binary categories that define social life, and disrupt the differential privileging of those who claim normative identities” (p. 5) for those that are more nuanced, plural, and approximate (Greene, 1996, p. 326).

Britzman (1995) noted that the production of binaries and our orientation to normalcy establishes the limits of what we can bear to know, without which our certainty is uprooted. According to Britzman, Foucault (1977) described the grid of intelligibility of the social order that regulates what is thinkable, recognizable, knowable. Foucault asserted that power and knowledge are intimately connected, with mechanisms of power determining the production and limits of knowledge. On this view, ignorance is not the absence of knowledge, but that which we cannot bear to know. As Britzman noted:

Along these lines, Bowman (2009) emphasized that discovering the cause of our ignorance involves a shedding process, a discarding of our certainty regarding the limits of our knowledge.

Another aspect of queer pedagogy is its adherence to the belief that all categories are unstable and constructed. Butler (1990), whose work is foundational in queer theory and hence essential to our understandings of queer pedagogy, challenged our understanding of fixed categories of identity by describing them as an enacted cultural fantasy, a performative act, shifting our understanding from biological essentialism to social construction. Therefore, in queer pedagogy, it is necessary to always question that which is unremarked or unremarkable, problematic or remarkable, assumed or normalized, included or excluded (Bey & Washington, 2013; Greene, 1996). And in line with Britzman (1995), it is necessary to ask oneself: What am I responding to as I read, listen, observe, interact? What is it that is difficult for me to accept, that I cannot bear to know?

Queer pedagogy is a process; it is engaged. All participants in queer pedagogy are “constant becomings” and multiply interlinked (Goodley, 2007, p. 322). They are rhizomes, as is queer pedagogy (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987). Deleuze and Guattari developed the evolving metaphor of the rhizome as an ontological model to describe systems of knowledge. Defining principles of a rhizome include

Deleuze and Guattari contrasted rhizomorphous being (p. 15) with “arborescence.” That is, rhizomes belong to a non-hierarchical network that is ever growing with no beginning or end, and arborescence is tree-like, unidirectional, hierarchically linked thinking marked by binarism and dualism. Unlike a tree, rhizomes are not fixed entities with rigid borders, but always in the between, always emerging, always becoming (Goodley, 2007, p. 323).

While Deleuze and Guattari challenge arborescence, they themselves are cognizant of the dualism of their rhizomatic and aborescent metaphors:

In line with what we have described above, to queer our pedagogy is to inhabit this liminal conceptual space (Sedgwick, 1990). As we envision queer pedagogy, we may invoke a dualism between queer and dominant pedagogies, but only to then further destabilize and deconstruct these as static categories. We understand this as playing in the in-between, in the borderlands so to speak.

A border is a line that serves to separate. Music therapy pedagogy and practice have come to be positioned within narrowly defined borders which uphold many of the dominant narratives of the culture it is situated within. Within music therapy, borders are created when access to education along multiple axes limits who is able to become certified as a music therapist, and when board certification is upheld as the primary marker of acceptable knowledge. Borders are often upheld by music therapy pedagogical practices that are intended to further the “reputability” of the profession, which is constructed according to those in power. Requirements such as proficiency in specific (Western) music skills and histories, standardized testing to gain the professional credential, academic achievement in non-music therapy coursework (limiting due to accessibility and financial standing), and expectations of “health” of the therapist (explicit or implied), act to keep certain people in and others away from becoming music therapists. Despite the exclusionary issues around these and other benchmarks, they are often held in higher regard when measuring preparedness of the music therapy student and validity of the field. Measures of “acceptable knowledge” value some types of knowledge as objective and hierarchize it above other knowledges. Furthermore, there is a correlation between those who are “in” (as cited above, primarily white, nondisabled cis women and men who have had access to higher education and are musicians trained in European classical music) as having acceptable knowledges and those who are “out” as not. “Gatekeeping” practices become established based on which knowledges are deemed (un)acceptable.

Other borders/limits we largely accept within the professional field of music therapy are understandings about health and illness, disabled and enabled, therapist and “client,” teacher and student, “appropriate” behaviors, “inappropriate” language (including censorship of participants, minoritized music therapists, and musics within music therapy practice, as well as the elevation of “standard English” in academic contexts), who is “at risk,” what is normal, and so on. These understandings lead us to construct academic requirements/curricula, standards of practice, professional competencies, codes of ethics, research standards, and so on, which all work to reinforce the borders that have been constructed in the development of the profession.

In our program, learning is neither imitation, nor is it the ability merely to accumulate and regurgitate fixed knowledge. Learning is a constant process of discovery, a process without end. We interrogate binary oppositions and work towards more fluid concepts of gender, sexuality, disability, race, and so on. We try to move from accumulation of facts or knowledge, to discovering the cause of our ignorance, a discovery that involves a shedding process (Bowman, 2009). Applying queer theory to how we understand music therapy pedagogy and multiple knowledges helps to reveal that knowledge is constructed, and acceptability is not a result of an objective or inherent characteristic of a particular knowledge base, but active result of sociocultural positioning, that we “perform” things into and out of (collective) acceptability (“what we can(not) bear to know”).

In line with a Freirean pedagogical approach, we aim to disrupt the assumed rigidity of the teacher/student binary structure, moving from a banking system of education to one which is dialogical, where all involved are teachers and also learners, the relationship reciprocal and fluid. As current participants in Slippery Rock University’s music therapy Master’s program, we are continuously engaging in the destabilization of music therapy constructs. There are many ways this destabilization manifests, but the blurring of traditional teacher/student roles and dynamics lays the groundwork for expanding beyond binaries in other areas. Within our program, we engage in a more collaborative approach to learning, wherein everyone’s personal experiences, in conjunction with the material, serve as a springboard for mutual growth. Through this approach, we all bring our epistemically informed perspectives that have emerged from our lived experiences and identities. Rather than placing borders around the educator’s life experience, mistakes, and areas for growth as off-limit topics, the educator engages in productive modes of transparency as we all do. In this way, everyone is constantly exposing their humility and engaging in inquiry for their professional and personal betterment.

Susan Hadley not only expands the interpersonal work of our learning but also blurs the role of expert with students, sharing the responsibility of knowledge and growth with us. Contrary to academic custom, Susan does not write as the authority on a topic and include students as supporting roles. Instead, the entire process from writing to editing is engaged in collaboratively and equitably. “Presentations” are approached symbiotically with all in attendance, moving in and out of dialogue with each other throughout the session. These practices make space to attend to all voices in a process of understanding, knowing, and becoming rather than seeking unidirectional enlightenment from a traditionally upheld voice of authority.

This approach is similar to that written about by Whitlock (2010):

The program itself is also in a constant state of becoming, where student knowledge and experience is woven into course material. Courses are always evolving, not only through the traditional method of anonymous student survey feedback potentially shaping the way an educator teaches a course the following year, but more so in terms of a constant dialogical relationship between student experience and need. Space is always available for our voices to shape the direction a course is taking even within a current semester that is unfolding. Additionally, when a student is authentically living out an identity or experience, we attend to that student’s voice. As students, we have facilitated intensive group process experiences, led classroom discussions on an array of topics, decided which articles or assignments would be most beneficial to our growth, and authored chapters that are rooted in deeply personal issues or experiences. In this way, queer students, students of color, and disabled students, are considered co-knowledge producers due to their unique lived experiences and perspectives (Jaekel, 2017; Museus et al., 2012). In addition to framing culture as an asset to students’ educational experience, Museus et al. (2012) argued for the integration of the academic, social, and cultural spheres so as to enhance student development, learning, and belonging rather than framing them as separate entities. In order to achieve this, college educators must make efforts to engage the voices and stories of all students and community members within the curricula.

In parallel to Freire’s theory of the “banking” system of education, traditional music therapist/client relationships can be understood as a banking relationship as well. The music therapist is the “healthy helper,” who is full of knowledge and works to improve in some way the quality of life of the “unfortunate, less-than, disabled client,” who is in need of help. The therapist is benevolent and speaks of the people whom they “serve.” So, we want to trouble and rethink the concept of helping. We do not want to fall into a fixed way of thinking of helping as a dichotomous process which is either good or bad. Rather, we want to take time to recognize problematic aspects of the concept of helping within the context of music therapy. For example, a relationship of helper/helped that positions the “helped” as reduced to diagnostic categories and operates upon binary, dualistic understandings of health and wellness, is limiting and oppressive.

Slippery Rock University’s MMT program aims to deconstruct the ways in which we work with people. This is done partly through a critique of the Western medicine dichotomy of broken/not broken. Susan encourages us to look at how societal structures are oppressive towards the individuals that are deemed “broken” and think about ways in which to change the system as opposed to the individual. Often what is understood as being “the problem” or “the symptom” is merely the individual’s attempt to adapt to an environment that isn’t set up to meet their needs.

Additionally, we critically dissect our assumptions about what it means to be a therapist as well as the assumptions we make about clients. We interrogate how we understand and discuss pathology, diagnosis, and client communication and behavior. We examine how understandings of pathology and diagnosis inform the ways in which we work. We deconstruct the understanding of therapist/client power dynamics. We explore ways in which pathology and diagnosis favor dominant communities. We explore systemic understandings of “the problem” or “the symptom.” We avoid “interventions” in favor of centralizing the ever-evolving, expanding, and constantly-becoming relationship of therapist, client, music. And we ask what it means to identify as a therapist. Through all of this, we explore the subjugation of clients and approach the “therapeutic relationship” as human-with-human rather than fixer-to-damaged or helper-for-those needing help. We bring a critical lens to how we approach assessment (of clients and of students), and we emphasize exploration and wonder rather than evaluation related to fixed knowledges. We learn to sit in liminal spaces, noticing the discomfort and joy that these spaces reveal in us. Our learning (personal reading and writing, weekly online face-to-face meetings, and at our intensives) is always tied to the political. As Jaekel (2017) wrote, “a place-based curriculum recognizes that place is inherently political and that it directly influences how students transition into, as well as experience, their education” (p. 135). By exploring the fluidity of our identities and bringing these explorations into the pedagogical process, we enhance a sense of belonging in the space (Jaekel, 2017).

Queering pedagogy in music therapy for us means that we are always in a process of becoming. We are never in a space of absolute certainty, but always questioning. There is no safe space in the borderlands, and yet there is a sense of possibility of people learning who we are in our fluidity when we suspend our preconceived “knowledge” and sit in the liminal space of wondering and asking, who art thou? It is in many ways a pedagogy of unlearning and unknowing. It is a stretching into our ignorance, aspects that are unbearable to know, and learning what is right now to us unthinkable, unrecognizable, unknowable.

Reading this article might make queering pedagogy sound like a beautiful, seamless process, but in reality, it is messy, difficult, and can create a lot of tension both intrapersonally and interpersonally. Indeed, we experienced that in the very process of writing this article. It is easy to slip into arrogant perception and requires deep levels of humility to maintain an orientation steeped in loving perception. While we are still very much in process in terms of queering our pedagogy, below are our reflections of our experiences playing in the borderlands.

In this process, we have all learned that queering pedagogy not only means questioning a profession or practice, but rather it changes the way we are in the world and with each other, always.

Vee Fansler, MT-BC, is senior music therapist at the Snohomish County Music Project based in Everett, WA. They are a master of music therapy candidate at Slippery Rock University. Their work emphasizes queer and postcolonial perspectives in music therapy supervision and practice.

Rachel Reed, MT-BC, is a music therapist in the United States. She is a master of music therapy candidate at Slippery Rock University. Her current research brings a critical analysis to disability discourse in music therapy literature.

ezequiel bautista, mt-bc, is a xicanx music therapist working in phoenix, az. he is pursuing his master of music therapy at slippery rock university and is passionate about culture and social justice work in music therapy.

Ashley Taylor Arnett, M.Ed, MT-BC is a marriage & family intern from Pittsburgh, PA. She is currently studying with Dr. Susan Hadley in Slippery Rock University's master of music therapy program. After graduation, she hopes to work in music therapy spaces with couples.

Freddy Perkins, MT-BC, is a North Carolina based music therapist. He is currently completing his master of music therapy studies through Slippery Rock University and Analytical Music Therapy certification through Molloy College. Freddy works with LGBTQ* survivors of intimate partner violence and sexual assault.

Susan Hadley, PhD, MT-BC, is director and graduate coordinator of music therapy at Slippery Rock University. Her teaching and research centers on social change such that human ​variability in myriad forms is valued.