Benjamin Arnberg - Queer Campus Climate: An Ethnographic Fantasia

Queer Campus Climate: An Ethnographic Fantasia is a visceral and provocative account of the lives of ten queer college men living in the Deep South. The book serves many goals. It is an emancipatory research document told in the raucous, fiery voices of these queer men whose narratives are presented free from the sanitizing impulses of traditional scholarship. It is a manifesto on postqualitative paradigms applied to a queer subject. It is a public history of the life and times of queers subjects living under an alt-right political assault. And it is an analysis of how a hostile campus climate impacts psychosocial development of marginalized students. Blurring the line between literature and research, Queer Campus Climate: An Ethnographic Fantasia contains a cast of characters (including a bear, a twink, and three drag queens) who dish on sex, gender performance, mental wellness, relationships, harassment, addiction, professional development, and politics. Their stories are told against a musical backdrop that includes selections from Puccini to Frank Ocean, which provides a multisensory experience unlike anything else in sociological research.