Xtra! Canada recently featured a Q&A with Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor in English, and 2013 Northrop Frye Professor of Literary Theory at University of Toronto's Centre for Comparative Literature. In the Q&A, Berlant discusses her most recent book, Cruel Optimism, as well as U.S. politics, same-sex marriage, and teaching. On her goals as a queer scholar, Berlant says:

I'm all for training my students in curiosity. One thing we talk about is what an LGBTQ teacher's job is these days. How much is the project of a queer pedagogy not just the project of distributing more fabulousness, or learning more history, but also of learning to have curiosity about the objects that sustain us intimately and politically? For me, not taking the object for granted – not assuming that someone’s erotic patterns are a clear and coherent story about who they are, for example – is a fundamental contribution of queer work.

Read the full Q&A here.