RUME 28
2026
Alexandria, Virginia
Queer Readings of Mathematical Proof: Appropriating Norms in the Pursuit of Epistemic Justice and Queer Joy
Page: 251
The enculturation of mathematics students into the mathematical norms of proof can be a source of epistemic injustice when personal, social, and cultural norms are in tension with those held by the mathematics community. This injustice can be addressed through students’ conscious appropriation of these norms, and I argue that queer readings, a form of critical textual analysis originating in queer theory, offers relevant analytical tools for this appropriation. In this paper, I present findings from a study on queer readings of mathematical proof and illustrate how our queer appropriations of mathematical norms resulted in an epistemically just interaction with proof and invited queer joy into the proof reading process.