Introduction

Abstract

There is an unmistakable power in narrative to comment on and shape cultural lives. This special issue of Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies is comprised of often unheard stories that seek to queer the relational phenomena of family, home, love, and loss. Authors draw on a range of theoretical perspectives and methodologies to disrupt and dismantle the normative conceptualizations that pervade research and everyday understanding concerning these thematic areas. These essays work in creative and experimental ways to evocatively demonstrate Queer Theory and queer as unique, needed, and generative paradigmatic orientations and conceptual tools for use in Cultural Studies research. They help to advance a more open and tentative understanding of relational stories and fluid and dynamic relational identities.