Adam J Greteman

I have a Ph.D from Michigan State University in Curriculum, Instruction, and Teacher Education and a BA in Psychology from Creighton University. I have been teaching at SAIC since the fall of 2011. I have taught courses in art education across the three degree programs (MAT, MAAE, and BFAAE). These courses include LGBTQ+ histories and politics, curriculum theory, histories and philosophies of education, research methods, and human development.

Visiting Fellow at the Neubauer Collegium (University of Chicago, 2025–2026); Spencer Foundation Large Research Grant on Education (2023–2026); Hunt-Simes Visiting Chair of Sexuality Studies at Sydney Social Sciences and Humanities Advanced Research Centre (SSSHARCH) (University of Sydney, 2024–2026); Hunt-Simes Junior Visiting Chair of Sexuality Studies at SSSHARC (University of Sydney, 2023); University of Illinois Chicago Award for Creative Activity; Innovation 80 CoGen Grant; Outstanding Book Award from Society of Professors of Education (2020; 2022).

Queers Teach This! Queer and Trans Pleasures, Politics, and Pedagogues (Bloomsbury, 2024); On Liking the Other: Queer Subjects and Religious Discourses (Myers Education Press, 2022); Genders and Sexualities in Education: Toward Queer Thriving (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018); The Pedagogies and Politics of Liking (Routledge, 2017). 

As a philosopher of education, I am sensitive to the importance of including diverse voices and experiences in teaching, writing, and making. I create courses that allow my students to engage written texts through experiences grounded in our diverse communities. My goal in teaching is to develop our critical thinking, writing, and making skills, along with our ability to debate issues in a constructive and agonistic manner. This is so we can speak to and about the lived realities of one another while developing our understanding of the histories, politics, and ethics involved in education. Throughout my teaching, I seek to provide students with encounters outside the classroom that take advantage of the rich cultural resources in Chicago.

I work at the intersections of educational philosophy, feminist, queer, and trans studies, teacher education, curriculum theory, and art education. I have an active writing practice that engages questions of queerness, education, and contemporary culture. Across my research, I have a concern for overlooked or under-investigated subjects that educate in under-recognized and under-theorized ways.

In fall 2019 I co-founded the LGBTQ+ Intergenerational Dialogue Project which connects two populations—LGBTQ+ youth and LGBTQ+ elders—who rarely have the chance to interact. A partnership between The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Center on Addison at Center on Halsted, the University of Illinois at Chicago and University of Chicago, we bring together racially, socioeconomically, and gender diverse cohorts of LGBTQ+ college students and older adults (60+) for year-long series of bi-weekly themed dialogues, creative work, and shared dinners. This research has been published in American Psychologist, Signs, Studies in Art Education as well as interfaced with community organizations like Gerber Hart Library and Archives, Museum of Contemporary Art, and Chicago Public Libraries.

In my most recent book project—Queers Teach This: Queer and Trans Pleasures, Politics, and Pedagogues (Bloomsbury, 2024)—I offered commentary on five lessons queers teach: transparency, inconvenience, others, hatred, and coming into. Intentionally idiosyncratic, each of these lessons takes seriously the work of teaching, the work of teachers, and the complex realities that unfold around LGBTQ+ issues and lives as they enter educational conversations. These conversations are conditioned by contexts and communities that make bold proclamations difficult, but also point toward possibilities rooted in specifics. Combined, these five lessons provide commentary on an educational project that forefronts queers and their practices amid complex and changing realities.

My co-authored book project—On Liking the Other: Queer Subjects and Religious Discourses—studies the intersection of religious and queer discourses in teacher education. It looks at the sometimes difficult topics rooted in these two particular discourses, which are often seen as unwelcome in both public and private educational spaces. In engaging in such a conversation, the authors seek to think about the ways that these discourses, while steeped in discontent, dilemma, and difficulty, might also offer ways to reorient ourselves amidst 21st century educational realities. This book was awarded an Outstanding Book Award in 2022 from the Society of Professors of Education.

My first solo-authored book—Sexualities and Genders in Education: Toward Queer Thriving—contemplated the work of what happens upon and after queer survival. If queer has survived into various threats, my work explored the next steps for cultivating queer lives, practices, and aesthetics. Utilizing a range of sources and arguments—popular and obscure—I speculated into the 21st century as a time to further generate new forms and modes of queerness. This book was awarded an Outstanding Book Award in 2020 from the Society of Professors of Education.

My first co-authored book project—The Pedagogies and Politics of Liking—was a co-authored investigation of the four-letter word "like." While ubiquitous in 21st century conversation and actions, we argued that like has far more potential in illuminating both the possibilities and pitfalls of like's ubiquity. The 21st century, we argued, has thus far turned out to be a century of liking demanding a critical assessment for what like, liking, and likability do for us in our daily lives.