Queer Confinement and the Rural American Camp in The Miseducation of Cameron Post

Abstract: This article explores the ideology of the camp in and outside of sexual conversion facilities in Emily Danforth’s novel The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012). I argue that strategies of confinement, limitation of access to outside media, and an omnipresent sense of supervision can be found within the protagonist’s rural community. These characteristics bear overt as well as covert resemblance to the conversion-camp facilities depicted. To achieve this, I draw from ‘camp theory’ as defined by theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Michel Foucault, and more recent scholars like Bernadette Barton, who integrates the Foucauldian panopticon into rural US America, especially through the predominance of Evangelical Christianity. I use a methodology of theory-assisted close reading to explore the relationship between the practice of attempting to convert the sexualities of queer teenagers, religious conversion, and the space in which these actions play out. In the relationship between the physical arena of the camp and the rural communities that act as camp-like institutions, I understand the camp as an ideology rather than only a spatial setting.

Crimes against queer people in the United States are not merely committed overtly, they also manifest through more veiled strategies of violation that take place in church basements at the hands of “religious advisors,” in medical institutions “by licensed health care professionals,” and under parental care (Williams Institute). The damaging practices of so-called ‘conversion therapy,’ often found in the context of camp settings, claim to be able to change an individual’s sexual orientation to heterosexuality. As science has come to understand that a change in sexual orientation is impossible and that attempts at conversion are inherently harmful, conversion camps and their horrors have received a surge of media interest since the turn of the twenty-first century (Pan American Health Organization 2). In recent decades, a growing corpus of novels, film adaptations, and memoirs on the topic has emerged. This includes narratives such as Boy Erased (2017), The Miseducation of Cameron Post (2012), and Pray Away (2021), showcasing a wide array of individuals who are battling conversion attempts and their aftermaths.