Monday, January 5, 2015

Welcome to our class!

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This is the right place!
Note that we will not be using ELMS or Canvas, except for putting books on course reserve at McKeldin.
So BOOKMARK this website for our use for the rest of the semester!

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Books ordered: 494 Lesbian Communities
Books also on hard copy reserve at McKeldin Library

** Enszer (Nestle & Tambiah), eds. 2014. Lesbians and Exile, special issue of Sinister Wisdom 94. ASIN: B00PPL2MKK.
** Enszer. 2013. Sisterhood. Sibling Rivalry. 978-1937420574.
* Gessen & Huff-Hannon, eds. 2014. Gay Propaganda. OR Books. 978-1939293350. ASIN: B00J7XJBWO.
** Paoletti. 2013. Pink and Blue. Indiana. 978-0253009852. ASIN: B007A0PHL0.
* Rodríguez. 2014. Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longings. NYU. 978-0814764923. ASIN: B00L8BUIES.
Wekker. 2006. The Politics of Passion. Columbia. 978-0231131636. ASIN: B007EWKA7U.

** Faculty at UMD we hope to have visit class.
* Speakers coming to UMD this term who may visit class or will be giving talks on campus or both.
As we have it information on all of this will be updated on the events & authors TAB!

ALSO NOTE! Wekker will be keynoting a conference in Amsterdam called The Politics of Attachment, 25-27 March. Info on this website: http://asca.uva.nl/conferences/politics-of-attachment/politics-of-attachment.html

THINK OF BOOKS AS ALIVE!! they are objects, gateways, bits of actual people, changing! 

We may all read some of these, parcel some out in bits, and choose between some, so that collectively we will "know" them all, while individually we will focus our "care-abouts" with sensitivity to what is at stake for each of us, all of us. NOTHING IS CARVED IN STONE! inquire about what you would like! WORRIED? talk to Katie about what you hope for in this class, what you want to know, what you want to focus on. We can work with all of it! Shoot your suggestions and interests to Katie at katking@umd.edu.

CLICK YEARS FOR LINKS TO AMAZON in case you find that useful.

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There yet may be additional materials, articles, chapters, online, xeroxed or otherwise shared. For example, you will be asked to check out the new journal TSQ, Transgender Studies Quarterly and select articles to discuss or think about the journal as a kind of collective project. Their website is here: http://tsq.dukejournals.org

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course description for this term’s version of the class

The term “lesbian community” might well mean something different in each decade since the 1970s when gay women began to use the term lesbian to describe themselves and feminism had to stop dyke baiting practices. Recently at UMD the LGBT Studies program became folded into our WMST department and there is talk about changing both names, but to what? And this last year a new scholarly journal began its first volume, named TSQ or Transgender Studies Quarterly. Transnational politics, legalities, travel, and scholarship under various names and umbrella terms have their own histories and timelines, something very unevenly obvious in and to the US. So in 2015 there are many questions to explore about lesbian communities. How do they/we name them/ourselves? What communities do we discover to be entangled here, how does naming matter, what intersectionalities should we center or network, what national and transnational ranges are our proper contexts for investigation? Are communities something to work for or against and why? Do communities protect or police or include or exclude those who might want to work together in solidarity today?

To create our own groups for solidarity in thinking and action, we want to get to know and work with each other. Ours will be an active and ambitious learning working group, both one and many at the same time, as is feminism! We will not be using Canvas in this class, but rather working with Blogger, a public online site, using it for class multimedia presentations, for class preparation and review, and maybe for other possibilities! Please bookmark our class site: http://lezcom15.blogspot.com    

All students please do come to office hours to just talk; I want to get to know each of you personally! This should be a very fun class, demanding I hope in the most satisfying ways, and full of comradeship and excitement. I want to know how the class is working for you, what touches and excites you, how your projects are going. So please make a point of coming to office hours and opening up conversations!

Let me know in office hours or after class when you need help, the sooner the better. If you have any kind of disability, whether apparent or non-apparent, learning, emotional, physical, or cognitive, please contact me as appropriate to discuss reasonable accommodations for your access needs. Folks who need time from class to observe religious holidays, please contact me ASAP to make any arrangements necessary. If you are experiencing difficulties in keeping up with the academic demands of this or any other course, you can also contact the Learning Assistance Service, 2202 Shoemaker Building, 301-314-7693. They have educational counselors who can help with time management, reading, math learning skills, note-taking and exam preparation skills. All their services are free to UMD students.

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Lots of coalitional politics to come! Here is something new and enticing! See what you think.... Consider this a first reading in the class!

http://environment.arizona.edu/proximities/trans-waters-coalitional-thinking-art-environment-adela-c-licona-and-eva-s-hayward



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Weekly outline of class assignments & activities

YOU ARE ENCOURAGED TO BRING LAPTOPS TO CLASS! Of course, all uses of electronic media during class should be class related. You may be asked during class to search for materials on the web and share them during seminar, or otherwise participate in class activities using your electronic media. Be prepared to respond quickly and appropriately, and to demonstrate that your use of electronic media is for class and even allows you to attend more intensively and creatively.

Handouts are downloadable from links at the class website, connecting usually to either Google Docs or Scribd.

Reading is very tricky in this class! You must read ahead constantly in order to begin work on the assignments at the right time. We have portions assigned on particular days to discuss, but often this is properly a REREADING, as you sometimes you should have read that a first time already. Notice that some days you have a choice of several readings to focus upon, say, 3 chapters out of 5 in a section of one book. This is to give us all the chance to hear about readings we may not have time to do ourselves by that point. That means you need to be able to tell others about the readings, making note taking and preparation even more important. However, by the end of class you should have read the entirety of each of our books. So you can see that keeping up with the reading, discussed on the day on which it is named, is essential, as is attendance on both days! And that doing all this carefully will make your graded assignments so very much easier!

Notice that you are assigned web research as well as readings. Put as much time into this as you do for reading and take it quite as seriously. Web reading and analysis is as important today as book reading is and should be done as carefully and with as much thought, not as a easy substitute for harder work: it IS the harder work! Similarly, everyone should spend time in McKeldin library, finding on the bookshelves stuff not available on computer databases. Schedule time on campus to do research in the library in person and to meet, face to face, with your partner or with other class buddies. In this class we think carefully about how to do all this as well as doing it! Learn to cite your sources, web and print, carefully and conscientiously. This means keeping good records of them all.

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>>>SECTION ONE: EVERYTHING CHANGES AND THE TIMES ARE MULTIPLE!

Tuesday 26 January – Welcome to Our Course!
HANDED OUT: Syllabus in process
CLASS BUDDIES, CLASS WEBSITE, SMART PHONES?
INTRO to course texts. Bring all the books you have so far! THINK OF BOOKS AS ALIVE!! they are objects, gateways, bits of actual people, changing!
READ: “Trans-Waters: Coalitional Thinking on Art & Environment with Adela C. Licona and Eva S. Hayward”; online at http://environment.arizona.edu/proximities/trans-waters-coalitional-thinking-art-environment-adela-c-licona-and-eva-s-hayward
CONSULT: Think-Pair-Share: http://www.hastac.org/blogs/cathy-davidson/2012/04/08/single-best-free-way-transform-classroom

We will start off making class buddies, interviewing each other, and otherwise beginning to create ourselves as a community of intellectual friends. With a classmate you will generate a list of questions to ask each other about topics that you hope to make part of this class, and take notes on your responses to share with everyone. We will use this technique popularized by Cathy Davidson, Think-Pair-Share, possibly more than once today!

We will also read and discuss the online article “Trans-Waters,” using it to explore the complexities of our course title, “tangled community, entangled communities: lesbians and always more.” Why such an article in an LGBT course? In a WMST course? In a course with “lesbians” in the title? In a course with “communities” in the titled?

Let us notice multiple realities in the meanings and hopes for communities, their problems and limitations, the ranges of inclusions and exclusions (identities, generations, transnationalities, knowledge worlds, and more?) What does all this have to do with the personal “care-abouts” that bring us to this class?

Tuesday 3 February – The material culture/s of gendered timelines 
READ: Paoletti, Pink & Blue: as much as you can but especially the Introduction (xiii-xix) and Ch4: A Boy is Not a Girl (60-84).
If for any reason you have been unable to secure a copy of the book for today’s assignment, then make a point of using the time you would have spent reading the book to find our what you can about the author, Jo Paoletti, and reviews of the book, online. If necessary, bring that material into class instead.
Bring questions for the author and interests to share!

Paoletti is faculty here at UMD, in the AMST program, and a long time pioneer in transdisciplinary study. She will visit our class today to talk about her book! So bring your interests and questions, bouncing off what you have read and what you have been able to find out about her and her book! She is the first of several authors who will either visit class or who will be on campus for exciting events!

Tuesday 10 February – Gay Propaganda  
READ: Gessen & Huff-Hannon. Everyone read the Foreword & Introduction (10-18), and then each person should pick three stories that call out to them. Be able to say why you chose those three to read!
ALSO: find out everything you can about Gessen on the web and bring in what you find!

Gessen is going to be on campus in April. What do you learn about her on the web, what will her book and her person contribute to our course? How do we read with persons in mind, with lives in action and what is happening as we speak? What does that add to a course like this one?

Tuesday 17 February – Times and Places: what they say to each other   
READ: finish Paoletti’s book, and read four more stories from Gay Propaganda.
DUE: logbook 1

How do these two books open up our expectations for the “tangled community, entangled communities: lesbians and always more” that our course is about? What is entangled in these books? How do they tangle together, how are they worlds apart? What timelines do they make vivid? What places do they shift and alter?

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