Please reach out to anyone who was missing. Be a class buddy and fill them in, IN DETAIL, about how to participate in Workshop 1, what to have done by the next class, how the workshop will operate and so on. It will help you too to go over it again and think it through.
By next class everyone should have a class partner to work with for the rest of the term on all projects. You will be asked for that name then. See form here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzmKs1Fz7m9uZW9wbDIwWTNoNXM/view
If you wish to work with another student, make arrangements and be able to name your collaborator in the next class.
Begin projects now: they will need two weeks to do properly. By THIS WEEK'S class you should be able to say all the things you have already accomplished.
Your class partner will review your materials BEFORE the workshop, so be sure you set up a time you both can do that by then and have things finished for that point in the process.
Please review instructions for the Workshop on the website: http://lezcom15.blogspot.com/p/workshops.html
Best wishes! Katie
PS. Remember this is what you are to do when you miss class: from the class website TAB: organization at the bottom: http://lezcom15.blogspot.com/p/how-class-will-be-organized-this-class.html
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what to do when you must unavoidably miss class, for emergency or perhaps for illness:
· TALK TO AT LEAST TWO CLASS BUDDIES IMMEDIATELY. Before you even come back to class, call them up or email them and find out if any special assignments are due the day you return, and make sure that you know about any changes in the syllabus. Try to have done the reading and be as prepared as possible to participate in class when you return.
· MAKE A DATE TO MEET WITH CLASS BUDDY TO GET NOTES AND DISCUSS WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WHILE YOU WERE GONE. You are responsible for what happened in class while you were gone. As soon as possible, get caught up with notes, with discussions with buddies and finally with all the readings and assignments. Always talk with class buddies first. This is the most important way to know what went on when you were gone and what you should do.
· AFTER YOU HAVE GOTTEN CLASS NOTES AND TALKED ABOUT WHAT WENT ON IN CLASS WITH BUDDIES, THEN MAKE APPOINTMENT TO SEE KATIE. If you just miss one class, getting the notes and such should be enough. But if you've been absent for more than a week, be sure you make an appointment with Katie, and come in and discuss what is going on. She wants to know how you are doing and how she can help. Or, while you are out, if it's as long as a week, send Katie email at katking@umd.edu and let her know what is happening with you, so she can figure out what sort of help is needed.
· IF YOU ARE OUT FOR ANY EXTENDED TIME be sure you contact Katie. Keep her up to date on what is happening, so that any arrangements necessary can be made. If you miss too much class you will have to retake the course at another time. But if you keep in contact, depending on the situation, perhaps accommodations can be made. Since attendance is crucial for all assignments and thus for your final grade, don't leave this until the end. LET KATIE KNOW WHAT IS HAPPENING so that she can help as much and as soon as possible.
· THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN EXCUSED ABSENCE AND ANYTHING ELSE: generally speaking you are only allowed to make up work you missed if you have an excused absence. That the absence is excused does not mean you are excused from doing the work you missed, but that you allowed to make it up. I usually permit people to make up any work they miss, and do not generally require documentation for absences. Be sure to give explanations in your logbook and do make up all work you have missed.
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NOTE: the structure of our course: we are now in Section Two and it culminates in Workshop 1. After this section of the class, the LGBT series begins and we have spring break. Then Section 3 starts up.
How the class is put together and where you are during each section of the course -- intellectually, emotionally, politically, personally; indeed overall in your life -- is something to chart and notice: you will analyze how it all fits together in the final assignment of the course, the learning analysis.
>>>SECTION TWO: ACCELERATING QUEERNESS
Tuesday 24 February – Sisterhood’s Table of Parts <ENSZER VISITS>
• READ: Enszer, Sisterhood: as much as you can. Read as individual poems, but also read as a long story: what is that story about? How do you know? What difference does it make to read many poems as well as single poems? Pay close attention to the book’s Table of Parts: what sort of poem is this too?
• 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, Julie Enszer, and reviews of the book, online. Bring that material into class too.
• Bring questions for the author and interests to share!
• CONSULT: Transgender Studies Quarterly: http://tsq.dukejournals.org.proxy-um.researchport.umd.edu/content/by/year Look for the journal on the UMD Libs Research Port system: http://researchport.umd.edu/ : figure out how to learn about a journal and its history: Enszer may have pointers about how to do this….
Today we want to think of books and readings and publications as alive, as companioning their authors, editors, and makers: they are objects, gateways, bits of actual people, changing and connecting….
Enszer is faculty here at UMD, has a PhD in the WMST program in which she works now, and is a long time pioneer in transdisciplinary uses and promotions of creative writing as theory and activism. She will visit our class today to talk about her books. 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 work online! She is another of several authors who will either visit class or who will be on campus for exciting events! Find her website online….
The second half of class we will go over what you will do for the first workshop, which will take place 10 March, in two weeks! We will have a lottery to see whether you will do a paper or poster, if you will collaborate, how to work with partners, and more! For more information and a handout go to the TAB: workshops.
Tuesday 3 March – Using one book to look at others: making meanings
• READ: Finish Enszer, finish Gessen, use Paoletti to think about both
• LOGBOOK TEMPLATE; NEXT CLASS IS WORKSHOP 1!
We will use the class to strengthen our understandings needed for Workshop 1, clarifying how to use insights from one book and apply them to others. When have you done this before? We call this knowledge transfer and it is one of the most important skills one can learn in college! And in life! (Stories from the Gessen collection suggest how too.)
1) LOOK TO WORKSHOP & THE NEXT WEEKS' ACTIVITIES:
• WORKSHOP #1: A Queer Method
We explore context, method, and queering as a practice for understanding newly. You will identify a theme from one of two books, a theme that captures your imagination, and then interconnect it with methods from the other book. You will then share in either poster or written analysis why these concerns you raise matter for lesbians in various communities. These mind-bending questions are ones to explore at any developing moment in your understanding of lesbian and queer worlds. Good faith work to challenge your thinking and to share with and learn from others is the point here. Chose EITHER • to analyze Gessen’s book through the analysis (eyes, lens, perspective, tools) of Paoletti’s Pink & Blue with its multi-linear histories and causes; OR • to analyze Paoletti’s book through the analysis (eyes, lens, perspective, tools) of Gessen’s Gay Propaganda’s interviews of people trying to figure out how to deal with changing legal and social systems. NOTICE that you will need to do some additional research. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and activities.
Tuesday 10 March
In the first part of class we will share our work poster session style: divide in two groups, and all move around talking to each other about work during the class time. After our break we will have a conversation about what we learned, noticed, thought about, and draw from class presentations. Make notes during the first part so you can run the discussion yourselves during the second part.
• Everything must be in final finished state on Tuesday to display, but you are allowed to revise one more time before turning things in electronically by Friday.
• Send to katiekin@gmail.com , use filename yrlastname 494 paper1 or poster1. Please number pics if more than one. Use this subject header too: yrlastname 494 workshop1
TAVIA NYONG’O, "Deep Time, Dark Time: Kara Walker’s Anarchaeology"
> Thursday, March 12, 2015; 5pm at Francis Scott Key Hall 0106
> Friday, March 13, 2015 Colloquium with Tavia Nyong’o; 12:30pm-2pm at Taliaferro Hall 2110
Tuesday 17 March – SPRING BREAK
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2) NOTICE HOW THINGS FIT TOGETHER AS THE WHOLE EXPERIENCE SET TO UNDERSTAND HOW ALL OF IT IS GRADED AS A UNIT OF ACTIVE MAKING, NOT JUST PAPERS AND POSTER THEMSELVES:
Sections of the course: how it fits together. With workshops and LGBT series.
Think: transfer of learning and meta-cognition.
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3) AFTER BREAK: LOGBOOK QUESTIONS & PROTOTYPING: DRAFTING POSTERS, VISUALIZATIONS, HANDOUTS
Prototyping activities: play and creative activities on the edge of our brains!
Wondering why we do this? about posters and handout?
...a range of reasons: research posters are more prominent even in the humanities nowadays and getting into the disciplinary uses is good. Creative posters are sometimes helpful for the prototyping activities that precede digital projects, or any projects. And posters and visualizations have cognitive uses and value, something that mulitimodal composition and action experiment with now too.
Learning specialists interested in how some technologies used well might open up learning as this sort of fun develop so-called constructionist pedagogies. The MIT Media Lab’s “lifelong kindergarden” group are people who work with learning as a form of play. Making things, making ideas, making connections and patterns, enjoying these with others, these are all elements in constructionist ideas about learning. Physically getting up and moving around, talking passionately with other students, enjoying the not-quite-under-control elements of communication and thinking and coming up with something new. Our class conferences and workshops are ways of putting constructionist learning into action in our class, as are the web posters, our uses of web actions, and even the paper handouts.
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BUT NOTICE THAT HOW THE POSTER LOOKS -- FANCY OR NOT -- IS MUCH LESS IMPORTANT THAN HOW WELL IT TELLS US THE RESULTS OF YOUR RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS AND HOW YOU ACCOMPLISHED THIS!!
Crafty posters on poster board with fabulous research contents will get better grades than the nicest electronic poster with sketchy content. If you don't already know how to do fancy electronic posters, then don't use your time learning how now. Do a simple poster demonstrating excellent research practices and outcomes that work with the messy interests in how feminisms name themselves and others, why, and in what forms.
You can use powerpoint to create a single poster frame, as a graphics package, BUT A POWERPOINT SLIDE SHOW WILL NOT BE ACCEPTABLE!
And if you do do something electronic, you must bring a print out of it -- do it cheap! -- to share, or bring YOUR OWN LAPTOP to show it on using wireless. You cannot use the class projector, or computer, or Katie's laptop.
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