Tuesday, March 31, 2015

you should have identified tools or texts or both by now and have writing to bring to class today!

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Tuesday 31 March – Afterglows? <ENSZER VISITS AGAIN>
• READ: Finish Lesbians & Exile issue of Sinister Wisdom
• EXAMINE AND BEGIN TO READ: Rodríquez book. Read Acknowledgments and Introduction, and the last part “Afterglow.” What can you say about the book having done this?

Enszer will visit again and will talk more about Sinister Wisdom. You should be in the thick of your plans for and drafts of your work for Workshop 2 now. What we do today should be invaluable for your projects! 

Bring partially done work to share with others!!

MIRANDA JOSEPH, "Investing in the Cruel Entrepreneurial University" 
> Wednesday, April 1, 2015; 5pm at Marie Mount Hall 1400






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Bring questions and ideas to share and ask Julie Enszer about! Remember Sinister Wisdom is one of the possible "texts" to analyze for Workshop 2! 

=How will you decide on texts? They should be worth a thorough analysis, with material that is not immediately obvious! if you want to work with short texts then use several and group them together. Being able to choose something worth this kind of attention is a pivotal part of the assignment for evaluation and care! 

=what opens up areas of life you never noticed before
=what makes you emotional and excited and changes your mind
=what connects things you never noticed could be connected before

MAKE NEW KNOWLEDGE! don't recycle things you already know: do something that makes you think differently! 

=How will you approach talks from the angle of finding tools? or points of view, other new ways of seeing and understanding something? Use surprise as a clue! Notice this means telling the difference between something you just didn't know, content, and having your assumptions or concerns turned around! Being able to identify such tools is the other pivotal part of Workshop 2 projects! 

So note what turns your ideas around in an important way! That is the new knowledge you take from the talk and use as a way into a text with an importance to you! 

And be sure to notice that somewhere in your paper or poster you need to explicitly talk about how you identified your tool/s and why the text you are working with is important! 

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Work in drafts with your class partner and perhaps also a collaborator!! meet together several times to figure out tools and texts, to share writing and thinking, to do a final edit before the Workshop itself! Your work should be of a quality that shows you have done this. 

You know how workshops work now, how posters are made, how to share your paper in an interactive format, and how to reflect on these experiences. LEVEL UP! now you know that, make this project especially exciting, for yourself and for all of us! 

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Worried how to get going? Freewriting is a good way to start! http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/freewrite.html

How do you identify tools in a talk? Sharing notes and discussing what you hadn't known with others, not just content, but ways of thinking! Think of it as a puzzle or game or journey or a sport or a piece of music you are just learning!

ASK BIG QUESTIONS AS YOU LISTEN AND LATER AS YOU REVIEW YOUR NOTES AND DISCUSS WITH OTHERS! "Why is this central to work in LGBT studies? How does this open up ways to experience the world?" https://sites.google.com/site/reflection4learning/why-reflect

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Thursday, March 26, 2015

The third possible event to use for Workshop 2! Joseph W 1 April 5 pm!!

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Remember, to do the work for Workshop 2 you must have attended one of three events! Two have already happened, and only one is still upcoming: Miranda Joseph speaks on The Cruel Entrepreneurial University as part of the LGBT lecture series Wed 1 April at 5 pm, Marie Mount Hall 1400 (right near our classroom!)



Why and how are university politics entwined with LGBT issues and concerns? We mentioned in the last class the conference going on this very week in which Wekker, our author of Politics of Passion you should have begun reading already, is keynoting. And while that conference is going on so are the protests by students at the University of Amsterdam.

Learn something about those students protest in the context of international struggles in UK paper the Guardian, here:

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/2015/mar/25/university-protests-around-the-world-a-fight-against-commercialisation?CMP=share_btn_fb

And this is the website of the collective at Amsterdam: http://rethinkuva.org/about-rethink-uva/


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Saturday, March 21, 2015

the third section of our course: our next experience set leading to Workshop 2

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We begin this week our next experience set, which will culminate in Workshop 2! 

• Queer Speculations & Lesbian Kin: analyze a text with tools from the LGBT lecture series
<Tuesday 14 April>

You may have already begun by attending either the Nyong'o talk or the colloquium:

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

If neither of those yet, then you must attend:

MIRANDA JOSEPH, "Investing in the Cruel Entrepreneurial University" 
> Wednesday, April 1, 2015; 5pm at Marie Mount Hall 1400  

Any of these three events in the LGBT lecture series can serve for tools for Workshop 2. You should be meeting with your class partner to discuss these and share what you have learned, are learning, will learn from these events. If you intend to collaborate with someone for Workshop 2, then you should be meeting with them as well! 

And it is also time to come up with texts to use these tools to address. You have three kinds of choices there too:

EITHER • a chapter of Rodríguez’ book, OR • an article you choose from either Transgender Studies Quarterly OR Sinister Wisdom at any point in their publication history. Whichever text you choose, you will explicitly discuss HOW YOU USE the tools, perspective, methods, lens, ideas you glean from the presentation or lecture of one of the two people presenting as part of the LGBT Series in March, before our workshop convenes. 

So come to class with ideas and experiences and notes to share with class partners and to jump start this section of the class!

NOTICE you will need to READ AHEAD and to do research in addition to preparation for class each week. And also notice that attending class each week will make it much easier to prepare for Workshop 2!


>>>SECTION THREE: QUEER KINSHIPS 

Tuesday 24 March – Exiles and Globalizations  
READ: Lesbians & Exile issue of Sinister Wisdom: read about half this week and the rest next week. You can read in any order you choose!
EXAMINE AND BEGIN TO READ: Wekker book. Read Preface and Acknowledgments, and then the first and last paragraphs of each chapter. What can you say about the book having done this?
ON THE WEB: find out what you can about the Conference Wekker is keynoting this week in Amsterdam. Follow up in case any videos or other materials go up on the web: http://asca.uva.nl/conferences/politics-of-attachment/politics-of-attachment.html

Create a list of things you read about in all this material that surprises you. Explore why you are surprised: what did you think instead and why? Where has your information come from? Why might these materials be different? What connections do you see between the conference Wekker is keynoting and the issues we are exploring? Think ahead to Workshop 2!! Bring questions and ideas!

Tuesday 31 March – Afterglows? <ENSZER VISITS AGAIN>
READ: Finish Lesbians & Exile issue of Sinister Wisdom
EXAMINE AND BEGIN TO READ: Rodríquez book. Read Acknowledgments and Introduction, and the last part “Afterglow.” What can you say about the book having done this?

Enszer will visit again and will talk more about Sinister Wisdom. You should be in the thick of your plans for and drafts of your work for Workshop 2 now. What we do today should be invaluable for your projects! Bring partially done work to share with others.

MIRANDA JOSEPH, "Investing in the Cruel Entrepreneurial University" 
> Wednesday, April 1, 2015; 5pm at Marie Mount Hall 1400

Tuesday 7 April – Knowing Otherwise  
READ: as much of Rodríquez as you can!
NEXT CLASS IS WORKSHOP 2! 

Rodríquez is giving the Keynote for the Queer Studies Symposium Friday 17 April. She is is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is also affiliated faculty with the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies; the Berkeley Center for New Media; the Center for Race and Gender; and the Center for the Study of Sexual Cultures. She is one of the founding members of the Haas Institute's Center for a Fair and Inclusive Society's LGBTQ Citizen Cluster, and currently serves on the President’s Advisory Council on LGBT Students, Faculty & Staff for the University of California. Rodríguez is the author of two books, Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces (NYU 2003) and Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures and Other Latina Longings (NYU 2014) and has published numerous articles related to her research interests in sexuality studies, queer activism in a transnational American context, critical race theory, technology and media arts, and Latin@ and Caribbean studies. She is currently working on a third book project that considers the quandaries of representing racially gendered violence, pleasure, and trauma in visual culture.

• WORKSHOP #2: Queer Speculations & Lesbian Kin 
This year’s LGBT lecture series invites you to join discussions about the speculation about queer bodies, objects, feelings, pasts, futures, utopias, dystopias, and transformations. You will explore class readings and LGBT lecture series presentations together carefully, chose which text to analyze with the tools from particular lectures and discussion, and •share in either poster or written analysis why it matters for lesbians in various communities. Our 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. Choose EITHER • a chapter of Rodríguez’ book, OR • an article you choose from either Transgender Studies Quarterly OR Sinister Wisdom at any point in their publication history. Whichever text you choose, you will explicitly discuss HOW YOU USE the tools, perspective, methods, lens, ideas you glean from the presentation or lecture of one of the two people presenting as part of the LGBT Series in March, before our workshop convenes. You will attend at least one of these events in order to note the concerns, themes, understandings, and approaches of EITHER Tavia Nyong’o (two possible events to go to) OR Miranda Joseph. (If for any reason you cannot attend one of these events, you will need to talk to Katie about the extra work required to substitute one of the author visits to our class.)

Tuesday 14 April  
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
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Tuesday, March 10, 2015

WORKSHOP 1 ON QUEER METHOD TODAY!!

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• A Queer Method: Reading one book object through the lens of another  
<Workshop 1, Tuesday 10 March>

“A Queer Method” is inspired by the conference hosted at the University of Pennsylvania 31 October and 1 November 2013: http://queermethod.tumblr.com  The conference took context as its focus, “examining not what the subject of queer theory should be, but rather how its work has been and might be done” …“and to ask what it means to understand queer work as having a method, or to imagine method itself as queer.” (Katie was a speaker at this conference and you can see her talk online here: http://fembooo.blogspot.com/p/slides-and-handout.html )

For our A Queer Method workshop you will create either a ten-page paper (with enough handouts for each member of the class: 22 folks) or a research poster (and document it with digital pics): which one determined by lot in class 24 February. You may work on these individually or with a collaborator.

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BE SURE TO BE ON TIME TODAY! DON'T BE LATE! WE NEED TIME TO SET UP! 

IF FOR ANY REASON YOU ARE NOT PRESENTING TODAY, COME ANYWAY AND PARTICIPATE! NO MATTER WHAT BE SURE TO TURN IN HARD COPY OF LOGBOOK 1 WITH EXPLANATIONS AND PLANS TO MAKE UP. 

Reminders and What to do!
=Is your name on paper, handouts, hard copy digital pics to hand in?
=Did you bring enough handouts for everyone in the class (22) and one to use for display?
=Did you bring hardcopy of Logbook1 to hand in today, with any notes or explanations?
=Did you bring tape or anything needed to create your display space? cords for laptops if using?

As soon as you arrive:
=SIGN IN on either Paper Sheet or Poster Sheet (two different ones).
=Begin set up of display spot as soon as you have signed in
=Fill out a display FORM and put it by your paper or poster in your display spot: KATIE WILL GIVE YOU NUMBER TO USE IN ORDER OF ARRIVAL. One number per PROJECT even if two authors.
=Pick up a NOTES sheet packet for your interactions during first and second sessions and to guide discussion after the break

As soon as everyone has set up their display space and coordinated with any collaborators:
=We will begin with 12 mins of silent inspection
=Go around and look at everything set up, write down information on your notes sheets for each project: number, names, titles, books used, etc.

Katie will assign equal numbers of papers and posters to each session, and tell you which session you will present in. About half the class looks at the work of the other half in Session 1, then we switch for Session 2. 



>>SESSION 1: 30 mins! so be expeditious in interactions and notes: you need to examine around 10 projects in this timeframe!

Immediately followed by

>>SESSION 2: 30 mins! again be expeditious in interactions and notes: you need to examine around 10 projects in this timeframe!

>>QUICK BREAK! 10 mins only! return to class and prepare for discussion.

>>FOLLOWUP DISCUSSION after interactions with others about projects. This is the heart of the Workshop! EVERYONE SHOULD TALK! use your notes to be as specific as possible in our work to create a great forum for discussion! 

=Tell others what you liked most about their project: BE SPECIFIC!
=Talk about what you learned that you did not know until you saw the work of others! This can include HOW TO DO something, such as great poster ideas you see now, and ANALYSES you have had shared. Again, be specific!
=Ask questions! What more do you want to consider now? Ask for specific feedback on things you tried out in display or analysis and ask others how well it worked.
=Consider if you want to revise, add, redraft anything on your work before turning in electronically on Friday. Ask others for suggestions or ideas.

• 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

Remember we discussed in class why we use these filenames and subject headers: downloaded files will display on computer in last name alphabetical order and can be search for by name, class, and which workshop. Similarly, gmail handles attachments best so Katie can archive your materials and nothing will be lost. Subject header allows Katie to search by your last name, the class, the item when referring to your stuff for discussion with you, final grades, and so on. [NOTE: katiekin, not katiekinG! the second will go to the wrong person!]

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DISPLAY FORM

NOTES FOR INTERACTION
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