DC Queer Studies

CFP: Delany at 70

2012-01-17T22:51:00.000-05:00

CALL FOR PAPERS

Delany at 70:

Honoring the Life & Work

of Samuel R. Delany

The Fifth Annual DC Queer Studies Symposium

University of Maryland, College Park

Friday, April 20, 2012

Deadline for submission of materials: February 6, 2012

We invite proposals for presentations at DELANY AT 70, the 5th Annual DC Queer Studies Symposium at the University of Maryland. The symposium will be a daylong series of conversations in critical queer, race, and gender studies inspired by the multifaceted cultural work of author, literary critic, and professor Samuel R. Delany, whose seventieth birthday is April 1, 2012. Events will include paper sessions featuring faculty and graduate students. The day will culminate in Mr. Delany reading from his new novel, Through the Valley of the Nest of Spiders, and engaging in conversation with Robert Reid-Pharr, Distinguished Professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

In recognition of Delany’s wide-ranging influence on queer studies scholarship, the symposium takes themes prominent in his work as its point of departure. We are eager to invite papers dedicated to Delany’s diverse body of writings, but we also encourage proposals that address any of the following (or related) points of contact with key preoccupations of Delany’s work:

• Black and queer cultural politics
• Crossing boundaries: cross-class contact, private/public divides, the dynamics of normativity and respectability
• Landscapes: utopia, dystopia, heterotopia, desire, lust
• Queer time: futurity, potentiality, paradox, anniversaries, commemorations
• Queer/ing visions: reflection, refraction, mythology, memory, language, perception
• Geographies of power: settler colonialism, racialization, territorialization, gentrification
• World-making and undoing: fantasy, performativity, self-elaboration, autobiography, selfhood, abjection

Proposals for 15-minute presentations should include name, affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper, a 250-word abstract, and a 1-2 page CV. Please send materials by e-mail attachment (Word or PDF only) by February 6, 2012 to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu. Put “Submission for Delany at 70” in the subject line of your message. For more information, contact JV Sapinoso at sapinoso@umd.edu. Selected participants will be notified by February 27, 2012.

In the words of Jeffrey Allen Tucker, Samuel R. Delany is “the ideal postmodern intellectual.” Delany is known for his long and well-established career as a writer of science fiction, fantasy, and memoir as well as his critical work in literary, African American, urban, and LGBT/queer studies. Speaking about the significance of his work, Delany says, “Science fiction isn’t just thinking about the world out there. It’s also thinking about how that world might be -- a particularly important exercise for those who are oppressed, because if they’re going to change the world we live in, they -- and all of us -- have to be able to think about a world that works differently.” Exercising the need to “think about a world that works differently” might well be adopted to describe the projects of both LGBT and queer studies.

DC Queer Studies is a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area formed in 2006 to discuss new works in the field and to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and across institutions. The DC Queer Studies Symposium is hosted and sponsored by the University of Maryland and co-sponsored by American University, Georgetown University, and the George Washington University. For event updates and further information, click here.

All symposium events will be free and open to the public.

Something Queer This Way Comes...

2009-04-15T14:35:00.005-04:00

The DC Queer Studies Symposium

A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland

April 17-18, 2009, College Park, MD

Free and open to the public

Visit our Web site here.

The new Web site is up. The program is set. The food is ordered. Now all we need it you.

Please join us this weekend for what promises to be a lively spring festival of scholarly exchange in an interdiscipline that continues to challenge and transform the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences, and the world in which we live.

Friday, April 17 offers presentations by graduate students from area schools, a reading by Washington-area poets Regie Cabico, Reginald Harris, Richard McCann, and a keynote address by Judith Halberstam, professor of English and gender studies at the University of Southern California and author, most recently, of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (2005).

Saturday, April 18 features a full day of papers by faculty from area universities as well as discussion and socializing. The symposium is free and will include a reception on Friday as well as continental breakfast, lunch, and an off-campus dinner/reception on Saturday.

Please visit the DC Queer Studies Symposium Web site for location, parking, and event information.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium

2009-03-24T12:54:00.009-04:00

The DC Queer Studies Symposium

A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland

April 17-18, 2009, College Park, MD

Free and open to the public

Visit our website here.

For those of you who attended last year's inaugural symposium, this year's will be similar but even more grand. We have a full two-day schedule this time around.

Friday, April 17 begins with quickanddirty V: A Graduate Queer Studies Symposium and will feature papers by students from American, Georgetown, George Washington, and Maryland. Friday afternoon, thanks to the efforts of Maryland poet and PhD student Julie Enszer, we will have a poetry reading featuring Regie Cabico, Reginald Harris, and Richard McCann placing their work in conversation with writers from pre-Stonewall queer literary history. At 4:30, Judith Halberstam will deliver the symposium's keynote address, "Queer Negativities." The day will conclude with a reception.

Saturday, April 18 will be a full day of faculty paper sessions on a broad range of subjects (titles and presenters below). The symposium will conclude with an evening of celebration and conviviality at Marilee Lindemann and Martha Nell Smith's home in Takoma Park. We'll have a reception and dinner and, if we're lucky, some quality time under the stars.

We hope you will be able to join us for any or all of these festivities. A condensed version of the schedule is below. We will have a more complete version up on the symposium web site in the next couple of weeks. For those of you not familiar with the Maryland campus, rest assured the web site will have detailed information about parking and building locations.

We invite you to join us for any or all of the two day's events. Due to limitations on space and our desire to create a seminar-type atmosphere on Saturday, however, we ask that you register in advance for that day only. We also hope that you will be able to stay with us for the entire day on Saturday, though we understand that may not be possible in every case. If you would like to attend on Saturday, you can request a registration form by sending an email to: lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu. Please fill out the form and return it by e-mail to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu or by fax to 301.314.2529.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium
A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland
April 17-18, 2009, College Park, MD

Free and open to the public

Friday, April 17, 2009
Riggs Alumni Center and McKeldin Library, University of Maryland

9:30 – 10:00 AM
Registration and Welcome (Riggs Alumni Center)

quickanddirty V: A Graduate Queer Studies Symposium
Presentations by graduate students from American University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and University of Maryland

10:00 – 11:15 AM
Concurrent Graduate Symposium Sessions

Speaking Truth to Power: Lesbian Performances, Politics, and Production (Chaney Library)

Amy Washburn, University of Maryland
Julie R. Enszer, University of Maryland
Maria Vargas, University of Maryland

Deviant at the Core: Reading Queerness in Iconic Texts (AAI Conference Room)

Caroline Sidman, Georgetown University
Melissa Yinger, American University
James Goodwin, University of Maryland

11:30 – 12:45 PM
Concurrent Graduate Symposium Sessions

Heteronormativity: Seductions and Subversions (Chaney Library)

Mary Elizabeth Bazemore, University of Maryland
Reed Cooley, George Washington University
Maria Velazquez, University of Maryland

Paranoia, Trauma, and Laughter: Combating Queer Invisibility in the 1960s and 1970s (AAI Conference Room)

Lisa Chinn, Georgetown University
Yee-Hang Tam, Georgetown University
Rebecca Krefting, University of Maryland

1:00 – 2:15 PM
Lunch on own

2:30 – 4 PM
Queer Writers Read
McKeldin Library 6137, Special Events Room

Regie Cabico, Reginald Harris, Richard McCann

4:30 – 6:30 PM
Keynote Address and Reception
McKeldin Library 6137, Special Events Room

Queer Negativities
Judith Halberstam, University of Southern California, English/Gender Studies

Saturday, April 18, 2009
Benjamin Banneker Room, Adele Stamp Student Union, University of Maryland
(Seating for Saturday events is limited, so pre-registration is required. Contact lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu for information.)

9:30 – 10:00 AM
Registration and Coffee

10:00 AM – 12:00 PM
Faculty Paper Session: Queer Pasts

Falstaff’s Fairies: Queer Ravishment in Shakespeare’s Windsor, Holly Dugan, George Washington University

History as Quick Cash: The Female Husband and the Pregnant Man, Mandy Berry, American University

What It Feels Like for a Grrrl: Susan and Emily Dickinson, Martha Nell Smith, University of Maryland

“Where’s That Partner of Mine?”: Ethel Waters and the Management of Black Queer Desire, Samantha Pinto, Georgetown University

12:00 – 1:00 PM
Buffet Lunch

1:00 – 2:30 PM
Faculty Paper Session: Constructing Queer Knowledges

Period Cramps, Madhavi Menon, American University

My Love for Hip Hop Is In Its Queerness, Jeffrey McCune, University of Maryland

Queer Transdisciplinarities, Katie King, University of Maryland

2:30 – 3:00 PM
Break

3:00 – 5:00 PM
Faculty Paper Session: Sex, Sexuality, Politics

Creating Kenyan Intimacies, Keguro Macharia, University of Maryland

Men Get Lean and Mean, Women De-Clutter: Weight Loss, Heteronormative Temporality, and the Thin Contract, Abby Wilkerson, George Washington University

LAUREL: The Irony of Lesbian Identity?, Christina Hanhardt, University of Maryland

Left Melodrama, Elisabeth Anker, George Washington University

7:00 – 10 PM
Reception and Dinner
(Off campus. Please RSVP, by April 3, for the dinner when you register for the symposium.)

DC Queer Studies is a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area formed in 2006 to discuss new works in the field and to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and across institutions.

Sponsored by: University of Maryland (Comparative Literature Program, Departments of American Studies, English, and Women’s Studies, Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies in the Department of History, LGBT Studies Program, Office of Undergraduate Studies); American University (College of Arts and Sciences); Georgetown University (Department of English, Graduate School); the George Washington University (Departments of American Studies and English, University Writing Program)

Susan Stryker Film Screening and Lecture

2009-03-10T15:53:00.003-04:00

The LGBT Studies Program at the University of Maryland is proud to announce two upcoming events in our seventh annual lecture series, 69/09: The Queer Afterlives of Stonewall.

Susan Stryker - Screaming Queens: The Riot at Compton's Cafeteria

Thursday, April 2, 2009
7:00pm - 9:00pm
Hornbake 0302J
University of Maryland

Please join us for this film screening of Screaming Queens, a 2005 documentary, co-written and co-directed by Stryker, tells the story of a 1966 transgender riot in San Francisco. Stryker will lead a discussion after the screening.

Susan Stryker - "We Who Are Sexy: The Post-Colonial Transsexual Whiteness of Christine Jorgensen in the Philippines"

Friday, April 3, 2009
4:00 p.m.
Susquehanna 1120
University of Maryland

Susan Stryker is associate professor of Gender Studies at Indiana University and is a pioneer in the field of transgender studies. Her most recent book is Transgender History (2008).

We are grateful to the Office of Undergraduate Studies for its support of the series. Additional sponsors include the departments of American Studies, English, and Theatre, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, and the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies in the Department of History.

For further information, please contact the LGBT Studies Program.

301.405.5428

lgbts@umd.edu

http://www.lgbts.umd.edu

Click here for directions, parking information, and a campus map.

quickanddirty V - Call for Papers

2008-11-18T15:42:00.001-05:00

CALL FOR PAPERS

quickanddirty V:
The DC Queer Studies
Graduate Symposium

part of the DC Queer Studies Symposium
at the University of Maryland, College Park

April 17 & 18, 2009

Deadline for submission of materials: January 15, 2009

DC Queer Studies invites submission of proposals for 15-minute presentations in quickanddirty V: The DC Queer Studies Graduate Symposium. Students enrolled in any DC-area graduate program are encouraged to submit proposals for inclusion in the program. We welcome proposals on any aspect of LGBT Studies, queer theory, critical approaches to sexualities, and intersectionality. Maryland’s program in LGBT Studies has held a graduate symposium for the past four years. Again this year, that event is being opened up to students from other institutions and held in conjunction with the scholarly program being arranged by DC Queer Studies, a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area.

Selected participants will be notified by February 2, 2009.

Proposals must include name, affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper, a 250-word abstract, and 1-2 page CV. Please send materials by e-mail attachment (Word or PDF only) by January 15, 2009 to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu. Put “quickanddirty” in the subject line of your message.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium is a two-day event bringing together scholars from the Washington, DC area to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Q/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines. April 17 will include the graduate symposium and the keynote address by Judith Halberstam, professor of English and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California and author of In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York University, 2004). April 18 will include paper sessions and roundtable discussions featuring faculty working in LGBT/Q/Sexuality Studies.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium is hosted and sponsored by the University of Maryland and co-sponsored by American University, George Mason University, the George Washington University, Georgetown University, and Howard University. See http://www.lgbts.umd.edu for details.

New Works-in-Progress Series

2008-10-01T15:40:00.004-04:00

Fall 2008 DC Queer Studies Works-in-Progress

This series of lectures presents recent work by members of the DC Queer Studies group. DC Queer Studies is a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area. The group works to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Q/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and across institutions.

Dana Luciano, Associate Professor of English, Georgetown University

"Nostalgia for an Age Yet to Come: Velvet Goldmine's Queer Archive"

1:30-3:30 PM Friday, October 3, 2008
Department of English, George Washington University
Rome Hall 771
801 22nd Street NW

*Rome Hall is located just off the northeast corner of 22nd and I Streets NW. From the Foggy Bottom Metro: exit the station and walk directly ahead down I Street. After you cross 22nd Street, and pass a small white house, Rome Hall will be on your right. It's a big glass building.

Dana Luciano is the author of Arranging Grief: Sacred Time and the Body in Nineteenth-Century America (New York University Press, 2007).

Event is free and open to the public.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium

2008-04-08T13:49:00.005-04:00

The DC Queer Studies Symposium

A Two-Day Conference at the University of Maryland

April 17-18, 2008, College Park, MD

Free and open to the public

Visit our website here.

DC Queer Studies is a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area formed in 2006 to discuss new works in the field and to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Queer/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines and across institutions. The symposium is the first public scholarly event organized by the group. Its aim is to showcase the work of faculty and graduate students who are helping to make the national-capital area a leader in interdisciplinary sexuality studies.

Please join us for what promises to be a lively spring festival of scholarly exchange in an interdiscipline that continues to challenge and transform the humanities, the social and behavioral sciences, and the world in which we live.

Thursday, April 17 offers presentations by graduate students in area schools and a keynote address by Roderick A. Ferguson, associate professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (University of Minnesota, 2004). Friday, April 18 features a full day of faculty papers, roundtables on key words in sexuality studies, and group discussion around the elegant mahogany table in the Crist Boardroom at the Riggs Alumni Center. The symposium is free and will include two receptions as well as a light breakfast and lunch on Friday.

We invite you to join us for any or all of the two day's events. Due to limitations on space and our desire to create a seminar-type atmosphere on Friday, however, we ask that you register in advance for that day only. We also hope that you will be able to stay with us for the entire day on Friday, though we understand that may not be possible in every case. Click here to access a pre-registration form. If you would like to attend on Friday, please fill out the form and return it by e-mail to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu or by fax to 301.314.2529. We will contact you if Friday fills up and we are unable to honor your registration request.

Sponsors: University of Maryland (Department of English, LGBT Studies Program, Office of Undergraduate Studies); American University (College of Arts and Sciences); Georgetown University (Department of English); the George Washington University (Columbian College of Arts and Sciences)

Event Coordinator: Marilee Lindemann, University of Maryland, with the assistance of Mel Michelle Lewis, graduate assistant to the LGBT Studies Program, University of Maryland

Planning Committee: Christina Hanhardt, University of Maryland; Dana Luciano, Georgetown University; Robert McRuer, George Washington University; Madhavi Menon, American University

Pre-registration form for Friday, April 18 is available here

Closets and Claustrophilia

2008-02-27T09:35:00.008-05:00

I've started reading Cary Howie's Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature. I don't think the book's merits could quite be captured/ illuminated/enclosed (?) in our usual discussions, so I'm not suggesting that we discuss it as a group, but I do think it's a fascinating meditation on queerness, desire, phenomenology, the sense of touch, and "unhistorical" approaches to literature (to quote Madhavi's term). It's an odd book, but one that's fun to read. (Think: Povinelli).

Don't just take my word for it: the folks over at In The Middle *love* it. Karl Steel calls it a "heartbreaking" book, and Eileen Joy writes: "The thought and writing of Howie’s book is so radiant, I hesitate to do more than simply urge its reading. Like a secret and profanely holy letter, his book should not be reviewed as such [summarized, evaluated, judged, and perhaps killed], but should, rather, be passed, quietly and with the urgency of desire, from friend to friend." (See http://jjcohen.blogspot.com)

So, friends, I pass it along. (In the spirit of cultivating--i hope--a Judy Blume's Forever kind-of-vibe, rather than say a Bridges of Madison County one).

DC Queers Win Big at the MLA GL/Q Caucus!

2008-01-14T15:29:00.002-05:00

(L to R: Robert McRuer, Marilee Lindemann, and Dana Luciano.)

It was a nearly clean sweep at the MLA GL/Q Caucus as three members of DC Queer Studies won awards at the annual gathering.

Dana Luciano, assistant professor of English at Georgetown University, won Honorable Mention for the Crompton-Noll Award for best essay in lesbian, gay, queer studies in the modern languages/literatures for her essay, "Coming Around Again: The Queer Momentum of Far from Heaven." The essay was published in GL/Q in vol. 13, number 2-3.

"The award pays tribute to Louis Crompton (University of Nebraska at Lincoln) and Dolores Noll (Kent State University), two early scholar/activists who helped found the gay and lesbian caucus of the MLA. The award recognizes the important work of lesbian, gay, and queer studies in the modern languages and the history that has helped make this current work possible."

Robert McRuer, associate professor in English at George Washington University, won the 2007 Alan Bray Memorial Book Award, which is given annually to a book in LGBT Studies by the GL/Q Caucus for the Modern Languages for his book, Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (NYU, 2006).

The judges for this year said:
"The members of the Committee were especially impressed by McRuer's original intervention in the area of queer studies, one that not only sheds light on the important new area of disability studies, but brings it into conversation with a variety of disciplinary perspectives, from composition studies to performance art. McRuer's book combines the public and the private work of queer studies in surprisingly new ways."

and

Marilee Lindemann, associate professor of English and director of the program in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies at the University of Maryland, won the 2007 Michael Lynch Service Award.

The award recognizes her extensive service in building and directing the University of Maryland's LGBT Studies program, as well as her innovative scholarship and teaching in queer studies. The Michael Lynch Service Award is meant, in Eve Kosofky Sedgwick's words, "to publicize and celebrate – as widely as possible – the range, the forms, the energy, and the history of queer activism in academics."

Kathryn Bond Stockton won the Crompton-Noll Award for best essay in lesbian, gay, queer studies in the modern languages/literatures for her essay, "Feeling Like Killing?: Queer Temporalities of Murderous Motives among Queer Children." Her essay was published in GL/Q in vol. 13, number 2-3.

Maria C. González, associate professor in English at the University of Huston, also won a Michael Lynch Service Award.

Congratulations to Dana, Robert, and Marilee on their awards.

quickanddirty IV: Call For Papers

2007-11-27T12:44:00.000-05:00

CALL FOR PAPERS

quickanddirty IV:
The DC Queer Studies
Graduate Symposium

part of the DC Queer Studies Symposium
at the University of Maryland, College Park

April 17 & 18, 2008

Deadline for submission of materials: January 15, 2008

DC Queer Studies invites submission of proposals for 15-minute presentations in quickanddirty IV: The DC Queer Studies Graduate Symposium. Students enrolled in any DC-area graduate program are encouraged to submit proposals for inclusion in the program. We welcome proposals on any aspect of LGBT Studies, queer theory, critical approaches to sexualities, and intersectionality. Maryland’s program in LGBT Studies has held a graduate symposium for the past three years. This year that event is being opened up to students from other institutions and held in conjunction with the first scholarly program being arranged by DC Queer Studies, a group of faculty from schools in the Consortium of Universities of the Washington Metropolitan Area.

Selected participants will be notified by February 1, 2008.

Proposals must include name, affiliation, e-mail address, title of paper, a 250-word abstract, and 1-2 page CV. Please send materials by e-mail attachment (Word or PDF only) by January 15, 2008 to lgbts-dcqueers@umd.edu. Put “quickanddirty” in the subject line of your message.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium is a two-day event bringing together scholars from the Washington, DC area to exchange, support, and cultivate new ways of engaging with LGBT/Q/Sexuality Studies across the disciplines. April 17 will include the graduate symposium and the keynote address by Roderick A. Ferguson, associate professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota and author of Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minnesota, 2004). April 18 will include paper sessions and roundtable discussions featuring DC-area faculty working in LGBT/Q/Sexuality Studies.

The DC Queer Studies Symposium is hosted and sponsored by the University of Maryland and co-sponsored by American University, Georgetown University, and the George Washington University. See http://www.lgbts.umd.edu for details.

Anechronology

2007-11-12T23:14:00.000-05:00

American University Department of Literature
Graduate Speakers Series presents

Lee Edelman
Fletcher Professor of English Literature,
Tufts University

Anechronology: Why The Birds is Still Coming

Lee Edelman is Chair and Fletcher Professor of English at Tufts University. An award-winning teacher, scholar, and poet, his books include Transmemberment of Song: Hart Crane's Anatomies of Rhetoric and Desire (Stanford, 1987), Homographesis: Essays in Gay Literary and Cultural Theory (Routledge, 1994), and No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (Duke, 2004). His essay "Hitchcock's Future" appeared in Hitchcock: Centenary Essays (ed. Richard Allen and Sam Gonzales, British Film Institute Press, 1999).

Friday, November 16, 5:00-6:30 P.M.
Ward Circle Building 1 • Refreshments will be served following the talk.

Non-recap from 10-26 and Future Reading Possibilities

2007-10-30T19:58:00.000-04:00

We had a lively discussion of Jennifer Doyle's Sex Objects, but since Robert was not there to stare us down, we failed to appoint a recapper. Instead I will share a few intriguing phrases I found scribbled in my notes:

eroticism in detail: "She-Bop"
bad sex--as failure of objectification
queerishness vs. queerness, content vs. style
Katie hearts Russian formalism

We also failed to decide on either a date OR a reading for next time since so many people had conflicts. The two possible dates are 11-30 and 12-7. The top three reading contenders are below:

South Atlantic Quarterly, "After Sex" special issue
Robert Reid-Pharr, Once You Go Black: Choice, Desire and the Black American Intellectual
Heather Love, Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

Also on deck/proposed for the near future:
Sharon Marcus, Between Women: Friendship, Desire, and Marriage in Victorian England
Kara Keeling, The Witch's Flight: The Cinematic, the Black Femme, and the Image of Common Sense

Jasbir Puar, Terrorist Assemblages: Homonationalism in Queer Times
Tom Boellstorff, The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia
David Valentine, Imagining Transgender: An Ethnography of a Category

...along with a mini- trans film festival, possibly for January.

Povinelli Recap

2007-09-23T22:46:00.000-04:00

With apologies to Kandice, who posted this as a comment -- I cut and pasted it into a post proper to make sure it would be seen and read. Cheers, ML

Hi All:

I'm tempted simply to thank Katie for her remarks and forego my efforts to record our conversation on Friday. This is especially true because my notes are fairly unintelligible. But I said I would be the notetaker and so I shall follow through. Errors are all my own, of course; please emend as you see fit -- and I'm not witty in my best moments and certainly not on a Sunday night. Forgive the dry account, please.

Our conversation tended to cluster around a couple/three topics: the style of the writing, which includes the narrative and argumentative structure Povinelli used as well as her use of first person story-telling as a method; the persuasiveness of the argument, which includes the respective effectiveness of the introduction and first chapter as well as her irregular invocation of (conventional?) ethnographic evidence; and the politics and pay-off of the argument being advanced. What follows is my sense of what we said/what was said in relation to these focuses (foci?).

Regarding style: I have in my notes such terms as "wading," "obtuse," and "Sedgwick without jokes," alongside "seductive," the last especially with regard to the use of story in this book. Comments critical of what I'm calling style may well have been informed by the kinds of problems with interdisciplinarity that Katie identifies in her posting; in other vein, it seemed clear that Povinelli's style, or at least, her particular strategy of switching back and forth between narrative modes, created useful disjunctures in reading experience for some. Formalistically/literary- critically speaking, that disjunction seems intimately related to Povinelli's objective of illuminating/articulating a link between putatively disjunctive sites. (I'm not sure I'm using disjunctive correctly here; someone correct the term, please.) I'm wondering now if the style isn't somehow modeling what it means to undermine autological and genealogical discourses by not allowing readers to settle either into identification with the narrator or into a comfortable context. But that's digressing from recording the night's discussion, so moving on....

regarding persuasiveness: this is the biggie, in a way, as it's the category that I'm making capacious enough to include both what I think of as methodology (as the question of what kinds of evidence Povinelli uses was raised) and points of debate regarding specific aspects of her argument. I'm focusing on the latter, here; as regards methodology, see style notes above, and more usefully, Katie's posting.

Of the questions regarding Povinelli's argument, here are some of the central ones we discussed:

Historically speaking, does Povinelli's argument stand up? That is, can her use of liberal diaspora withstand historical contextualization? The answer, I believe, was a resounding no, at least, insofar as the chronologies of the circulation of certain kinds of intimacies and certain kinds of liberal philosophies don't match up with Povinelli's temporal frame (e.g., some colonies precede the Enlightenment -- "illiberal" colony projects). But there was also some understanding that Povinelli was working retrospectively and so...okay, I have to admit that I was actually a little lost on this point. Why is it okay that the book's historicization and other (okay, David's, which I completely accept) historicizations are not the same? This doesn't, by the way, bother me in terms of engaging Povinelli's argument insofar as I don't think it undermines her overarching objective; but I'd be interested to hear (to re-hear, that is), why this difference is okay to others as well. (David, by the way, suggested _The Politics of Piety_ by Saba Mahmood, in the context of this conversation. David also mentioned pirates, which intrigued me but I didn't get a chance to follow up.)

Another matter for discussion: what is geontology? Does it privilege in potentially troubling ways -- as in fetishizing (my term, not used, I don't believe, in the course of our conversation) indigeneity? Is stranger sociality available to the indigenous? Is it methodologically or conceptually opposed to diaspora? Does the body accordingly emerge in this book as pre-discursive or essentialist? Textual references that were invoked as we discussed such questions include pp. 60, 70+, and 159.

Related to the above, what is the status of the body? Povinelli's effort to think about flesh without privileging discourse connected (for Sam and Bill especially, I think) to the ongoing debates regarding the limits of poststructuralist views in apprehending embodiedness. In this way, Povinelli connects with the Ahmed and Solomon materials read by the group last spring. More immediately, it seemed that Povinelli's sores and her use(s) of them in this book were helpful to many of us in thinking about the ways in which we relate to bodies, our own and others. We didn't follow through on this particular point, but it does seem that, as Jason reminded us, Povinelli wants us to think about the possibilities for intimacy rendered by conceiving the world as she does -- it might be fruitful to play out this vein of thought so as to articulate more fully how identifying the body as the juncture point between materiality and ideality (I'm quoting Bill here, I believe) specifically helps to foster and proliferate intimacies.

[I have a nagging question about this matter, which, under the guise of posting these notes, I'll ask you all: I keep running into the idea that essentialism and poststructuralism are necessarily antithetical, and I keep thinking that that's not right. Certainly, some essentialisms -- those that philosophically locate human ontology not in language or the social -- may well be anti-poststructuralist. But not all essentialisms are not poststructuralist. I believe. E.g., Cixous -- the experience of woman, yes, but the experience of woman as dictated under phallocentric logocentrism; hence, ontologically through language. Right? Forgive me this digression; I just keep running into this formulation -- literally, in three different settings this past week -- which is making me wonder if I'm wrong (that couldn't be!).]

What are we do make of/do with the place of HIV in this book? Which also became focused around what to do with the Michael Warner moment in the book. No conclusions drawn, but some insights as to possibly reading this as a) homophobic; b) a comment on the differences between chosen and immanent dependencies (I think this was Siobhan -- or Sam -- my notes say "S"); or c) related to the ways that Povinelli wants us to see that there's always a leaving behind such that there is only a partial sense of self in any given context (Dana's reading?).

Okay, and regarding the payoff (with apologies for the crude term): What I'm shorthanding as payoff is more elegantly and helpfully offered by Dana as an inquiry into the political reach of the project and by Kevin as a question about the "politics of trespass." This book explicitly refuses alignment with a redemptive reading (see p.21). Does she finally get us somewhere different? Perhaps yes, Siobhan suggests, in pointing us to the cutting. By narrating a different way of cutting, Povinelli doesn't evade the violence of the cut; and as Sam put it, she (Povinelli) shows us that the cut (or sores) won't hurt less; there's no way to avoid the violence; but it's
nonetheless different.

Okay, I think that's about it. There were other issues and ideas raised, including the big question about how the key terms of the text like love and intimacy are understood given our reading; how to understand the figure of the intimate couple (p.17) and the difficult way in which the question, "Is this sexuality?" is posed (p.66); how this book engages disability studies; and lots of discussion on how to read the book (again, see Katie's posting). I'll leave it to you all to supplement as necessary.

Thanks to our gracious hosts for graciously hosting us yet again. And finally, a reminder that the next meeting is scheduled for 26 October and will focus on Jennifer Doyle's _Sex Objects: Art & the Dialectic of Desire_ -- I don't think we settled on specific chapters.

September 23, 2007 10:25 PM

Flexible Knowledges, Interdisciplines, (Inter)interdisciplinarities

2007-09-23T12:53:00.000-04:00

Reading Povinelli in an interdisciplinary queer theory reading group with a primary constituency in literary fields was a challenge. As Hanhardt suggested toward the end of the meeting, there were many knowledges implied and alluded to in Povinelli's Empire of Love, and as a group we were not at all versed in all of them.

So how do we read books like this? After all this was a book that is published in a Duke Series that says "It is designed for a public that reaches beyond experts and academics. Combining narrative description with informed reflection, each book focuses on an issue or event that is still unfolding. Public Planet Books are extended essays (about 120 pages), readable in a single sitting." (website)

Maybe instead of jumping right into critiques of uses of language and suspicions about liberalism more generally and its deployments here – all reading points of value – we could have started with situating the book inside of its flexible knowledges: academic but with intentions of informing hybrid publics, AND requiring from them great generosities of engagement and willingness to suspend customary judgments for very partial and tentative explorations.

From my own viewpoint, this book is not NOT an academic one, NOT trying to reach some mythical "general audience," NOT a quick fun read (although actually it sort of was), but an experiment in a kind of playful refusal to "ground" its arguments, even while always then raising desires for such grounded-ness, and playing with languages that work some bait-and-switch type operations, to produce some intellectual experiences and some cognitive affects (yes, really, affects), intended to be multiply pleasurable, irritating, uncontrollable while provoking desires for control, and so on.

I think in this it was very successful. I think our discussion performed all these reactions.

Since the reading group meeting I read three more articles by Povinelli – whose work I was unfamiliar with before – and was very taken by them as well.

"Radical Worlds: The Anthropology of Incommensurability and Inconceivability." Elizabeth A. Povinelli. Annual Review of Anthropology, Vol. 30. (2001), pp. 319-334.
EA Povinelli 1999. "Thinking Sexuality Transnationally." Special issue GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 5, no. 4
Elizabeth A. Povinelli. "Disturbing Sexuality" SAQ 07 Special Issue "After Sex."

What it takes to make worlds and knowledges incommensurable and commensurable does to me describe some of our performances together as scholars on Friday. What tools liberalism offers, what performances it dictates, what double binds it creates as we tried to get outside it, always inside of versions of critique that unself-consciously tend to privilege its mobilizations of reason, contradiction, consensual conversation, intellectual mastery and such – how could we have performed these better? And with such discomfort created by the limitations of critique that always works so hard to be radical within liberal worlds we are forced to inhabit, often as professional academics.

I like how Povinelli puts this in her SAQ essay: "I have written about a certain impasse in liberal politics of cultural recognition and about the multiple double binds and capacitating possibilities that emerge from it." I like calling out both the double binds – which register in layers of affect and cognitive dissonance – and the notion of "capaciting possibilities" – since I don't know where else we are to find possibilities as academics under globally restructuring knowledge economies.

CFP: Transgender Studies Conference

2007-09-14T11:35:00.000-04:00

TRANSSOMATECHNICS:
THEORIES AND PRACTICES OF TRANSGENDER EMBODIMENT

Call for Papers

A Transdisciplinary International Conference
May1- 3, 2008
Harbour Centre, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

SPONSORS
Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowment
Women’s Studies Department
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada

Somatechnics Research Centre
Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

Organized by:
Susan Stryker
Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair

CONFERENCE DESCRIPTION
This conference seeks to include a wide range of
innovative scholarship, public policy, grassroots
activism, socio-political analysis and artistic
production in the field of transgender studies. We
will consider work from any discipline or
specialization, but we are especially interested in
work that calls attention to the interconnections
between embodiment, technology, and bodily practice—an
emerging area of transdisciplinary research we
designate with the new term “somatechnics.”

We understand the material intelligibility of the body
(soma) to be inseparable from the techniques and
technologies (technics) in and through which bodies
are formed and transformed, and by means of which they
are socially positioned and lived. The term
somatechnics thus reflects contemporary understandings
of the body as the incarnation of historically and
culturally specific discourses and practices. It
conceives of activities involving bodies—in medicine,
science, law, information technologies, the arts,
language, migration, racialisation, surveillance,
state bureaucracy—as fundamentally constitutive of
bodily being.

We understand transgender bodies, through the multiple
forms of boundary crossing and ruptures of the
normative that they enact and render visible through
their implicit technologisation, to offer a peculiarly
rich arena for exploring, analysing and elaborating
upon historically and culturally specific
interconnections between embodiment, technology, and
bodily practice. We seek exciting, intellectually
challenging, politically engaged, heartfelt work that
addresses theories and practices of transgender
embodiment from any and all perspectives.

ABSTRACTS FOR PAPERS
250-500 words Deadline: Monday, 19 November 2007
Proposals for Panels Welcome (three papers + chair)
Please a submit abstracts by EMAIL ONLY to:
Andrew Wickerson, Assistant to the Woodward Professor
RWWchair@sfu.edu

HOW YOU CAN HELP MAKE THIS CONFERENCE A SUCCESS
To assist in grant-writing for this event, it would be
beneficial to demonstrate as soon as possible that we
will attract over 200 attendees. If you are simply
interested in attending the conference—even if you do
not intend to deliver a paper, and even if you
ultimately decide not to attend—PLEASE REPLY
IMMEDIATELY TO THIS E-MAIL by cutting and pasting the
following text (adding your name and affiliation):

Yes! I hope to attend the TransSomatechnics
Conference
Name:
Institutional Affiliation (if any):

And sending it in a message addressed to
Andrew Wickerson, Assistant to the Woodward Professor:
RWWchair@sfu.edu
(Note: Please do not reply to listserv or forwarding
addresses!)

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
In the next few weeks we will circulate further
information about keynote speakers, the venue,
available accommodations, registration costs,
transportation options, ancillary events, etc.

____________
Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair
Women's Studies Department
Simon Fraser University
8888 University Drive
Burnaby, BC V5T 1S6 Canada
Phone: (778) 782-4023
Email: RWWchair@sfu.ca

Incompatibility

2007-09-12T20:57:00.001-04:00

Relax -- This post has nothing to do with anyone's relationships, though I'm sure we'll reach that point soon. It has to do with browsers. It has come to our attention that DC Queer Studies does not read well in Safari. How do we know this? One of our younger members was having such a difficult time reading the blog that she was frantically preparing to consult an eye-care professional, which is not an easy thing to do when you've got a brand new job in a brand new city. But still, if that new job requires inordinate amounts of reading and you think your eyes are going. . . .

Anyway, Safari users, who already suffer so much for being Mac users in a PC world (I know, I know -- me, too), should switch to Firefox for a much better reading experience. Poor things -- You've been trying to read text against the background of those lovely bricks my assistant put down! If you switch to Firefox, there will be pretty white boxes for the text, and you'll realize your eyes are working just fine.

DC Queers is opposed to tyranny of every shape and size, but this is one battle we can't win today. Switch to Firefox, and we promise that the visual pleasures of this text will be significantly enhanced.

Blog Makeover!

2007-09-06T21:02:00.001-04:00

Thanks to our blog wizard, dcqueers has a new look and the beginnings of a links list. Let us know what you think. Send suggestions for more links -- or just go ahead and add some if you've signed on as a designer. We'll continue to work on this next week, so please weigh in. We'll get the syllabus archive up next week, too.

All hail the blog wizard -- blog designer extraordinaire.

A follow-up question on course names

2007-08-31T14:22:00.000-04:00

I meant to ask y'all what you thought about this last week, but I got distracted by the tart and forgot. I used to be in the habit of giving my queer/LGBT courses closet names for transcript purposes; for instance, I had an LGBT lit course whose official registrar name was "Special Topics in Literary Studies," even though the course name and number were reserved specifically for my class. This was because I'd heard that sometimes students who wanted to take such classes shied away from having "queer" on their transcripts because they were not yet out to their parents, or in ROTC, or whatever.

In the past few years I have been teaching a series of courses with the keywords sex or sexuality (or "sexuality and gender") in their titles, but still not queer or LGBT; this is partly because I'm attracted to rubrics over identities, partly because some of them are 19th century courses and thus not LGBT anyway (though queer), and partly as a way of keeping a foot in the course-name closet. I don't know that the keywords are fooling anyone, really. A recent grad told me that at an interview with the law firm where she now works, they made a point in the interview of asking her about the two courses she took with me, which stood out on a transcript otherwise filled with international finance courses. On the other hand, she did feel safe taking those classes even though she's not out to her father yet.

I'm not concerned about renaming the courses I already offer: the names are general enough to give me flexibility and specific enough to accurately advertise the courses--though I do occasionally get students in "Sexuality in US Lit., 1790-1900," who seem dismayed to learn that we will be discussing sexualities other than hetero-. However, I am currently working up a lesbian literature course and a queer film course, and I really just want to call them "Lesbian Literaure" and "Queer Film." I still worry about shutting students out, but I wonder whether that's really enough of a concern these days to merit collusion with institutionalized desires for closetedness. What do you all think?

FYI, back when I first taught "Special Topics," I asked the students whether they thought I should uncloset the course name. The straight students all said absolutely yes. The queer students, with one exception, said no.

Consortial Desires: Queer Syllabi Recap

2007-08-24T12:29:00.000-04:00

Consortial Desires: Queer Syllabi recap

Last night, we unanimously decided that Dana’s “consortial desires” were an amazing way to describe some of the work we’re doing here in dcqueerstudies. After eating the most delicious food—the tapas selections were so good they were off the hook, and there was much speculation on how we’d ever top-ah selves (get it? get it?)—we discussed announcements and our goals for the coming year.

Announcements:

From Dana: the MLA’s GLBT caucus is seeking nominations for MLA-ish colleagues who deserve recognition for their activism in academic arenas around GLBT issues. Examples might include working for domestic partnership, non-discrimination clauses, or in Dana’s words “all the things that make our lives easier.” Despite the many folks who do this, there’s a paucity of nominations each year. If you know of someone who fits the bill, contact Dana or another MLA GLBT caucus member in the group.
From Madhavi: Lee Edelman will be giving a talk at American University on November 9^th, 2007. Stay tuned for more information.
From Marilee: do we want to formalize DC queerstudies? If so, how?

This sparked a lively discussion that identified a number of perks and dangers from such solidification. Perks included the ability to alert UG students across the consortium of LGBT course offerings (particularly those students at institutions that don’t offer LGBT studies as an official major or minor); the ability to track the number of students we’re sending over to Marilee and U-MD, which will help them lobby for more awesome hires like Christina; and the ability to make similar arguments at our institutions for an LGBT major or minor. Downsides included a rather nasty moment when we realized that the consortium was originally designed to foster militarized knowledge (I’m not sure what this exactly means but the consortium website included a lot of references to the army). Also, Patrick and Ricardo also noted that the availability of LGBT courses across the consortium may work against our individual institutions offering majors and minors. Regardless of how we solidify our group, we agreed to keep our informal setup, or in Dana’s words, we’ll continue to just “drink and read.”

Four points emerged from this discussion. We should:

1. generate a contact list;

2. create a blog;

3. post our course offerings on the blog;

4. host a spring conference of works-in-progress.

We’re already up and running online, thanks to Katie. Our blog: http://dcqueers.blogspot.com/

Syllabi Discussion

Patrick kicked off the discussion by noting the prevalence of Foucault’s History of Sexuality: Volume One on most of our syllabi (and the fact that most of us start with this text). What is the place of Foucault in our courses? To what extent does this bias shape the questions asked or the methodologies explored in the course? As Madhavi noted, starting with Foucault raises distinct challenges for those of us working in early periods. Foucault, and Vol. 1 in particular, is just a little too neat (compared to a text like Gender Trouble, for example). This raised a question we’d return to throughout the discussion: what’s queer about these courses? Is it content or process? Shouldn’t we be resisting a LBGT canon and resisting tidy pedagogical strategies? Does starting with Foucault Vol 1 enable us to do either of these goals?

Almost all of us agreed that Foucault’s Vol. 1 is a classroom sinker, although Bill and I noted that the text (and its inability to deal effectively with race or gender) works well if you teach it as a symptom rather than a strategy. Siobhan noted that it also helps to historicize Foucault, reading Vol. 1 against Marcuse and alongside of alternative models, like Lorde or D’Emilio. Bob suggested that Foucault’s power/knowledge lectures and the lectures on abnormality are much easier to teach, especially to undergraduates.

Not surprisingly, we moved from Foucault to Butler. If Foucault’s too neat, then Butler’s too unruly. What is the role of Butler in a queer theory course, especially at the undergraduate level? Dana expressed some reservations about the role of Butler on undergraduate syllabi, specifically Gender Trouble. It takes too long to “do” properly; a gloss seems ineffective; and leaving it off the syllabus just seems plain wrong. (The same is pretty much true of Sedgwick.) Ricardo and Bob questioned Dana about this formulation; what does it mean to “do” a text properly? Shouldn’t we be preserving such difficult messiness? Part of the challenge of Butler, however, is the way in which “performativity,” once unleashed, takes over a course. As Ricardo noted, in some ways, it’s a show-stopper.

Some strategies for dealing with this included Siobhan’s approach, which is to teach Gender Trouble as an example of ideas in formation. That is, it is an example of queer process, rather than queer content: teach the moments where the argument doubles back or struggles for words. This works well for grad classes. Bob and Ricardo suggested using Bodies that Matter and Undoing Gender in undergrad classes, since both reflect simplified versions of Gender Trouble.

This brought us back to the tension between queer process and queer content. Shouldn’t we be embracing the messiness of a text like Gender Trouble rather than simplified, bite-sized chunks of theory? In many ways, Marilee’s “Queer Theory in the last 15 minutes” solves these problems, alleviating a need for a “canon” and empowering students to participate in current debates in the field. Katie observed that this struggle is part of the challenges of queer theory, as it emerges as discipline within particular institutions. Bob queried if the anti-disciplinary position was content or process, i.e. was our goal liberation pedagogy, a la Friere?

This led us to a fruitful discussion of assignments. If our goal is to foster a queer process, what kinds of assignments enable that to happen? Siobhan noted that her graduate students loved an assignment that asked them to analyze any academic journal (other than GLQ) to see the impact of queer theory in the past three years. This had two pedagogical goals: 1. mapping where queer conversations are happening, and 2. training future academics in various professional genres. Queer process is notoriously difficult to foster, particularly if graduate students are in the course solely to get another “theory” notch on their belt. Katie agreed that students had particular difficulties connecting queer theory with contents (like science) that weren’t overtly related to queer topics.

This emphasis on student learning shifted the discussion to more practical concerns. Madhavi shared her deep discomfort with Marilee’s, Bill’s, and Kandice’s open-ended syllabus. Is it possible for a queer theory course to be too messy? What is the role of student choice in syllabus formation?

(At this moment, we were all blown away by Patrick’s apple tart. We indulged in a group fantasy about a sexy bake-off between Patrick and Kevin. In the end, we decided that Patrick is the queen of tarts and Kevin is the queen of cakes. And I hereby proclaim myself the despotic king of croquettes.)

We resumed discussion, querying: if Foucault starts all of our courses, how do they end? A number of folks utilize the last few weeks of the semester to focus on student projects. This seems to work rather well, though it does shorten the semester dramatically (putting even more pressure on the selection of texts used in the course). Katie suggested that there needs to be space for students’ intellectual pleasure. One way to do this—and to deal with critics like Sedgewick without actually having to teach them—is to employ a “footnote” assignment. Patrick, Christina, and Katie have had success asking students to trace a footnote and report on their “discovery” of critical conversations. Madhavi takes a different approach, choosing to scare the metaphorical pants off of her students by teaching Gallop’s A Feminist Accused of Sexual Harassment. (We had a brief discussion here of whether or not Madhavi, referencing a shitty classroom space, could pull off the following Sarah Silverman ‘riff on the first day of class: ”when god gives you aids, make lemon-aids.”) Many noted that Bob’s syllabus, with its opening quote about fucking the future, makes a similar surprising move.

Whereas Katie and Patrick use pleasure, Madhavi uses fear, and Bob uses surprise, Christina admitted to using subterfuge in the classroom. She uses a masterful strategy for dealing with divergent student populations in the classroom, specifically when teaching theory-heads and activists. She alternates weekly readings between historiography (Foucault, Scott, etc.) and lesbian liberation texts. Students learn to put theory and practice together across the semester, thereby fostering a contrived (but pleasurable) eureka moment at the end of the semester: theory and practice do inform each other! This strategy, however, presents some problems for those of us working in earlier periods and led to a brief discussion about students’ inability to grapple with historical difference. Student conceptions of “way back in the day… when women weren’t equal…” seems ever expansive, describing everything from thirty years ago to five hundred years ago. Christina noted that students also seem to rely too much on irony in order to distance themselves from political activism. Teaching the deathly earnest liberation texts (and using words like lesbian! And cervix!) enables her to argue for the usefulness of certain kinds of stable identity formations in order to affect a political goal. Students struggle with this. We had a brief side discussion about whether or not irony was sexualized and gendered: is it anti-gay male to be anti-irony?

We returned to the notion of queer process. Much of this results from that which can’t be planned, i.e. the surprising encounters between teachers and students. Ricardo suggested that this element of surprise speaks volumes about our student populations. What’s possible in a classroom in UCLA is not the same as what’s possible in a classroom in Georgetown. For example, issues of moral urgency sometimes shut down discussion in ways that are not readily apparent. Two useful anecdotes illuminate this issue:

1. Siobhan taught Stone Butch Blues and the entire class read the sex scene with Annie as a rape scene. She hypothesized that this resulted from a deep anxiety with the notion that a heterosexual woman could like having sex with a woman without “knowing” it. The reading of “rape” gave the discussion a moral urgency that made it virtually impossible for any other reading to be voiced.

2. Dana taught a LGBT theory course and an explicit debate between two gay male students about safe-sex practices emerged. Towards the end of the class, Dana noticed a visiting student glancing at the cross in the classroom (present in all of Georgetown’s classrooms). At the end of class, the student asked Dana if the course would be cancelled once the administration learned of the discussion. This fear of certain kinds of intimacy in the classroom revealed both a utopic pedagogical moment and acknowledgement that such intimacy might, to quote Bob’s syllabus, fuck the future. This type of moral urgency was difficult to navigate.

Dana suggested employing the following strategy when facing the first issue: ask students why it is difficult to talk about a certain issue. Once these issues are raised without implicating anyone directly (“I think I’m a woman who likes having sex with women but doesn’t know it!”), the class can focus on intellectual questions. The second issue is harder. (As a useful aside, Christina suggested that if the issue involves NAMBLA, allow 5 minutes of class time, but provide a forum for those wishing to discuss the issue at length and in great detail.) The group seemed to have various opinions about the relationship between sexual intimacy (and explicit discussions of sex) and academic forums. Using Dana’s teaching example, Bob queried, when are explicit discussions of sex permissible and when are they punishable? (Lee Edelman was cited as an example of permissible frankness… i.e., not personal in nature). For example, Bob’s editing a collection of essays with a colleague. During this process, they shared a number of frank, sexy, and intellectual discussions about their sex lives over email, none of which will make it into the book. I expressed real discomfort with certain moments of first-person sexual accounts in academic prose. To me, such declarations seem “cringe-worthy.” A lively discussion emerged, in which I think Madhavi accused me of having mother issues with my old dissertation advisor (probably true) and Katie wondered if I was expressing a generational preference for coolness (also probably true). Bill noted that “cringing” was a fascinating way of managing both identification with and mastery over anxiety about truths that make one vulnerable. Dana wondered if it was merely a question of writing well, i.e. performing such a moment stylishly and with panache. In the end, we all agree that such vulnerability can be magical in the classroom, particularly when students and teachers are equally vulnerable and working together on new intellectual discoveries.

We ended with a brief discussion of reading suggestions for the fall semester:

SAQ special issue on Sedgewick, titled After Sex
J. Doyle’s Sex Objects
R. Reid-Phar’s Once You Go Black
E. Povinelli’s Empire of Love

At this point, the many glasses of wine I drank made me super sleepy and I lost focus of what we decided… Apologies, and stay tuned!

Thanks for Setting this up, Katie

2007-08-24T11:10:00.000-04:00

Katie & all -- This space will prove to be very useful for exchanging information, essays, syllabi, and more.

And I just want to say how much I enjoy this group and also to thank you for sharing your syllabi. This semester I'm teaching a grad seminar, Poetry.Media.Dickinson & Co., as well as one of those large lectures, Introduction to Literature by Women, and I am keenly interesting in substantively queering parts of each course. Your rich ideas re: course design are inspiring--arigato, as our Japanese friends would say (with a bow, I might add).

I would have never predicted that I would end up writing a cultural biography. If any of you has a favorite biographical work that's well designed and intellectually rewarding, would you mind sending me a suggestion?

See you in September.

Peace,
mn

Syllabus sharing

2007-08-23T20:36:00.000-04:00

23 August -- We met together to discuss a range of syllabi.