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Thurs. 1/20

On Tuesday, I mentioned that I’d be asking you to take a look at some speeches from early LGBTQ+ rights activists, but I think I’ll set that aside for our work together next week. (I know the Sedgwick reading is a bit dense so I don’t want to assign more reading on top of that for you today.) Instead, I have a few synthesizing questions I’d like you to discuss in small groups on Moodle to build connections between Foucault and Sedgwick:

Both Foucault and Sedgwick are laying out hypotheses in their books. Foucault’s focuses on the production of sexuality in society, while Sedgwick’s focuses more specifically on the binary of homosexual vs heterosexual desire in Western history and culture. In the chapter we’ve read, Sedgwick lays out axioms or truths as a groundwork for the tests she puts to her hypothesis later in the book in the chapters we won’t be reading this semester. (I highly recommend reading at least chapter one, “Epistemology of the Closet,” if you’re interested in reading more queer theory after this class, as it’s essential – it was just a bit too long for me to assign on top of “Axioms.”) As I mentioned in some of my introductory comments, Sedgwick’s axioms seems rather simplistic on the surface, but are more complex than they seem. For our discussion board post today, I’d like you and your group to think about a particular axiom in the context of today’s views of sexuality as well as what we learned from Foucault. Do we think the axiom itself holds up? Do we think Sedgwick’s 1990 explanation of the axiom holds up, or have circumstances changed even if the axiom hasn’t? Is it still a “truth,” or do we think that’s too lofty a term for it? If you’re not sure, explain some of the questions you have or your thinking behind your lack of surety. (It’s okay not to have a definitive answer. 🙂 ) I have some guidelines for my expectations for discussion board posts here, just FYI.

Axiom #2 Group: Kayla, Kora, Charlie, Danielle

Axiom #3 Group: Michaela, Jake, Dana

Axiom #4 Group: Teryn, Izabelle, Kristi, Ryan

Axiom #5 Group: Ken, Dean, Maria

Axiom #7 Group: Maya, Cora, Ashlee

Since I’m posting this so late, your responses won’t be due until Saturday.

Remember that for Tuesday, we’ll be reading the first half of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. See you on campus in Seay 301! 🙂

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Guidelines for Presentations

For these informal presentations, you’ll choose a theorist to explore and explain to the class, helping to lead our class discussion and bring up questions we will address during our time together. The goal of these presentations is to give greater context to our theoretical readings, and to establish connections amongst the different lines of thought we’re confronting this semester. These presentations should be done collaboratively with the other person signed up for your date. Please reach out to your partner well in advance of your presentation date to plan, as collaborative assignments do take more time and it can be frustrating to work with a partner who does not communicate. (Don’t be “that person.” 🙂 )

Your presentation should…

  • Focus on one theorist from our reading list. (Sign up for one here.)
  • Establish some context for that theorist’s work
    • What are some of their major publications?
    • What ideas are they known best for or what groundbreaking work have they accomplished?
    • What are some major criticisms that have been leveled against them (if there are any)?
  • Show how they fit in with other queer theorists
    • Who else on our reading list can be connected to their work and how?
    • What ideas about queer theory have we discussed together in class that you see popping up in their work?
  • Develop about 5-7 discussion questions that we can bring up during our in-person class or as a discussion board post on Moodle focused on the theorist.
  • Develop a short bibliography of further reading by, about, or related to the theorist
  • Be around 8-10 minutes long
  • Provide some type of visual – a slideshow, a handout, an infograph, etc.
    • Feel free to include images, videos, GIFs, memes, etc. as long as you give photo credits appropriately
  • Use MLA citations for all sources (scholarly sources and credible websites only, please)

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Thurs. 1/13

Thanks for a wonderful first class on Tuesday, everyone! Hopefully you’ve all received your invitation to a shared Google Drive folder for your assignments this semester, and you’ve all been able to access our readings on Perusall. If you’ve had any trouble, please reach out and let me know.

Since we’re still getting settled, I have just a couple questions for you to respond to independently for today. In a document in your Google Drive folder for the class labeled with today’s date, reflect on these questions in 2-3 pages or so. (Please note: I am not a stickler for word counts or page counts. I’m just offering that as a rough suggestion. 🙂 ) This should be completed by Friday at 11pm. (I’m giving you some extra time since I’m posting this so last-minute. Normally, our Thursday asynchronous work will be due by 11pm on Thursdays as we agreed upon during our first class.)

  1. Revisit your in-class writing from Tuesday. After completing the readings from McCann and Monaghan and Berlant and Warner for today, how have your definitions of “queering” and “theory” changed? What new questions come up for you about these key terms after reading through Berlant and Warner’s piece in particular, given how they grapple with queer theory’s inability to be defined?
  2. McCann and Monaghan ask some good questions at the end of their chapter that I’d like you to respond to: How does queer ‘theory’ compare to queer ‘politics’ and ‘identity’? Do these uses involve different ideas of what queer means, or do they share common goals?” These questions address ideas we’ll return to throughout the semester, and I’m interested to hear your thoughts now, at the start of the semester, after just starting to be introduced to the idea of queer theory.

We’ll jump in feet first next week with some theoretical readings from Michel Foucault for Tuesday (1976) and Eve Sedgwick (1990) for Thursday, both of whom are a little dense but extremely interesting in their discussions of repression, power, love, and sexuality. When you start reading, start thinking about the way the idea of “normalcy” starts popping up in their writing; we’ll be returning to that idea over and over this semester in different ways.