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Thurs. 1/27

It was lovely to see everyone in person on Tuesday! And thanks for such a great class discussion! We covered a lot of ground, from the truthiness of Sedgwick’s axioms to her idea of “the closet” and current conceptions of coming out, to David’s struggle with coming out to himself and the subsequent impacts that has on the settings and characters around him in the first part of Giovanni’s Room. For today’s work, I’d like us to work on one of the exercises we didn’t have time for in class, and to address some of the themes of taboo and transgression we began to discuss, now that you have finished the second half of Baldwin’s novel.For the prompts below, please respond

Part I: The 1950s, Queer Folks, and Medical Rhetoric

As we began discussing the first part of Giovanni’s Room, the word “shame” came up in our conversation a few times. David clearly is struggling to accept a major part of himself, and that continues throughout the second half of the book as he explores his relationship with Giovanni further. On Tuesday, I handed out a speech from 1957 given by Dr. Albert Ellis, a medical doctor and straight “ally” arguing for the need for greater tolerance and acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community. His argument is posed by laying out steps for how queer folks can make themselves more acceptable to straight folks. (…Remember, this was the ’50s…) The speech features some of the medical rhetoric very common to the period in discussions of the LGBTQ+ community. (For more on some of the harmful ways that type of rhetoric impacted queer folks throughout their lives, take a look at Queer Literacies by my dissertation advisor, Mark McBeth. It’s a sad read at times, but so, so excellent.) After reading reading through Ellis’s speech, I’m wondering where you can see connections between the that diagnostic rhetoric and the recurring elements of shame seen in Giovanni’s Room? How does shame get tangled up in the book with David trying to “fix” himself? Conversely, is there another healing going on in the book, counter to this institutionalized version alluded to in Ellis’s speech?

*If you don’t have the hard copy of the speech from our handout, here is the PDF.*

Part II: Taboo and Transgression Throughout the Novel

We talked a lot about transgression and taboo when we discussed Foucault, and those words came up again in our reading of Sedgwick. Where do we see those ideas popping up in Baldwin’s text, particularly in the second half of the book? How do they operate as major themes in the novel? As a result, how can we start to read Baldwin through the lens of Foucault’s theories of sexual production and repression?

We’ll be discussing Judith Butler next week, with Dana giving us our first theory presentation on Tuesday. Butler focuses on embodiment and conceptions of gender and sex in society. If you have any questions or need any help understanding the readings, feel free to see me during my office hours or to schedule a meeting with me. I’m happy to help! 🙂

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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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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.