Intro to Queer Studies
Queerness can never define an identity; it can only ever disturb one” –Lee Edelman, No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive (2004:17).
Originally a term for the odd, strange, or peculiar; later, a homophobia slur, the word queer today signals defiant resistance to heterosexism and oppression based on social norms of gender and sexuality. As an interdiscipline, Queer Studies focuses not only on LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans) lives and communities, but more broadly on the social production and regulation of sexuality and gender. It seeks intersectional, social-constructionist, and transnational understandings of sexual and sexualized embodiments, desires, identities, communities, and cultures both within the U.S. and beyond (Wesleyan University).
Queer Studies is a relatively new field, emerging in the 1990s. It draws upon concepts and methods from anthropology, history, geography, psychology, sociology, literature, philosophy, political theory, biology, art, and art history, religious studies, science and technology studies, performance studies, and visual studies. Queer Studies focuses on the study of how norms are produced and come to be taken for granted, and, conversely how they are destabilized either through their own internal contradictions or through the interventions of activists seeking social justice. Thus the field shares intellectual affinities with the interdisciplinary fields of women's studies, gender studies, ethnic studies, critical legal studies, and cultural studies. Interdisciplinary insights from area studies, religious studies, science and technology studies, and visual studies also enrich this field of study (University of California, Irvine).
Overview
Session #3: Self-Feedback Workshop
Session #1: Intro to Queer Studies
FFW (5 min; 10 sentences): What is your personal definition of gender? What is your personal definition of sexuality?
Agenda
Rosie Jayde Uyola, Gender: How We Get Free
Concept/Writing and Image Exercise (adapted)
List 15 things you see (anything that stands out to you during entire video)
FFW (5 min): what do you think is missing from this vision of the concept? If you could make three changes to the video to bring it more in line with your vision of the concept, what would they be?
Draw a representation of the concept, take a photo of it for your portfolio.
FFW (10 min): write a short (150 word) explanation of what changes / additions you made to your personal definition of gender after watching this video. Explain why.
Robin Dembroff, Why Be Nonbinary? (p. 136 - p. 142)
Read aloud (entire group, one paragraph at a time)
Underline words / phrases that stand out to you about gender
Circle words / phrases that stand out to you about sexuality
Writing in the Zones (adapted)
Analysis/Close Reading: Pick a passage that’s important to the way you understand or experience the text. Which words or phrases are most central to the meaning and/or beauty of this passage? Why is this passage important to the text as a whole?
Making connections: What texts, voices, memories, experiences come to mind as you read and write?
Bracket & Share
Session #2: Peer Feedback Workshop
Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process helps to shape constructive dialogues about works-in progress. Using a series of steps guided by a facilitator, it affords both the maker and a group of responders a chance to ask questions, share reactions, and voice opinions with the goal of building a stronger work of art.
The Process offers artists valuable information and engages professional peers, audiences, and community members in the art-making process. Beyond its application in the arts, the Process contains useful approaches for all kinds of feedback conversations at home and in varied work settings.
THE ROLES
The artist -- offers a work-in-progress for review and feels prepared to question that work in a dialogue with other people.
The responders -- committed to the artist’s intent to make excellent work -- engage in the dialogue with the artist.
The facilitator -- initiates each step, keeps the process on track, and works to help the artist and responders use the process to frame useful questions and responses.
The Critical Response Process takes place after a presentation of artistic work. Work can be short or long, large or small, and at any stage in its development.
STEPS
Statements of Meaning: Responders state what was meaningful, evocative, interesting, exciting, striking in the work they have just witnessed.
Artist as Questioner: The artist asks questions about the work. After each question, the responders answer. Responders may express opinions if they are in direct response to the question asked and do not contain suggestions for changes.
Neutral Questions: Responders ask neutral questions about the work. The artist responds. Questions are neutral when they do not have an opinion couched in them. For example, if you are discussing the lighting of a scene, “Why was it so dark?” is not a neutral question. “What ideas guided your choices about lighting?” is.
Opinion Time: Responders state opinions, subject to permission from the artist. The usual form is “I have an opinion about ______, would you like to hear it?” The artist has the option to say no.
Bracket & Share
Session #3: Self Feedback Workshop
Agenda
Process Journal / Metacognitive Writing (adapted for portfolio)
(FFW 5 min): What were your key goals for this writing assignment at the start of the L&T and did they shift as you grew familiar with a wide array of texts and Writing and Thinking exercises? If so, why, and in what ways? Would you be willing to share that with your instructor as a way of guiding their thinking?
(FFW 7 min): What themes, patterns, issues, ideas, questions about this material are you centering or emphasizing in the final assignment? What themes emerged as you worked with your instructor during 1:1 meetings? With your peers?
(FFW 7 min): What challenges or difficulties did you anticipate having with the course material, and how have your addressed these challenges?