It’s that time of year again. Time to start seriously prepping for classes this fall. Last fall I taught Queering Theory and Feminist Pedagogies. This fall I’m teaching Queering Desire and Feminist Pedagogies. Several of the same students from queering theory will be in queering desire so I need to radically redo the syllabus. Here are some books that I am thinking of using:
1. The Promise of Happiness by Sara Ahmed
2. The Queer Child: Growing Sideways by Kathryn Bond Stockton
3. Curiouser: the queerness of children edited by Steven Bruhm and Natasha Hurley
4. Queer Ecologies edited by Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands and Bruce Erickson
5. Cruising Utopias by Jose Esteban Munoz
6. Mad for Foucault by Lynne Huffer
Will I use all of these books? At this point, I’m not sure. I do know that I want to add in many more random articles. And I also want to focus a lot (again) on blogs and blog reading. Last year students in the class suggested that we spend more time on each others’ blog entries. If I want to do that, which I do, I will need to make sure that I don’t assign lots of articles/book reading. In addition to reading each others’ blog entries, I want students to read entries from other blogs. What if I did some blog clusters (that is, a series of articles around the same issue + some non-blog background reading)? I was thinking it might be useful to start with the recent “Butler Scandal”–the scandal that erupted when Judith Butler refused the civic courage award in Berlin. Here are few sources that the students could read for this section:
a. Where Now? From Pride Scandal to Transnational Movement
b. Judith Butler Refuses Prize at Berlin CSD 2010
c. Transcript of Butler’s refusal speech
d. Celebrating Refusal
e. Angela Davis’ youtube response:
f. Interview with Judith Butler
Along with these blog sources, I might want to throw in a reading or two. Maybe an excerpt from Puar’s Terrorist Assemblages + something else? I need to spend a lot more time thinking through all of this. Good thing I have more than a month before I start.
Addendum: I posted this entry a few hours ago; since then, I found a couple more sources that I might want to use in the class. I wanted to post them here before I lost/forgot about them. All three of these sources discuss the value of new social media for queer communities/activism/theorizing/engagement:
Queer Blogger Roundtable: What’s the future?
Queer and Feminist New Media Spaces
Out in the Country by Mary Gray