Notes Towards Week 1 (Aug. 30): Sailing our Sylla-ship

Howard Hoffman, on building the ark....

I. Kaye: welcome! (starting @ 5 after....)
to Precarious, Performative, Playful, Potential...Perspectives on Sex and Gender
this is the core course in the bi-co Gender Studies Program,
an insistently interdisciplinary class, drawing on
humanities, science, social science, and the intersections among those fields;
you needn't be a concentrator to take the course, but it is aimed @ juniors,
and we do expect everyone here to have already taken
@ least 1 course in gender or sexuality
(chance to leave now...).

let's get rolling....
form a wagon wheel (to "roll" after every third question):
1) if you were an imaginary (literary, filmic, gaming) character, who would you be? (humanities)

2) if you were a life form other than human, what might it be? (science)

3) if you were a (non-organic) structure, what might that be? (social science)

-----

4) what is your name and preferred pronoun?
(tell each other all the pronouns you’ve ever heard of )

5) what is year and your major/area of interest?
how much (and how?) does it intersect w/ gender and sexuality studies?

6) what work (classes, activism, projects?) have you already done in this arena?
what work might you like to do?
____

7) what questions do you bring to this course?

8) what particular issues would you like to address in this class?

9) what areas of the world would you like to focus on?
____
some pedagogical questions:

10) what ideas do you have, about how we might go about having these conversations?

11) is there anything that you are afraid to talk about/worried about our talking about?

12) what get-acquainted question should we have asked, but didn't?

re-order as a single circle:
write down a sentence or two--what have you just learned
that would be useful for the class as a whole to know?

read this aloud...


 
Howard Hoffman on the road less traveled..

III. Anne: our evolving syllabus is on-line @
/exchange/courses/pppp/f11
you should bookmark this, and check it in preparation for every class;
it may change as the semester goes on, so be sure to "re-fresh" each time you return.
I'm going to take you now a # of other pages;
all are available from the top of this course home page.

We've ordered five books (for you to buy new or used or to rent):

• Riki Wilchins' Queer Theory, Gender Theory,
• Eli Clare's Exile and Pride,
• Joan Roughgarden's Evolution's Rainbow (also available free on-line through ebrary),
• Paul Farmer's Pathologies of Power, and
• Chris Cleave's Little Bee.

There are also quite-a-few essays available in a password-protected file on-line
(need user name and password....); you may print these out, or bring them
to class on your computer or Kindle; but be sure to come to class w/ the text.

By Sunday evening each week,
Kaye and I are asking you to post a comment in our on-line class forum @
/exchange/courses/PPPP/f11/conversation
reflecting on our discussion from the week before,
anticipating the conversation upcoming, or calling our
attention to related materials/issues you encounter elsewhere.

This is more deliberate than speaking in class, less formal than written work:
an excellent place for showcasing revisionary thinking.
Learning to be a public intellectual, thinking out loud:
it's on the internet, not a closed space: readable-by-the-world.

First assignment, before our next meeting,
is to go to this web forum, introduce yourself
(as Kaye and I have already done),
and reflect a little on the syllabus and first class;
to do this, you need to follow these instructions for weekly postings.

This informal writing is background/preparation/warm-up
for your 4 (slightly more) “formal” writing assignments:
you will create three 4-pp web events,
and a final 12-pp. project, also posted (and responded to) on-line.

We will have two writing groups; Kaye will advise one,
me the other for the first two papers, then we'll switch;
you need to meet once w/ each of us--
once before the first paper, once before the final one
(we're happy to meet to talk about papers # 2 & 3 also).

What is (probably) distinct about our course is our form of evaluation:
we will not assign grades to individual assignments;
rather, all your papers and weekly postings
will be automatically collected in an on-line portfolio,
which we'll ask you to review and
evaluate yourself, @ the end of the semester.

The checklist for that evaluation, and our expectations, are all on-line
(this is not mysterious: be present in class and conferences,
contribute in-person and on-line, hand your papers in on time,
be responsive to instruction...).

All this information is available in our "talking notes,"
also accessible from the top of the course home page.

Talking about accomodations: precarity of us all
(addressed through--but not only through--Access Services).

* Questions about any of this course-keeping??

* Sign up sheet: name, bi-co e-mail address, major, year,
G&S courses you have taken, or are currently taking….

IV. Anne (continuing, conceptually....)
We have an overfull "syllaship," with a long history;
we first co-taught this course in '97, again in '98,
to a complaint about listening to parents argue…

our goal, in part, is to unsettle you, show you how unsettled/
unsettling are many of the questions in gender and sexuality studies;
and yet also give you a way to move forward admit those complexities,
to act/be activists...

A lot has changed since we first taught together 12 years ago;
then we both had small children @ home; now they have all left us:
Kaye raised 3 boys, I raised 3 girls and a boy, and just! became a grandmother.

I ran the BMC Feminist and Gender Studies Program for a decade,
and shepherded the name change to Gender and Sexuality,
this reflected the evolution in the field, and its shift in emphasis
(but was very controversial--and so I stepped aside...)
Kaye is now directing the HC Gender and Sexuality Program.

Our individual, academic, activist interests
have also grown and diverged in the past decade:
Kaye's have headed into public health, the
Center for Global Citizenship, Quaker Studies and praxis;
I have been led to explore the role of a public intellectual,
particularly web-based work that builds bridges
between science and culture, between academia and the world "outside" it.
12 years ago our students might have heard their parents arguing;
you might find yourselves wondering now if we are in the same room/universe!

Here's the overall arc of the course:
we've scripted a prologue, an epilogue, & 3 acts in-between;
our keynotes are precarity, performativity, playfulness, potentiality, perspectivity.
our title (all these p's) is an index to the
overfulness and undecidability, spilling overness of the course ....

The first two terms come from Judith Butler's campus-wide lecture series,
scheduled for 7 p.m. on 3 Mondays: Nov. 7, 14, 21;
"play" and "potential" were Kaye's additions
(to lighten things up, and aim towards the future);
"perspectives" has always been part of the title...

Judy Butler is a philosopher and professor of rhetoric and comp lit @ Berkeley,
who has profoundly shaped the fields of feminist and queer theory; her talks are campus-wide.

Our second visitor this semester will be Karen Barad, who was trained in theoretical particle physics,
is a professor feminist studies, philosophy and history of consciousness @ UCSanta Cruz,
and combines quantum theory and social justice work in some really remarkable ways;
she will be visiting our class, to give a public lecture and then talk w/ us, on Tues, Nov. 8.
We took inspiration for this course from these upcoming lectures.

The prologue for the course is very full--and wide:
we're going to start this evening w/ some selections from
Riki Wilchin's "instant primer" on Queer Theory, Gender Theory;
continue next Tuesday night w/ the remainder of her book, as a review and touchstone,
a NYTimes Magazine article about the "intractable connundrum" facing gay evangelicals,
and 20 pp. from Karen Barad's book on
Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning

Act I (Anne): interdisciplinary/intra-action/disability (Kristin Lindgren; mental health; varieties of writing)
Act II (Kaye): dig back into gender and sexuality, especially biology
(assuming you all bring soc sci and humanities perspectives/preparation)
Act III (Anne&Kaye): activism
Epilogue (you all): performances --> interactive theater of the oppressed

we'll bring an abundance of food this week and next;
after that--modeling the "potluck" that is our intellectual work together,
we'll ask you to take turns supplying something
to eat during our mid-class break each week

* Questions about any of this conceptualizing??

V. Kaye: break for eating and reading..
AAC&U. "Beyond Limits: Women's Progress in Higher Education--and the World: 1977-2011,"
and the first three chapters of Riki Wilchins' Queer Theory, Gender Theory....

look first @ the time line:
what is familiar? what surprised you here?
what are you learning that's new?
where would you like the time to go?
what developments would you hope to see by 2020?

then read the first 3 chapters of Wilchins' text:
highlight a short passage you want to share w/ the class--
something you find compelling/challenging/controversial, or...?

VI.  re-gather to discuss both

V. Discussion continues in the course forum area....