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tangled community, entangled communities: lesbians and always more

Tuesdays 4:00pm - 6:30pm at KEY 0125
WMST 494 / LGBT 494, Spring 2015 UMD Lesbian Communities and Difference
>>>SECTION ONE: EVERYTHING CHANGES AND THE TIMES ARE MULTIPLE!
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday
Tuesday

26 January Welcome to Our Course!

3 February The material culture/s of gendered timelines
10 February Gay Propaganda
17 February Times and Places: what they say to each other

>>>SECTION TWO: ACCELERATING QUEERNESS

Tuesday 24 February Sisterhoods Table of Parts <ENSZER VISITS>
Tuesday 3 March Using one book to look at others: making meanings

WORKSHOP #1: A Queer Method

We explore context, method, and queering as a practice for understanding newly. You will identify a
theme from one of two books, a theme that captures your imagination, and then interconnect it with
methods from the other book. You will then share in either poster or written analysis why these
concerns you raise matter for lesbians in various communities. These mind-bending questions are
ones to explore at any developing moment in your understanding of lesbian and queer worlds. Good
faith work to challenge your thinking and to share with and learn from others is the point here. Chose
EITHER to analyze Gessens book through the analysis (eyes, lens, perspective, tools) of Paolettis
Pink & Blue with its multi-linear histories and causes; OR to analyze Paolettis book through the
analysis (eyes, lens, perspective, tools) of Gessens Gay Propagandas interviews of people trying to
figure out how to deal with changing legal and social systems. NOTICE that you will need to do some
additional research. Always make a point of connecting projects to class readings and activities.
Tuesday 10 March
In the first part of class we will share our work poster session style: divide in two groups, and all move
around talking to each other about work during the class time. After our break we will have a
conversation about what we learned, noticed, thought about, and draw from class presentations. Make
notes during the first part so you can run the discussion yourselves during the second part.

Everything must be in final finished state on Tuesday to display, but you are allowed to revise one
more time before turning things in electronically by Friday.
Send to katiekin@gmail.com , use filename yrlastname 494 paper1 or poster1. Please number pics
if more than one. Use this subject header too: yrlastname 494 workshop1

TAVIA NYONGO, "Deep Time, Dark Time: Kara Walkers Anarchaeology"

> Thursday, March 12, 2015; 5pm at Francis Scott Key Hall 0106
> Friday, March 13, 2015 Colloquium with Tavia Nyongo; 12:30pm-2pm at Taliaferro Hall 2110
Tuesday 17 March SPRING BREAK
>>>SECTION THREE: QUEER KINSHIPS
Tuesday 24 March Exiles and Globalizations
Tuesday 31 March Afterglows? <ENSZER VISITS AGAIN>
MIRANDA JOSEPH, "Investing in the Cruel Entrepreneurial University"
> Wednesday, April 1, 2015; 5pm at Marie Mount Hall 1400

2
Tuesday 7 April Knowing Otherwise

WORKSHOP #2: Queer Speculations & Lesbian Kin

This years LGBT lecture series invites you to join discussions about the speculation about queer
bodies, objects, feelings, pasts, futures, utopias, dystopias, and transformations. You will explore
class readings and LGBT lecture series presentations together carefully, chose which text to analyze
with the tools from particular lectures and discussion, and share in either poster or written analysis
why it matters for lesbians in various communities. Our mind-bending questions are ones to explore
at any developing moment in your understanding of lesbian and queer worlds. Good faith work to
challenge your thinking and to share with and learn from others is the point here. Choose EITHER a
chapter of Rodrguez book, OR an article you choose from either Transgender Studies Quarterly OR
Sinister Wisdom at any point in their publication history. Whichever text you choose, you will explicitly
discuss HOW YOU USE the tools, perspective, methods, lens, ideas you glean from the presentation or
lecture of one of the two people presenting as part of the LGBT Series in March, before our workshop
convenes. You will attend at least one of these events in order to note the concerns, themes,
understandings, and approaches of EITHER Tavia Nyongo (two possible events to go to) OR Miranda
Joseph. (If for any reason you cannot attend one of these events, you will need to talk to Katie about
the extra work required to substitute one of the author visits to our class.)
Tuesday 14 April
In the first part of class we will share our work poster session style: divide in two groups, and all move
around talking to each other about work during the class time. After our break we will have a
conversation about what we learned, noticed, thought about, and draw from class presentations. Make
notes during the first part so you can run the discussion yourselves during the second part.

Everything must be in final finished state on Tuesday to display, but you are allowed to revise one
more time before turning things in electronically by Friday.
Send to katiekin@gmail.com , use filename yrlastname 494 paper1 or poster1. Please number pics
if more than one. Use this subject header too: yrlastname 494 workshop1

>>>SECTION FOUR: POLITICS OF ATTACHMENT

DC Queer Studies Symposium

Friday, April 17, 2015 ALL DAY
Tawes Hall, University of Maryland
RAMZI FAWAZ, Stepford Wives and Female Men: The Radical Differences of Female
Replicants"
SHANT PARADIGM SMALLS, Superheroes, Queerness, and Anti-Blackness: Storm, Django,
and Michael Brown
Plenary: Friday, April 17, 2015; 3-4:30pm at Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
JUANA MARA RODRGUEZ, "Feeling Queerly, Knowing Otherwise"
Keynote: Friday, April 17, 2015: 5pm at Ulrich Recital Hall, Tawes Hall
Masha Gessen's Maya Brin Residency will take place from April 16-25 at UMD, with public
events and a conference. The Maya Brin Residency brings leading Russian scholars, artists, or cultural
figures to UMD.
>Monday 4/20: 4:00 pm McKeldin Library: book talk
>Wednesday, 4/22: Public Lecture (ULRICH RECITAL HALL)
>Friday, 4/24: Conference on Freedom of Speech in Russia.

Tuesday 21 April Not today, not tomorrow

Tuesday 28 April Multiplicitous Self
Tuesday 5 May Sexuality on the Move
Tuesday 12 May GATHERING: THE LAST DAY

DUE: LEARNING ANALYSIS AND LOGBOOK 3

On our last day we will share with each other our thoughts on how what we know has changed during
our time together.

tangled community, entangled communities: lesbians and always more

Tuesdays 4:00pm - 6:30pm at KEY 0125
WMST 494 / LGBT 494, Spring 2015 UMD Lesbian Communities and Difference
Credit only granted for: LGBT494 or WMST494
Prerequisite: 1 course in WMST. Recommended: WMST200 or WMST250
Class Website at: http://lezcom15.blogspot.com
===
course description for this terms version of the class
The term lesbian community might well mean something different in each decade since the 1970s
when gay women began to use the term to describe themselves and feminism had to stop dyke
baiting practices. Recently at UMD the LGBT Studies program became folded into our WMST
department and there is talk about changing both names, but to what? And this last year a new
scholarly journal began its first volume, named TSQ or Transgender Studies Quarterly. Transnational
politics, legalities, travel, and scholarship under various names and umbrella terms have their own
histories and timelines, something very unevenly obvious in and to the US. So in 2015 there are many
questions to explore about lesbian communities. How do they/we name them/ourselves? What
communities do we discover to be entangled here, how does naming matter, what intersectionalities
should we center or network, what national and transnational ranges are our proper contexts for
investigation? Are communities something to work for or against and why? Do communities protect or
police or include or exclude those who might want to work together with in solidarity today?
===
Weekly outline of class assignments & activities
Reading is very tricky in this class! You must read ahead constantly in order to begin work on the
assignments at the right time. We have portions assigned on particular days to discuss, but often this
is properly a REREADING, as you sometimes you should have read that a first time already. Notice
that some days you have a choice of several readings to focus upon, say, 3 chapters out of 5 in a
section of one book. This is to give us all the chance to hear about readings we may not have time to
do ourselves by that point. That means you need to be able to tell others about the readings, making
note taking and preparation even more important. However, by the end of class you should have read
the entirety of each of our books. So you can see that keeping up with the reading, discussed on the
day on which it is named, is essential, as is attendance on both days! And that doing all this carefully
will make your graded assignments so very much easier!
Notice that you are assigned web research as well as readings. Put as much time into this as you do
for reading and take it quite as seriously. Web reading and analysis is as important today as book
reading is and should be done as carefully and with as much thought, not as a easy substitute for
harder work: it IS the harder work! Similarly, everyone should spend time in McKeldin library, finding
on the bookshelves stuff not available on computer databases. Schedule time on campus to do
research in the library in person and to meet, face to face, with your partner or with other class
buddies. In this class we think carefully about how to do all this as well as doing it! Learn to cite your
sources, web and print, carefully and conscientiously. This means keeping good records of them all.