Queering Scholarly Authority

ECS 6960-002/7960-002

Course Description

This group independent study takes up questions regarding progressive and mainstream assumptions about embodied authority in academia. Although the dominant convention has been to assume a one-size-fits-all approach to knowledge and authority (that is, anyone can be an expert on anything, provided that they put in the work and engage in the appropriate credentialing process), standpoint theorists, queer theorists, CRT scholars, and other “outsider” scholars have challenged the assumption that members of dominant groups can write with unproblematic authority about historically marginalized and oppressed groups. The individual scholar’s investments in the status quo, her or his embodied desires, fears, experiences of surveillance, expectations of belonging, and practices of claiming ownership, as well as his or her practices of placating, passing, or performing identity/ies, all shape both how and what a person is likely to “know.” For the most part, the argument that the possibilities of cultural and political knowledge are embodied as well as studied has not been interpreted to mean that members of dominant groups should not write or teach at all about groups to which they do not belong. It has meant, however, that such writing and teaching may be considered limited or otherwise problematic.

Queer theory troubles a range of assumptions about the coherence and naturalness that may be claimed for both subaltern and dominant identities, yet because queer theory also has been somewhat resistant to theorization addressing whiteness or other privileged positionalities, it offers us a simultaneously provocative and problematic framework for exploring the ways in which sexuality, gender, race, language, culture — as well as (dis)ability, class, race, and nationhood — are taken up or ignored in academic performances of epistemic authority. This course will examine how experience and relationships, situatedness, and structural positionality all may serve to shape assumptions about authorship and authority in social justice scholarship. Although we will start from progressive critiques of the disembodied view from nowhere/everywhere, our primary focus will be on what it can and cannot mean to claim authority from embodied and/or relational positionalities. Using queer theory as a framework, we will examine both examples of explicit embodiment in scholarly writing and theoretical arguments regarding the role of embodied authority in scholarly writing and teaching.

Required Texts:

The readings will be available on electronic reserve at the Marriott University Library or will be provided in class.

Course Requirements

Requirements for the course also include regular attendance and participation; careful readings of the assignments; short in-class activities; an identity adventure; and a final paper.

The identity adventure (see handout) will involve choosing a theme connected to embodied and/or situated identity, and then exploring new framings, juxtapositions, and possibilities for how we play with that theme in our daily lives. The intent is to shift our embodied and/or situational perspective on the readings and class discussions through a dis-organizing of some of the performance habits that shape our current sense of identity.

Class Participation

Come to class having read the articles carefully. Listen at least as much as you talk. The goal in this class is not to be authoritative but to recognize and explore the value and limitations of different approaches to scholarly writing. This means taking some risks. It is vital that students listen to one another respectfully and give one another uptake.

• Prevent disruptions by turning off and refraining from use of cell phones and beepers, and by putting away extraneous reading materials. Please do not check text messages or email during class.

• Adhere to the University of Utah code for student conduct available at:

http://www.admin.utah.edu/ppmanual/8/8-10.html

Thurs. 14 Jan.                                                 I. Introduction: Modern and Postmodern Politics
Reading:

• Lisa Duggan, “Making It Perfectly Queer,” Socialist Review 22, no. 1 (January-March 1992): 11-31.

Activity: Drawing virtues and vices

Thurs. 21 Jan.                                                 II. My Home Is Your Home
Readings:

• Elspeth Probyn, “Approximating Belonging,” in Outside Belongings (New York: Routledge, 1996), 3-15.
• Craig M. Loftin, “Unacceptable Mannerisms: Gender Anxieties, Homosexual Activism, and Swish in the United States, 1945-1965,” Journal of Social History 40, no. 3 (Spring 2007): 577-96.
• Karin Aguilar-San Juan, “Going Home: Enacting Justice in Queer Asian America,” in Q & A: Queer in Asian America, ed. David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 25-40.

Thurs. 28 Jan.                                                 III. The Concept of Wholeness
Readings:

• David Shneer, “Out at School: A Queer Jewish Education,” in Queer Jews, ed. David Shneer and Caryn Aviv (New York: Routledge, 2002), 135-47.
• Lennard J. Davis, “Visualizing the Disabled Body: The Classical Nude and the Fragmented Torso,” in Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verso, 1995), 126-57.

Activity homework: “I don’t see it that way.” Bring to class 3 photos you have taken (they could be photos you have taken in the past, though I am assuming you will try taking some new ones, too) that help viewers see something in a non-authoritative way. Each photo should have a different topic or theme. Be prepared to explain what would make an assumed other view “authoritative” (you don’t have to document this version) and how your framing in each photo subverts, reinterprets, or otherwise plays with that form of authority. (The photos do not have to address scholarly forms of authority.)

In-class activity: One-minute autobiographies

Thurs. 4 Feb.                                                 IV. Fluidity and In-betweenness
Readings:

• Vera Whisman, “The Pleasures and Dangers of Choice,” in Queer by Choice: Lesbians, Gay Men, and the Politics of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1996), 11-36.
• Alexandra Juhasz and Ming-Yuen S. Ma, eds., “Coming to Terms with the in-between: A Graduate Student Forum on Being Queer in Media Studies,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 15, no. 4 (2009): 611-25.
• Sandip Roy, “Curry Queens and Other Spices,” in Q & A: Queer in Asian America, ed. David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998), 256-61.

In-class whiteboard draw/diagram activity: What do masculinity and femininity look like?

Electronic handout: Some Questions We Will Be Asking about the Readings

Thurs. 11 Feb.                                                 V. “Giving” Voice
Readings:

• Daiva Stasiulis, “‘Authentic Voice’: Anti-Racist Politics in Canadian Feminist Publishing and Literary Production,” in Feminism and the Politics of Difference, ed. Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman (Halifax, NS: Fernwood, 1993), 35-60.
• Ann Fienup-Riordan, “Eskimos in the Movies: Opening Night,” in Freeze Frame: Alaska Eskimos in the Movies (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1995), 38-55.
• Renate Eigenbrod, “Not Just a Text: ‘Indigenizing’ the Study of Indigenous Literatures,” in Creating Community: A Roundtable on Canadian Aboriginal Literature, ed. Renate Eigenbrod and Jo-Ann Episkenew (Penticton, BC and Brandon, MB: Theytys Books/Bearpaw Publishing, 2002), 69-87.

In-class activity: Two-minute colorings: Draw a wake-up moment you had in a school setting

Thurs. 18 Feb.                                                 VI. Nostalgia for Innocence
Readings:

• Mary Louise Fellows and Sherene Razack, “The Race to Innocence: Confronting Hierarchical Relations among Women,” Journal of Gender, Race and Justice 1, no. 2 (Spring 1998): 335-52.
• Annette Kolodny, “Surveying the Virgin Land: The Documents of Exploration and Colonization, 1500-1740,” in The Lay of the Land: Metaphor as Experience and History in American Life and Letters (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1975), 10-25.
• Carolyn Epple, “Coming to Terms with Navajo ‘Nádleehí’: A Critique of ‘Berdache,’ ‘Gay,’ ‘Alternate Gender,’ and ‘Two Spirit,’” American Ethnologist 25, no. 2 (May 1998): 267-90.

Thurs. 25 Feb.                                                 VII. Norm and Otherness
Readings:

• Judith Butler, “Imitation and Gender Insubordination,” in Inside/Out: Lesbian Theories, Gay Theories, ed. Diana Fuss (New York: Routledge, 1991), 13-31.
• Katrina A. Karkazis, “Boy or Girl? Bodies of Mixed Evidence and Gender Assignment,” in Fixing Sex: Intersex, Medical Authority, and Lived Experience (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), 89132.
• Toni Morrison, “Recitatif,” in Confirmation: An Anthology of African American Women, ed. Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Amina Baraka (New York: William Morrow & Co., 1983), 243-61.

Thurs. 4 March                                                 VIII. Pedagogies of In/Coherence
Readings:

• David McInnes, “Sissy-Boy Melancholy and the Educational Possibilities of Incoherence,” in Judith Butler in Conversation: Analyzing the Texts and Talk of Everyday Life, ed. Bronwyn Davies (New York: Routledge, 2008), 95-116.
• Cristyn Davies, “Becoming Sissy: A Response to David McInnes,” in Judith Butler in Conversation: Analyzing the Texts and Talk of Everyday Life, ed. Bronwyn Davies (New York: Routledge, 2008), 117-33.
• André P. Grace and Fiona J. Benson, “Using Autobiographical Queer Life Narratives of Teachers to Connect Personal, Political and Pedagogical Spaces,” International Journal of Inclusive Education 4, no. 2 (2000): 89-109.

Thurs. 11 March                                                 IX. Times in/and Spaces
Readings:

• Elizabeth Ellsworth, “Pedagogy’s Time and Space,” in Places of Learning: Media Architecture Pedagogy (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2005), 57-81.
• Lorraine Code, “Voice and Voicelessness: A Modest Proposal?” in Philosophy in a Feminist Voice: Critiques and Reconstructions, ed. Janet A. Kourany (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998), 20430.
• Judith Butler, “Collected and Fractured: Response to Identities,” in Identities, ed. Kwame Anthony Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 439-47.

Thurs. 18 March                                                 X. Queering Categories in Scholarly Writing
Readings:

• Jorge Luis Borges, “The Analytical Language of John Wilkins,” in Other Inquisitions, 1937-1952, trans. Ruth L. C. Simms (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1964), 101-05.
• Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, excerpt from “The Museum,” in Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 168-75.
• Francis-Noël Thomas and Mark Turner, “Trade Secrets,” in Clear and Simple as the Truth: Writing Classic Prose (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 103-08.
• Eric Partridge, “Euphemism and Euphemisms,” in Here, There and Everywhere: Essays upon Language (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1950), 39-49.
• Jessamyn West, “The Condemned Librarian,” in Collected Stories of Jessamyn West (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986), 423-40.

Thurs. 25 March                                               Spring Break: No class

Thurs. 1 April                                                    XI. Phenomenology and Performativity
Readings:

• Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry 17, no. 4 (Summer 1991): 773-97. Also Joan W. Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” in The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader, ed. Henry Abelove, Michèle Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin (New York: Routledge, 1993), 397-415.
• Linda Martín Alcoff, “Towards a Phenomenology of Racial Embodiment,” Journal of Radical Philosophy 95 (May/June 1999): 15-26.
• Zan Meyer Gonçalves, “Performing Identities/Performing Social Change,” in Sexuality and the Politics of Ethos in the Writing Classroom (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2005), 1-26.

Thurs. 8 April                                                    No class meeting

Thurs. 15 April                                                 XII. Cultural Speech
Readings:

• John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Perigee Books, 1934/1980), Ch. 5: “The Expressive Object”
• Tressa Berman, “Cultural Appropriation,” in A Companion to the Anthropology of American Indians, ed. Thomas Biolsi (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004), 383-97.
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, ed. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 271-313.

Thurs. 22 April                                                 XIII. Contradictions of Identity and Commitment
Readings:

• Richard Dyer, “Gay Misogyny,” in The Culture of Queers (London: Routledge, 2002), 46-48.
• Richard Dyer, “It’s Being So Camp as Keeps Us Going,” in The Culture of Queers (London: Routledge, 2002), 49-62.
• Suzanne de Castell and Jennifer Jenson, “No Place like Home: Sexuality, Community, and Identity among Street-Involved ‘Queer and Questioning’ Youth,” McGill Journal of Education 41, no. 3 (Fall 2006): 226-47.

Guest Speaker: Kim Hackford-Peer

Thurs. 6 May                                                 Finals Week: No Class Meeting

5:00 p.m. Final paper due in lieu of exam