While I find myself incredibly invested in this project and eager to get started, I struggled for quite some time with figuring out where to start. I think my trouble stems from the fact that I have never created a syllabus before, much less an OER queer syllabus. I was thinking about what sorts of topics and materials I would like to include on such a syllabus but could not really come up with anything. Of course, there are the foundational l texts that we mentioned on the first day of class that could potentially be taught using OER. Yet, while I was thinking about this, I was also thinking about how using OER is simultaneously limiting and freeing. Using OER allows us to think beyond the texts and authors that we are already familiar with. That being said, I’m still not sure of what I would want to include if I’m not limiting myself to the tried and true. 

While I continue to think of what I would like my syllabus to look like, I also thought of some resources that may be useful — if not to me than hopefully to others:

The Lesbian Herstory  Archive, located in Brooklyn and home to the largest lesbian collection in the world, has made some of their resources available online, including recordings of talks given by Audre Lorde and material on the Daughters if Bilitis.  This also made me think about the role of archives and who has access to this material and how archives might be used in the classroom.

Pew Research Center publishes data on a number of different social issues related to gender and sexuality and beyond. Some of this data might be interesting to use to map trends and discuss the current sociopolitical climate.

Sarah Ahmed’s blog Feminist Killjoys might also be an interesting place to look for academic quality writing on a number of different issues.