Hi everyone,
For those of you who want some guidance choosing a queer studies text to teach to the class, I’m posting my syllabus from the last time I taught this course in 2015. I used the Routledge Queer Studies Reader as the primary course text, but you’ll also see readings, films, etc., that I grabbed elsewhere. Take a look. You can get a sense of what the workload looked like as well, not only in terms of how much we read but in terms of how I imagined “the work” of the class. Here’s the link to the syllabus: Introduction to Lesbian and Gay /Queer Studies, 2015
I also want to mention my own attempt at creating an open educational resource. You’ll see that on the above syllabus on Friday, Feb. 20 we watched United in Anger: A History of ACT UP, which is an HIV/AIDS activist documentary film. At the request of the director, Jim Hubbard, and the producer, our CUNY colleague Sarah Schulman, I wrote on open access online study guide to help instructors and students think about the film. You can find it here: United in Anger Study Guide. This project represented a couple months of pretty intense work (I didn’t create the website, just the content), and it grew out of my having taught the film in class several times. Not incidentally, I posted the Study Guide in my Academic Works account (the CUNY equivalent of Academia.edu, except not for profit), and it gets more hits/views than any of my regular publications. –Matt
Francesca Petronio
Matt, I really love the disability statement in your syllabus. I haven’t seen that wording thus far in the GC, or at any of my schools. It’s usually something like… “it is your responsibility as the student to advocate for yourself etc.”
Matt Brim
Francesca,
The thing about that disability statement is it allows from a discussion of what I mean when I say that accommodations have been made for everyone…like printing the syllabus in 12 point font or larger (as opposed to 1 point font, which no one could read), holding the class in a room that has a doorway everyone can enter (as opposed to a doggy door), etc. That discussion begins by me asking students what accommodations that can identify as having been made for “able-bodied” people that go unnoticed (like the two examples above). We eventually get to a pedagogical theory of what is sometimes called “universal access,” a phrase that ought to be linked to *everyone* but is usually not, and a phrase that can never live up to its universalizing promise as well. –Matt