Very fortunately indeed, JPuar remains for me "a mystery wrapped in a riddle inside an enigma." I still have time to submit an application to Rutgers should I choose to and ask professors to submit letters of recommendation, and I am seriously somewhat tempted... She could probably really push me into some intense thought, but I'm still not convinced that Rutgers could ever be the right place for me overall. The pros are many, and on top of it all her current book in progress is focused on queer disability studies with assemblage and affect theory (Affective Politics: States of Debility and Capacity), which just sounds awesome (see Prognosis Time: Towards a Geopolitics of Debility, Capacity, and Affect), but besides JPuar there doesn't seem to be a lot of faculty support for me there. I am glad I chose to stick with tracking JPuar solo, and found it strangely freeing to work with tracking a theorist and her theory rather than a term, even though we didn't get to read and engage with her as a class and I was a bit disappointed by that-- I still crave some more interaction and community around the deep shit I've gotten into with her (maybe someone to help me with digging my way out, you know, so to speak). I have to keep plugging away at JPuar's first book some more anyway, so I should have plenty of opportunities.
It's probably clear that I enjoy the blog and twitter workings of this class, they seem to fit for me and, yes, I also fell deeply in love with tweeting theory and interesting tidbits of theorizable material. Both formats have helped me in different ways-- twitter with brevity and clarity (notes) and blogging with solo engagement (thinking through/beside/against). I could have used our digital tools more for engaging with (more different) classmates, but I do also enjoy how these digital mediums allow for selective engagement.
Overall, I can tell that the flow of qd2010 benefited greatly from our rocky road in Queering Theory 2009 (and probably a whole lot of experiences before that). Timelines for assignments and their due date clusters were mostly manageable-- especially compared to some of the rushes we found ourselves in in 2009 (yikes!), trust me. For many reasons, the whole dynamic of the class was shifted with a change in enrollment from eight or so to nearly thirty (the odd physical space of our classroom is a part of this). We did have a longer class, which helped a lot (although and because it was only once a week), and we were able to have deeper conversations between the few of us in that time. If memory serves me correct, we also read EVEN more in 2009, thoroughly covering all of Gender Trouble (rereading some of it even!) as well as significant portions of Undoing Gender, Disidentifications, and Curioser, among other books that also came up this year. (It may have been the best preparation possible for this year.) I think qd or QT students need to know that testing the waters of these theories and assignments will start off most messy and confusing, but the systems developing in these classes will ultimately give you more space to learn how and about what you want to, period. The messiness may not (ever) clear up, but it will (even in one semester) become more of a contemplative discomfort once you get the hang of slinging around some queer theory, playing with it, and not worrying too much about being right so much as just wondering. It (the class, the action) can be whatever you need it to be for your adventures in gender and sexuality, and power and privilege, and embracing it will forever change the ways you think. This is important stuff to carry with you wherever you go, because it effects everyone.
That sounds kind of cheesy, and I believe it.
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