Recently in Tracking Terms Category

1 a. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter Chapter 1: Pig Ladies, Big Ladies, and Ladies with Big Mouths. Feminism and the Carnivalesque.

b. In this chapter Rowe brings up several pop culture icons from Shakespeare to contemporary forms to explain how fat women are portrayed in their representations as disruptive, loud, excessive, outrageous, etc. in physical (space) and verbal (language, laughter) actions. A definition of topos is given as women who disrupt norms of femininity and the social hierarchies that are in place (male>female) through their excess and outrageousness. Rowe provides a list of what characteristics make up the unruly woman as one or many of the following:

Rowe continues by explaining how the definition of grotesque functions as an exaggeration of incompleteness, process, and change; the grotesque body exaggerates its bulges, processes, etc.
Fat grotesque woman is:
**huge
**eats and drinks in excess
**has voracious sex
**an obscene joke maker
c. Are there any fat woman in pop culture that are not portrayed as the woman on top or in a grotesque manner? Are these fat women seen in a positive light only when they are nearing the end of their liminal space and have become "normal" and no longer seen as a fat body?

d. Sara provided this chapter in PDF form to me via an email.

e. Rowe, Kathleen. The Unruly Woman: Gender and the Genres of Laughter. United
States: University of Texas Press, 1995. Print.

2 a. Rosanne: Let them eat junk part two AKA "The Oreo Scene: you're the Or ee ooest"
b.
c. I specifically looked at the first two minutes of this clip from Roseanne. The scene is set up with the largely overweight Roseanne sitting at the Kitchen table. Her sister Jackie who is very thin comes to pick up her son Andy who has been with Roseanne all day. Roseanne in this particular scene completely embodies what has been deemed as the grotesque body.
Roseanne Grotesque Body
huge huge
eats (in excess) eats (in excess)
joke maker (obscene) joke maker (obscene)
The dialogue between the "normal" body Jackie represents and the "excessive, outrageous" body Roseanne represents is important. Jackie picks up her baby and proclaims, "My child has oreo breath". Roseanne replies, with obscene humor, "well, relax, that's just because we were drinking an oreo flavored liqueur". Jackie brings up a list that she made explaining not to give Andy junk food. To which Roseanne replies, "You can spit and you can swear, but you will NOT come into my house and refer to oreos as junk food"! The next exchange is what I found particularly interesting. Roseanne asks Jackie to calm down by explaining that she used to give that stuff to her kids all the time. Jackie prods back my saying, "that maybe that's the reason why you kids tuned out the way they did". The grotesque body, Roseanne, has pushed her grotesqueness onto her children by allowing them her excessive, fat habits.
d. I think it would be interesting to look into other grotesque bodies in pop culture to examine how their lifestyles either do or do not affect (they become grotesque as well) those around them.
e.. I found this youtube clip after I read Rowe's chapter one from Unruly Woman, which mentioned Roseanne. I went to youtube and typed in "Roseanne eating".
3 a. In Solidarity With Those Who Have Been Called "Too Much"
b. Bevin Branlandingham
c. Too much: too fat, too loud, too feminine, too slutty.......and the list of toos can go on and on. Bevin uses this specific post to address the deemed excessive physicalities and/or actions she has faced or her friends have faced to find productivity within these spaces. The opposite of this identity is what she calls "beige" people; people who lack color in life. Are these people the opposites to the excessive? Bevin continues by explaining people's uncomfortability with her excessive being in the dating scene. She explains the excessive as loving hard, caring and giving large amounts of love and attention, and making lover's feel as though they were the only other person in a room full of people. Bevin continues by explaining that this excessive way of living via flamboyance, glitter, nurturing, love...takes a specific kind of patience to deal with. This is interesting to me because it seems to be emphasizing the fact of difference or uncomfortability with one's excessive behaviors and/or bodies. Does this mean that excessive/flamboyant bodies can only share space comfortably with other excessive/flamboyant bodies??
d. How does this idea of excess/flamboyancy function with other marginalized groups/people? What Bevin describes as "beige" individuals, are these dominant, hegemonic bodies within society?
e. Sara recommended the blog to me. I went to the blog and began reading different entries and this one seemed to fit in the best with my other sources.
f. Branlandingham, Bevin. The Queer Fat Femme Guide to Life. Cutline by Chris Pearson, 2006. Web. 20 Dec. 2011.

1.a. Revolting Bodies? The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity (Chapter 7 The Queerness of Fat)
b. Kathleen Le Besco
c. Le Besco draws on connections between fat and queer identity in chapter 7. She speaks of a cause seeking rhetoric in which their is a strong desire to fix one's queerness or fatness. She gives the example of searching for a "gay" or "fat" gene that may help to explain or correct the queer of fat identity of someone. Why in our culture is there this need to explain away modes of being? This mode that she talks of being explained away is fat and queer people, which seem to be manifesting some underlying problem, deviancy.
Stigmatized Individuals
1) Hypersexual
2) Animalistic
3) Overvisible
Le Besco continues by explaining to see fat as a subset of queerness and fat admiration as another part of sexuality. To draw upon fat within the gay community she mentions the ostracization of fat, where gay men have become obsessed with appearance and normality. Although is overall seen as a feminizing characteristic (roundness, softness) in the lesbian community women can gain strength through fatness. Whereas, gay men acquire fatness and achieve woman-like qualities and weakness.
[UN]Outing
Le Besco refers to outing in fat politics as the use of language by skinny individuals. For example, "I'm so fat" is a call for help/reassurance that the individual who proclaims this is actually not fat. It is also used for this group of people to bond i.e. "Oh, you're not fat". People who are truly fat then do not have these conversations because it would out them. Le Besco gives three categories in which fat people fall within
1) Out and About-owning and embracing one's fatness
2) Silent types- the downplaying of the relevance on one's size
3)Traitors-she speaks of the person who once stood for and embraced fatness is
now against of ambivalent
d. As I was reading I kept thinking of fat people in pop culture and where they fall within fat politics and/or where I think they fall. Do these people exert agency through their fat identities. Are they out and about, silent, or traitors? I think it may be helpful to read a couple other chapter out of this book in particular. What I was really hoping for was to get various perspectives from different authors from Le Besco's The Fat Studies Reader. It is unfortunately checked out from our library :(.
e. Sara recommended this book after discussion of my first annotated bibliography. While meeting with Sara in her office she gave me the call number for the book. I checked this book out from Wilson library here at the U.
f. Le Besco, Kathleen. Revolting Bodies?:The Struggle to Redefine Fat Identity. USA: University of Massachusetts Press. Book.

2.
a.Glamour Magazine: Beth Ditto's New Clothing Line
b. glamour.com
c.
Beth, singer and fashion icon, was quoted as saying "I want to make clothes for big girls". British department store Evans agreed. After looking at the clothing line, which was prompted and inspired by Beth, I was shocked to see average to thin women modeling the clothes. Because Beth herself is so big into fashion and because the line was influenced by hew own clothing, why wasn't Beth modeling? What is the face of Evans? Why wasn't Beth used? Is Beth what LeBesco deems as Out and About? According to the Glamour article the answer is yes. They state, "She's plus-sized and proud of it. She wears brightly patterned skin-tight dresses, loud accessories and all the other stuff that fussy old style folks would say is a no-no for anyone over size 2. And, you know what? They're all total DOs on her, especially as she's so full of spunk and confidence". What if she wasn't so full of "spunk" and confidence? Would this change Beth's ability to reach a large audience? Would she be seen as lazy or disgusting instead of confident and forward?

d. I searched Beth Ditto on google because Scotty had recommended using Beth for an informal source. I pulled up the cover on NME, which he had specifically mentioned. After pulling of various videos and article on Beth I came across her clothing line which came out in 2009. I would like to find more on Beth today and where and how fat identity comes to light in her life and if it does.
e. Lomrantz, Tracey. "Beth Ditto's New Clothing Line: Cheap & Chic & Plus Sized".
Glamour.com. 18 June 2009. Web 12 Dec. 2011.

3.
a.Big Fat Deal (A Blog that proclaims to be happy with whatever weight you happen to be).
b. Monique "mo pie" van den Berg, Weetabix, and Jen "jen fu" Larsen
c. The Big Fat Deal began in 2004 because Monique was in search of a blog which focused on the portrayal of weight in pop culture in both a negative and positive light. Monique boasts that her focus is fat positivity and writes, "We've talked on this blog about all kinds of contributors to overweight--from genetics to sexual abuse to illness. It's fucking COMPLEX, and people who are just like, "Die, fatties, die!" negate that complexity and simply make themselves look simplistic and dumb. Not to mention the fact that a person's body is nobody else's business, when it comes down to it". Monique here when referencing genetics is channeling Le Besco and her explanation of a cause seeking rhetoric. Where there seems to be this urge to correct fatness by trying to/figuring out ways to repair the deviancy.
d.I would like to read more of the comments posted on different enteries. There are tons of comment on various topics from celebrities, advocacy, weight loss, fatism, fat positivity, and more.
e. Larsen, Jen, Monique "mo pie" van den Berg, Weetabix. "Big Fat Deal". July 2004. Web. 12 Dec. 2011.

Annotated Bib #3

Source one
1) Queering the Color Line
2) Siobhan Somerville: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American
Culture
3) The author dissects the ways in which society has come to view constructions of racial identity as natural. Somerville exposes the ways in which racist ideologies have come to frame science invent race and homosexuality. She uses the mulatto figure represented in American fiction to expose how the mixed body inverts notions of gender formation. Desire of the other is a central theme in shaping the social identities of mixed bodies. Deviance of these bodies becomes linked with constructions of homosexuality. Somerville highlights the ways in which mulattos are framed as ambiguous figures disrupting normative standards. Somerville writes of how scientific discourse of sexuality was developed through ideologies of race. How does then does this then frame queers of color in relation to homo-normativity?
4) Cherrie Moraga's Loving the War Years is a great resource.
5) I found this book working on another project. Suzanne Bost author of Mulattas and Mestiza's heavily referenced this book in her work.
6) Somerville, Siobhan B. Queering the Color Line: Race and the
Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Durham,
[NC: Duke UP, 2000. Print.

Source Second
1) Bodies That Matter
2) Judith Butler
3) In chapter one Bodies That matter Butler engages with the work of Irigaray. Butler seeks to bring the body back into view from the realm theory. In many ways it seems that one cannot truly live their body in that we can only mimic gender. Butler discusses the ways in which materiality is experienced through discourse, what is material is produced though power. Thus the materialization of bodies is in constitution of norms. Butler writes " If gender is the social construction of sex, and if there is no access to this "sex" expect by means of its construction, then it appears not only that sex is absorbed by gender, but that "sex" becomes something like a fiction" (Butler, XV). What interest me is that there is not sex before construction; therefore any performance of gender is mimicry. Than I am lead to wonder if any non normative performance mocks this construction and as such is a form of resistance?
4) Butler critiques Irigaray's theories of which I am not familiar. I feel that reading Irigaray may be necessary to further understand this text. As well as Nella Larson author of Passing, which I am slightly familiar.
5) This text was a suggestion by a classmate. I do own the book, however I have not been able to read previous to this project. Obviously Butlers work is familiar to most in gender studies.
6) Butler, Judith. "Introduction/ Bodies That Matter." Introduction. Bodies That
Matter: on the Discursive Limits of "sex" New York: Routledge, 1993. XI-27. Print.

Source Three
1) Paris is Burning http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggreEl4zV3Y
2) Documentary by Jennie Livingston
3) This film documents the lives of New York's "Drag Queens" of color. Many times throughout the film people spoke of the need to create oneself. The film is centered around Ball's in which there is a competition for recognition. The goal of the competition was to look as natural as you could. If you could pass in the outside world you have made it. There was a need to be the best that one could be. The Ball was a place where one could appear to be rich, successful, beautiful, all of the things the outside world denied them. For some there was the opportunity to find the acceptance of a family. The part that drew me the most was in the stealing of clothing. There was a symbolic meaning in this as well, in which one steals an identity a self from the white man's world in order to be seen.
4) Someone mentioned this source in class, I looked it up on youtube where there was a full version.
5) Paris Is Burning. Prod. Jennie Livingston, Barry Swimar, Claire Goodman,
Meg McLagan, Nigel Finch, and Davis Lacy. Dir. Jennie Livingston. By Jonathan Oppenheim, Paul Gibson, Maryse Alberti, and Stacia Thompson. [Prestige], 1990. Youtube.

When I first approached this project, I was a little unsure of what my angle would be. The difficulty with the terms resist/reject is twofold. First, the terms are verbs and are used in many disparate contexts. The words imply an action: to reject, to resist. In relation to queer subjects and queer theory, they take on special meaning, for "queer" is both resisted and resisting, rejected and rejecting. Second, the terms do not mean the same thing. To resist is to struggle against something, to attempt to counteract it. To reject is to dismiss, to even possibly erase. I wanted to start off by looking at some different uses for the terms. My first source addresses resistance in its most obvious form, as political street activism, protesting specific and often material injustices. My second looks at the concept of rejection, rejection of and rejection from. Does one necessitate the other? My third source revisits resistance, but is more concerned with resistance to more implicit or subtextual forces. How does resistance change its form when fighting the unseen foe?

a. Queer Resistance: Group Pool (Flickr)

b. Queer Resistance

c. My first source is the group pool on Flickr for a group called Queer Resistance. The group describes themselves as "a collective of queers and allies across the UK coming together to fight the cuts - including lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersex and queer folk. We come from all communities, backgrounds and walks of life and we share one common objective". I found this source interesting because it provided visual representation of what it means, at least for the particular group of queer activists, to resist. It's been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. In this case, we get all kinds of information from the compilation if images provided. Things that stuck out to me were the significance of the color pink, the participation in the London Slutwalk (not necessarily linked to financial cuts, the groups main battle), and the specific type of activism (street protests, hand-made signs, etc.) This is one form of resistance, possibly the most recognizable invocation of the word.

d. I found this page while searching the terms "queer" and "resistance" on Google. This particular group, of exactly that name, has been making a splash lately in the UK, protesting against budget cuts and other perceived social injustices.

e. After reviewing the images in this group pool, I wanted to know more about the specific issues this group is responding to in the UK. Some possible research avenues to consider would be the budget cuts by the government or the London Slutwalk. I would also be interested in researching the differences and similarities between street activism in the UK and the US, specifically in light of the recent riots in London.

f. "Flickr." Photograph. Queer Resistance: Group Pool. Queer Resistance. 2011. Web. 5 Oct 2011.
.

a. "Why I Reject Gay Culture"

b. Michael

c. What I found intriguing about this source was that it explored the concept of rejecting v. rejection, whether one eliminates the possibility of the other. This blogpost, written by a semi-anonymous author "Michael" is confessional in it's nature. In the post, the author describes his rejection of mainstream gay culture, but concludes that he was actually rejected from it. Intersestingly, but not surprising, the comments on the post are divisive, some comments empathetic to the author's viewpoint and some extremely critical.

d. After reading this blog post, I had to wonder, is this man's rejection of/from gay culture political or just one man's social experience? Is there a difference? The site is entitled "The New Gay". What does that mean? Will this "New Gay" identity develop into one as seemingly conformist as the old gay identity? This author is attempting to provide a counterpoint to the normative gay identity. What might that look like?

e. I found this source on Google while searching the terms "reject" and "queer". While the author uses queer in this post to describe a homosexual orientation, his approach to the dismantling of the gay mainstream is theoretically queer.

f. "Why I Reject Gay Culture." The New Gay. 03 Apr 2009. Web. 5 Oct. 2011. .

a. Queer Girls and Popular Culture: Reading, Resisting, and Creating Media

b. Susan Driver

c. This book explores the way media influences and is influenced by young GLBTQ women and girls. What I like about this source is that it addresses queer themed and directed media specifically, which is such a large contributor to the formation of homonormativy and homogeneous gay identity formation. Although this book's focus is on women and girls, I thought it was interesting to consider in relation to my last source "Why I Reject Gay Culture". I was most interested in the chapter entitled "Uneasy Pleasures: Reading and Resisting Lesbian Magazines". In this chapter, Driver discusses the formation of normative identity of young lesbians in response to exposure to lesbian media.

d. This source made me think about the difficulty of resisting/ rejecting with the onslaught of media representations we consume daily. However, media is not the enemy, it can be a rather useful tool. The question then is how does one include the queer subjects and themes within media without recreating stereotypes or reinforcing homonormative identities?

e. I found this source on Google Scholar. I was looking for a traditional source that spoke to me about resisting/ rejecting, but that wasn't super specific.

f. Driver, Susan. Queer Girls and Popular Culture: Reading, Resisting, and Creating Media. New York: Peter Lang, Inc, 2007. Web.

Here's the sign-up sheet with your chosen terms.

3 Annotated Bibliographies (of sorts) Posts
These 3 annotated bibliography entries should include a brief summary and engagement with a number of different outside sources (that is, sources that are not included on the syllabus) that relate to your chosen topic. Each entry should include at least 3 sources, one of which must be a "traditional" academic source (an academic article or book). You may also write about films/videos, other blogs, websites, news articles, commercials, songs, poems, images, etc.

Your annotated bibliography should begin with an overview of how your sources connect (and why you are grouping them together in your entry). Then, each bibliographic entry should include:

a. Title of the source.
Your title should also be a link to the source (or to a more detailed citing of your source). Just in case you have forgotten, here is how to create a link within your entry:
Highlight the title in your entry. Scroll up to the chain image at the top of the entry box and click on it. Put in the URL (address) for your link and hit okay.

b. Author/authors of the source.

c. Brief summary.
You should provide a brief summary of the source and how it relates to the term that you are tracking. This summary should include any specific passages/ideas that you found useful, thought-provoking and/or inspiring.

d. Additional sources and/or directions for further reading/thinking.
Each entry should include your reflections on further research/thinking about your term. If possible, mention any additional sources that your source discusses that might be useful.

e. Where/how you found this source. Describe the process of how and where you found your source. What database did you use? Did you find it randomly in the stacks at the library? Did you find it in a search through google or google scholar? Did you stumble across it on twitter? Did another student/professor suggest it?

f. Formal citation.
In addition to linking to your source, you should formally cite it using MLA style.
Category: your tracking term subcategory (e.g.: homonationalism or gender)

2 Comments on Other Bibliographies
Your comments should demonstrate a respectful engagement with the author and their ideas. You could post suggestions, thoughts or reflections on their topic. You could also discuss how their topic connects to your topic.

9 Tweets on Term Sources
You are required to tweet about 9 sources that you found while tracking your term. Your tweet should include a link to the source and a brief (remember, you only have 140 characters total) description of or teaser about the source. Spend some time thinking about how you want to describe and present your source to your readers. You can check out my undisciplined twitter account (@undisciplined) for examples of tweeting sources. Remember to use the hashtag for our class in your tweet: #quet2011

Due Dates:
Annotated Bibliography #1: October 5
Annotated Bibliography #2: October 31
Annotated Bibliography #3: December 1
Track Term Comment: October 22
Track Term Comment: November 19
Tweet Sources 1, 2 and 3: October 5
Tweet Sources 4, 5 and 6: October 31
Tweet Sources 7, 8 and 9: December 1

Here's a revised list of tracking topics (1-2 people per topic). I will distribute a sign-up sheet in class today and then post it on our blog. 

Want to know how past students have tracked their terms?

• Tracking a theorist: Jasbir Puar
• Tracking Topic: Resistance 
• Tracking Topic: Bodies and Material Experiences