5 down, 8 to go...

Whoa. What an exhausting lecture!! After doing the admin work and getting announcements out of the way, I was faced with the task of having to simultaneously re-emphasize the importance of being able to have fair and theory-driven in-class discussions in a room of 38 who all come from different disciplines, lifestyles, experiences and ages AND getting through a longass full full lecture while still leaving time for 3 presentations. I borrowed a quote that lucky heard during his conference a coupla weeks back from longtime activist Ron George - a hereditary chief of the Wet'suwet'en Nation in B.C.:

“I was born with two ears and one mouth, which means I should listen twice as much as I speak."

Nice, huh? The students responded to it with a lot of nods and audible positive sounds, and it's one that I'm going to use again in my classrooms. Remarkably effective in its succinctness. I then launched in to a bit of a diatribe on how we as teachers are responsible for helping lay the foundation for all of the students in our classes to become successful and responsible scholars in their own right - and that that simply cannot be done if they can't learn to back up their comments with theory. I gave them my the personal is the political is the theoretical line, and ended with a hardnosed strategy: "If you haven't done the readings and cannot reference them in your comment, you cannot speak today."

Good thing, too - my 15 pages of 14pt. font was a LOT of material, and I needed the time to get through it all...We officially entered Part 2 of the class - "Matters of Masculinity" - and I launched the section with a class loosely entitled "making new men/markets." They read D'Emilio's "Capitalism and Gay Identity" (a seminal piece that's an easy read but a tough one to break down for lecture purposes) and so I basically reviewed what we've been doing in the course to date and then brought them through the rise of industrial capitalism and the emergence of wage-labour all the way to the current historical moment...A century of political economy in an hour. Whew.

If you haven't read the stuff on Queer Eye from Volume 11, Issue 1 (2005) of the GLQ, do it. I gave them the pieces by Torres, McCarthy, Muñoz, and Miller - and the students ATE it UP. They're short and don't mince words - and each one has a very unique take on the show, the context in which it gained its popularity, and the multiple implications of it within market capitalism...Brilliant stuff, excellent for inciting discussion in the classroom and a really good read.

I think I only have one more lecture left this term. As much as that will so totally help my own work schedule, I'm actually a little sad about that!