Week 7-8 Schedule — Making Up Today & Saturday
THIS SATURDAY: fixed groups are listed below. Please show up to class this Saturday as usual. Use it as an opportunity to really seminar and get work done without me yapping away:
–Please take 30-45 min (no more) discussing and reading work that you wrote from the procedure of being “marked” in public–ambulatory poetry of the private turned public. Please allow for at least 4-5 individuals to share work, plus some time for comments, discussion, response. This writing you will have, by Saturday, already done. PLEASE ELECT 1 FACILITATOR (OR SOMEONE TO VOLUNTEER TO FACILITATE THE DISCUSSION & KEEP TIME).
–Then, from around 445 onwards spend the rest of the working day in fixed groups going around discussing what each of you within that group has been thinking about working on during the last 4 weeks, discuss how you as group would ideally like to collaborate, and toss ideas around–brainstorm and get to know one another’s sustained writing/text arts ideas, and let those dictate how closely collaborative the group work will be. And then before you leave for the day, take down contact info for the group and figure out 1 time per week of at least 1 hour you all can meet outside of class. Remember, these collaborations can be as tight or as loose as your combined interests will allow. The only constraint is that these sustained pieces be a) grounded some way in text arts, and b) speak to “art,” “transgression/transgressive,” and “what the body can do” in form as well as content. That is, art and the transgressive body as area of formal-artistic inquiry. Though not a constraint per se, these writings, like some of the prompts have been, should be well-thought-out, and should push you to truly experiment with language as artistic medium–to make passionate work that is not a rehashing of what is comfortable/digestible for you. Your group members should be relied on for critique/feedback every week, whether the collaboration is loose or really tight.
MAKING UP WHAT WE WERE GOING TO DO TODAY: Today we were going to debrief, including sharing the reflection writings; we were going to perform the final Butler piece; and we were going to begin discussion Eleni’s Armies of Compassion pp 1-55 (the first few sections). Then we were going to spend the remaining time breaking off into fixed groups. Some of this work you need do Saturday as suggested above. Some of this work, especially working further in groups and sharing of work you’ve produced this past week, will need optional makeup class days next week.
I will be scheduling 2 makeup class periods that are optional (highly recommended), each of which will cover the same material. That is, 2 of the same class on different days so that you can look over your schedules and decide which of the 2 you’d like to participate in.These will be:
Monday, Week 8: 5-7pm – same classroom as usual
Monday, Week 9: 5-7pm – same classroom as usual
Please email me to let me know which of the days you’d like to participate in. It’ll help to have a head count!
If it turns out the classrooms are in use when we arrive, no big deal, we’ll find an empty classroom nearby. Each of these days will be devoted to debriefing on the writing and gathering we’ve done (some high stakes stuff) over the past week, further (if need be) reading/sharing your work from writing-as-publicly marked, and meeting with small fixed groups to workshop/discuss your text arts pieces and ideas you are working on. That is, each of these extra optional days will be devoted to your work, to debriefing and collaborating, and not the readings. That is, these days will be further chance to discuss/share work, and for your groups to meet and with me–stuff we were planning on doing today. Eleni’s book we’ll mainly cover next Weds. as a lecture-discussion, and we’ll do it in one go, carrying over some of that discussion and writing in response into beginning of Week 9.
NEXT WEDS LECTURE-DISCUSSION (Week 8): this will be the next time we meet as a whole group with me present. We’ll take the 2 hours doing only two things: logistics for week 10 (including group work check-ins), and then a lecture-discussion on Armies of Compassion and 1 additional reading–short, complimentary–I will be emailing you. We’ll discuss Armies in relation to the proposition of poetry-as-restorative, poetry-as-interrogating-”community” in relation to the body; and the poetics herein in relation to the “disabled” body. That lecture-discussion will catch us up for the most part–Eleni’s book I feel is an important contribution to thinking about the body in relation to illness and what counts as “disability” and why, interrogating what we mean by community, and in relation to radical political healing. So it’ll be good for us to gather together after this break, and, refreshed, think thru these issues and how they are treated or invented via the poetic forms of Armies of Compassion.
So, as heads-up, please have read by next Weds. all of Armies of Compassion and the essay I will send you.
In the meantime, for Saturday, please do the poetic writing as “publicly marked”. So it can be shared by Sat and if need be again during part of the makeup sessions. Also, placing it on the blog-journal is a good way to circulate your work and get feedback. Regardless, end it to me via email after you have completed it, ie., by Saturday evening.
READINGS FOR NEXT WEDS: will, as usual, be emailed to you and put up on the (now fixed) blog. Just as heads-up. Between now and next Weds the only other reading I’ll ask us to do will be a) finish Eleni’s book, and b) read an essay on post-ableist theory – critique of disability discourse – by Robert Kocik. And, as usual, those will be sent out as reminders by next Sunday (tho feel free to continue reading Eleni’s book now if you wish!).
FIXED GROUPS (can be tweaked thru this week if really necessary – give these a try first. Let me know if I left anyone out accidentally!):
Erica, Ian Wright, Anna, Justin
Nur, Mike S, Claire, Valencia
Chris, Sean, Ilsina, Chelan
Monica, Ashley, Michael L., Tash
Zoe, Olga, Ian L., Larkspur
Kaylani, Lorena, Natalia, Kevin
Reena, Rik, Peter