ABSTRACT for seminar paper

Well, I started with this abstract. I work in abstracts before I begin a paper because they help me figure out my structure. After reading this one, however, you'll find that I completely changed my mind.

First Abstract:

As we move, in the contact zone of the composition classroom, toward utilizing social media platforms students use on a regular basis outside of its sphere, it is important to consider what hegemonic social structures are embedded within them. While much work in composition contends that we must ensure our classrooms build, foster, and maintain safe spaces, I argue, before incorporating SMS into our pedagogy, we must consider the ways in which such spaces trouble sexuality and gender: the silencing or interruption of performance of sexuality and gender; the troubling ways in which cissexual privilege, heterocentricism, repronormativity, and heteronormativity challenge representativity of sexuality and gender in online spaces, or are perpetuated; the very infrastructures of popular platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr. Do these spaces perpetuate the tradition and limits of “The Closet”, or, do they open the door? In the same spirit that Kristin Arola worked to unveil the ways in which young Native Americans represented their mixedblood identities on MySpace, with interview and close textual analysis, I ask three queer, traditional college aged persons about how they perform their sexuality and/or gender in the social media spaces they use online. I ask these individuals in what ways online spaces and non-online spaces affect how they represent their queer identities, whether they approach each SMS in the same way, and in what ways their queer literacy was shaped by a digital literacy with such spaces. Little investment is made into how sexuality and gender function and performs outside of heterocentric and ciscentric notions of queerness (i.e. T.V. Reed’s latest book). I argue a focus on queer students’ performativity is warranted and necessary if we are going to use SMS in the composition classroom.

If you've ever read any Deborah Britzman, especially her "Is There a Queer Pedagogy? Or, Stop Reading Straight," you'll read about what many in queer pedagogy describe as denial, disavowal, and shock. I've been experiencing this since I came out at 17. But these moments keep reoccurring, especially as I move toward entering the discourse of queer pedagogy. When I discussed what I wanted to do for my paper in class, I felt the shift of body and the silence that I am perfectly used to. The conversation was helpful in that the class asked that I consider what kind of subjects I would use and the role of family in online participation in SMS, but it was as if I had spoken something uncomfortable.

At the same time, I have also been in the midst of reading articles and viewing documentaries on AIDS in the late 80s and early 90s, especially the involvement of ACT-UP. One thing that we have been discussing in Dr. Shahani's "Gay and Lesbian Studies" course is that, even for the LGBT students in the class, this activist history has been erased. When I read articles, all working towards defining what queer pedagogy might mean, be, and do, all of them are caught up in representing marginality and not so much on acting from moments of disavowal. They also deny the reality that much of what it means to be queer is to be not just visible, but to be active and to engage in multimodal writing. I've decided to nearly revise my entire abstract into the following for my seminar paper.

New Abstract:

REINSCRIBING ACTIVISM THROUGH MULITMODALITY IN QUEER PEDAGOGY

Queer pedagogy is stuck. It isn't moving right now at all. When we read Deborah Britzman from the mid-90s, or Jonathan Alexander now (or ten years ago), we are still where we were. We are stuck in whether queer pedagogy might mean more than representing marginalized voices or more than operating from moments of disavowal. We are stuck in our conceptualization and cannot move towards praxis. Significantly, simply mentioning queer composition pedagogy shifts bodies. The fear the word "queer" invokes ranges from body language to "why?" to "really?" to issues of whether education is supposed to be comfortable. "Queer" disrupts the heteronormative structures--physical or pedagogical or political--that glue the day-to-day of our composition classrooms together. Nishant Shahani wrote that we must operate from the axes of failure and limits in queer pedagogy and Britzman wrote that we need to operate from moments of disavowal, but what makes this difficult is the fact that within queer pedagogy we have erased the history of activism, especially with AIDS. Visibility is important in our work, certainly, but this visibility was made possible through major movements such as the involvement of ACT-UP in the late 80s and early 90s into today. I argue that queer pedagogy needs to be more engaged with multimodal composing. The thing is, queer pedagogy is much older than we give it credit for.

When we look to the counter media, the majority of it multimodal, that arose in response to the AIDS plague and the queer safe sex movement, we might glean that we have forgotten that queer pedagogy has a history, and not static, but truly activist. By integrating the multimodal compositions from this movement in queer pedagogy, we might encourage students, like those activists, to not only overcome fear, limits, and disavowal but to write from these spaces. ACT-UP, in many ways, had to generate a pedagogy. In their work, which ranged from physically placing bodies on streets and in the walkways of churches to creating video to dressing as Jesus to creating posters that fused the visual with the verbal, “the viewer was to be activated to, minimally, a revision of her or his views and, more promisingly in terms of effecting change, to further interventionist actions arising out of greater understanding of how the government, its agents and agencies, as well as the private sector operate to create the deficits, inaction, and distress…” (Griffin 42). This sort of activist multimodal composing was necessary to give those deceased, those dying, and allies of those with AIDS awareness that there was a space for them and that they could learn, take action, and fight back. “Fight Back. Fight AIDS. ACT UP.” Queer pedagogy has a history of action, activism, and multimodal composing. In this paper, I would like to discuss the real history of queer pedagogy and its birth during the AIDS plague with the formation of ACT-UP. I will discuss how we need to move beyond conceptualizing queer pedagogy as representing marginality. I will then discuss how we might infuse queer activist multimodal composing into our composition classrooms and how this might help us actually act from and anticipate limits, fear, and disavowal.