These are collaborative. It’s awesome. Just the kinds of issues that we’ve been thinking about, and the questions that we’ve thought about:

How has feminist oriented poetry changed in reaction to changing theoretical and ‘political’ trends; in particular, as second wave lesbian poetry and theory gave way to third wave/queer poetry and theory?

How does identity continue to be an important and centering feature of feminist/queer poetry and theory in spite of, the problematic tendency of identity categories to privilege and essentialize arbitrary structures?

and…

• Historically, how has poetry been used within the feminist movement?
• How has the “I” of lesbian feminist /queer poetry evolved alongside and in response to post-modern theories of identity?
• What factors played into the prominence of lesbian-feminist poets during the second wave, and their comparative absence in the era of queer theory? (How was this change influenced by evolving notions of identity?)

More coming momentarily.

Cheers, sam and heather

We’ve been working on having some sort of mission statement as a way of demarcating and outlining our purpose as a way of giving us structure to work from.

So first off, we have Heather’s original mission statment from a few months back. (which yes, I did have to dig through months and months of lj archives.)

We’re going to be looking at feminist poetry, how it has evolved alongside post modern studies of identity, and how that in turn complicates its usefulness as activism. It’s also going to touch on the presence of radical lesbian feminist poets as theorists in the ‘second wave’ and their comparative absence in ‘third wave’ feminism / queer theory. What does it mean that our poets are no longer some of the dominant theorists? How does that impact theory / our identity as a movement? etc. We’ll probably have to narrow the scope of this project when it comes time to write our paper / (symposium?), but this is where we’re begining.

Now we have a more refined one that we’ve been working on this very morning…. (Mostly of Heather’s Creation) > This special project will examine selections of lesbian-feminist poetry from the ‘second wave’ to the ‘third wave’ / era of queer theory. We will examine how lesbian-feminist/ queer poetry has evolved (or in some cases, refused to evolve) alongside postmodern theories of identity, and how that in turn complicates its relationship to activism. What does it mean when our poets are no longer some of our dominant theorists? How does that impact theory / our identity as a movement?

Finally I took a hack it, and got this: > The rising popularity of postmodern identity theories within the feminist/queer movement, primarily in the academy, has had a profound impact on the ways in which poets align their work with identity categories. In that direction we are interested the deveoplment of “queerness” as a category in tension with iconic kind of lesbian-feminist. These questions force us to examine how feminist and queer oriented identity poetry has moved out of the academy, and ways that identity alignment is both reject and remains a driving framework for feminist and queer theory and poetry.

Then Heather (who came in to my room to use my long mirror, but I’ll pretend it was for the discussion) was like “great, but you know being historically prescriptive without actually researching it, isn’t really A GoodThing(tm), and I thought she had a really good point, so I’m going to change it some more: > The rising popularity of postmodern identity theories within the feminist/queer movement, primarily in the academy, has had a profound impact on the ways in which poets align their work with identity categories. In that direction we are interested in determining if the deveoplment of “queerness” as a category is actually in tension with the lesbian-feminist poet/theorist who has reached a semi iconic status within feminist and queer ‘political’ movements. Specifically, we seek to unpack the disavowal of identity alignment in contemporary poetry, complicate its rejection and see if and how identity alignment remains a driving framework for contemporary feminist and queer theory and poetry.

Now admittedly, I’m still a bit proscriptive here, but leave it too open, means it’s hard to get a good structure, and I think generally we know what’s going on, right now we need to having something to work with; it can always change later

Cheers, sam

One Star Reviews.

This is really amazing. I mean really. Let’s call it, Literary Criticism in the Trenches.

Thanks Jeff for the link.

Enjoy Everyone!

What do you call a Freudian Slip, if it happens when you’re reading. A Freudian Shuffle? Because I don’t have the time or the energy to do better at this point, here are two recent textual slips/shuffles that I’ve made of late. I promise I’ll be back with real content at some point.

I was writing a paper about depression, but kept writing oppression instead.

Just now, I was reading a blog that mentioned “Delay” (as in the former house majority leader) which I totally read as “_Delany,” as in Samuel R. Speaking of which, I need to add Delany material to my Amazon Wish-list (which I’m not going to link to here out of taste, but you can feel free to find it on your own.)

Cheers, Sam

Because I don’t really have time to do a pod-cast, or any kind of internet radio show (and frankly if I were going to play music I probably wouldn’t find much in a pod-safe directory). So I’m going to continue blogging as I would otherwise, and offer you a playlist, as a sort of Intellectual Radio Program. All the thought without any of the pesky listening.

We’ll call it Radio Marrakesh, because I think that’s what I’m going to call any radio show or radio-like show that I do. So here’s the playlist. It’s a sort of angry political (in my mind) bunch of songs (with a little humor), that I’ve been listening to for a while. Powerful songs, which have a coherent political statement but also have great emotional power. I don’t quite have the order worked out, so don’t blame me there.

Title - Artist - Album

• Palaces of Gold - Martin Carthy - The Collection
• Ballad of Harry T. More - Sweet Honey in the Rock - The Women Gather 30th Anniversary
• Samson and Delilah - Spencer Bohren - Carry The Word
• A Prince Among Men - Andy Irvine - Rain on the Roof
• Time to Ring Some Changes - Richard Thompson - Starting as Henry the Human Fly
• The Monument (Lest We Forget) - Andy Irvine - Rain on the Roof
• Joe Hill (Ballad of, to the Tune of John Hardy) - Phil Ochs - Montreal, Canada - 22 October 1966
• Hard Times of Old England - Steeleye Span - All Around My Hat
• Joe Hill (I Dreamt I Saw Joe Hill Last Night) - Joan Baez - The Best of Woodstock
• Wasn’t That A Time - Pete Seeger
• Viva La Quince Brigada - Pete Seeger
• Five Years - Tom Smith - Debasement Tapes
• Raggedy - Pete Seeger - American Industrial Ballads
• Another Clearing Time - Stravaig - Movin' On
• Pharaoh - The House Band - Green Linnet 20th Anniversary Collection
• The Pit Stands Idle - Housebound - Groundwork
• Ballad of William Worthy - Phil Ochs - All the News that’s Fit to Sing
• The White Collar Holler - Stan Rogers - Between the Breaks… Live
• I Ain’t Marching Anymore - Phil Ochs - I Ain’t Marching Anymore

So There you go. Enjoy

Cheers!

So this isn’t link rot in the normal sense, I’m not going to post about how links age on the internet, because frankly I bet you could care less. No, I’m going to post about links that have been sitting around in my “you should post TealArt entries about these articles” folder (ok so it’s a mental categorization, shoot me.

We Are Not OK This one from June 17th. About gay male community issues, relating to drug usage, HIV. I really enjoyed the authors analysis that: > One of the questions I most frequently ask residents is “What is it that you wanted to do sexually that you could only do when you were high?” You might suppose that the answer would be an array of sex acts so extreme and kinky as to be unimaginable. And for some this is true. However, for most, their fantasy is no more than to get fucked and to connect with another man. Albeit in all the wrong places and all the wrong ways, these guys are basically looking for love.

Spot on. People keep saying things like that, pretty soon I’ll be out of a job. But seriously, I think the guy nailed it here. This is why projects like WWOTB are necessary, this kind of analysis makes what I’m interested in worthwhile. I need to go back over the research, but my sense is that gay men, for a multitude of reasons, are not exceptional in their problematic ability to relate to each other/other men (the leader in this little sub-group is Peter Nardi, who’s work is fascinating and really rather good. So there.) Nardi’s work is so interesting, it’s a good thing he’s at a college that doesn’t have a Ph.D. program, elsewise (my new favorite word), I’d be tempted to apply to study with him, and I’m not sure I can deal with that kind of disciplinary shift. (Though in fairness, I’m practically doing sociology at this point anyway, so it wouldn’t be too shocking, never the less, despite any griping that may go on, I’m pretty happy where I am.)

Bloggers Need Not Apply Seems, search committees for academic jobs google people as part of their process, and people’s blogging has interfered with jobs and what not. I worried about this for a while, but then it became a non issue, or something. TealArt isn’t a typical blog: I don’t complain about people or shitty institutional situations and I don’t share any information that could be potentially identifying. The most incriminating act that I commit on TealArt is blathering, and unreviewed academic work, which at this point isn’t a big deal, and frankly I think TealArt is more of an asset than a potential harm. Shrug, the article is good though. Enjoy it.

I’m feeling all bloggy, so expect a spree in the next few days/hours. Cheers… Sam

Wow.

Really, that’s all I can think to say. Last night, I went to see Serenity, the Joss Whedon movie that was made as a part of his late lamented Firefly TV series.

Wow.

I’ve known that it was going be be heart wrenching for a while, one of my friends got to see it in a sneak preview in late May. But somehow, amazing actually, she didn’t give me a spoiler. I totally would have broken.

I usually attach to characters, and am completely broken when characters I love die. When I watched it, I completely didn’t react, it wasn’t real. Until later, and then it was.

Despite the heartbreak, the movie was perfect, basically. I have a few complaints. Like, why there wasn’t more Chinese spoken. (One premise, is that humanity was united by an anglo-sino alliance, so the characters pepper their speech with chinese phrases, much like I use yiddish.) Why did you have to do it Joss, why?

Other than that… amazing. I really think that it was a pretty damn perfect job with the movie. I don’t know what more to say, so there.

Cheers, sam

This document is a general collection of all sorts of notes, created by and deemed relevant to my life, my studies and my pursuits. The intention is that this document will be much like the notebook that I have up until quite recently carried around with me damn near every where. While I realize that this is something of a foolish transition (given that my laptop is sizably larger than it’s analog equivelent.) I think that it will be good to digitize this age old kind of data concomeration, given my habit of taking my laptop with me so much of the time.

In past notebook’s (which I have, in perfect Sam form, dragged behind me every time I’ve moved, despite the fact that once finished I almost never go back and reference old notebooks.) I’ve frequently left the first few pages blank with the hope of keeping some sort of table of contents. This is almost always a useless expenditure of time, as I a) never keep such an index, and b) have a pretty good time remembering where specific notes are. Yet, that’s precisely the purpose of this kind of digital transition: to keep a more organized and relationally linked database of notes.

To be fair this isn’t the first iteration of a digital notebook that I’ve made. I used a program called Notational Velocity, which has worked quite well for me. Basically it’s digital card file with a handful of nifty features, spell check, search-ability, and an always on instant save, which make it totally worth it. Unfortunately, as I began to use the program more there were a couple of features that I really felt like I needed. The first one was the ability to edit more than one note at a time (useful when taking field notes for ethnographic methodologies. The second was a new way of organizing titles/filenames. I’m usually really good about creating descriptive file names that will lump together when listing files by title. It’s helpful for keeping groups of files organized, but slightly less helpful when trying to determine what’s in the file, because the name tends to be really long and less specifically descriptive. So at Chris' recommendation I got VoodooPad, a program which basically uses the idea of a Wiki, to organize a note taking program. It’s sort of hard to imagine until you get used it. Then it’s wonderful.

In the tradition of leaving the first few pages of a notebook blank, and then having the problem of setting the mood for a notebook and starting a new notebook. I’ve decided to use this “page” (and the entry teal that it will become) to discuss a more basic day to day aspect of my operation and tendency at the time of my writing as of.

At this point I use the computer for almost all of my writing and data creation and collection. Because so much of the content of my classes is digital and I’d just as soon not create hard copies, I have my computer with me all the time. So I suppose that it makes a great deal of sense to avoid using a computer for note taking. At one point I thought that having a truly portable computing solution would give me the chance to write more effectively because I could write electronically (which is really what is most comfortable for me anyway), anywhere. Seems the problem was that writing isn’t the kind of vocation that one can just pick up and put down at any point. For that I needed to learn how to knit. The fact is that the computer doesn’t really let me do anything that I wasn’t already doing with a notebook, it just has the potential to not drive me crazy in the long run.

So there you have it. You may think that all this portability would actually mean that I’d post to TealArt More often. Well that would be nice wouldn’t it? But alas, that’s not how it seems to work most of the time. I guess that you have to take what you get. Cheers.