Blackburn brings up a lot of interesting tensions throughout the book, but the one I am struck most by is that of the process of naming (p. 19-20). She intentionally makes explicit the difficulties she has creating categories of and inside of race, class, gender, and sexuality. The argument of Foucault vs Harstock's critique of Foucault about the tensions of naming to control vs naming to disrupt were interesting because I think there is a quick jump to say, "oh, well it's just semantics."  Of course, this is generally the people in the position of power who are able to say with some certainty that no matter what you call "it", it still exists.

Upsettled!
By Celeste Ledesma

My oh my, Terry Tempest Williams is a phenomenal writer. Her style, a blend of personal experience, social critique, historical exploration, dependent clauses, stories, and portraits of places integrates beauty and thoughtfulness in contemplative and thought-provoking ways. In reading, my experiences and other readings came up left and right throughout in unexpected ways.

In all of the articles we read, as well as Blackburn's Interrupting Hate, I noticed that usually-unmentioned trend of visibility were rife throughout all the works. The theory goes that we should talk to kids and teach them about queerness and "otherness," learning that different is okay and not something to be afraid of. That's great! I totally support that. There were a number of really great suggestions, including one from Epstein's article, that asked "Why not feature a gay couple in a maths problem the way a straight couple would generally be featured?", really emphasizing the interdisciplinary nature of inclusion and multiculturalist education.

Paola Bernal

April 12, 2015

P. Cohen, Education 266

Film Analysis

Classrooms: A Space for Learning or a Space for Race Wars? 

I first watched the movie Freedom Writers in my seventh grade English class. I was attending a Catholic school with a predominantly white student body; regarding the honors-level English class in which I watched the movie, I remember only Irish and Italian Catholic students. At the time, we watched Freedom Writers through the lens of charitable service, a theme rampant in our dioceses’ curriculum. If there was one thing my school hoped that we would take out of our education, it was that there are people less fortunate than us, and we need to help them.

The importance and necessity of Blackburn’s for transforming the classroom reaches beyond the LGBTQQ community into something larger. That is not to say that the LGBTQQ community’s struggles should be appropriated in the ed system, rather it means that much of the work Blackburn outlines has useful applications in education in general. The most concrete illustration of this is work that happens in The Attic and subsequently the work The Speaker’s Bureau group does by empowering youth through celebration of their identities and giving them voices in ways they don’t usually have in school. Because of the teacher’s often subversive role created by an already oppressive and homophobic education system, there is a need for teachers to speak out against homophobic behavior in the classroom.

There was one line in the book I felt a much stronger connection to than the rest. In the essay titled "The Village Watchman," she asks Alan how he's feeling and he responds by saying "I am very happy and very sad," and I feel like I haven't felt such emotional connection to a sentence in a while. It might just be because of where I am emotionally right now, but that feeling of extreme happiness and also extreme sorrow at the same time is such a true emotion that not enough people acknowledge exists. 

I guess it sort of validated my feelings, knowing that someone else even wrote about feeling conflicting emotions at the same time.

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I never really thought I could be so miserable and uncomfortable yet so happy at the same time. I had a headache, but I was happy. I had a fever, but I was happy. I had sore throat, but I was still happy. I was absolutely miserable, but I was happy. I realized then that my pain and happiness are not directly related all the time. That there were some things that made me happy enough to ignore the misery momentarily and forget that I was sick. I was so absorbed in the happiness that I forgot how cold I was because even though it was warm out, I had a fever and should have definitely not chosen to stand outside for a prolonged period of time.