Laura T. Smith: Teaching

I love to look at pop culture in relation to LGBTQ issues because it’s a great place to find many of the fallacies that plague the hetero-dominated society that we live in. In the last week alone I have found incidents where the heterosexual ideals have seemed to have crept their way into seemingly meaningless issues in our culture.

The lecture from Blanton was very edifying - my experience with art is limited and queer art even moreso. One of the pieces I connected with most was Sharon Hayes "Revolutionary Love," and I think this is not coincidental - her performance at the Democratic and Republican National Conventions was intended to reach the public, which makes it more easily accessible to those of us who may not be able to qualify its artistic value but can see its message clearly.

What most interested me in Riki Wilchins’ “Race-Critical Thought and Postmodernism’s ‘Second Wave’” were the racial images that included gender stereotypes. The main point of this article is the reconstruction of identities, but the author spends a good deal in defining the various identities.

Using the tradition of the sonnet in LGBTQ poetry is an interesting choice of form. The sonnet is defined by its boundaries - it is generally understood to be a fourteen line rhyming poem in iambic pentameter that reflects on love, usually unrequited. Yet in the selection of contemporary poets that we read, not only did the rhyme and meter not ascribe to these boundaries but the subject matter was a clear departure from the restrained love and admiration that I associate with the sonnet. Adrienne Rich's poetry, in particular, has a sense of immediacy and intimacy that was especially moving.

I did not get a chance to write about the art that we saw during the presentation from the Blanton Art Museum. This was definitely a nice change of pace, this year we have discussed GLBTQ literature. Through literature works we were able to see GLBTQ as a literary expression. Each author we have read have seen common themes that are expressed with words, such as struggle with self-identity, desire, sexual frustration, homophobia, aids, and the list continues.

So it seems that I must write again about the interweaving of sexuality and politics. I’m fascinated by the struggle between the individual and society, how each is dependent on the other and how a difference of desire is negotiated. Looking back over the material we’ve covered throughout the semester, we’ve been given a multitude of angles from which to view this particular situation. We began with the Halperin article, and his discussion of sex in classical Athens.

Within the first act of Tony Kushner's Angels in America the audience has a good idea of what kind of person Roy is; he's bossy, rude, in your face; he's a man that likes to be in charge of every part of his life and he will even lie to himself in order to hear what he wants to hear. Roy is in denial about a lot of things. He claims that he is not a homosexual. He is in denial about his disease and continuously refuses to accept what is happening to him. He even tells his doctor "Roy Cohn is not a homosexual. Roy Cohn is a heterosexual man…who fucks around with guys" (Kushner 52).

Last week I wanted write about the piece of art that I thought was the most interesting. But when I sat down to write, I saw that someone else had already written about it. The piece I wanted to write about was the pile of candy in the museum. As the lecturer described to us the significance of the candy, my jaw dropped. What a genius and passionate idea for art. For days after class, I shared the story of the children excited to see the candy, the significance of its weight, and how people are allowed to take a piece.

The Second Annual University of Texas World AIDS Day Conference

December 1, 2008
Texas Union, Eastwoods Room

A university-wide conference designed to facilitate the exchange of ideas ongrassroots, civil society and governmental responses to the global HIV/AIDS pandemic. We envisage this one-day conference as an opportunity to continue to build a university-wide public sphere around HIV/AIDS. In so doing,

Hi all,

Just wanted to note that I've been looking at each person's blog individually (rather than just commenting on everyone's blogs in sequence) over the last couple days and I'm seeing lots of strange numbers....

To clarify: each of you should have written six blogs during the semester (and you have two weeks left to get this done: this current week and next week). However, there are two blogs (the Halperin blog and the blog from the Wilchins or Witeck talk) that don't count toward this six. They were just regular assignments.