As I became increasingly invested in both troublemaking and online new media, my methods, approaches, and assignments mutated. They didn’t so much evolve or transform as became twisted, aberrant, excessive and a bit monstrous, unruly, and deviant. They mutated so much that by the time I stopped teaching at the end of the fall semester of 2011, I came to be believe that they were no longer tenable within the academy.
Mutating Methods, Approaches, and Assignments
- Designed a course that targeted and disrupted students’ entrenched assumptions about feminist movement/s and introduced them to tools/methods/concepts for resisting easy resolutions, effectively navigating contentious collaborations, and embracing a feminist curiosity.
- Created detailed and extensive directions for online/offline engagement that provided structure and some guidance, while encouraging experimentation and creative explorations.
- Relentlessly posed and explored lots of questions designed to challenge and open up students so they could engage deeply and generously with the course and aimed at inspiring them to develop, pose, and “feel the force” of their own questions.
- Experimented with new ways to cultivate community by constructing group assignments that combined online and in-class collaborations and that valued the process of that collaboration (planning, working through ideas together) as much, or more, than its product
The Mutations:
- Twisted Approach to Teaching Feminist Debates
- Aberrant Assignments for Queering Theory
- Excessive and a bit Monstrous Directions
- Unruly Questions
- Deviant (and deviating) Forms of Community Through Diablogs
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