Social Studies
I am earning .5 Social Studies credits for:
Queer History and Culture
I have continued to study queer history and culture in a fairly relaxed manner. I’ve been doing a lot of reading mostly. I have been reading The World Only Spins Forward by Dan Kois and Isaac Butler, an oral history of Angels in America, in preparation to seeing it in April. I have also been reading Disidentification by José Esteban Muñoz, which is a queer theory text about identity and how it helps/hurts one's existence. I have been listening too many queer voices on podcasts, in films, and in books, and they all bring something new and different to the table.
On BOUNDLESS we have discussion sections where we talk about current events or pop culture or the like in relation to queerness, these discussions often demonstrate my thought process regarding queer culture. Example: The new Queer Eye came out on Netflix, and we had a discussion about how it’s not really queer because they are 5 gay men.
I have started to work on a piece of writing about my experience as a queer person. It is definitely still evolving, but I think I will be using it to better develop my sense of self in relation to the history and reality of what I perceive the queer experience to be.
This has probably been one of the most influential studies of my life.
Queerness is a strange thing.
It is not hereditary.
We are not given it by our parents.
We discover it within ourselves.
When I went to Angels in America it was a pilgrimage. Because Angels is a unifying thing, and it is such a powerful historic play. After this year I feel as though I have made the connections between history and the present, and am ready to go forward in the world as a queer person who has a basic understanding of the history of queer people.
This took a heck of a lot of work.
I discovered a document called QUEERS READ THIS in the last month of school. It was the kind of thing I have been looking for all year, a primary source written by queer people. I had previously spent ages digging through the internet for things like it to no avail. Along with QUEERS READ THIS I discovered a library of queer zines from the 80’s through the present. There are so many resources out there, but they are so hard to find, especially from places like Vermont - where the queer community is so small and spread out.
I have begun writing a piece about my ideas on queer theory, which I will continue to develop after I graduate, and I am making a sound piece about queer patriotism for BOUNDLESS (pulling from Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae, Angels in America, QUEERS READ THIS, and more).
I think that the most important thing about this study was that it was truly just for me. All my art pieces need viewers, I needed science and english to graduate, but this study was purely mine. I did all the research because I felt like it was something that was important for me to know, and that no one else was going to teach me. I read so much theory, and so many opinion pieces, and choose what I liked to agree with, and formed my own opinions. It was a deeply independant experience, and because of that, a deeply important one for the adult that I want to be.
History and Culture
My exploration started with the Netflix documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson, which explored her alleged murder in 1993, but she stands as a very important figure in gay rights movement, and is often credited with being the first to throw things (coins, and later bricks maybe) at the Stonewall riots. The film also followed Marsha’s contemporary Silvia Rivera, what was also at Stonewall.
Since August I have been listening to LGBTQ+ podcast Homophilia as entertainment, but once I heard the hosts talking about the Marsha P Johnson documentary I began to use it as a resource to bring me to other podcasts relevant to my study, most importantly Making Gay History by Eric Marcus. On Making Gay History I listened to interviews with Silvia, Marsha, and others, including Dr. Evelyn Hooker, and founders of early gay rights groups.
I went on to watch Paris is Burning, and briefly exploring drag ball culture, and watched Angels in America, which, while also being an important piece of queer theater history, shed some light on the AIDs epidemic.
I have continued this historical exploration, reading a book about Stonewall, and continuing to follow Homophila and Making Gay History. I did, however, also take the step to actually producing a piece of writing from this research, in the form of my Stonewall Sticky Notes.
The most cut and dry example of my exploration of queer history is my understanding of the HIV/AIDs crisis, and its effect on my world today. On PAGE 11 I reference how hard it was to find good documents from that time period, and I have an explanation for why:
“...3,720 men, women and children died of AIDS in the same month, caused by a more violent attack— government inaction, rooted in society's growing homophobia."
- From QUEERS READ THIS
The answer to why documents are so hard to find is that many of them are lost or forgotten, because the people who made them or read them died of AIDs , and the ones who didn’t are few and far between.
I’ve been looking at the idea of queer patriotism, ever since Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer came out, featuring Crazy, Classic Life and Americans, both of which comment of Monae’s place in society as a queer woman of color, and celebrate it vigorously.
This study has been very important to my identity, and has helped me discover many things that I would not have had I not been looking.
I am earning .5 Social Studies credits for:
- Queer History/Culture
- BOUNDLESS
Queer History and Culture
I have continued to study queer history and culture in a fairly relaxed manner. I’ve been doing a lot of reading mostly. I have been reading The World Only Spins Forward by Dan Kois and Isaac Butler, an oral history of Angels in America, in preparation to seeing it in April. I have also been reading Disidentification by José Esteban Muñoz, which is a queer theory text about identity and how it helps/hurts one's existence. I have been listening too many queer voices on podcasts, in films, and in books, and they all bring something new and different to the table.
On BOUNDLESS we have discussion sections where we talk about current events or pop culture or the like in relation to queerness, these discussions often demonstrate my thought process regarding queer culture. Example: The new Queer Eye came out on Netflix, and we had a discussion about how it’s not really queer because they are 5 gay men.
I have started to work on a piece of writing about my experience as a queer person. It is definitely still evolving, but I think I will be using it to better develop my sense of self in relation to the history and reality of what I perceive the queer experience to be.
This has probably been one of the most influential studies of my life.
Queerness is a strange thing.
It is not hereditary.
We are not given it by our parents.
We discover it within ourselves.
When I went to Angels in America it was a pilgrimage. Because Angels is a unifying thing, and it is such a powerful historic play. After this year I feel as though I have made the connections between history and the present, and am ready to go forward in the world as a queer person who has a basic understanding of the history of queer people.
This took a heck of a lot of work.
I discovered a document called QUEERS READ THIS in the last month of school. It was the kind of thing I have been looking for all year, a primary source written by queer people. I had previously spent ages digging through the internet for things like it to no avail. Along with QUEERS READ THIS I discovered a library of queer zines from the 80’s through the present. There are so many resources out there, but they are so hard to find, especially from places like Vermont - where the queer community is so small and spread out.
I have begun writing a piece about my ideas on queer theory, which I will continue to develop after I graduate, and I am making a sound piece about queer patriotism for BOUNDLESS (pulling from Dirty Computer by Janelle Monae, Angels in America, QUEERS READ THIS, and more).
I think that the most important thing about this study was that it was truly just for me. All my art pieces need viewers, I needed science and english to graduate, but this study was purely mine. I did all the research because I felt like it was something that was important for me to know, and that no one else was going to teach me. I read so much theory, and so many opinion pieces, and choose what I liked to agree with, and formed my own opinions. It was a deeply independant experience, and because of that, a deeply important one for the adult that I want to be.
History and Culture
My exploration started with the Netflix documentary The Death and Life of Marsha P Johnson, which explored her alleged murder in 1993, but she stands as a very important figure in gay rights movement, and is often credited with being the first to throw things (coins, and later bricks maybe) at the Stonewall riots. The film also followed Marsha’s contemporary Silvia Rivera, what was also at Stonewall.
Since August I have been listening to LGBTQ+ podcast Homophilia as entertainment, but once I heard the hosts talking about the Marsha P Johnson documentary I began to use it as a resource to bring me to other podcasts relevant to my study, most importantly Making Gay History by Eric Marcus. On Making Gay History I listened to interviews with Silvia, Marsha, and others, including Dr. Evelyn Hooker, and founders of early gay rights groups.
I went on to watch Paris is Burning, and briefly exploring drag ball culture, and watched Angels in America, which, while also being an important piece of queer theater history, shed some light on the AIDs epidemic.
I have continued this historical exploration, reading a book about Stonewall, and continuing to follow Homophila and Making Gay History. I did, however, also take the step to actually producing a piece of writing from this research, in the form of my Stonewall Sticky Notes.
The most cut and dry example of my exploration of queer history is my understanding of the HIV/AIDs crisis, and its effect on my world today. On PAGE 11 I reference how hard it was to find good documents from that time period, and I have an explanation for why:
“...3,720 men, women and children died of AIDS in the same month, caused by a more violent attack— government inaction, rooted in society's growing homophobia."
- From QUEERS READ THIS
The answer to why documents are so hard to find is that many of them are lost or forgotten, because the people who made them or read them died of AIDs , and the ones who didn’t are few and far between.
I’ve been looking at the idea of queer patriotism, ever since Janelle Monae’s Dirty Computer came out, featuring Crazy, Classic Life and Americans, both of which comment of Monae’s place in society as a queer woman of color, and celebrate it vigorously.
This study has been very important to my identity, and has helped me discover many things that I would not have had I not been looking.