en|Gender

I mentioned in passing a while back that I accepted a job teaching Gender Studies next year, but I’ve recently been reminded that I never filled in the blanks, and since I just received approval for a course I designed precisely for me to teach, I thought I should fill everyone in.

I’ll be teaching two courses in Gender Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, for their winter term, which is January – March. I hope the folks at Fantasia Fair will appreciate that I turned down teaching the fall term because of a previous commitment to attend FanFair this year, only because it’s not just cold in Wisconsin in January, it’s goddamned cold. (But now that I think of it, Miqqi Gilbert lives in Toronto, so I’ll probably get no sympathy there, ha.)

I’ll be teaching an Intro to Gender Studies course, team-taught, with Gender Studies Chair and psychologist Beth Haines, and the other course is of my own devising, and called “Transgender Lives”:

An introduction to the historical and literary representations of transgender people. Using a feminist lens, this course will examine issues such as identity, pathology, representation of the “other,” and of course, cultural ideas about gender norms and appearance. We’ll be reading things like The Well of Loneliness, and Orlando, and Stone Butch Blues, as well as She’s Not There, amongst others.

I’m very excited about the prospect, even while Betty & I still have no idea if she’s coming with me, or staying here with the cats, or what. Eh, logistics: we’ll figure that all out later. Needless to say, I’m expecting long johns for Christmas.