My guest author for today’s post is Louisa Spaventa. I asked Louisa to tell me more about her honors course on queer lit, which she is teaching in the Spring 12-week term.
The course starts Feb 12, so there’s still time to register! Click ENGL-1302-64939 and scroll down to the 12-week term for details. To sign up, contact honors at 512.223.2171.
Here’s what Louisa says about the course:
Queer Writings is an Honors Composition II class that I created for ACC and I started teaching in the spring of 2015. ACC’s honors classes are designed for a maximum of 15 students, which is highly remarkable. In the course, students synthesize fiction, theory, and related essays with concepts relevant to social justice and the LGBTQ community. Some of the authors on the syllabus are Emma Donoghue, David Leavitt, Willa Cather, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Allison, Alison Bechdel, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Alice Walker, Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, Gloria Anzaldua, and Jeannette Winterson. In addition to discussing the readings, we look at cinematic texts like Velvet Goldmine and Transparent. We visit the UT Gender and Sexuality Center to hear about the center’s social programs and the university’s academic resources. Students are required to attend at least one community arts event (OUTsider Festival, an author’s performance at a bookstore, or a drag show, for example). And for the last class, everyone engages in gender performance–coming to school “doing gender” in a different way.
Every year I ask an author to visit the class; this has been a very popular feature of the semester. Additionally, for the past two years, I have produced an event called “A Night of Queer Performance.” This occasion features writers, visual artists and drag creatives from the local community and beyond. Open to the public, attendance has been fantastic, and I hope to make it, like the course itself, an annual offering.
I am excited to be staging the class at South Austin Campus this spring for the 12 week session.
My student Allison from last year’s class had this to say about it:
“As a student of Austin Community College for over five years, I can’t begin to express how important Spaventa’s Queer Writings class was to my education. It provided insight into a subject very important to me personally, and opened my mind and heart to the world of literature the LGBTQ+ community can provide for both those within it and for supporters who want to understand and learn from these crucial voices.”
Thanks for the post, Louisa — and thanks for offering this course!
Interested in honors at ACC? Find out more!
