"Free Papers" by Wideman

 

I love having Daniel Wideman's "Free Papers" as the first reading in the Queer 3.0 class because of the lyricism of the language and how it sets the town for what the themes of the class will be. The "Justice/Just us" homonym is catchy but meaningful at the same time.

The piece allows us to use what will become our standard mode of textual analysis, with a clear Thesis, determining Audience, analyzing the Method/Rhetorical Strategy, the author's Objective (reason for writing the piece) as well as their Assumptions/Perspective.

As a logophile myself, I actually enjoy the fact that Wideman uses numerous "five-dollar words" like the following:

• admonish
• ameliorate
• antipode
• facile
• furtive
• hegemony
• moniker
• mundane
• obviate
• ossify
• Pavlovian
• pernicious
• predilection
• Prometheus
• schadenfreude

In the comments, feel free to define these words (and add them to the Vocab page)

My favorite part of "Free Papers" is towards the end, where the writing becomes almost poetic, this excerpt:

A life free of scripture and stricture---each man free to write his own script, invent his own life. Part of the power of authorship is the power to write your own rules and enforce them, to harness the power of the word to military might. Thus the primal acts that inscribed you as a citizen of the world (an autonomous author) were voting and bearing arms. The right to write and, if pen did not prove mightier than the sword, he means and privilege to tote both and draw either indiscriminately. We enjoyed no such powers. We could not officially script our lives, so we developed the most sophisticated sense of subversive narrations inn the world: We acquired an endless fascination and proficiency with the insurrectionary properties of language.

What's your favorite part of "Free Papers"? 

First But Not Last Blog Post!

Hello class!

This is the first blogpost of the class, but hopefully not the last!

I want to welcome you all to this group blog for #FYS6: (Queer 3.0) LGBTQ Rights in the Internet Era, my FYS class for Fall 2023 at Occidental College. The course description is: 

This course is about the past, present and future of the fight for equal citizenship for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans, commonly known as the “gay rights movement.” A fundamental tenet of the course is the idea that gender, race, sex and sexual orientation (among other aspects of one’s identity) are social constructions. We will analyze the historical treatment of LGBTQ people throughout history with a specific focus on the Internet era: the time period from the Internet’s birth in the 1960s to the present day. We will examine the historical, cultural, religious, legal and societal significance of marriage and deploy this analysis as a lens to view the myriad ways that civil rights and fundamental freedoms are often mediated by identity and contingent on circumstance. Texts in the course will include academic articles, court cases, legal briefs, popular media, fiction, blogs, videos, tweets and images. We will use networking tools and social media (e.g., Slack, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Blogger/Wordpress, etc.) to facilitate students’ development as both consumers and producers of intellectual, academic material. The ability of students to produce and critique online content is a learning outcome of this class. No previous knowledge of any particular internet tool is required.

Feel free to use this space (and your own personal blogs) to highlight and comment on issues that involve LGBTQ rights that occur in the media or news during the semester. One of the central outcomes of the class is for you to see each other as producers, and not just consumers, of intellectual content.