We have had the pleasure of learning under Dr. Tyler Bradway this semester, and in the last four months I have consumed so much information and I can say with great joy that it has changed the way I think. The final project for the course was the creation of an activism project and this inevitably led to an inquiry as to what Queer Activism could look like, as well as the forms it has take on in the past. I began to think about the reasons I signed up for a course that dealt with theories and ideals that I was an alien to and I came to this conclusion: it's not that people don't want to understand, it's that more often than not the heavy theoretical lifting is done in high academic language that is wordy, lengthy, and ultimately confusing. So, I set out to make the theory more accessible, to better arm anyone who wants to contribute to the conversation, but doesn't have access to the resources I've been fortunate to have access to.
The course was broken down into five parts: My aim here is to provide the essential ideas these theorists provide, filtering out the excessive language while maintaining the ideas being produced and making them accessible to anyone who wants to begin to understand the issues surrounding heteronormativity and queerness; this is by no means an exhaustive explanation. |