It's that time -- the end of the semester when I am thinking so much about my students and our time in class. Here are some of the books we've read together---
We've had such a jam-packed semester reading and discussing plays, attending plays, reading/discussing memoirs, novels, watching films, having a myriad of guests, laughing and learning together.
This is English 212--Lesbian and Gay Literature and the students in this class are strong and powerful individuals who are unafraid to read a wide variety of amazing literature. My thoughts keep going to one of our early readings this semester: Tony Kushner's play, Angels in America. In an interview, Kushner discussed his play saying, "The question I am trying to ask is how broad is a community's embrace? How wide does it reach?" Kushner is speaking of personal as well as political bonds. In Angels in America, it is only after these personal and political bonds are tested, deconstructed, destroyed, that then community is regenerated/recreated to include connections never before imagined. I think of our group knitted together within the fabric of literary analysis. And yet, within that fabric, our analytical discussions unravel our own preconceived notions or break open toward other avenues of inquiry. The authors we read have created works that problematize what it means to be human or what it means to be an individual within a constructed normative society.
Sometimes I wish this could be a year course. There is so much more to read, so many more films to consider with these works of literature. I always hope that my students will not stop but continue and many of them do. Today when one of my students gave me her final paper, she exuberantly told me how she had come across more books in her research and that she will be reading them over the winter break. Her effusive manner was contagious. I kept smiling the rest of the afternoon.
