Lesson Plans

Syllabus:
3/16
In Class: Written Lives Presentations. Overview of Final Project. Uncovering your topics. Freewrite to consider your topic for your final project; see SMH 3a, “Exploring a topic,” and SMH 13a-h to review and reflect upon purpose, whether your statement can be argued, formulating your thesis, and developing support. Bring in chaos/ ideas/ clusters.

In Class:

Speakers:

• Responses
• Considerations
• Revisions?

Readings:

• Heger's Arrival at Sachsenhausen (Triangles Roses) (A bit outside of our geographical area)
  Ruthie and Connie: Every Room in the House (film synopsis)
  Ruth Ellis
  Ruth Ellis: Portrait of a 100-Year-Old Lesbian (Curve Magazine)
  Ruth Ellis 1899-2000 (Lesbian Legacy Collection at USC)
  Harvey Milk
  Dave Kopay Profile
  Poster Boy
  Optional:
  Out of the Past, documentary at PBS-- click on timeline and dates
  "Musician's Death at 74 Reveals He Was a Woman" New York Times, Feb 2, 1989. p. A18
  AIDS Quilt Images from CT: Imperial Court CT; Hospital of St. Raphael; St. Luke's Community Church, Stamford; Mid-Fairfield AIDS Project, Norwalk; In Memory of Our Patients, Norwalk Hospital; Friends and Family of Windham Tech, Windham; To The AIDS Victims of Litchfield County; HIV/AIDS Unit Hartford CT
  Melvin Dixon (Bio.), "Aunt Ida Pieces a Quilt"

Final Research Project:
(there will be another, 'shorter,' paper due in the interim)

Your topic should be:

• Interesting to YOU -- what readings intrigued you most and why? what is your major/ area of interest? How can you work with your interests and this course's theme?
• Important. Consider the purpose of your writing. Often, we write to persuade or to teach. Writers can influence people, and as corny as it may sound, writing can change the world. How can you use writing to make a difference?
• Original. This can be the hardest part, as it may feel to you that everything has been covered before. Think of music-- love songs. Think about how many times you can stand to hear the same song over and over on the radio-- even your favorite song can set your teeth on edge. That doesn't mean, however, that all love songs are exactly the same. Lyrics and performance can change perspectives. Even working from a common base (consider remakes!) can lead an artist to create something original.
  .....One way to consider how you will make your writing original is to consider what you uniquely can bring to a work. If you've played team sports for ten years, might you not have something stronger to add to a conversation concerning gays in sports? If you're a psych. major, do you have a way to analyze homophobia among members of the psych. profession?
• Researchable. Ok. Not sure if that's even a word. In truth, everything is, as you will need to establish authority in your paper, and one way in which to do so is to demonstrate your awareness of scholarship concerning your topic. Remember that your research may take you in different directions than you may suppose. If you're writing about the media and gay stereotypes, consider researching psychology journals for studies concerning repeated exposure and perception of norms ("media" and "gay" might not be found in these articles, but don't the concepts apply?).
• Fun. You may not think that this is possible, but it should be. You're going to spend a lot of time researching and writing. Find something that is interesting and fun, one that offers you opportunities to think, to perhaps be a little creative. This is an academic paper, but academic shouldn't equal boring/painful/tedious.

Timeline:

• 4/25: Research Project Proposal (500 words, plus prospective outline of project) [5%]
  See previous guidelines for proposal for an idea.
• 5/2: Annotated Bibliography for your specific topic. Minimum 10 sources. [10%]
  Sample AB entry is in SMH 14.i (Substantive/Evaluative Entry). Grading based on Citation, Summary, and Analysis. Note how the sample entry is brief, yet covers the necessary information. See below for more info. as to types of sources.
• 5/11 (reading day): Researched Analysis (2500 words minimum plus Works Cited and Outline). Min. 7 sources (not including reference materials) [20%]
  As always, sources are used to add to your analysis-- which this paper is, first and foremost. Sources must be appropriate for college level (generally, no general use websites or news sources; if your topic leads you to these types of sources, please meet with me to discuss). Consider how you will create something that is original scholarship, providing a different means of consideration, interpretation, or analysis. I would suggest moving beyond the blanket topics of gay adoption, gay marriage, or gays in the military, as people seem to be getting caught in many cliches.
• Fin.: Oral Presentation: Final Research Project (5-10 mins.) [5%]
  

Looking Ahead:
3/28
Read & Blog: Sacrifices and Standards. In Class: Essay II Proposal.

Syllabus:
3/14 Read & Blog: Written Lives

In Class:
Total change of plans. We will have two guest speakers in class today: D and Joel.
Per pre-class email:
Sorry about the short notice, but today was the only day I could confirm for, and I didn't find out until Saturday night (and I didn't have computer access until this morning). Tonight during class we will have two guest speakers. Please prepare some questions for them (see SMH on conducting an interview). Perhaps think about their lives in terms of the dry data we've read-- these are two of the names and faces that are behind the facts and figures.
Short bios follow.
=========================
Dolores (aka ‘D’)
=========================
Ask D to define herself, and the term “lesbian” will be pretty far down on the list. D is a woman who is passionate about her ideals and whose interests range from gardening and cooking to mechanics and music. It may have been her passion for conscientious action and a strong sense of right and wrong that drew her to her career in law enforcement.

Part of a large Italian-Catholic family, D grew up in Connecticut during the 1950s and 60s. Although she dated men—and had even been engaged to be married—she knew that she wanted more than the traditional life as wife and mother that was the aspiration of most women of her time. She chose to join the military in order to ‘see the world’ and served during the Vietnam War. It was at this time that she came to know servicewomen who were gay and reconsidered her own sexuality.

She has survived what she refers to as the military’s “witch hunts,” lived and loved in times and places where being gay and acting upon it was illegal, and has fought sexism, heterosexism, and cancer.

She currently lives in the Hartford area with her partner, Rosann, and their dog, Dexter.
=========================
Joel Zea
=========================
While most people become infuriated by stereotypes, Joel seems to enjoy crossing the lines between assumptions and actions. He is simultaneously ghetto and uptown, Anglo and Hispanic, book smart and street savvy. He’s also a gay man.

Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, Joel has needed to redefine his relationships with his family since coming out. However, he has not held back in acting in accordance with his heart and beliefs. Joel and his former partner, Manny, were one of the first gay couples in Hartford to register as domestic partners. Joel has worked to promote safer sex awareness and was also active in campus organizations such as Queer Alliance. He is well-known and quite active in Hartford’s gay community.

A graduate of Wesleyan, Joel is interested in pursuing his doctorate and specializing in queer studies.
=========================
Looking Ahead:
3/16
SMH Online: “The St. Martin’s Tutorial on Avoiding Plagiarism: Avoiding Plagiarism.” Read tutorial and complete exercise, “Avoiding Plagiarism.” How did you do? Do you feel that you now have a better understanding of the concepts of academic honesty and proper citation practices?
In Class: Written Lives Presentations.
Overview of Final Project. Uncovering your topics. Freewrite to consider your topic for your final project; see SMH 3a, “Exploring a topic,” and SMH 13a-h to review and reflect upon purpose, whether your statement can be argued, formulating your thesis, and developing support. Bring in chaos/ ideas/ clusters.

Syllabus:

• 3/7 Finished Draft of Essay I. Workshop: Format/Design and proofing. In Class: Contemporary Cultural Perspectives Presentations. Overview of Wednesday.

Bookkeeping:

• Guest Speakers are unable to attend this week. Class will be held. See below for expectations/requirements.
• Please review web site after class to make sure that I have a link to your blog so that you will receive credit for your work. Also, make sure that you are creating a new post for each section (e.g., Contemporary Cultural or Religious); you will not receive credit for a blog posted as a comment (each entry is difficult to find).

In Class:

Grammar Workshop

• First: Grammar check. Look at the notation marks noted in your proposal. If you haven’t yet, look up these terms in SMH to find out what they are and how to correct them.
• What's the most common error in class? Read off descriptions.

Essay I Workshop

• Count off to find workshop partner.
• Email file as attachment
• Check email ;-) and open file.
• Follow workshop guidelines at cundrie.com; see special note for laptop lab people. You will save the document as a pdf so that the person has a copy. Make sure you know the file location to which you saved the pdf.
• Email reviewed draft in pdf format with revisions showing to the original writer, a copy to you, and one to me (Beaudin A 1 @ southernct. edu). In case you didn’t know, you can do this by sending one email to multiple recipients.

6:15 Section

• MLA Review. Parenthetical citation and list of works citedo what needs to be cited and why
•  direct quotes
•  summaries
•  paraphrases
•  any data that you needed to research (either by asking someone, looking up online, referring to a book—any type of research!)
• How to cite
•  MLA is a type of reference system. Term used in text (e.g., Smith 101) must be primary index term in WC (e.g., Smith, Thomas H. A History of Queer Literature. New York: Triangle, 2005.)
•  All quotes must be introduced, even if cited parenthetically.
• • WHAT NOT TO DO: “The reading and writing you do in college are part of what we broadly think of as research” (Lunsford 39).
• • DO THIS: As Andrea Lunsford notes in the St. Martin’s Handbook, “The reading and writing you do in college are part of what we broadly think of as research” (39).
• • Note that when the source is made clear, the parenthetical citation need only to indicate where in the text the particular quote, paraphrase, or section summary is to be found. The reader knows that he or she can look in your works cited and find an entry that begins “Lunsford, Andrea A.” that will name a text with full bibliographic information so that the reader can, if he or she wishes, turn to page 39 of that book and find that quote and the context in which it was used.
•  If a source was located via JSTOR, the OED, or any of the Buley databases, it must be cited according to SMH 20c#40 (Work from an online subscription service). Look at the second example for more information.
•  The greatest difficulty with citation is—for most—figuring out the type of source. SMH 20

Looking Ahead to 3/9

6:15

• Essay I due.
• We will discuss Contemporary Cultural Perspectives readings in depth in class.

7:35

• bring in finished draft of essay one on disk/ thumb drive/ emailed to self as MS Word attachment for in class review and workshop.
• We will continue discussion of Contemporary Cultural Perspectives.

Syllabus:
2/28
SMH Online: “The St. Martin’s Tutorial on Avoiding Plagiarism: Documenting Sources.” Read tutorial and complete exercises, “MLA Documentation for In-Text Citations.” and “MLA Documentation for Works Cited.”
Draft of Essay I (One printout; one digitally accessible). You are expected to have continued to work on your draft and considered both input from the previous workshop and the response(s) to your proposal. In Class: Workshop: effective organization, analysis, and use of source materials.
3/2
Read & Blog: Contemporary Cultural Perspectives. Draft of Essay I (One printout; one digitally accessible). You are expected to have continued to work on your draft and considered both input from the previous workshop and the response(s) to your proposal. In Class: Workshop.

In Class:
Essay Review:

• Status?
• Existing Issues.
• Follow Workshop Reference
• By end of workshop should have strong responses/suggestions. Goal is to help yourself as writer by critically considering others' writing. Be civil, but don't hold back if you think that the writer has serious gaps, flaws, or errors. Tell him/her what she has done well.

Text Discussion:

• Did you know? Jael Phelps
• Shrek
• Social concerns in contemporary culture. What are threads among texts?
• Contemporary Cultural Perspectives
  "10 Myths About Priestly Homophobia" (Catholic Educators' Resource Center) See #6
  The Abel and Harlow Child Molestation Prevention Study (11-12)
  The Journal of Social Psychology, 2005, 145(1), 65–83. “The Components of Sexual Orientation, Religiosity, and Heterosexuals’ Impressions of Gay Men and Lesbians.” WAYNE W. WILKINSON and ANDREW C. ROYS. Read 65-68 (to Study I) and 78-80 (beginning with “General Discussion”). You are welcomed to read the article in its entirety
  Technical Report by the American Academy of Pediatrics: Coparent or Second-Parent Adoption by Same-Sex Parents
  "Will Sponge Bob Make You Gay?"
  S. Bear Bergman: "Pardon Me, Have You Seen My Sexual Orientation?"