"Resistance and change often begin in art, and very often in our art – the art of words.” – Ursula K. Le Guin
As literary and cultural studies scholars, words are at the heart of what we do. The words we choose to engage with – and how we write about those words – matters a great deal. To quote the inimitable Donna Haraway, “it matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories”(12). Together in this seminar we will work to identify what matter(s) we are using to think other matters with, to locate our own positionality, and then to consider how scholarly writing practices – what Le Guin terms “the art of words” – can remake the world.
This seminar is premised on the possibilities of scholarship that refuses the illusion of objectivity and invests in what is deeply personal. Our collective engagement will be organized in two parts. Part I of this block seminar will begin with what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney term study “a mode of thinking with others separate from the thinking that the institution requires of you”(11). By engaging theories of self and care we will come to an understanding of scholarly work as embodied, personal, and political. Part II of this seminar moves from theory to practice, taking direction from Donna Haraway who argues quite simply, that “we must change the story; the story must change” (40). And so, in the second part of our seminar we will write together and with a purpose, pursuing creative approaches to academic writing that will lead us down what Jack Halberstam calls “the path to the wild beyond” (qtd. in Moten and Harney 8).
References
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press, 2016.
Le Guin, Ursula K. . "Watch Ursula K. Le Guin’s Amazing Nba Acceptance Speech." https://electricliterature.com/watch-ursula-k-le-guins-amazing-nba-acceptance-speech. Accessed 20 September 2021.
Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Minor Compositions, 2013.
As literary and cultural studies scholars, words are at the heart of what we do. The words we choose to engage with – and how we write about those words – matters a great deal. To quote the inimitable Donna Haraway, “it matters what matters we use to think other matters with; it matters what stories we tell to tell other stories with; it matters what knots knot knots, what thoughts think thoughts, what descriptions describe descriptions, what ties tie ties. It matters what stories make worlds, what worlds make stories”(12). Together in this seminar we will work to identify what matter(s) we are using to think other matters with, to locate our own positionality, and then to consider how scholarly writing practices – what Le Guin terms “the art of words” – can remake the world.
This seminar is premised on the possibilities of scholarship that refuses the illusion of objectivity and invests in what is deeply personal. Our collective engagement will be organized in two parts. Part I of this block seminar will begin with what Fred Moten and Stefano Harney term study “a mode of thinking with others separate from the thinking that the institution requires of you”(11). By engaging theories of self and care we will come to an understanding of scholarly work as embodied, personal, and political. Part II of this seminar moves from theory to practice, taking direction from Donna Haraway who argues quite simply, that “we must change the story; the story must change” (40). And so, in the second part of our seminar we will write together and with a purpose, pursuing creative approaches to academic writing that will lead us down what Jack Halberstam calls “the path to the wild beyond” (qtd. in Moten and Harney 8).
References
Haraway, Donna. Staying with the Trouble. Duke University Press, 2016.
Le Guin, Ursula K. . "Watch Ursula K. Le Guin’s Amazing Nba Acceptance Speech." https://electricliterature.com/watch-ursula-k-le-guins-amazing-nba-acceptance-speech. Accessed 20 September 2021.
Moten, Fred and Stefano Harney. The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study. Minor Compositions, 2013.
- Dozent: Hannah Nelson-Teutsch