 Discussion:
• “We Might as Well be
Strangers”
 Presentation: End of
course
 Paper #2 (Due Friday
12/12 at 9:15)
Homework Self-assessment
 Exam Preparation
 Revisions due Friday, week
11 before noon.

 Q: What is the proper way to come out to your parents?
 Q: Are there better ways to come out?
 Q: Is it necessary to come out to parents?
 Q: How does Alison’s grandmother’s experience with her
roommate’s family mirror Alison’s experience with her
mother?
 Q: In what ways, consciously or subconsciously, do we
come out throughout our lifetimes?
 Q: What is the most hurtful part of Alison’s mom’s
reaction?
 Q: Why did Alison not reveal to her mother that she had
already come out to her grandmother, and that her
grandmother accepted her homosexuality?

 Q: If the mom already “knew” that Alison was gay with Laura, then why
didn’t she do anything sooner?
 Why does Alison’s mother react so differently than Alison’s grandmother
about coming out?
 Q: Was it right for Alison to come out to her grandmother and mother
separately?
 Q: If we can make connections like Alison’s grandmother did towards her
feeling, could it make the coming out experience a bit more easier,
instead of exploding in rage like her mother? Does it possibly show the
two types of people in this world between Allison’s mother and
grandmother?
 Q: Why did Alison’s grandmother not help her come out to her mother?
 Q: If Alison’s grandmother had not had any Holocaust experience, would
she have been as closed-minded as Alison’s mother?

 Class 20:
• Introduce Essay #2
• Self-assessment
• Introduce Exam #2
 Class 21:
• Film
 Class 22:
• Individual Conferences by
appointment
• Self-assessment due
 Class 23:
• Friday 12/12 9:15 to 11:15
• Exam #2
• Final paper due before class.

 In this second half of our quarter, we have read and
discussed multiple texts, theories, and opinions on both
literature and literary analysis, and for this reason, I
offer you many choices for your second essay: In a
thesis driven essay of 2-5 pages (formatted in MLA
style), analyze one or more aspects of one of the
primary texts we have read in the second half of this
quarter. Aim to convince readers that your
interpretation adds to the conversation among those
who read and write about queer texts. Back up your
analysis with reasons and support from the story.
Consider using one or more secondary sources to help
support your ideas and assertions.

PRIMARY TEXTS
 Beebo Brinker
by Ann Bannon
 The Front Runner
by Patricia Nell Warren
 “Gee, You Don’t Seem Like
an Indian From the
Reservation”
By Barbara Cameron
 “Philorstorgy, Now Obscure”
By Allen Barnett
 Stone Butch Blues
By Leslie Feinberg
 “Am I Blue”
By Bruce Colville
 “We Might As Well Be
Strangers”
By M.E. Kerr
SECONDARY SOURCES
 From Critical Theory Today
“Lesbian, Gay, and Queer
Theory” by Lois Tyson
 “From Psychopathia
Sexualis” Krafft-Ebbing
 “Studies in the Psychology
of Sex” by Havelock Ellis
 “The Psychogenesis of a
Case of Homosexuality in a
Woman” by Sigmund Freud
 “A Letter to an American
Mother” Sigmund Freud

1. What are the politics (ideological agendas) of specific gay,
lesbian, or queer works, and how are those politics revealed
in...the work's thematic content or portrayals of its characters?
2. What are the poetics (literary devices and strategies) of a
specific lesbian, gay, or queer works?
3. What does the work contribute to our knowledge of queer, gay,
or lesbian experience and history, including literary history?
4. How is queer, gay, or lesbian experience coded in texts that are
by writers who are apparently homosexual?
5. How might the works of heterosexual writers be reread to
reveal an unspoken or unconscious lesbian, gay or queer
presence? That is, does the work have an unconscious
lesbian, gay or queer desire or conflict that it submerges?

6. What does the work reveal about the operations (socially, politically,
psychologically) of heterosexism?
7. How does the literary text illustrate the problematics of sexuality and
sexual "identity," that is the ways in which human sexuality does not
fall neatly into the separate categories defined by the words
homosexual and heterosexual?
8. What elements in the text exist in the middle, between the perceived
masculine/feminine binary? In other words, what elements exhibit
traits of both (bisexual)?
9. What elements of the text can be perceived as being masculine
(active, powerful) and feminine (passive, marginalized) and how do
the characters support these traditional roles?
10. What sort of support (if any) is given to elements or characters who
question the masculine/feminine binary? What happens to those
elements/characters?

 Manifestations of queerness on the body
 Internalized oppression in lgbtqqia2p people
 Identify, analyze and explain coded texts: when, how, and
why?
 Analyze the military as a homosocial/homosexual realm
 Analyze and explain social stigma and consequences for
homosexual behavior and those effects on queer people.
 Identify, analyze, and explain demons and predators in queer
literature.
 Analyze spaces specific to queer characters
 Analyze the connection between death and queerness

 Masculinity (in men
and women)
 Femininity (in men
and women)
 Race/Class/Sex
privilege and
queerness
• Love
• Guilt and blame
• Medical and other
social services
• Isolation
• Queer spaces
• Violence
• Oppression
• Passing

Be Familiar with the Text
 A good paper begins with the writer having a
solid understanding of the work. Being able to
have the whole text in your head when you begin
thinking through ideas will actually allow you to
write the paper more quickly in the long run.
 Spend some time just thinking about the story.
Flip back through the book and consider what
interests you about this book—what seemed
strange, new, or important?

 Consider how you might approach each topic.
What will your answer to each question show about the
text?
So what? Why will anyone care?
Try this phrase for each prompt to see if you have an
idea: “This book/short story shows
______________________. This is important because
______________________.”
For more information, see the presentation from class 10

Write about literature in present tense
 Avoid using “thing,” “something,” “everything,” and
“anything.”
 Avoid writing in second person.
 Avoid using contractions.
 Cut Wordy Sentences
 Avoid run-on sentences and fragments.
 Check for misused words
 Put commas and periods inside of quotation
marks

 Does the paper follow MLA guidelines?
• For help, click on “MLA Guidelines” and view the “Basic MLA
format” video.
 Is the page length within assigned limits?
 Is the font type and size within the assigned
guidelines?
 Does the Header follow the assignment guidelines?
 Is the professor's name spelled correctly? Kim Palmore
 Is your name spelled correctly?
 Does the paper have a title? Is it a good title? Is the title
in the appropriate location?
 Have you italicized book and movie titles and put
stories, articles, and poems in quotation marks.

The homework post points (100) require self-assessment.
Consider three aspects of your
responses: First, how many of the posts did you
make? Second, what was the quality of your
response? Third, how timely were your
submissions? Write a paragraph justifying your
grade. You may submit this to me by email as
soon as you finish post 20, but you must send it
before class 22.

Passage Identification by author and work
a. He looked into the dull costly garden. It improved. A man had
come into it from the back of the yew hedge. He had on a
canary-coloured shirt, and the effect was exactly right. The
whole scene blazed. That was what the place wanted—not a
flowerbed, but a man, who advanced with a confident tread
down the amphitheatre, and as he came nearer Conway saw
that besides being proper to the colour scheme he was a very
proper youth.
3. Character Identification
a. The sound of an approaching train awoke him, and he started
to his feet, remembering only his resolution, and afraid lest he
should be too late. He stood watching the approaching
locomotive, his teeth chattering, his lips drawn away from them
in a frightened smile; once or twice he glanced nervously
sidewise, as though he were being watched. When the right
moment came, he jumped.

Author Identification
She is best known for writing about the landscape of the
American heartland and those who immigrated and settled
there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
This is most vividly expressed in her two most famous
novels, O Pioneers! (1913) and My Ántonia (1918).
Comprehensive Essay Question: 500 words
Using one or more texts, discuss what the works reveal about
the operations (socially, politically, psychologically) of
heterosexism.

Begin Paper 2
QHQ 20: paper abstract
or summary, with a thesis
argument.
Friday, Week 11, all
revisions due before
noon.
Self-assessment due