Queer Time Meta Time: Rethinking Gender & Sexuality Education as Anomolous Places of Unlearning
Abstract
This is a reflection/refraction on several semesters of teaching an undergraduate seminar on Rethinking Gender & Sexuality Education in an Alterglobal World. The course is an exercise in “Queer Time” (Halberstam 2010). Queer uses of time and space develop in ways parallel to and different from normative social institutions such as families, heterosexual development, reproduction, and transitioning into adulthood. Rethinking Gender & Sexuality education often turns out to be an initial introduction to gender and sexuality, or an uncanny experience of re- experiencing one’s own gender and sexuality “sentimental education” (Donald 1992) A semester seminar can benefit from the realization that queer time fits better than chrononormativity. There is no appropriate series of experiences through which one must achieve maturity, nor is there a clear definition of any term related to curriculum, such as learning, knowledge, objectives, experience, or instruction. Queerness is itself an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and, from the normative social perspective, eccentric economic practices. Queerness is constituted by its differences from conventional requirements of time and life milestones. Queer time demands Meta Time: a time inside and outside of time itself, as an anomalous place of unlearning (Ellsworth 2005, Knott 2015).
Presentation Description
This is a reflection/refraction on several semesters of teaching an undergraduate seminar on Rethinking Gender & Sexuality Education in an Alterglobal World. The course is an exercise in “Queer Time” (Halberstam 2010). Queer uses of time and space develop in ways parallel to and different from normative social institutions such as families, heterosexual development, reproduction, and transitioning into adulthood. Rethinking Gender & Sexuality education often turns out to be an initial introduction to gender and sexuality, or an uncanny experience of re- experiencing one’s own gender and sexuality “sentimental education” (Donald 1992) A semester seminar can benefit from the realization that queer time fits better than chrononormativity. There is no appropriate series of experiences through which one must achieve maturity, nor is there a clear definition of any term related to curriculum, such as learning, knowledge, objectives, experience, or instruction. Queerness is itself an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and, from the normative social perspective, eccentric economic practices. Queerness is constituted by its differences from conventional requirements of time and life milestones. Queer time demands Meta Time: a time inside and outside of time itself, as an anomalous place of unlearning (Ellsworth 2005, Knott 2015).
Location
Stream A: Curriculum Dialogues
Publication Type and Release Option
Presentation (Open Access)
Recommended Citation
Applebaum, Peter, "Queer Time Meta Time: Rethinking Gender & Sexuality Education as Anomolous Places of Unlearning" (2020). Curriculum Studies Summer Collaborative. 47.
https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cssc/2020/2020/47
Queer Time Meta Time: Rethinking Gender & Sexuality Education as Anomolous Places of Unlearning
Stream A: Curriculum Dialogues
This is a reflection/refraction on several semesters of teaching an undergraduate seminar on Rethinking Gender & Sexuality Education in an Alterglobal World. The course is an exercise in “Queer Time” (Halberstam 2010). Queer uses of time and space develop in ways parallel to and different from normative social institutions such as families, heterosexual development, reproduction, and transitioning into adulthood. Rethinking Gender & Sexuality education often turns out to be an initial introduction to gender and sexuality, or an uncanny experience of re- experiencing one’s own gender and sexuality “sentimental education” (Donald 1992) A semester seminar can benefit from the realization that queer time fits better than chrononormativity. There is no appropriate series of experiences through which one must achieve maturity, nor is there a clear definition of any term related to curriculum, such as learning, knowledge, objectives, experience, or instruction. Queerness is itself an outcome of strange temporalities, imaginative life schedules, and, from the normative social perspective, eccentric economic practices. Queerness is constituted by its differences from conventional requirements of time and life milestones. Queer time demands Meta Time: a time inside and outside of time itself, as an anomalous place of unlearning (Ellsworth 2005, Knott 2015).
