Feminist Reading Group revived!

Well, perhaps new enthusiasm for our Feminist Reading group across worlds and media. In Second Life at the Sea Turtle Lodge in Cedar Island we had a 2 world livestream book party.

Shall we come up with something mixed, multiple, and enjoyable for discussing some transdisciplinary -- or whatever -- books?

We are thinking of Mel Y. Chen's Animacies: Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect for the first book: http://www.dukeupress.edu/Catalog/ViewProduct.php?productid=49311

It comes out in July, so we are aiming for mid July for a first meeting in Second Life, and to set up a parallel set of threads for sharing discussion on facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/258805885897/10150978425065898/?notif_t=group_activity

Feel free to sign up there!

And here on Blogger. We will try to get these interconnected in some fun way.

Ideas welcome!

Next meeting Mon 22 Feb 8 am SLT/Pacific = 11 am ET = 5 pm UK

• Katie King is back from discussion of Kara Keeling's The Witch's Flight. It is a complex book and we will probably be returning to it down the road.

• But for next time we are slated for Anna Tsing's essay on mushrooms as companions species. Email Katie for a copy: katking [at] umd [dot] edu

• Mon 22 Feb same time same place. SLURL -- this is the url that takes you to the Quaker meeting house at Sea Turtle Island in Second Life.
• To receive notice of all events, join the FB group: Feminist Reading Group at Sea Turtle Zendo (even though we are out growing the Zendo and are now at the Quaker meeting house).
• There is also an SL inworld group: Feminist Reading Group. For an invitation to join, IM either Lindsay Madrigal inworld or Katie Fenstalker (my avatar's name).

IF YOU HAVE TROUBLE REGISTERING: this is what Linden Labs told me when I asked:
"If the resident needs a avatar manually created by us they can submit a guest ticket on the Second Life support portal by using their e-mail address to contact us." Haven't heard if anyone has tried this yet and how it helped. Click this link to get to SL Support. 

If you want help at becoming comfortable in Second Life email Katie and she will meet up for an orientation if you want.

Here we are, talking today:

Second Meeting Monday 1 Feb 8 am SLT @ Quaker Meeting House

We had to change the meeting time and even the place! We are about to overflow the Zendo, we will be meeting instead at the Quaker Meeting House near Cedar Island. Here is the SLURL. Click it when you are ready to go into Second Life and it will transport you to the right location.

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We met 11 Jan and decided to discuss Keeling's The Witch's Flight next at the same times: 8 am SLT Pacific USA/11am ET USA/ 5pm UK/Europe. We will read pp. ix-44 & 95-117. Videos and such are linked at the blog from my discussion in posts below -- go to my class blog with video clips and such. We will discuss an essay from Anna Tsing Mon 22 Feb same times. Email Katie [katking [at] umd [dot] edu for a copy.

We meet first time Monday 11 January, 8 am SLT at the Zendo.

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The first meeting will be organizational -- altho I hope we actually talk about various books we want and like and desire! So you can still talk about any even before you get it! And the meeting is on monday the 11 of Jan. in SL. 8am SLT or Pacific Coast USA time, 11 am Eastern USA time, and 5 pm UK and Sweden time (I hope... I have that right!). You need only get to the place, be able to walk into the Zendo and sit down. And then use text to communicate. This should be relatively simple! Relatively! Ask for help if you need it. I will try to be inworld an hour ahead of time to help people. Instant message me in world -- my name is Katie Fenstalker.

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Katie Fenstalker looks like this:

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Katie King looks like this:

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And the Zendo at Sea Turtle Island in Second Life looks like this:

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Kintimacy

Kissing Cousins: A New Kinship Bestiary

Frances Bartkowski

“At a time when walls and fences and barriers are being erected in bricks and mortar and electronic circuitry, we might rather ask what the world would look like if we opened the borders of our selves to the others—-those others whom we resemble though we may be inclined to insist that we do not recognize them as our coevals, our co-evils” (3).

Weaving together such works as John Sayles’ film Lone Star, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Middlesex, Cai Hau’s A Society Without Fathers or Husbands with studies about pigs as organ donors, and stories from primatological research and evolutionary science, Bartkowski suggests kintimacy as the trope for the killing/kissing worlds we have inherited.

“If we could think and live this kissing-killing knot with empathy as the starting point, we might be able to move forward into our mixed and mingled futures with forms of radical hope fashioned out of old histories of despair" (139).

a book various folks are talking about. should it begin our explorations?

Kara Keeling's The witch's flight: the cinematic, the Black femme, and the image of common sense is an ambitious work that is thick enough with layers of intention, apparatus, new beginnings, and trans media to be both daunting and seductive. Perhaps it could be a beginning node to a network of readings opening out into transdisciplinary movements across neuroscience, queer affect, trans media analysis, and the posthumanities of animal studies and digital worlds.

Katie taught the book this term and created two posts for students on blogger, with embedded media that Keeling couldn't afford to include in the book but uses to attempt to enlarge both readerships and sensory cognitions.

on cliché as a training ground for survival: trans media & circulating images
on the L Word and Blacksploitation: a genderqueer black femme?

Katie's context for thinking about Keeling's book has to do with her own curiosities about cognitive sensation and how the nineties generated ways of hooking up cognitive apparatus and media across knowledge worlds. Here is a bit of her thinking on these issues:

on trans media, sensory apparatus and TV and Web: deployments of race, gender and dna

Katie also finds this not-so-new essay of Bruno Latour's very useful (from his website):
(89) «Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern» Critical Inquiry (Vol 30 n° 2) pp. 25-248 (Winter 2004).

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Katie was wondering about having a first meeting in Second Life at the Sea Turtle Island Zendo. I will post a SLURL here as we collect a few folks and discover a good time to meet. Remember SL time is Pacific Coast USA time. Please communicate by adding comments to this post. If you are not yet in Second Life but would like to participate and to have some mentoring about getting into SL let us know here too and we will set up a way to come inworld as easily and quickly as possible. The Quick Start Guide is linked online here.


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