The Spaces In Between

Hello! I am back after my usual summer hiatus. I never intentionally stop blogging over the summer, but these tend to be the quietest months here, as I am often moving, working at summer camp, and prepping for a new academic year. Now that I am into the swing of the semester, I have been wanting to write here more, and I thought I would start off with a quick summer recap.

In May I attended the Spirit Pride Project, and said goodbye to my students at Amherst College. It was particularly hard to say farewell to the students in my Representations of Trans Identities class!

In June I packed up my apartment in Amherst, put my stuff in storage, and then traveled to San Francisco to present a paper on historical constructions of children’s gender at the Queer History Conference. When I got back to the East Coast, I headed up to New Hampshire to be the art director at Camp Aranu’tiq for two weeks.

In July I was mostly in DC and Maryland, spending time with my partner, friends, and family. The highlight of that time was taking care of my friends’ baby, River, who will be a year old in November. I am their earth-parent, a bit like a god-parent, without the god part. They are so darn cute! I also worked on my article on drag children, devoured the Broken Earth Trilogy and Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemison, and prepped for Fall classes. I also attended the wedding of a close friend from college, and, as the “poet laureate” of the wedding party, read a Pablo Neruda poem for the ceremony.

In August, I volunteered at Brave Trails (an LGBTQ Leadership Camp), moved to Pennsylvania, survived new faculty orientation, and began teaching at Dickinson College.

Phew! It was a hectic and at times very stressful summer, and moving was difficult as I loved Amherst so much. But I am now settling into my new home in Carlisle, PA. One advantage of being here is that I am much closer to DC/MD and can visit my loved ones down there much more easily. Thus far I am enjoying teaching at Dickinson, and already feel a part of the campus community.

This semester I am teaching a new class called Feminist Writing, Research and Practice, which has been an absolute delight! I love teaching research methods to students. I am also teaching Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies, and it has been fun to delve back into teaching Women’s and Gender Studies courses, after a year of focusing on LGBTQ Studies classes at Amherst.

As we enter October, the weather is finally cooling down, trees are starting to lose their leaves. My new neighborhood is covered in Halloween decorations: witches, and ghosts, skeletons, and black cats. The nights are getting longer, and I feel the turn towards winter.

Before we get too far away from sweet summer memories, I want to share with you some of my favorite moments from the LGBTQ Camps I attended; keep an eye out for some blog posts about those memories coming soon! I will also be posting the updated LGBTQ Summer Camp list for Summer 2020, as many camps will be opening their registration in mid-October.

I hope that you are all well, dear readers. Happy Fall to you all!