I was fortunate to study with Dr. Funk last semester. The topic of the course was material culture and urban spaces. I knew nothing about material culture prior to taking the course and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that the study was so vast and could include so many subjects. I am very interested in the research Dr. Funk has done on the correspondence learning and distance education phenomenon. I think this stems from my time as an administrator at fine arts college. The way we negotiated and transferred credits was such a labor intensive fruitless process. It seemed almost arbitrary at time which credits were applied towards a degree and which credits were not applied. Currently I am taking Dr. Smith-Shank's course in material culture which has invigorated an interest in a semiotic look at objects. Recently the work of Karen Barad and other readings on the agency of objects has peaked my interest. 

Honestly, the reading I did does not compare to the VAST amount of information covered by Dr. Sanders. Before his talk queer theory was conceptually something I was aware of and I knew it was important to recognize the work of theorists working in this genre. Dr. Sanders made this subject come alive and described so many applications and uses for the ideas in what is called queer theory. It took me a while to process everything, and I still feel like I missed chunks of what he described because time felt like it went by so quickly. 

I am very interested in the way we learn through doing through performing. I think Dr. Sander's presentation brought some very interesting questions to mind about this concept. Dervishes and Rumi --> I don't even know what to do with that, it is so immensely interesting to hear the fabric of someone's years of research. 

I think about Butler's performativity theory and how this can be further extrapolated. I would like to research some takes on Butler's ideas by other theorists to see what they have extrapolated. 

Richard Florida - Bohemian Cities

How to survive the plague film Dr. Sanders mentioned in his talk