Dr. Smith-Shank's presentation was helpful in getting started. I feel my research practice is just now developing into something that could potentially be interesting. I like the advice that Dr. Smith-Shank gave for approaching ones research. I am excited to look at Dr. Lather's book Getting Lost-- It sounds like how I am currently approaching research. I am almost losing myself in spaces of inquiry.  

I was also thinking about what would be useful in another section of the colloquium course. A workshop strategy for the course might be good. I would love the opportunity to present a project or dissertation idea and have the class dissect it and offer suggestions. It would help us develop a community of inquiry as suggested by Dr. Smith-Shank. 

I have had the pleasure of working for Dr. Bode for the last two semesters. I was assigned to work for her for the 5 hours of faculty assistance required by the department. During this time I have been able to spend quality time with Dr. Bode learning about her research interests, art practice, book, and dissertation. Assembling her website has also provided an excellent opportunity for me to learn more about how diverse and plentiful a scholars interests can be. I hope that some day my website will be as full with varied experiences as Dr. Bode's website is shaping up to be. I really appreciated all of the help Dr. Bode provided in how she conceptualized her thesis. The way she developed her methodology and how she focused her topic really helped with helping me imagine what my dissertation could potentially look like. 

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