HON: Symposium on Common Good, Queer Virginia (Fall 2020)
I have taken many different honors classes but taking my symposium class has been my favorite one so far. Because we were all honors, the class size was under 10 students. This made us grow closer than I have in any other class I have taken at Longwood. We were in the middle of a pandemic but somehow we grew close as individuals and as a whole class. The class topic was queer history. and we were tasked with many assignments ranging from learning the basics about queer erasure to rewriting VA SOLS to include queer history. I learned so much more than I expected in this class even though I felt as though I had a pretty solid foundation of knowledge going into the course. I knew that every day going into class I would learn something new even if it was from a fellow classmate just sharing their perspective. The small class size combined with a 400 level course meant we were all well equipped to have difficult conversations and we were able to hear everyone’s opinions and thoughts.
Throughout the semester we worked on many different projects as mentioned, but they were all for the purpose of one of the goals for the symposium class. By the end of the class, we needed to show people what we had learned from not just this class but our others Civitae classes. Due to Covid, we were not able to present this at the symposium day, so instead, we all made videos. Our videos were on something we could “queer” on campus or in Farmville. My group picked Joan of Arc and made a video giving background information on who Joan of Arc is and the significance she has on our campus. We then shared her queer history specifically and proposed a way we could celebrate her history with a “Joan of Arc Day” at Longwood. After they were shared with everyone to see, we put them on our website that we had been working on all semester. The website is called “The Queer Heart of Virginia” and this was the other big project my class worked on. We were all in different groups and worked together to create a website that educated others on Farmville’s queer history and share our work. Specifically, the purpose of the website states “throughout this website you can see our views on many different topics we have discussed and how we would adapt academic curricula to better include the queer community throughout history”. We hope this project continues and more work is added to the site as more students take the course.
I not only expanded my knowledge of queer history, but this class taught me a lot about working in a group and having to figure things out as they come. Working on our website was not always easy even in our smaller class. There were many times where communication was lacking and we would get behind. However, our professor was very adamant that we try and figure things out ourselves because it was a 400 level class and it was part of the process. Of course, at first, I was against that and just wanted someone to step in and fix it all. However, I understand and see now that she was only helping us in the long run. Because of that, I believe my ability to work in a group has drastically improved, and I’m better at being flexible with my work.
Below you can find my and my partner’s 4th Grade History SOL Modifications to include aspects of Queer History. These are also included on the website page under “SOLs” along with other suggestions.
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