Giant Robot Store and GR2 News
I don’t often sit and just write. Today I’m at LAX waiting to get on a plane that’s a bit late. I’m not sure if I mentioned that I co-taught a class at Pitzer College which is part of the Claremont Colleges. It’s the most liberal campus, which is part of a network of 5 colleges that are basically connected to each other. The class is about zines and it’s been taught by Todd Honma, who developed it’s curriculum. I met Todd Honma perhaps over a decade ago when we spoke on a panel at UCSB and he’s since been teaching at Pitzer College. I spoke at his class over a year ago, and evidently earned high marks for my talk which then led to being invited to co-teach the class.
It’s a milestone of sorts that in 2014 there’s a class about zines, but it also makes sense because it’s not just zines in general, it’s part of an Asian American and Queer department – two marginalized communities. The class is therefore split between the two groups with whoever has an inkling in the topic. Of course there are Queer Asian Americans, but there was an invisible line between the two groups that slowly went away. One student thought it was a class about cui”zines” and thought it would be about foods from Asian America and the Queer community. She must have thought for a second, “I wonder what Queer folks eat?” I’d wonder that too.