In the chapter, Spatial Stories from The Practice of Everyday Life, Michel De Certeau discusses the performative work of narrative. For De Certeau, stories carry out a labor that transforms places into spaces. Nelson Sullivans video work, James Baldwins Another Country, and Mart Crowley’s The Boys in the Band can be understood as narrative productions that conjure a queer geography. Utilizing De Certeaus discussion of the transformation of place into space, analyze the work of Sullivan, Baldwin, or Crowley. Think through the various ways a queer New York City is imagined through narrative and investigate what is at stake in these performative acts of narration. Be attentive to the ways queerness works in relation to the boundaries and frontiers of urban space. Feel free to cite the work of any author on the syllabus in your discussion. Nelson Sullivans videos can be found on You Tube under the 5 Ninth Avenue Project: http://www.youtube.com/user/5ninthavenueproject?ob=0&feature=results_main (Links to an external site.) Your 4 to 5 page response must be in Times 12 point font, double-spaced, with one inch margins. While you must clearly identify authors and cited texts in the body of your essay, no formal citation or bibliography is required. Submissions must be submitted via Canvas as a pdf file. Please allow yourself plenty of time for the inevitable technical difficulties that arise at the last minute. For those who might not know this, you can save a Word file as a pdf by choosing the print option and selecting “Save as pdf” instead of selecting a printer.
