I asked my students today about the relationship(s) among appearance, identity, and authority - specifically mine. It's part of the ongoing pedagogy project I've been working on with Leda about the visibility/invisibility of our actual bodies in the classroom. By the end of the discussion several students were telling me how I should have taught (!) the class all along: roughly more form-based than content-based.
I came out indirectly to my students in COM260, Public Speaking. I told them of the time I questioned Geraldine Ferraro, at the National Women's Music Festival, about how she could address an audience of 3000 lesbians without using the word, "lesbian". I don't remember exactly what I said, I'm pretty sure it was implicit - I was a member of the audience she was addressing (without knowing us too well). I do recall a moment of heightened alertness/silence - as if a shudder went through the whole class at the same time?
