Teaching in the War Years Notes on the Lesbian Class as (Butch) Labor of Love in 2024.

Abstract

This essay explores lesbian pedagogy as a "labor of love" in a "lesbian histories and cultures" class I regularly teach at CSU Long Beach. Using bell hooks's concept of the "love ethic" as the root of "radical transformation" and "ending domination," I examine the stakes of teaching this "lesbian class" as an adjunct instructor and butch lesbian of color in back-to-back semesters in 2024, a year marked by an unprecedented convergence of national and world events that formed the backdrop of our teaching that year: an historic statewide faculty strike in January; the student-led Palestine-solidarity protest encampments against the US-sponsored Israeli war on Gaza in Spring; and the November election of convicted felon Donald J. Trump again to the US presidency. These three moments informed my pedagogical approach to teaching the lesbian class in ways that illuminate this butch "labor of love" as central to the critical and necessary interventions made possible by a course like Lesbian Histories and Cultures in the first place.