Faculty Development Groups

Embracing LGBTQIA+ Identities and Studies in the Classroom strives to provide an open and safe forum for faculty to discuss texts exploring LGBTQIA+ experiences in the classroom and how tools garnered from these texts can be used in applicable ways at our college to create an even more welcoming and inclusive space for LGBTQIA+ students, faculty, and staff. In this faculty development group we will focus on discussing different strategies for dismantling heteronormativity and gender normativity in our classrooms and the college at large and ways in which this dismantling could contribute to an even more welcoming environment for LGBTQIA+ students as well as faculty and staff. We will look at the ways in which this incorporation--through materials given during lessons, for example, or including LGBTQIA+ lives in narratives shared in the classroom--includes examining and understanding the intersectional and simultaneous identities inhabited by LGBTQIA+ students. We will also think about how this decentering of heteronormativity and gender normativity can contribute to an even healthier, more open, and inclusive environment for everyone.

Description of Meetings with readings where applicable:

Meeting One:

Sharing our experiences with LGBTQIA+ students as LGBTQIA+/Ally faculty and staff Part One: Where are we now? How has this changed in this recent landscape? What resources do we have presently and what resources are needed to best support our students and ourselves as we move into the next few years?

Meeting Two:

Sharing our experiences with LGBTQIA+ students as LGBTQIA+/Ally faculty and staff Part Two: This follow up conversation will focus on the experience of navigating conversations about LGBTQIA+ lives in our classrooms and all the places we interact with students, staff, and faculty. What resources are needed to better support these interactions? How do we sustain ourselves and our mental health in these interactions as LGBTQIA+ faculty and staff and allies?

 Meeting Three:

In this meeting we will discuss findings from recent studies on the ways in which LGBTQIA+ rights are being effected. All participants are welcome, it is not necessary to have done the reading.

“ACLU Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in U.S.State Legislatures in 2026”

https://www.aclu.org/legislative-attacks-on-lgbtq-rights-2026

Meeting Four:

In this meeting we will discuss NASPA Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education article “Supporting Queer and Trans College Students Amidst Political Turmoil”. All participants are welcome, it is not necessary to have done the reading

https://www.naspa.org/blog/supporting-queer-and-trans-college-students-amidst-political-turmoil

Meeting Five:

In this meeting we will discuss what the latest news is regarding LGBTQIA+ rights and how to best support ourselves and our students. Since there are changes to LGBTQIA+ rights with a rapid frequency currently we might reflect on where things were at the beginning of this semester, or this year, and where we are right now. Further, we will discuss how to best support ourselves and our students in the midst of it all.

Dates for Meetings:

Tuesday, March 17th 1:45pm-2:45pm

In person (M391) and Virtual

Tuesday, March 31st 2:00pm-3:00pm

In Person (M391) and Virtual

Wednesday, April 15th 3:00pm-4:00pm

Virtual

Wednesday, May 6th 3:00pm-4:00pm

Virtual

Wednesday, May 20th 3:00pm-4:00pm

Virtual

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89522019163?pwd=7LYVJebsdcfXn5xtmZNGaH66Aax8OQ.1

Meeting ID: 895 2201 9163

Passcode: 571404

About the facilitator Amy Tziporah Karp

Amy Tziporah Karp is an Associate Professor of English. Her work focuses on the possibilities of the stranger identity as site of resistance to the ways in which assimilation imperatives haunt othered and estranged peoples. She is the author of Queer Jewish Strangers in American Popular Culture: Life Between Assimilation and Otherness (2023), as well as articles such as “Jenny Schecter and the Strange Case of the Present Absent Jewish American Woman on the Queer Screen: The Ghostly Failures of Jewish American Assimilation". Her poetry can be found in journals such as Sinister Wisdom, The Quint, and Sophie’s Wind.

For more information or to join our group please contact Amy (Amy.Karp@kbcc.cuny.edu)