This semester of humes has presented me with many opportunities to reflect on the methods with which I think. I found myself developing new thought pathways through my reflection on my old ones. This reflection was prompted by topics discussed in class. For example, as we discussed in plenary, history is subjective and is not just the events that happened chronologically. This was a contrary way of thinking about history in comparison to my previous experiences with history in academia. I also found myself contemplating the possibilities of what queerness can be and what it can meet in terms of the future and representing utopia. Previously I only had a laymans understanding of queerness, which humes challended through our explorations into queer future possibilities. Going off that, I also thought it was interesting how closely utopian and dystopian futures could look. Because of our discussions in humes I have begun to reflect on what I now think of as a possible utopia and dystopia. A topic often explored in utopian/dystopian fiction is protest. Protest was something that humes challenged me to explore in terms of what protest can look like and how it can choreograph bodies to cause social disruption in order to demand change. This disruption of social norms was seen in cases we looked at in class, such as the ACT UP protests during the AIDS crisis and the sit ins during the civil rights movements. All these topics have challenged my previous structures of thought, challenging me to reflect on how I interpret events like protests or fictional representations of the future.
