What an eventful month!  You may have noticed that I haven’t updated the QUE in a while.  True.  Once the Prison Notebook project took off, I got a bit sidetracked with correspondences and dispatches.  People all over the world have begun receiving their letters and working on their responses.  I have had the great pleasure of meeting in person with some folks in Toronto who have received their letters.  I’ll share more reflections on the process of the process of the project as things unfold, but I will say it has been engaging to retell stories from my childhood which have not been so active and present in the last years of my life.  The letters are very powerful objects.

I have also been preparing myself for the American Association of Geographers 2012 Annual Conference.  I will be presenting my paper “Taming the High Line: Vagabond Plants and the Creation of an Ecological Icon” on the Human-Plant Geographies V: (Re)forming Relations panel.  This is a strange place for me; the garden, the planet considered as such (Thanks, Gilles).  Judging by the other presenters, I am the only one working within such a particularly ‘queer’ and ‘urban’ paradigm.  It should be a very interesting discussion!  (Duh.)  I think the whole panel and each abstract can be viewed publicly here.  If you are around NYC on 24 February 2012, come crash the conference!

So, look forward to conference updates on some amazing presentations.  So far, I’m most excited about Matthew Gandy, Neil Brenner, and Elizabeth Grosz, among many others!  And, of course, the incomparable Dara Blumenthal will be presenting.  She’s on a plane RIGHT NOW.  She’ll be offering up “You Lookin’ At Me? The ‘intra-action order’ of men’s public toilets and the (re)production of heteronormative masculinity” on the panel Relational Masculinities II: Embodiment, Homespaces, and the Family.  Check it out here.

Alright, got to get to this last minute work.  See you in New York, lovers.

(Enjoy some great links in the mean time…
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/hegel-versus-heidegger/
http://www.newleftreview.org.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/A2925
http://www.newleftreview.org.ezproxy.library.yorku.ca/?page=article&view=2924)