Historiann

Spinning in his grave!

Oh, yeah–New England distinguishes itself yet again as the region of the U.S. that is fast on its way to full marriage equality.  Governor John Baldacci of Maine signed the bill just minutes after it passed the Maine Senate by a hefty (although not veto-proof) majority, and New Hamphire is hot on Maine’s heels.  (Paging Rhode Island–the right side of history, line one!)  Since straights can get married in Maine by a notary public immediately after obtaining a license, it’s not like Mainers are all that stuffy about marriage protocol in the first place.  Why not let the same-sexers be just as frivolous and irresponsible? 

As Historiann wrote just one month ago,  “I don’t think even most American historians appreciate how appropriate it is that New England has pioneered marriage equality, when we reflect on colonial New England (which I’m sure you all do quite frequently!)”  Humor me with this re-run–it’s such a sweet, sweet victory lap, after all:  Continue Reading »

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That’s right–it’s Captain Scarlet again! Check out the computers that work like microfilm readers!  And Captain Scarlet, who looks and sounds exactly like Cary Grant (well, Grant ca. 1937 anyway)!  This episode is like a pop culture time capsule of the Cold War.  Don’t miss the Angels, the glam girl pilots–they appear (as usual) in the intro in part I here, and Symphony Angel swings into action in part II of this episode (at about 4:33).  This is actually an unusual episode in that Symphony is kidnapped–usually the Angels just fly their planes around and shoot people down or drop bombs strategically–more often than not, it’s they who save the day for Captain Scarlet and Captain Blue. It’s also unusual because poor Lieutenant Green, who’s always stuck behind that space-age desk, actually complains (finally!) about never being permitted off of the Spectrum cloud base. Continue Reading »

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Well, dude-ettes and dudes, it’s been quite a week–and it’s only Tuesday!  Here are a few tidbits to get your heart racing this morning while I’m writing the next chapter in my sure-to-be prizewinning second book.  (Have the AHA or OAH instituted a prize for the best book in Marxist feminist history yet?  No?)  Anyhoo–while I’m working a few knots out of this chapter (once I’ve worked the knots out of this here rope), here’s a roundup of some recent news and views that caught my eye this morning: 

• For the first time in American history, a Latina is being seriously discussed as a top candidate to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court!  And here’s what Jeffrey Rosen at “even the liberal” New Republic had to say about Sonia Sotomayor (h/t TalkLeft):  “The most consistent concern was that Sotomayor, although an able lawyer, was ‘not that smart and kind of a bully on the bench,’ as one former Second Circuit clerk for another judge put it. ‘She has an inflated opinion of herself, and is domineering during oral arguments, but her questions aren’t penetrating and don’t get to the heart of the issue.’ (During one argument, an elderly judicial colleague is said to have leaned over and said, ‘Will you please stop talking and let them talk?‘)”  Uhhh–Jeffy:  what about her actual opinions?  “I haven’t read enough of Sotomayor’s opinions to have a confident sense of them.”  Oh–okay.  It makes sense to quote one random clerk and one random former colleague (who weren’t man enough to be quoted by name) and give their completely unbiased and totally apolitical opinions of Sotomayor a national platform because it’s so much more fun than doing, you know, your homework.  (According to Big Tent Democrat at TalkLeft, Jeffy was a supporter of both Samuel Alito and John Roberts for the Supreme Court.  Excellent judgment, Jeffy!  I guess you never got around to reading their opinions either?)
• Hey, all of you academic broads out there:  raise your hands if you’ve ever been told (as was Sotomayor) essentially to shut the frak up by an older male “colleague” because you were, you know, doing your job by talking in a department meeting or participating in a discussion at a conference?  Continue Reading »

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Don't be a dip$hit!

If I wish I had learned one lesson earlier in life, it’s this:  it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to make other people angry, and anger can work for you.  (Well, that might be three lessons, but I find it hard to disentangle them, so bear with me.)

It’s okay to be angry.  Girls are subjected to an impressive load of anti-anger propaganda.  Snow White and Cinderella, at least in the mid-century modern Disneyfield versions we’re stuck with today in U.S. popular culture, are both specifically praised for remaining sweet and good-natured in spite of the fact that they’re turned into indentured servants by their stepmothers.  (There’s also a not-so-subtle implication that it’s their sweet natures that preserve their beauty–because anger is so aging, my dears!)  What kind of a lesson is that for girls?  If a child of mine were enslaved by an evil stepmother, I’d sure as hell want her to get pi$$ed off and fight back.  But, anger is punished in girls from the beginning.  An undergraduate student of mine recently complained that she’s not permitted to express anger.  When she does, first she’s patronized and told that she really doesn’t mean what she’s saying, and when she insists that no, she really is angry, the reaction she gets from other people isn’t apology or rational discussion, it’s anger at her anger.  (For more on this see below, “It’s okay to make other people angry.”)

I’ve got another version of Snow White’s story I like to tell:  Instead of a smiling, simpering dip$hit who simply loves scrubbing the stairs, Snow White sneaks away one day to raise an army.  Continue Reading »

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As you all know, ”Historiann” is a prankish name for this blog (and for this blogger)–I’m neither anonymous nor truly pseudonymous.  I made this decision for a number of reasons–mostly because I have specific training and areas of expertise, and I wanted to be clear about that.  But realistically, this blog caters to a community with a fairly specific cross-section of interests: women’s history, early American history, feminism, and the academic workplace, and how many people do you know who live at this exact intersection of “rusticated” and ”fabulous?”  So it would only have been a matter of time (and an IP address locator) before I was unmasked in any case.  (That said, I realize full well that being “out” as a blogger is a luxury of my rank and status as a tenured Associate Professor.)  

I’ve renewed a lot friendships and acquaintances with people through my blog, and I’ve met a lot of new people inside and outside academia I otherwise would probably never have met.  I really value your interest in my writing here and I feel like I’ve learned a lot from you because of your different professions, disciplines, and fields of expertise, and because even the academics among us teach at different kinds of institutions and have had different career trajectories.  We all imagine that our corner of the blogosphere is normative to some extent, which I realize is delusional, but it still disturbs me when I see or hear about people who use blogging differently–specifically, when they use the shield of (partial) anonymity the on-line world offers to be disagreeable, to attack, or even to threaten others.  Continue Reading »

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That Keith Olbermann–what a classy, classy guy.  Will someone please explain to me how incredibly “progressive” this is?

Be sure to read the actual words the corporate hireling said: “Our number-one story: Miss California now being accused of using performance-enhancers.” (To watch the whole segment, click this.)

As many readers already know, this whole thing started when [Carrie] Prejean was asked to state her view on same-sex marriage. She stated a view slightly to the left of Barack Obama’s (and Al Gore’s, and Hillary Clinton’s). She therefore had to be trashed on the progressive TV shows which endlessly kiss that president’s keister. Thereby attracting the demo, of course, which these programs exist to stalk.

Ha-ha!  Millionaires with poor news judgment using their platforms to mock a relatively unimportant person because she’s a young woman with breast implants.  (How exotic in California, especially for someone who competes in beauty pageants!)  Now this cutting-edge journalism:  calling a beauty queen ”dumb and twisted,” “a human Klaus Barbie Doll,” a ”ding-dong,” and “not just a boob, but a fake boob.”  Continue Reading »

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Ann Bartow at Feminist Law Professors has been doing a regular series called “Where are the Women?” which documents the underrepresentation of women authors published in recent editions of elite law journals.  (Check it out–the tables of contents are shocking.)  Laura Spitz yesterday wrote a post documenting the numbers of articles, essays, and comments by male and female authors in law journals from 2001-06, and the numbers are again equally shocking in light of the fact that law schools have nearly equal numbers of women and men.

Spitz’s post is interesting in that it notes that law reviews are edited and produced by students, not by law professors–a quirk unique to law reviews, so far as I know.  She writes, “students are not especially well trained or positioned to meet and address the systemic discrimination felt by women and minorities in trying to get their work published and ‘valued’.”  Spitz continues: 

This is not an especially intuitive observation, and it has been made by lots of others before me. And this discrimination cannot be visited solely on law students (who often make great choices and invariably work very hard). Rather, I think it has more to do with the fact that they are the wrong people to be making these publishing decisions. Not because they are ‘bad’ people (some of my best friends were students), but because their experience and training makes them ill-suited for the task.

I’ve never worked at a journal, and the world of law reviews is something I have no understanding of whatsoever, but I wonder if Spitz is right that (perhaps ironically) students’ “experience and training makes them ill-suited for the task?”  Continue Reading »

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