Posted under: American history, art, book reviews, class, Gender, GLBTQ, happy endings, jobs, students, women's history
I hope you’ve been following our discussion of Terry Castle’s The Professor and Other Writings. Today, we’re back at Tenured Radical for Part III, the final installment of our conversations, “She’ll Always Be A Player On the Ballfield of My Heart: Tenured Radical and Historiann Wrap Up Their Conversation about The Professor.” If you recall, we were talking about the function of villains in autobiography, and the need for female heroes, when I asked Tenured Radical, “Do you really think “Terry Castle” wouldn’t have turned out to be Terry Castle without her having endured this abusive relationship [with The Professor]? Do you really think she wouldn’t have become such a “profoundly imaginative and original scholar,” or is that just what “Terry Castle” tells herself to justify the affair, to redeem it in some fashion, or at least to justify telling us the story?” Click here to read her shocking reply, full of lots of great historical context and what it felt like to be a young lesbian in the 1970s. Plus some wimmin’s music, just to put you in the mood!
For those of you who are scrambling to catch up, here’s the complete series:
- Part I, “Day 1, The Professor: A Conversation with Historiann About Terry Castle’s The Professor and Other Writings.”
- Part II, “Humiliation and Longing,” with a video bonus of the elegiac sound stylings of Art Pepper
- Part III, “She’ll Always Be A Player On the Ballfield of My Heart“
- see also Comrade PhysioProf’s review, in which he prounounces it “a f^@king excellent book.”
undine on 23 Jul 2010 at 4:12 pm #
I’m bookmarking your series on Terry Castle to read later but just wanted to say this: Reading _The Apparitional Lesbian_ years ago was just plain amazing.
Historiann on 23 Jul 2010 at 5:29 pm #
Undine–you should blog your thoughts about the book and be sure to let us know when you do, if you get a chance to read it.