Historiann

• The Bennet campaign is stamping their tiny little feet in frustration at that New York Times story about “Senator” Michael Bennet’s advocacy for taking taxpayer money to the track with him, but the Times sticks by its story.  It published a correction and an addendum this morning, but only on two minor points:  on the history of Bennet’s relationship with Tom Boasberg, and to note that one of the sources is a supporter of Bennet’s primary challenger Andrew Romanoff.  (Apparently, it’s not worth mentioning that Boasberg has been sending out talking points from him office to distract from the NYT story, and is an open supporter and maxed-out donor to his former boss Bennet.)  Sorry, “Senator” Wonderbread:  if your bet had won and you had made money for the Denver Public Schools, you’d be tooting your own horn pretty loudly.  But since you bet on the wrong horse, it’s somehow dirty or wrong to point that out?  That’s not evidence of your poor judgment, somehow?  That’s politics, friends.  Can’t take the heat?  Get the f^&k out of the kitchen, “Senator.”  Big girls don’t cry–we pull up our panties and get $hit done.
• Tenured Radical asks for some advice in dealing with sexual and romantic revelations found in the personal papers of a Famous Feminist in the 1970s.  She asks:  “What to do with past life shockers? Would anyone be shocked by them really? What, if anything, do they contribute the history of radical feminism I am working on? Do they amplify the atmosphere for my reader that will better evoke the period? Do I risk losing the trust of second-wave feminists now collaborating with me if I seem to have bad judgment? (I’m thinking the answer to this is yes.) Should you publish any document about a person of interest that you wouldn’t want published about yourself? And yet, why did these women leave these love notes in their papers if they didn’t want me to know?”  Great questions–especially that last one.
• For-profit colleges and universities are clearly fraudulent peddlers of hope to people who have been ill-served by their public secondary educations and the current U.S. economy–but will anyone do anything about them?  Continue Reading »

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Too optimistically whiggish?

Federal District Court Judge Vaughan R. Walker made the right decision in the California marriage case yesterday–interestingly a decision (like Dred Scott) based on history more than on the law.  Historians Nancy Cott and George Chauncey appear to have been extremely important in his decision, which you can read here.  (Check out the citation of Antonin Scalia’s opinion in the 2003 the Lawrence v. Texas case to explain the judge’s reasoning, p. 63!)

The big lesson in this case appears to be–have a case and credible witnesses to back it up.  Walker’s decision makes a great deal of the credentials and credibility of the plaintiff’s witnesses (those testifying against discrimination in marriage law) versus the absence of credentials or credibility in the two–two!–witnesses who appeared for the defense of marriage discrimination.  (If you followed the case last winter, you’ll recall that there was a great deal of folderol about the pro-discrimination team fearing for their personal safety if they actually testified about their opinions.  Please.  They were defending a law the majority of California’s voters approved of just 14 months earlier, a law that supposedly reflected the will of the people.  I tell ya, in this country we used to have civil rights foes who would go to the mat to preserve discrimination!  These folks are just wimps.)

What possible strategy could the pro-discrimination team have had in mind in basically throwing their case?  Did they just want to rush their appeal on up to the Roberts court?  Continue Reading »

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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?”  Continue Reading »

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If you recall, when Tenured Radical and I broke off yesterday in Part I of our discussion of Terry Castle’s The Professor and Other Writings, we were talking about the odd attraction and revulsion that characterizes relationships between academics and public intellectuals.  At least, it’s why I’ve always forgiven Gore Vidal for his nasty swipes at the “Assistant Professors” of his imagination, who according to Vidal were always scurrying off to write something narrow and pointless.  Vidal never went to college.  (The Deuce had a lot to do with that, since he was Philips Exeter Class of 1943.)

So here we are again–gossiping about Susan Sontag!  Today, we’re moving along to some of the even knottier issues that The Professor raised in our minds, those of desire, longing, and the price one pays to join the academic club.  And as some of you have reported here, sex is one way young scholars can gain admission, or at least imagine that that’s what they’ve done.

Tenured Radical:  I think it’s important that Sontag isn’t a feminist, even though she has always been honored by feminists. In contrast, I’ve begun to develop a relationship with a highly successful feminist writer from the 1970s, and she seems to be very clear why our work is differently important, and she is making a point of being generous about the kind of collaboration that can be possible between two very different kinds of writers.  It’s just one example, but it is a strikingly different experience than I have had in the past with “famous” people who rely on me for all kinds of support, but wouldn’t dream of offering to introduce me to an agent.  I think the Sontag essay also illustrates two paradoxes that you allude to in your comments, paradoxes that actually structure the whole book.  The first is that the cost of being smart and accomplished as Castle is – particularly because she is a woman and of working-class and immigrant origins– is the ever-present fear of humiliation, that humiliation that comes from not belonging. In “Courage Mon Amie,” Castle’s essay about her love affair with World War I, she emphasizes the inescapable humiliation of being female in a world where female heroism is impossible, and particularly impossible for those who suffer from the dread and fear of not belonging.  “I was female,” she writes dolefully about her inability to face the post- 9/11 world with stoicism; “and a wretched poltroon.” (21).

The second paradox you raise is that we academics seek out larger than life “female/heroes” like Sontag and The Professor, but inevitably, the heroism of such people is not unconnected to their narcissistic need to humiliate us.  The question is, are we drawn to them because somehow we actually know that they will do that thing which we fear the most?  In this sense, all the essays strike me as exercises in coming to terms with humiliation and the longing to be part of the most exclusive club.  It’s no accident, I think, that Castle’s obsession with Art Pepper, maniac cockmeister and a sublime, brilliant drug-addicted jazz musician covered with tattoos, takes hold at the exact time she is driving around in her persona as a respectable professor with a trunk full of research intended for an article she knows, in her heart, she will never write.  Continue Reading »

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This creepy doll by Hans Bellmer, 1935

I can’t let the coincidence of this pass me by, since we’re talking about dolls and the objectification of girls’ and women’s bodies again.  Squadratomagico has a great post up on the off-label hormonal engineering of baby girl fetuses who have tested positive for (gasp!) Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia, which means that they frequently have ambiguous genitalia, may possess a strong interest in softball, and “as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role.” 

(Well, what thinking woman doesn’t agree with that last bit?  Seriously:  if you dig scrubbing crusty surfaces and wiping snotty noses and bums, that should be a symptom of clinical depression, not normative behavior in any adult, male or female.  Most of us do that junk because we don’t want the state condemning our houses and taking our kids away.)

Click immediately on this link to join the discussion.  I left a comment over there, so I’ll be following that thread.  Something else I didn’t mention in my comment is the odd equation of childhood behavior with adult predisposition for motherhood among these alleged sufferers of CAH:  “As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”  What a stupid way to think about children or the importance of play.  Continue Reading »

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It’s Stampede season here, friends, and we’re all excited about rodeo days and the world’s largest Independence Day rodeo, right here in Potterville!  Heck’s'a’poppin’.

• First up, the hearings for Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court start today.  Tenured Radical has a nice round-up of her own, with some quality links for your enjoyment.  I liked this article by Deborah L. Rhode of Stanford University, “Why Elena Kagan’s Looks Matter.”  (Answer, paraphrased by me:  That ol’ devil, patriarchal equilibrium.)  Don’t miss the part in the article where she describes how hateful, anonymous insults about her looks after publishing an op-ed illustrated the point of her new book rather perfectly.  Rhode writes, “Yet pointing this out is likely to unleash the prejudices at issue. I got a recent taste after publishing an op-ed in The Washington Post. The editorial summarized themes from my just released book, The Beauty Bias, which documents the price of prejudice and proposes some legal and cultural strategies to address it. It was surprising to discover how many individuals were willing to take time from their busy day to send hate mail on the order of ‘I just bet that you yourself are one ugly c—.’ Some readers, annoyed that no author picture accompanied the article, felt strongly enough to do independent research. One explained: ‘knowing there had to be a reason why [you would write about bias] I looked you up in the Stanford Faculty Directory and then all the pieces fell together… I’m sure Stanford has to tie a bone around your neck to get even the campus dogs not to run away from you.’ Several hundred online posts following the article included more of the same. One reader proposed taking up a collection so I could ‘buy …a burqa: This would certainly improve the aesthetics around Stanford.’”  Lovely.  (Does the WaPo realize that comments like this reflect poorly on them?  Once again, and with feeling:  either moderate your comments or eliminate them!  Same goes for you, Daily Beast.  Why give these douchebags a forum when they can start their own damn blogs, for free?)
• Paul Krugman has some bad news for us all.  (Well, those of us who aren’t fabulously rich enough to eschew employment and live off of interest income, anyway.) Sucks for us, friends!
• Randall Stephens has some interesting reflections on Glenn Beck’s use of history and style of historical argumentation.  He writes, “Beck’s political grandstanding and maudlin theatrics are offensive enough. (I can think of no better ipecac for the typical humanities professor.) But it’s his ahistorical theories of the past that disturb me most. Continue Reading »

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Public History Tour 2010!

Where in the world is Historiann on this summer’s random public history tour?  Well, here’s a clue on the left–some of us dwell in possibility, wherever we go.  I had never visited before, and neither had my subset of the attendees of the Little Berks conference this year, at Mt. Holyoke College.  The Big Berks–otherwise known as the Fifteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, will be at the University of Massachusetts next June.  (Check out that new website!)  The program committee meets tomorrow–so keep your fingers crossed if you submitted a proposal last winter.

So many interesting people are here–the elusive Clio Bluestockingshowed up, and seated herself near me at dinner last night.  (I’ve had a lot of people tell me they’re reading this blog–only compliments so far, but the conference is only half over!)  After dinner last night, Mary Beth Norton and Judith Zinsser spoke about the history of the Berkshire Conference, and the “ladies” who founded it (including the tradition of trillium-spotting and bourbon-drinking.  Unfortunately, threatening thunderstorms and hail had us looking for more indoor-oriented activities today.)  Norton noted that the official name of the organization is the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, not the Berkshire Conference of Women’s Historians, and she lamented that there are very few non-women’s historians who attend any more since the Big Berks conference on women’s history effectively “took over” the identity of the organization. Continue Reading »

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Well, it’s been a busy exam week.  And I’m still not done with my grading!  While I’m firing up the grill here at the Hell’s Half-Acre Ranch this afternoon, here are a few links and treats to keep you busy while you’re avoiding your grading, or writing, or reading, or whatever work it is you’re trying desperately to avoid:

• Tenured Radical has some interesting thoughts on the politics (and rampant paternalism) of egg donation in the high-tech fertility industry, and the deep, deep concern that some bioethicists have for the medical procedures involved in egg harvests and, of course, for women being paid to hand over their ova.  She notes how funny it is that no one expresses the same deep, deep concerns when women are injected, poked and prodded for their own eggs, which will be then used in fertility treatments in their own bodies:  “When was the last time you saw a front page article about the long-term risks associated with thirty-something and forty-something women juicing up their ovaries with dangerous chemicals over a period of anywhere from one to five years?  But that’s cool because they become mothers, as opposed to becoming unnatural, selfish women whose only goal is to pay for college and graduate school.”
• Roxie at Roxie’s World has been on fire about Elena Kagan and the question, is she or isn’t she?  (A natural brunette, that is–what did you think I meant?)  Tenured Radical addressed this last weekend, in case you missed it.
• Historiann wonders:  Continue Reading »

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Good morning, friends–today’s post is a front line dispatch from my faithful correspondent Classy Claude, who is in Washington, D.C. at the Organization of American Historians’ annual meeting.  Yesterday, he attended a star-studded panel, “State of the Field:  History of Women/Gender/Sexuality,” and reports that the panel and the audience ended up discussing the question, “are undergraduates interested at all in women’s history these days?”  Great question, Claude!  Everyone else, read through his report and join in the conversation below.

Classy Claude checking in from the OAH, this year in Washington, DC.  First of all, it is HOT here!  I arrived yesterday and as the plane was coming in for a landing the pilot informed us that the high was 90 degrees.  [Ed. note:  Claude--take off the suit and tie!]  This unseasonable warmth also seems to have produced a remarkably high pollen count.  I went for a run yesterday upon arrival and at the end my eyes were so red and bloodshot that Classy Claude looked more like Cannabis Claude.  And the sneezing! 

But on to matters historical… Most of my day was filled up with grad school friend reunions but I did make it to one of the OAH’s “state of the field panels,” this one of particular interest both to myself and other Historiann readers: Women/Gender/Sexuality.  The panel was moderated by Robert Self and was comprised of Nancy Cott, Nayan Shah, Stephanie McCurry, Regina Kunzel (who was ill and whose comments were delivered by Self), and Brenda Stevenson (Iris Stevenson, a DC attorney, delivered the paper that her sister, recovering from an ankle injury, was unable to give herself). Continue Reading »

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Knitting Clio

Dr. Mister and I have been binging this week on Season 3 of Mad Men, now out on DVD.  (It’s better than anything else on the teevee–but that’s probably not saying much.)  This season we’re left with the overwhelming need to say, “Mad Men?  Meh.”  We just took delivery of the last DVD, which has the final four episodes, but overall this season is just more of the same characters put in the same situations, and there’s no sense of forward movement.  The show’s nearly all-white cast makes occasional reference to the Civil Rights movement, but I’m afraid some of my initial suspicions about the show appear to have been justified:  the two black characters (Hollis the elevator operator and Carla, the Drapers’ housekeeper) so far this season are totally marginal, and we never see them in their non-work lives the way we do the white characters. 

Indyanna

It’s 1963, and Betty Draper is redecorating and tries out a beehive hairdo, but otherwise nothing much is new.  (I will say that Betty’s dresses are even more gorgeous and envy-inducing than ever–and for me, they’re reason enough to watch the show all by themselves.)  Pete Campbell?  Still a douche.  (Quelle Suprise!)  Peggy Olson?  Still trying to find her way to career success and love in a man’s world.  Betty Draper?  Still suffering from the problem that has no name.  (Actually, the problem was named on February 25, 1963, when The Feminine Mystique was published, but the show isn’t suggesting any awareness of that title on the part of its characters.  Civil Rights, Vietnam, and the assassination of John F. Kennedy are the only current events they’re using in their foreshadowing.) 

Janice

And Don Draper?  Still the brooding, mysterious, strangely trouble-prone old Don.  I’m so over that.  Can we at least have more of the wisecracking, hard-drinking, child-bride-taking Roger Sterling, please?  He’s the only guy who seems to be enjoying himself.  (The minstrel scene was horrifying, I’ll grant–and appeared to be included to shore up the show’s moral position as an anti-racist show with an overwhelmingly white cast.)  After this point in my review, I should probably say SPOILER ALERT AFTER THE JUMP! Continue Reading »

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