First, the really great news: good friend and fellow medievalist Clio's Disciple just landed a tenure-track job! So head on over and give her your congratulations, and bits of random advice (the latter of which she solicits in this later post).
Second, the reminder: Installment two of our History Matters roundtable will be taking place tomorrow (Monday) over at Historiann's place. So do check it out. I'll be there with the jello salad.
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Saturday, March 7, 2009
It takes all kinds
...and sometimes all kinds at once.
Today (Saturday) on the campus of Urban University, the following events are taking place:
Today (Saturday) on the campus of Urban University, the following events are taking place:
- a powwow
- a debate tournament
- an interchapter meeting of a gay fraternity
- something involving the marines
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Oh please, not again.
As if this week weren't going crappily enough... my evil throat infection from exactly one year ago seems to have made a return.
Fortunately, this time I recognize the early symptoms, so I'm going to go to the doctor tomorrow and beg for antibiotics. One encounter with an otolaryngologist is enough for me.
Fortunately, this time I recognize the early symptoms, so I'm going to go to the doctor tomorrow and beg for antibiotics. One encounter with an otolaryngologist is enough for me.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
In Memoriam
I've held off on this for a day because I wanted to give the last post time on the front page, but no longer, please.
Late two nights ago, or perhaps early in the morning, fellow medievalist scholar June Mecham passed away from a long illness, far too young, and far too soon for those of us who knew her.
June earned her Ph.D. only a few years ago, so was a relative newcomer on the scholarly scene. Still, even in that short time, her work on the material culture and performative piety of nuns earned her the respect of eminent scholars in her field.
But that's June's CV, not June herself. Those of us who knew her were blessed by a genuinely kind, warm, and loving friend. She always seemed to have a positive outlook on life, and was always willing to help others. She was the kind of person who you expected to rescue kittens, but she also was the only person I knew who knew what a Jake Brake was. Her work may have inspired us to be better scholars, but her open and genuine personality, devoid of the egoism that often seeps into the academic life, inspired us to be better whole people. Our lives are better for having had her in them, even if it was too short a time.
My love and thoughts are with her husband and daughter.
I will miss her.
Late two nights ago, or perhaps early in the morning, fellow medievalist scholar June Mecham passed away from a long illness, far too young, and far too soon for those of us who knew her.
June earned her Ph.D. only a few years ago, so was a relative newcomer on the scholarly scene. Still, even in that short time, her work on the material culture and performative piety of nuns earned her the respect of eminent scholars in her field.
But that's June's CV, not June herself. Those of us who knew her were blessed by a genuinely kind, warm, and loving friend. She always seemed to have a positive outlook on life, and was always willing to help others. She was the kind of person who you expected to rescue kittens, but she also was the only person I knew who knew what a Jake Brake was. Her work may have inspired us to be better scholars, but her open and genuine personality, devoid of the egoism that often seeps into the academic life, inspired us to be better whole people. Our lives are better for having had her in them, even if it was too short a time.
My love and thoughts are with her husband and daughter.
I will miss her.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Should politics be historical? Should history be political?
(First installment of the March History Matters bloggers' roundtable. Click on the following links for part 2 [Historiann], part 3 [Tenured Radical] and part 4 [Blogenspiel].)
While rereading Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism this past week, I found myself thinking about an incident about four years ago, when I was involved in a mildly serious bicycle accident about a quarter of a mile from my home. I remember seeing my front wheel connect with the car door that had opened into my path, then the next thing I remember I was sitting up on the curb in the middle of a conversation with people who had gathered around. I eventually ended up in the emergency room for a CT scan, but by far the worst part of the whole ordeal was looking around me, knowing that I should recognize the street I was on, but for about three terrifying minutes I was a mostly blank slate. There was something that I was supposed to know, and that in turn would tell me where I was supposed to go next, but until I recovered it I was stuck there on that curb.
Judith Bennett is a historian of medieval English women. She is also a feminist who has worked for decades to reconcile her feminism with her love of history – and not just any history, but medieval history, a chronological specialty that can at times breed charges of insularity and irrelevance. Bennett's book is no less than a manifesto, urging feminists to think more historically, and women's historians to consider their work in terms of larger feminist projects. If you've gotten into the book (and I hope you have), you'll have realized that there are dozens of big ideas in there, all of which deserve discussion (hence the "roundtable"). But since I have but one post, I'm going to confine myself here to the two linked questions in the title:
Should (feminist) politics be historical?
That Bennett's answer to this is a clear yes should be a no-brainer. Yet she outlines how women's history, once a driving force in feminism, has been relegated to near-irrelevance. This seems to be especially true for history from before the twentieth century. How can I, as a committed feminist, make my work on the Middle Ages anything more than a curiosity to non-academic feminists, many of whom may assume that there is little to learn from a distant past that is assumed to have been a bleak wasteland of oppression?
But as Bennett points out, a deep historical knowledge gives us a vantage point from which we can see important continuities. I especially like these when I'm teaching. I actually teach a course on women in premodern Europe, and while I suspect that many students sign up expecting to be outraged at the Bad Old Days, I make sure to point out continuities (even broad ones) with our present. That knowledge is like the knowledge that I struggled to regain after my bike accident: until I knew where I was, and what had been going on up to that point, I couldn't know where I was supposed to go next.
Should (professional/academic) history be political?
The answer to this second question is more complex, I think. One of the first things they drum into our heads in graduate school (if not before) is that historical objectivity is a chimera. We can never tell history "the way it actually happened," completely stripped of our own experience, biases, and agendas. As historians, our job is meaning-making: taking the Stuff That Happened, and making sense of it. We aim to be fair, and not decide our conclusions before the evidence is in, but whenever we ask a particular question, choose an analytical framework within which to place it, make critical decisions about what's relevant and what's not, we are making a political decision.
So why are historians who are also feminists (and I number myself among these) so often hesitant to wear their feminism openly in their work? Why the temptation to all but retreat into positivism or antiquarianism, whether in the seminar room, the conference panel, or in our published work? Why, when we care so deeply? I have three half-baked ideas on this score:
1. It makes us seem old-fashioned. By talking about patriarchy, we are rhetorically aligning ourselves with scholarship from three to four decades ago – the last time that a critical mass of academic historians had an openly, unapologetically feminist agenda. We – especially younger scholars – want/need to feel that we are doing something new and exciting.
2. It makes us seem unprofessional. Despite all that time reading Peter Novick in graduate school, we're still allergic to anything that would make our work seem agenda-driven. Academic women especially may still struggle to be taken seriously, and this may be even truer of women studying women's history topics. I myself have tied myself in knots, worrying about whether I was being intellectually rigorous enough. This is not a bad habit to be in in general, but historians (especially female ones) studying women's topics often start out in a defensive posture.
3. It scares the men. Or at least, we fear it will. If I talk about "patriarchy", will male colleagues write off my work? Will potentially sympathetic readers turn away at the first whiff of openly feminist language? Wouldn’t it be better to find some less confrontational way of saying this so as not to alienate my readers?
I've been guilty of all of these. Bennett, on the other hand, encourages us as historians to be "less safe, and more offensive." It's a big step, and there is a certain comfort (again, especially as a medievalist) to burrowing into your documents and living there for a while. But part of the point of feminism is that we not get too comfortable.
There are, of course, many more aspects of this book that I have not hit on, and I'm sure my fellow roundtable members will in the coming week. In the meantime, I hope to have at least gotten the conversation going. Jump into the comment section and share your thoughts.
And don't forget to check in over at Historiann's place next Monday for the next installment!
While rereading Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism this past week, I found myself thinking about an incident about four years ago, when I was involved in a mildly serious bicycle accident about a quarter of a mile from my home. I remember seeing my front wheel connect with the car door that had opened into my path, then the next thing I remember I was sitting up on the curb in the middle of a conversation with people who had gathered around. I eventually ended up in the emergency room for a CT scan, but by far the worst part of the whole ordeal was looking around me, knowing that I should recognize the street I was on, but for about three terrifying minutes I was a mostly blank slate. There was something that I was supposed to know, and that in turn would tell me where I was supposed to go next, but until I recovered it I was stuck there on that curb.
Judith Bennett is a historian of medieval English women. She is also a feminist who has worked for decades to reconcile her feminism with her love of history – and not just any history, but medieval history, a chronological specialty that can at times breed charges of insularity and irrelevance. Bennett's book is no less than a manifesto, urging feminists to think more historically, and women's historians to consider their work in terms of larger feminist projects. If you've gotten into the book (and I hope you have), you'll have realized that there are dozens of big ideas in there, all of which deserve discussion (hence the "roundtable"). But since I have but one post, I'm going to confine myself here to the two linked questions in the title:
Should (feminist) politics be historical?
That Bennett's answer to this is a clear yes should be a no-brainer. Yet she outlines how women's history, once a driving force in feminism, has been relegated to near-irrelevance. This seems to be especially true for history from before the twentieth century. How can I, as a committed feminist, make my work on the Middle Ages anything more than a curiosity to non-academic feminists, many of whom may assume that there is little to learn from a distant past that is assumed to have been a bleak wasteland of oppression?
But as Bennett points out, a deep historical knowledge gives us a vantage point from which we can see important continuities. I especially like these when I'm teaching. I actually teach a course on women in premodern Europe, and while I suspect that many students sign up expecting to be outraged at the Bad Old Days, I make sure to point out continuities (even broad ones) with our present. That knowledge is like the knowledge that I struggled to regain after my bike accident: until I knew where I was, and what had been going on up to that point, I couldn't know where I was supposed to go next.
Should (professional/academic) history be political?
The answer to this second question is more complex, I think. One of the first things they drum into our heads in graduate school (if not before) is that historical objectivity is a chimera. We can never tell history "the way it actually happened," completely stripped of our own experience, biases, and agendas. As historians, our job is meaning-making: taking the Stuff That Happened, and making sense of it. We aim to be fair, and not decide our conclusions before the evidence is in, but whenever we ask a particular question, choose an analytical framework within which to place it, make critical decisions about what's relevant and what's not, we are making a political decision.
So why are historians who are also feminists (and I number myself among these) so often hesitant to wear their feminism openly in their work? Why the temptation to all but retreat into positivism or antiquarianism, whether in the seminar room, the conference panel, or in our published work? Why, when we care so deeply? I have three half-baked ideas on this score:
1. It makes us seem old-fashioned. By talking about patriarchy, we are rhetorically aligning ourselves with scholarship from three to four decades ago – the last time that a critical mass of academic historians had an openly, unapologetically feminist agenda. We – especially younger scholars – want/need to feel that we are doing something new and exciting.
2. It makes us seem unprofessional. Despite all that time reading Peter Novick in graduate school, we're still allergic to anything that would make our work seem agenda-driven. Academic women especially may still struggle to be taken seriously, and this may be even truer of women studying women's history topics. I myself have tied myself in knots, worrying about whether I was being intellectually rigorous enough. This is not a bad habit to be in in general, but historians (especially female ones) studying women's topics often start out in a defensive posture.
3. It scares the men. Or at least, we fear it will. If I talk about "patriarchy", will male colleagues write off my work? Will potentially sympathetic readers turn away at the first whiff of openly feminist language? Wouldn’t it be better to find some less confrontational way of saying this so as not to alienate my readers?
I've been guilty of all of these. Bennett, on the other hand, encourages us as historians to be "less safe, and more offensive." It's a big step, and there is a certain comfort (again, especially as a medievalist) to burrowing into your documents and living there for a while. But part of the point of feminism is that we not get too comfortable.
There are, of course, many more aspects of this book that I have not hit on, and I'm sure my fellow roundtable members will in the coming week. In the meantime, I hope to have at least gotten the conversation going. Jump into the comment section and share your thoughts.
And don't forget to check in over at Historiann's place next Monday for the next installment!
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Even better.
Yesterday's news was good.Today's is better:
The college committee voted to grant me tenure and promotion.**
((exhales))
**Technically, nothing's official until the Provost signs off, and she has until June 1. But the college committee was the last major hurdle. So, if there are no objections, I'm going to go ahead & start celebrating now.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Well, that's nice!
A small but important personal triumph, in the non-academic vein: the fellowship fifteen are gone! 
I won't go into the dull details, except to say I did it the hard, boring way: I ate better, and exercised more.
But that last leads me to report another milestone. Check out the picture at left. That's right: tonight, the odometer on the bike that I brought home in late August** rolled over to 1,000 miles.
That's just pretty darned cool.
**With full props to ID, who paid for half of a very zippy bike as a birthday present last summer.
I won't go into the dull details, except to say I did it the hard, boring way: I ate better, and exercised more.But that last leads me to report another milestone. Check out the picture at left. That's right: tonight, the odometer on the bike that I brought home in late August** rolled over to 1,000 miles.
That's just pretty darned cool.
**With full props to ID, who paid for half of a very zippy bike as a birthday present last summer.
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