throbbing light machine

( meme responses: stuff about Dollhouse, Star Trek, and Narnia )

Also, I want to link to Ana Mardoll's piece at Shakesville on the acquittal of Ezekiel Gilbert for Lenora Ivie Frago's murder, because this is one of those cases I want to point to whenever people (so often in the form of my undergraduate students) assert that we've changed since the (inevitably indefinable) Bad Old Days. It's an impulse that I find really frustrating, because it makes me not want to celebrate our successes, knowing that any mention I make of victory will be taken as a total declaration of the end of the war.

eta: also I passed the graduate Spanish test-out I took yesterday! Which is awesome, because it means I don't have to take HISP 492 for the rest of the summer, and have both the foreign language requirements for my degree covered. Which means that as soon as I defend my prospectus, I'll be ABD. I am chilling out today, but this weekend is going to be for writing; I think I have most of my prospectus worked out mentally, but I need to just sort of pound out the words.

JFC so much work. Drowning in words send help and/or gifs.

All of these things come due next week:
-exam list. With alllll kinds of internally inconsistent input from the members of my committee.
-teaching proposal for the dirt discourses class. Am debating whether Nella Larsen is too long, whether I should add a scene from Boucicault's "The Octoroon" for lulz, or if Victorian melodrama humor is one of those things that does not translate to people outside of the field.
-portfolio for teaching award. Seriously, uni, if you want to give me awards that's great and everything, but I do not appreciate them coming with extra work attached in order to even compete.
-trial assignment for a summer freelance position with Thomas Riggs: a 1,000 word bio of Anne Wharton, who I'd never heard of but seems way cool.
-grading, eternally.

I miss having time to do research. And it's like 80 degrees out so I don't even have a brain right now. I just wanna listen to Tom McRae forever.

- cohort meeting next week, not today. Plus side: I got in an extra walk?

- preliminary connection spotted between Adam Bede and Tess of the D'Urbervilles - no, not unwed mothership. Further notes, if any, to follow.

- total reshuffling of comp syllabus: in progress. Lots of work, but ultimately lovely & freeing - it turns out that I took instruction on this project a little too well, and focused so hard on the "composition" part and the "not overpoliticizing" part and the "not having a thesis" part that I policed myself out of a strong conceptual structure.

And I've got 14,000 words on my ladiesbigbang fic - not that it's done yet! Wordcounts and plots do not seem to be matching in this case. Sigh. If I could go back to writing short fic, maybe I'd post stuff sometimes! As is, I'm writing up a storm over here, but since stuff just keeps on branching ...

So I was sure when I got a snotty email in my inbox, sent from one of my professors to the entire class, banging on about the use of "they" as a generic pronoun rather than "he," and calling the entire thing a grammatical error - the best part was when he lamented that soon the war would be "lost," and we wouldn't be able to enforce patriarchy on our own students - that if I was not the main target I was at least included. I'm the most vocal feminist in the class, certainly. And so I was sure that I'd be marked down, and I was sort of bracing myself to write letters and possibly contest the grade if that bit of sexist pedantry was my only sin - and then I opened my grades, and the bastard gave me an A. He never gives As! Sir, I'm confused.

Rereading Barthes always makes me feel better.

I had an epiphany today: I can deal with the concept of modernism if I connect it to the increasing naming of names with regard to gender, sexuality, and the psyche. I've always found myself allergic to the concept in the past - mainly because it was always explained to me from a very masculinist "oh noes the world be changing I don leik it!" perspective. But if I think of Havelock Ellis and all that lot as a turning point in modernity - that, I can get on board with. I'm glad to have figured this out - it will make my upcoming reading course on sex and gender in modernity progress much more smoothly.

The Uni bookstore ran out of my undergrads' required readings, so .pdfing ahoy tomorrow. And nearly all of the central campus printers appear to have broken at once. I feel bad for the kids - and I hope they don't use it as an excuse to not hand assignments in or do the reading.

Also, I seem to have fallen into Remus/Sirius (Three Year Summer style), and I can't get up. So I would totally take recs! /hint hint

I've been turning thoughts over in my head about the integration of chromatic feminist theory/writing into other work, and I wanted to hear all your thoughts, o people of the interwebs, for verily y'all are smart.

In writing about an Old Book by a white woman, I wouldn't hesitate methodologically to bring up some contemporary feminist theory. I mean, if it were very contemporary, primarily concerned with our current world, I'd maybe have to tapdance a little - but I would still do it. Right? We've all been swanning around applying Judith Butler to George Eliot for a while now. But what if the theory that I want to nudge up against Old Books by white women is Black feminist work? Is it sound to apply Cherrie Moraga to the critique of education in Jane Eyre? Or does it disrespect chromatic feminism to appropriate it for the tales of the travails of white girls?

On the one hand, I love seeing Audre Lorde get play, because I seriously worship her brain, and part of me doesn't want her stuck in a feminist ghetto. Part of me feels like the flexibility and play involved in porting theory about is a good thing. But I also have no desire to steal away from chromatic feminism what isn't mine to take - or my cultural heritage's. Both Eliot and Brontë have some racism going on; would using minority feminism to talk about the other aspects of their novels be deeply inappropriate, or kind of a cool re-valuation?

Right now I'm working up a prospectus for looking at double-voiced irony in women's rhetoric. When I actually write the paper, it'll probably focus on white women in the nineteenth century, because I did sign on for this Victorian thing and I've been trying to make myself stick to it, no matter how much I want to write about Cherrie Moraga and Sor Juana. But in limiting my scope, I'm wondering, do I have to give up all the unspeakably brilliant things feminists of color have said about silence and double meaning? Or can I port them in the same way I'm intending to do with LeGuin and Adrienne Rich and Virginia Woolf?

Thoughts?

I think I'm going to have to just finish these term papers. I've got 2-3 weeks till they're due, but they're driving me crazy with anxiety, and I think I'm going to try to just pound them out and then be done with it. I'll be more sane!

Term Papers: It's What's For Thanksgiving Dinner?