What’s your pleasure? There are lots of snarling fights all over the place these days:
- Tenured Radical returns to the U.S. from her travels and mulls over the question, “How Should Graduate Schools Respond to the Bad Job Market,” and gets accused of and blamed for all sorts of crimes she never committed and things she never said. (So does Historiann, in the comments!) Yeah–because Tenured Radical has never, ever offered any helpful advice or a sympathetic ear (or shoulder) to graduate students negotiating the job market. What a horrible, horrible person!
- Katherine Franke at Feminist Law Professors, in “Marriage Equality: The Old Fashioned Version” schools us on what’s wrong with feminism today: “Among the things that drives me to the highest levels of frustration when I consider the state of feminism today is the way in which women, particularly mothers and wives, have given up on men. Not so long ago we had a rich, systemic and unrelenting critique of the ways in which fathers and husbands felt little or no obligation to do domestic work – whether it be taking care of kids, maintaining the household – even clearing the table – or other “reproductive” work. The fact that men felt entitled to and received a free pass when it came to this work received a thorough working over by those who cared about dismantling the second class status of women.” Just go read the whole thing–especially the part where she participated in a networking breakfast among women lawyers from their 20s to their 60s. “Perhaps
the most interesting moment was when the more senior women asked the younger women whether they would call themselves feminists. ‘No’ most replied – ‘it’s not something for our generation. We feel burdened by feminism – it means we have to do it all, but we haven’t been given any tools to pull this off: be successful lawyers, mothers, and good wives/partners.’ What emerged from the conversation was a sense that the younger women didn’t see feminism as opening up opportunities for women, but rather heaping on expectations. The older women in the room were shocked.”
Yeah: feminism created all of those expectations! Things were so much easier when upper-class white women just had to find a husband–the children and the Valium addiction were so fulfilling and relaxing, not to mention easy. Did I mention that they were relaxing too? Sorry–I just can’t keep anything in my tiny little brain any more! Because as an employed historian with tenure in an M.A. granting department, I’m just a huge part of the problem for frustrated graduate students these days too, here’s just a taste of just how I have used this space to heap burning coals on the heads of graduate students everywhere. (And this is only a partial list:)
- Checking in on the AHA-hahahahaha! (Lolsob.)
- How (not) to apply to graduate school, part I and part II: stems and seeds edition
- Classy Claude frets about his job talk strategy
- What’s a “good university?”
- I Can Haz Homework Assignment?
- (Grad) school supply list
- Since when is faster necessarily better?
- Historiann.com EXCLUSIVE: Publishing in “Gender and History” by Co-Editor Ruth Karras, part I and part II: Ruth Karras answers your questions, dishes some more.
- Marley in Muncie mulls a return to the groves of academe
- Modern graduate studies and the value of historiography
- Want glamour and exotic travel? Be a historian!
- Campus visit and job talk advice
- Hanging on the telephone: a good convention interview substitute?
- Busted Barry begs to interview somewhere else
- The War Between the States (of employment)
- Also try searching Historiann.com for specific topics like “AHA,” “MLA,” “job talk,” or “job market.”