Free publicity for women's history bloggers!

pat-steir-1981.jpgAs one of the Program Committee co-Chairs of the 2008 Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, along with Peg Strobel and Susan Amussen, I sent out the following call for blogs (a CFB?) a few months ago:

“We on the 2008 Program Committee are assembling a links page for blogs that deal substantially with women’s history (both pedagogy as well as research and publications) and professional issues of interest to feminists both inside and outside of the historical profession.  While blogging is a free-form genre, and we understand that they will frequently offer a mixture of both serious concerns and humorous commentary, we cannot include blogs that focus predominantly on hobbies or other personal interests outside of women’s history and/or the aforementioned professional issues.”

Please let me know, in the comments below, if you have a blog you’d like us to list.  Just pop the link in your comment, and include a short list of the topics that you write about most frequently.  (You may also e-mail me if you have any questions.)  You do not have to be a professional historian or studying to become one in order to be listed–you just have to write a good blog that’s on point.  Also, I’d really appreciate recommendations for other people’s blogs you’d like to see on our links pages, which will appear on both this year’s conference website (www.berks.umn.edu) and on our main website (www.berksconference.org).  For those of you with blogs, I’d appreciate it if you’d help me spread the message–please link to this post with abandon, and encourage your friends to contribute.

As we approach the conference on June 12-15, I’ll be doing more blogging about the Berks, and highlighting some of the sessions that I think will be standouts, perhaps some “liveblogging” at the conference, and follow-up through the summer.  (Did you know that one of the fun things this academic conference offers is a dance?  F’real!  Check out the program, page 88, at the bottom.) 

Why no women's history? Blame the Patriarchive! (An International Women's Day omnibus spectacular and bee-yatchfest.)

someone was going to have to set a bad exampleWell, we’re a full week into Women’s History Month, but Historiann has been so immersed in one woman’s fate that she hasn’t had time to come up for air–until today.  Apologies, sisters and brothers!  Consider this an “open thread” for any and all random thoughts on Women’s History Month–but just for kicks, here are a few l’il tidbits for your brain to nosh on:

1.  Check out The Patriarchive, which I’ve blogrolled under “History Geek Squad” at left.  Aside from having a most excellent name, this blog is about “gender, libraries, archives, technology, outreach, teaching, the digital divide, and blaming the patriarchy.”  Whew!  And what will she blog about after breakfast?  Who is this young mystery Marxist feminist librarian, and can I read what she’s reading?  We know only one thing about her–that like this dangerous woman she attended a subversive undergraduate college–but I hope we’ll learn more. 

2.  Anxious Black Woman is following up her excellent Black Herstory Month series with Women’s History Month blogging.  Go check it out, especially because today is International Women’s Day.  (Ortho at Baudrillard’s Bastard might be especially interested in her most recent post on Global Lockdown, an edited collection on women in the prison industrial complex.)

3.  Women in medicine:  part of an occasional series on the lives of women professionals around the world.  This is a true story, although some of the details have been altered:  one of Historiann’s college roommates is in academic critical care.  (I know!  Thank goodness no one’s life depends on me!)  She writes:  I’m a meeting for [The Very Important Research Physicians in Intensive Care Conference].  I am approached by an ICU Professor at the University of [Ben & Jerry’s] who introduces himself and then asks, “So what do you do?”  I respond, “I’m here in [Whoville], and I work with [this Division Chief]”.  He looks very puzzled.  “But what do you do??” he repeats.  “I mean, are you a resident or a nurse?”  Uhmmm, no Jerky McJerkface, she’s just like you, an actual professor of this bullcrap, although she apparently has lady parts!  This is just one in a series of insults that she has been offered in partial recompense for her lifelong dedication to her field.  Is it better to get angry every time this happens, so that one doesn’t get become blase about these things, or is it better to take happy pills and say, “whatevs, Last Century Dude.”  (Or, in l’esprit de l’escalier, should she have said, “I’m an attending physician dumbass, are you looking for the Senile Dementia conference?”  What say you, PalMD?)

4.  Do any of you have recommendations for a good picture book (ages 3-8-ish) that would serve as a good introduction to women’s history for the preschool/kingergarten set?  Perhaps a moving story about a little girl in history?  (Example of something like what I’m looking for:  there’s a very good book for preschoolers that introduces the concept of slavery and emancipation called Henry’s Freedom Box, by Ellen Levine and illustrated by Kadir Nelson, about Henry “Box” Brown.)

 5.  Et vous, mes amis?  What’s happening around your council fire?

Simply perfect!

Let’s pretend that there are two women who might potentially be the next First Lady of the United States.

Lady A is a graduate of Princeton and Harvard Law School, and until her husband started running for president, she had a successful career as a corporate lawyer and a hospital vice-president.  She has never had a drug problem, is her husband’s first wife, and to all appearances, looks pretty much perfect.  Lady B, the heir to a beer distributor fortune, took up with her husband (18 years her senior) when he was still married to his first wife.  (Oops!)    Lady B attended the University of Southern California and has a degree in teaching, and had a drug problem.  (Double oops!)  She used her inherited money to set her husband up in his political career.

One lady is profiled in a high-profile magazine whose reputation as either interesting or authoritative has, well, slipped in recent years, to put it charitably.  In this article, the author writes that her “lack of pretense has made her popular with the portion of the electorate.”  However, she also points to her “tendency toward deflation” and “dismissiveness” of other people and their efforts.  She quotes a local newspaper columnist who said he [heard] “rumbles a mink coat reportedly belonging to [this lady], wife of [this candidate], may have gone missing following [a local politician’s] birthday bash.”  The author also notes that because in her job this lady made $121,910 four years ago then made $316,962 three years ago, a random letter-writer to a local newspaper complained that “Mrs. X is extremely overpaid.”  In sum, the author writes, “Some observers have detected in [this lady] an air of entitlement.”  Which lady was it, Lady A or Lady B?  Answer here.

The other lady is profiled on a cable news program in a segment called “Can [this lady] really be that perfect?”  The lede of the summary on the web reads, “She’s always dressed in a killer suit and never has a hair out of place.”  A friend and former local official in her home state describes her as a “fun down to earth person with a great sense of humor.”  Which lady was it, Lady A or Lady B?  Answer here.

Your thoughts?

(p.s.  Here’s the full quote from the last part of the summary of the The New Yorker article linked above:  “Some observers have detected in Obama an air of entitlement. Her defenders attribute these charges of arrogance to racist fears about uppity black women. While it’s a stretch to call the suggestion that Obama projects an air of self-satisfaction bigoted, it may at least reflect a culture gap: last April, after Maureen Dowd wrote a column criticizing Obama for undermining her husband’s mystique, a blog riposte, circulated widely on the Internet, was titled ‘The White Lady Just Doesn’t Get It.'”  Does anyone understand how the last sentence describing a supposed “culture gap” refutes the earlier “charges of arrogance” due to “racist fears about uppity black women?”  How does refuting a dumb Dowd hit-piece make one “uppity?”  Why do successful African American women seem to make people totally insane when trying to write or talk about them?)

UPDATE, 3/7/08:  I should remember never to publish a post after 9 p.m., when it’s sleepytime for Historiann!  I think I understand better now what that writer was suggesting in that paragraph–not that I think she’s correct.  She’s still insane, but for different reasons than I thought.  The writer insists that it’s legitimate and not “bigoted” to say that Michelle Obama “projects an air of self-satisfaction,” but acknowledges that there may be a “culture gap” (although I think she really means, black people and white people seem to have different reads of this accusation.)  Well, how many Princeton and Harvard Law grads do you know who are very successful professionally and personally at the age of 44 and who don’t “project an air of self-satisfaction.”  Why isn’t that allowed, as Susan points out in the comments below, if you earn your own money instead of inheriting it from a rich daddy?