Monday, June 30, 2008

Timing is Everything

Timing is everything



So I'm supposed to leave on a research trip to London on Wednesday. I hope to kibbitz with many colleagues and write the introduction to the Big Project (no contract yet, but they are asking me about artwork and for a blurb for the advert), and maybe even get something done on a second article.

Today, I arrived home to find a Jury Summons. For two dates during the period I'm going to be gone.

*rhymes with 'clucking bell'*

Update: Thanks to a wonderful clerk, who ran the paperwork up to the judge just before today's sessions started (so I wouldn't have to wait to find out), and a kind judge, I am flying off to London as planned. Thanks!

Wednesday, June 25, 2008

relativity at the gym

relativity at the gym


So I finally dragged my butt to the gym after getting settled into a new apartment and going to Berks and then really getting settled. And I went at the end of the day, so surprise! it was busy. All the treadmills but one taken.

And I was going to rant about the fact that the only three treadmills that catch the a/c and the fans were being used by people who were walking. And how selfish it seemed to me at the time, because I run on the treadmill. And it's really hot, especially when it's really hot outside.

But maybe those people were working up a sweat walking, and I should just shut up and be happy that I can run.

In other news, I am trying to figure out how to both cut an article down AND add more references and citations.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Carnivalesque up!

Carnivalesque is up!!



Hey all, there's and Early Modern Carnivalesque up at Janice Liedl's place! Go and read!!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Calling all Medievalists

Calling all Medievalists



Hi all -- I am reprinting (with permission), parts of a letter I received regarding the Berks conference. If you are looking for a fantastic conference and do anything on the history of women -- and this doesn't mean you have to be a women's historian or even a feminist historian per se -- please consider adding this conference to your roster. I had a fantastic time this year, and hope I can go again.


Dear Colleagues,

I just returned from the 14th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women at the University of Minnesota, where I was happily surrounded by medievalists, and not just those who study the European Middle Ages. I’ve been going to the Berks since 1992, when it was at Vassar, and it is always an intellectual high. But this year, thanks to Ruth Mazo Karras and a superb program committee, there were not only more panels devoted specifically to medieval women, there were more medieval historians, art historians, literary scholars, and theologians taking part in an impressive array of panels, workshops, and seminars that crossed temporal and geographic boundaries. The theme of the conference, “Continuities and Changes,” is evident in the following panels that directly addressed or touched on medieval feminist scholarship (see the Berks website for details here):

* Foreign Queens of the Bible as Political Tropes (session 13)
* Women’s Authority, Authorship, and Authorizing (29)
* Women, Royalty and Politics in Comparative Perspective (32)
* Feminist Provocations: Judith Bennett’s History Matters (47)
* Interrogating Women’s Agency: Voice, Choice, and Power in the Premodern World (56)
* Mothers, Wetnurses, and the Evolution of Reproductive Medicine in Premodern Europe (81)
* Seeing Women in Byzantine Society (112)
* Gendering the Plague (152)
* Using the Archives of Medieval Religious Houses to Reflect on their Secular Sisters (182)
* Discovering Women’s Lives amidst Premodern Numbers: The Application of Demography to Premodern Europe and North America (185)
* Managing Property, Constructing Gender (196)
* Singlewomen (199)
* Women and the Law Courts in Global Historical Perspective (202)


Many SMFS members presented papers, were discussants or chairs, and if the blogs (see the Berks website) are any indication, the conference will continue to generate the sorts of ideas and conversations that make our field so vibrant and vital.

If you have not been to a Berkshire Conference, put this on your list of things to do. And, believe it or not, start thinking now about the Berks of 2011. That may seem a long ways away, but it’s not. The conference organizers get to work very early and solicit session proposals roughly 18 months before the conference, so start brainstorming now. It is best to submit complete panels, and since these can sometimes take a while to put together, it's not too soon to begin to sound out colleagues about potential panels. As a rule, participants may take on only one role in a panel, although anyone can organize it. (But a presenter will not be a chair, for example, nor a commenter.) At this point in the calendar, we don't know yet where the Berks will take place, but it will most likely be on the east coast, and it will be around the second weekend in June. The schedule then, will look something like this:

* Summer/Fall 2009: Call for papers/panel proposals
* February 2010: Deadline for submissions
* June-July 2010: Panels accepted
* June 2011: Conference


The Berks conference is held every three years (this is called the Big Berks, not to be confused with the annual retreats called the Little Berks). If you are not a historian per se, don’t stop reading. Non-historians can deliver papers and act as chairs and comments. They also welcome proposals from independent scholars, whether or not they define themselves as historians. As a general rule, though, individual papers (and the panels and roundtables in which they appear) need to be intelligible to an audience made up largely of historians of women, and to be relevant to the current historical enterprise, broadly conceived.

Panels typically involve a chair, two to three papers, and a comment. Often panels focus more narrowly on a specific historical problem, field, area, or time period (though many are comparative across regions or periods, and they can be interdisciplinary). Roundtables tend to take on "larger," and somewhat more speculative (and sometimes more controversial) subjects, and they often feature shorter, more informal presentations by a larger number of people, and they usually include more discussion time for audience members. This year, for the first time, the Berks held a series of seminars and workshops based on pre-circulated papers; this format was generally successful, and it is likely conference organizers will do it again. These were held simultaneously on Sunday morning for 2 1/2 hours.

And, in the spirit of what Miri Rubin, in her plenary address termed the “generous history” of feminist scholarship, the Berks is not just for or written by women. I was impressed by the number of men, among them many graduate students and junior faculty, who study women’s history.

For those of you who subscribe to the medfem-L but have not yet joined the SMFS, please consider making us part of your array of professional organizations. We are devoted to keeping medieval feminist scholarship at the forefront of scholarship on the European Middle Ages and we not only welcome your expertise and your voice, we need you to continue to keep feminist scholarship at the forefront of intellectual life.

And finally, stay tuned to medfem-L. As the Berks organizers get ready for 2011, we will send you information so that you, too, can be part of a tremendous intellectual and feminist experience.


My colleague says this far better than I, but I have to say, she's absolutely right.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

I heart John Scalzi

I heart John Scalzi



Well said, that man

Transformative Conferences

Transformative Conferences


Wow. I'm at the Big Women's History Conference. I had dinner last night with the plenary speakers (OMG I am still in major fan squee from being allowed to sit at their feet and drink in their wisdom!) and with women whose work I've been catching up on, because it has more and more to do with my own. And throughout this conference, I've been struck by how much generosity there is -- I've found that before, at the Late Antique conference especially, and at K'zoo. But it's a bit different here.

The transformative part, though, is the realization that women's history (and I'm not particularly a women's historian) forces us to be inclusive in ways that more traditional male-oriented history doesn't. I think many of us can and do regularly consider issues of class, gender, and race (where applicable), in our work, but it's because we are interested. Women's history seems to demand that those things be considered.

OTOH, I have heard two papers where the larger political and religious contexts were under-considered, IMO. Balance is good.

Otherwise, having a wonderful time, and am just enjoying myself, since I'm done with my paper!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Allen rehashes

Re-hashing Allen by Allen


Charlotte Allen re-hashes her weekly standard column and bashes at various interdisciplinary studies programs. It's pretty sad, really, in terms of writing (quoting the same passage twice in the same paragraph?) and in terms of her attacks. It's also pretty funny that she cites the sad case of Betsey Fox-Genovese, an academic who began as the type of Marxist feminist Allen derides, and ended up being anti-feminist and hugely conservative as she grew older. Allen's presentation of F-G as a victim of those "studies" people conveniently overlooks easily Google-able reports of a sex harassment lawsuit and other indications that she was not a powerless victim at Emory.

I suppose the up-side of all this is that Allen is coming off more and more like a sad crank.

HT to Matt Gabriele Larry Swain at Modern Medieval