As the semester crawls ever nearer, I'm starting to get into the usual panic of not having accomplished enough with my summer and worrying about not being able to get any writing done during the academic year. It would probably not surprise any of you that one of the things that I see as getting in my way is service.
Like many small colleges and universities, SLAC counts service in a big way. Although this is changing, many 'teaching' colleges and universities often used to count service and teaching as important -- or even more important -- than research and scholarly publication. This seems perfectly reasonable to me, to a point. After all, I have colleagues at SLAC, and know people who have taught at similar institutions, not to mention friends at community colleges, who were hired to teach 5-5 loads (that is, 15 lecture/seminar hours a week). Often that includes 2-4 different preps. It's a lot of work. Add to that service, and really there's not time for anything else.
That was then.
Now, faculty are increasingly expected to carry a somewhat balanced load of teaching, research, and service. That is true at all institutions, I think, at least according to my colleagues at research universities. I have a friend who can tell stories of merit increases denied to faculty who didn't do all three things. It's just that at research universities, there are generally larger numbers of faculty to share the work (maybe), and the teaching load is considerably lighter. At any rate, I'm going to try to focus on the smaller institutions, the ones that are in the process of redefining themselves, taking advantage of the glut of PhDs who still want to do research to boost their own prestige as they grow.
What is service? There's service to the profession and service to the university, right? The service that counts most is usually service to the university. But what does that mean? Well, for some of my colleagues, especially the older ones, and the ones at more isolated universities, service includes community service -- establishing strong connections between town and gown. LDW once told me that he was talking to a young colleague who taught at a very small SLAC in the deep South who was allowed to count coaching one of the town's little league teams toward his service. I think that that sort of thing is going by the wayside, although I know that we at SLAC are encouraged to join local service organizations and get on the boards of various non-profits, etc., but it no longer counts towards tenure and promotion... just some sort of nebulous good will. And that works for me.
Then there is service to the profession. For example, I have a couple of colleagues who serve on the editorial boards of journals, another who is the main review editor. I'm on the council of a professional organization. None of us get course release time for these duties, although I think that the people who run major journals do -- in part because they are at research universities that have a system for such things. Anyway, this doesn't count for us as service on our load evaluation, but it does count towards promotion. And it's appreciated by our administrators.
But really for me, service = university governance. I believe strongly in faculty governance. Without faculty participation, faculty governance cannot work. There are lots of things that can get in the way, but that's a basic necessity. Faculty senate committees, task forces, search committees -- they have to be driven by faculty. That's true even in places where the administration regularly overturns or ignores faculty input - and that can and does happen in many places. Still, if faculty don't serve, and serve well, they can't complain if things are taken out of their hands. The problem is, there is a different kind of university service, too. Running institutes, putting on conferences, setting up programs that make the university look good ... these are all important, and they take time, but they can also be self-serving. Say a person gets course releases or even release from all other service to run an institute or conference in their field. No one is denying that it's work, nor that it's good for the university in a very general sense. But the only faculty who receive a direct benefit are the ones directly involved. In many cases, faculty turn their personal hobby horses into a service boondoggle, making sure their service also ties directly into their research. In many ways, I say, "good for them." But not in others.
I have mixed feelings about this sort of service because other faculty end up carrying more of the governance work. That work can impinge upon their own ability to get research done, and thus have a negative impact long-term. There's a certain unfairness in that, I think, although not as much as there is with people who do their best not to do a damned thing. There are those as well, the colleagues who just can't be bothered. Moreover, at all of the institutions where I have worked, and according to many of my colleagues this is true for their institutions as well, big or small, what ends up happening is that a small core of people end up serving over and over again -- and often on a disproportionate number of service assignments at a time. Good department chairs and deans will try to keep people from being overloaded, but even they will start to go to the same people over and over ....
It's a situation that pisses me off for a number of reasons, one of which, I freely admit, is that I am one of the people who often gets chosen or nominated to committees, often by people who are serving on no committees because they are doing 'important work.' More importantly, though, is that I think it breeds resentment among faculty and helps to create situations where talent can be overlooked. Faculty who feel overburdened start to resent the people who seem not to be carrying their own weight. Some of the people who aren't performing service, or who think what they are doing is a valid substitute, feel the resentment and withdraw because they are uncomfortable. Some may even start phoning it in even more than they were before. And, because we always think we know more than we do, we start to respect some of our colleagues less.
It goes beyond losing respect for our colleagues and the ways that that affects our work environment, and perhaps even our students. It also tends to make some of the people carrying the load start to think that they have to be involved in everything, and they voluntarily take on additional service, because after all, nobody else will do it, right? Or because the committee looks interesting or important, they want to be on it because they deserve it to make up for all the crap committee work they already have. Meanwhile, there's still the issue of people who aren't serving. Or those who haven't yet had a chance to serve. And yet, sometimes when members of the former group get put on the right committee, they get sucked in. And they do good work, sometimes becoming the experts on whatever that committee does. But the resentment against them for years of non-participation is hard to get over. The only way to change it is for people to actively point out that Colleague X is really good at thing Y -- which is annoying and patronizing in its own way (and I'm not even going to get into whether or not people get into these messes themselves or deserve the resentment -- it's not productive, and shouldn't be the point). For the latter, the new faculty, especially the really junior people, it's hard not to get sucked into the dynamic when you're just trying to keep afloat with the transition from grad student to faculty member. After all, you want to emulate the people who seem to be 'in' on how the university works.
I haven't got any bright ideas on how to fix these things, by the way. I've only just started to recognize them myself, and then only because I have been thinking about where I want to start to focus my own service work in a very general way, because now that I have tenure (or values thereof), I want to work a little harder at carving a niche for myself, and putting my service talents where they can do the most good. I mentioned this to a friend, specifically pointing to a new project that is very much in line with things I have done in the past, and which is something I've always been interested in. And the friend, already spread thin, and in charge of a couple of fairy large initiatives, said that they really needed to make sure they were also involved in the steering of this project. And I thought, "wait. This is somewhere where I have expertise and you don't. Why exactly do you feel you should be taking a leading role on top of everything else?" And I realised that this is the environment I have seen so often before. And I felt as though my competency were in question, even though I know it wasn't, and that this colleague would consider me a member of the people who shoulder a heavy service load very well. In fact the colleague often comes to me for advice. But it's symptomatic of this whole cycle, and I wonder, if I can feel that way knowing that it's not meant to belittle my skills, how the newbies or the people who are somewhat marginalized (sometimes because of their own inaction) feel.
Well, it's International Blog Against Racism Week, and I only found out on Wednesday. So I don't have a particularly long or well-thought out post and am instead linking to some things that maybe you would like to see.
The first are from a site called Racebending. The site grew in reaction to the casting for a movie version of Nickelodeon's show, Avatar: the Last Airbender. The world of the show is clearly built with East Asian and Inuit cultural elements. Where the problem is ... well, look at the characters from the show:
Look at the casting:
The film is M. Night Shyamalan's latest attempt at a blockbuster, and the trailer looks pretty damned cool. I certainly thought it looked like I might want to see it, but not now. In fact, I'm going to be boycotting it, and encouraging my friends to do likewise.
It's not the first time this has happened, and it seems to happen a lot with sf/fantasy -- does Hollywood think that, because those genres are still somewhat marginalized, the fans are too few to notice and be annoyed?
If you remember, this sort of thing also happened with the adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's A Wizard of Earthsea. Le Guin was not pleased with the result. It also regularly happens on bookcovers, where the main characters are depicted as white, even when the text makes it clear that they aren't.
Racebending also points to the video below. It's almost 10 minutes long, but worth watching.
It's interesting that this week is also seeing the winding-down of the furore following the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his own home. There's been a lot of coverage of that on the web, on TV, and pretty much everywhere. HNN has had a lot of coverage, including this column on President Obama's tendency to not confront issues of race very directly. My own opinion is that the arrest was probably fine within the letter of the law, but the circumstances were probably loaded with a lot of racial baggage. Would Gates have been as upset had he not been a black man who has achieved a pretty notable position in the scholarly, and even talking-head, community -- and yet every day has to deal with a society where there are still many forms of institutional racism, and knows very well that people of color are frequently treated differently by the legal system and its representatives than whites? Would Sgt. Crowley have reacted as he did had Gates been white? or even (and my own totally unfounded guess is that this might have had something to do with it) had Crowley not been someone who was supposed to be especially well-versed in issues of racism, and was perhaps even more upset by Gates' alleged abusive language because he thought of himself as an ally?
I am not sure. What I am sure of is that race is still a very real issue in most of the societies in which I and my readers live. There's a poll on Facebook at the moment asking whether Michael Vick should be allowed to return to a career in the NFL after his conviction for participating in a dog-fighting ring. I do sometimes wonder if professional athletes would be held to higher standards if the demographics of professional sports in the US had not changed so dramatically over the last 30 or so years. Along with our, "anyone can make it if they just work hard enough," mythos, we have also developed one where sports save the young black men from a sure future of life in the inner-city, probably dealing drugs, fathering welfare babies, and otherwise caught, inevitably, in a vicious cycle of crime and punishment. So if professional athletes act like criminals, well, what do we expect? There's a subtext of "we know that's what they are" in a lot of the media coverage of the lives of professional athletes.
Um ... no. There are lots of reasons why people commit crimes, but I'm pretty damned sure that race is not a cause, although there are correlations between some of the effects of institutionalized racism, e.g., poverty, poorer education and fewer opportunities for better education, surroundings where people are more exposed to crime, disproportionate incarceration of juvenile offenders, etc., and whether or not a person becomes a criminal.
I don't really have much else to say on the matter. I just thought I should say something, because, well, it's something we should be aware of, and now's a good time to remember that.
Anyway, I figure it was time for a change, and I think this might be a bit easier to read? This is only the 4th layout in seven years, soooo ... Happy almost blogiversary!
Working on two posts, one about drinking the kool-aid and all that entails when it comes to the professoriate, the other about service and the range of approaches to it, from 'cant be arsed' to 'can't bear not to have a finger in every pie.'
Back soon, I promise.
Also, I need to report on conferences.
Also, Thursday is my 7th blogiversary, and I may be changing the look!
So I've been in England. And mostly not blogging, because I've been busy, busy, busy. I started my trip with my annual appearance at a BSFA meeting, where I saw an interview with Ian Whates, and then went out to dinner with some fen, so that I could spend a little time with some people I know. All much fun.
Then, the next morning, off to the BL. There, I saw someone I hadn't planned on seeing at all, and spent much of the next 10 days or so working in companionable silence, with breaks for coffee and lunch. The BL was fantastic, as always -- not only did I get a chance to work on my Leeds paper, but also to visit with Extremely Cool Colleague and Susan, and had a quick chance to say hello to Dame Eleanor Hull.
Much time in between spent with friends and family, including a trip to Folkstone to see friends (one of whom is up for several very important awards this month -- crossing my fingers for him at WorldCon!) who have new Maine Coon kittens, the usual walks in Regents' Park and Golder's Hill Park with the family, and LOTS of Halo 3!!! Yes, one of the highlights of my summer is playing Halo with my nephew and X's brother and playing video games, while being told, "Aunt ADM, you're CRAP at this, aren't you?" I was, this year too. I think I never got above about 6 kills in a game. Last year, I rocked and managed to do serious damage to BiL's ego. This time, they kept changing up the games and the maps on me ...
I also managed to get killed by Zombies several times.
In the meanwhile, I listened to my niece play guitar (she's very good, and playing a lot of Renaissance stuff), chatted with SiL, and tried to chill as much as possible.
I blogged my first conference already, and am now watching the people start to queue for the buses to our flight from Heathrow, T5.
And also, a walking tour! The second day of the conference was even better than the first, if that's possible. I talked a little about the papers last time, but after the papers, we went for a lovely walking tour of the town -- fortunately a short one, since I was in a skirt, and it got sort of chilly. But the tour was interesting and fun, and some of my favourite bits were when our guide, a colleague who is frighteningly knowledgeable on many subjects, dismissed lots of things as being too late to care about! No offense to you folks who work past the millenium, because there are fantastic things in your periods, but it's nice to not feel like my period is the one being dissed!
Anyway, here's a picture, at the risk of my anonymity (just remember, people, if you know me, I don't use my real name here on a matter of principle!):
And now, back to work and on to Yorkshire in the am, to meet with many other medievalists, and some of the same ones again!
So today I was at a conference on monasticism. This is the first time where I've been at a conference where at least half the people have a clue about my sources, and lots know way more about how to use them. There are some hella smart people here.
Why yes, I am feeling depressingly not so smart. Not the best thing before giving a paper next week.
Having said that, can I just say that this is an incredibly nice conference, and that the postgrads who organized and are running it are doing a fantastic job?? The papers today were all very good, I thought, although I was having a hard time keeping up with the rapid-fire Irish names rolling trippingly off Irish tongues. There was a wonderful paper on the vita Sadalbergae, and a paper by a colleague I really admire that was just so well constructed and argued... and another by someone I'd wanted to meet for a long time, because he helped me out a while back -- he's as nice in person as in e-mail, and also gave a really interesting paper.
Several people have been very kind with advice that makes me feel like my own paper might not be hopeless, and I've had a chance to talk to some other really interesting people. At the moment, I'm sort of digesting it all, but I think I'll eventually have some really good ideas, after I get used to having been in a room of people who speak my sources.
Nota Bene: this may not be ideal; rather, it represents what my brain starts doing after about 20 of the things...
In Jesus/God's name Donors! Blah blah blah reason for donation! Blah blah blah recipient! Blah blah blah stuff donated! Blah blah blah curses on you if you try to take this stuff away from those nice monks! Blah blah date blah pathetic monk who wrote this down! Witness list.
ETA: translation? me? Seriously, though -- just ran into one where the blah blah reason is 'ob metum gehennae aeternae et premium vitae aeternae seu pro remedio animae nostrae aut remissione paccatorum nostrorum' and then a lot more blah blah fear blah blah reward blah. Not exactly the normal formula.
Apparently, my paper is going to be a lot more about gender than I thought. Because data searches are better for finding things that stick out rather than supporting normativity.
Does anyone know/can anyone think of a situation in which we might see the phrase "per manum" for a male donor of property? (for the MA, preferably)
At the moment, I'm thinking it's pretty much used for female donors...
Update: I've just found an interesting variation in my own sources -- CDF 613, "signum Ruotgeres qui hanc traditionem potestiva manu quatuor supra memoratorum germanorum rogatu fecit."
hmmmmm ....
ideas? because this isn't the same as "trado per manum X", which you see mostly with widows or spouses ...
The latest edition of Carnivalesque is now up at Medievalist, food history person, and sf/f writer Gillian Polack's Food History Blog. It's got a cool organizational theme, and the Food History blog has all sorts of other interesting posts as well.
Sorry for the lack of blog visiting and blogging. I am away earning quick money with a marking gig at BaaRamU and trying ot get writing done. But apropos of these posts at Tenured Radical and Historiann, and my comment at TR's, I had a thought.
It might not be a particularly good one, but here goes.
I looked at it again, and noted that one of the fields that is supposedly in decline is economic history. And again, I was struck by how us early folk are pretty much written off, invisible, unimportant to the generalizations of what history is and what it's good for. Because, well, Chris Wickham's prize-winning Framing the Early Middle Ages sure as hell seemed to be largely economic history to me. But then I thought, "ah, but Wickham's a Marxist historian, isn't he? and that is also that narsty non-traditional stuff."
Except, well, Marxist historiography is certainly nothing new.
Anyway, even if that's a crap argument (I've had 4 hours' sleep and travelled all day), here's my thought:
Where is this absence of traditional fields when you look at us pre-Modern types?
It doesn't exist.
Medievalists (and I'm including the Late Antique folks here) are still doing economic history, diplomatic history, military history, legal and constitutional history ... all of those things and more. And doing a booming business.
Now, I ws thinking that part of why this never seems to be the case is that most of us have to use whatever tools are in our bags to get the job done, and most of us can move around a bit, because we've had to.
But here's my other thought: to others -- including our colleagues in history, who dammit should know better -- we are medievalists. To the outside world, we don't get to classify ourselves by subfield (except for period, pretty much). Is Steve White a legal historian? Nope, he's a medievalist. Is Charlie Bowlus a military historian? Nope, he's a medievalist. Judith Bennett a social historian? Nope. She's a medievalist, too.
MA in Archaeology by Research - Fee Waiver Visualising Late Antiquity: Everyday Life AD 300-650 Centre for Late Antique Archaeology, University of Kent
The School of European Culture and Languages is able to offer two MA fee waivers at Home /EU rate for the academic year 2009-2010, to support guided research into the Visualisation of Everyday Life in Late Antiquity. This degree will be taught through tutorials and guided research, although it will also be necessary to attend lectures and seminars on late antique archaeology in the first term. Assessment will be based on a 40,000 word dissertation, though students will be asked to write preparatory essays in the first term, connected to their subject. The theme of the dissertation will be set by their supervisor and may include topics such as the architecture, furniture and material culture in late antiquity.
Programme Duration: Full-time 12 months Start date: September 2009
Entry Requirements: Applicants are generally expected to have obtained an upper second-class honours degree, or the international equivalent, in archaeology or a related field. Applicants whose first language is not English are expected to have obtained IELTS 6.5 or TOEFL 570. Candidates should have an established interest in late antiquity and its architecture or material culture, and intend to progress to a PhD at Kent on this theme, if the opportunity presented itself. Excavation experience and organisational skills are desirable, as students will be expected to participate for one month in the Ostia Excavation Project, and offer some administrative assistance to the Centre for Late Antique Archaeology during the year. Knowledge of one or more modern European languages (French, German and Italian) would be an advantage, as would experience of Mediterranean archaeology.
Fee Waiver: the successful candidates will be offered a fee waiver of 3,670 GBP to cover one year of postgraduate fees at home / EU rate. No maintenance fee would be offered. Fees could be repayable in whole orpart if the degree was abandoned without completion, or if efforts made were deemed to fall below the acceptable minimum standard for MA work.
Application Process To be eligible for these studentships, candidates must send to Dr Luke Lavan (via email) a CV and a letter explaining why they would like to be considered for the University of Kent studentship, accompanied by a piece of written work. The deadline for submissions is 16th June 2009. Selection will be based on written submissions, with the option of interview by telephone / email.
Contact: Dr Luke Lavan, Email: l.a.lavan AT kent.ac.uk Tel: 01227769665 School of European Culture and Languages, Cornwallis North West, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7NF http://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/classics/staff/LukeLavan/ www.lateantiquearchaeology.com
When I started this academic gig, I pretty much figured I knew the basics of the job: academics, no matter where we are employed, are engaged in some combination of teaching, service, and scholarship. The priorities and proportions may shift depending on where we are, but it's pretty much that, right? I also am one of the last people to subscribe to the idea that a college or university is a business, at least in the sense that the student is the customer and the customer is always right. No. Really, no. The student pays to have the chance to learn or not learn, as she chooses. Paying tuition gets a student in the door. What they do after that point is largely up to them. But in another way, institutions of higher education are businesses. It's not just that people are paying for the opportunity to learn, but they are also paying, especially at SLAC's like mine, for a particular sort of experience, a certain ratio of faculty to students, and to feel that they are being given the best possible chance at success -- and that's not even counting things like decent dorms, edible food, nice gym facilities, and ... oh yeah, quality teaching.
So what is quality teaching? How do you measure it? Can you measure it?
These are not trick questions.
For some of us, we measure our teaching by how much students learn. More or less. Obviously, if students are crap, or unable to do the work, they won't be learning much, no matter how good we are as teachers. But in general, the only way I can think of to tell if I'm a good teacher is to see whether the students are learning. This means that I need to think about what it is I want them to take away from my teaching, and in some way, measure it. I guess. The traditional way of measuring learning is through exams. And you know, I'm good with that in a general sense. You spend a period teaching a subject, and at the end, you test the students to see if they've learnt it. But that's a pretty broad interpretation. When I was attending Beachy U, and in Grad School, I knew I was responsible for learning all the information delivered to me in lecture and in the readings, and synthesizing it (and to some extent, regurgetating it) on exams. That's how it was done. If you had asked my profs how they measured learning, it would likely have been expressed more or less as, "the student used historical information from a variety of sources in order to support arguments for a particular historical interpretation." Or something like that. And I agree that that's basically what we want students to do. But what does that mean?
There are lots of important factors in learning history. And even those students who received what are considered decent high school educations are often ill-equipped for such exercises. They don't know what they don't know, nor are they sure what they are supposed to know. So in order to figure out if they are learning, i.e., if I am teaching effectively, I have to ask myself this: What parts do I most want them to learn? Is it learning the narrative? Is it learning to read and analyze primary and secondary sources? Is it learning to argue a particular view of why something happened? Do I focus on content or skills? Those are all important things. For myself, I'd like some sort of balance between them all, but if I have to choose, I tend to fall towards the 'learning to be a historian' side of things, because I think that the sorts of thinking and the presentation of information and creation of narratives that we do are the things that transcend the narrative, and are the tools that allow people to create their own narratives, and to question the ones they are offered. I think this is because, to me, thinking that learning history means learning a narrative, and maybe some varying interpretations, is like thinking a degree in English is about learning all the important works well enough to recite the plots, and compare and contrast them, but not ever learning about how the works have been seen, interpreted, and fit into the contexts of genre, style, period, etc.
Admittedly, there is a disadvantage -- well, lots of them! -- to this approach. First, it means that I often rely on my students learning a narrative (not the narrative, but a narrative) and the general factual stuff on their own, so we can spend the majority of class time discussing primary source documents. Next, it's just hard, because it means going in to every class not knowing where the discussion might lead. Students in one class might pick up on one thing, but not the same thing that another class does. I'm not saying it's chaos, but it means being fairly flexible and sometimes taking what you thought was an obvious discussion of class and changing into a discussion of gender roles, for example. Finally, that flexibility means that you really have to keep in mind, and keep steering towards, the things you want the students to learn, even if it means getting there by a slightly different path.
Honestly, I'm also a bit leery about this approach, because I worry that the students aren't learning enough content, enough narrative. And I sometimes wonder if it wouldn't be just as good to walk in and give topical lectures and ask the sort of questions that help the students tie it all together. But this is all in my Survey courses, and I think I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that there is no way to cover all the content for five continents and anywhere from 500 years to 5000 years, so concentrating on a few themes seems a good way to go. And you know, it's not too hard to assess whether students have learned -- the hard part is making sure I cover the stated outcomes for the Gen Ed the course is supposed to fulfill.
Well. For a minute I was worried I'd got off track, but maybe not.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that, whatever I'm doing wrong or right, when I think of teaching, it's always connected to whether or not the students are learning. If they aren't learning, I look for other ways to teach so that they do. There are some things I can't do: the sort of teaching do requires that the students take a lot of responsibility for their own learning, and it really doesn't work if they don't prepare for class. But still, in my head, there the point of teaching is that students learn from it: I need to be able to tell if they are learning and, if they aren't, I need to think about whether how I am teaching is part of the problem. And again, I am a little worried that the what I am teaching seems to be getting short shrift, or maybe I'm expressing it badly? Or maybe it's because, even apart from the survey, I teach Ancient, two different Medieval courses (this is my one attempt at 'specialty' courses -- I do Late Antiquity to the end of the Carolingians, and the Central- and HMA as separate courses -- still pretty much surveys), Ren/Ref, East Asia, and am supposed to fit Britain, Contemporary Europe, and Historiography/Methods into my two-year course rotation. So honestly, I'm still working on refining preps, and focusing on how I can teach well given that I've only taught one of these preps twice seems my best option. Or maybe it's excuses?
Anyway, I think we've established that teaching and learning are absolutely connected in my mind.
But not everybody sees it that way. There is a school of thought that our expertise is what makes us good teachers, that teaching is an art itself, and can be judged separately from whether students learn. And, well ... I think that, without students, I couldn't teach. They're sort of the point of it for me. A university, no matter the size, exists because of the students. Now don't get me wrong -- I think that the faculty are the heart of the university. Without us, there's no reason for the university to exist, and I wish more administrators and staff would remember that (SLAC's top administrators are admirable in the amount of support they give faculty, but some of the others seem intent on creating a culture among their staffs that breeds contempt for faculty and not only treat us as nuisances, but will say out loud that we aren't to be trusted advising students on career paths, courses to take in our majors, etc.). Without faculty who can do their jobs, no one else would have a job. But without students to justify faculty, none of us would have jobs. Or that's my understanding of how this stuff works.
To return to that idea of expertise, though, I have to ask: "what is the purpose of expertise?" And how do we judge it? Is it by the fact that our peers in the wider academic world respect us? Is it because we publish? I never really understood until I came to SLAC just how justified some people were in scoffing at the academics safely ensconced in their Ivory Towers. I'd met one or two in my career, but they were generally considered out-of-touch, oddballs. My undergrad days are far behind me, but even today, I can go to a conference in Anglo-Norman stuff, and when people ask me how I, the Carolingian person, can feel comfortable asking questions on Orderic Vitalis, for example (I wrote my senior thesis on his ideas of proper female behavior), I can say, "I did my undergrad work with X,Y, and Z at Beachy U", and S the scary A/N legal guy was on my PhD committee," and all is explained. Same when I go to the Late Antiquity panels -- what can I say? I studied with good people as an undergrad and grad student. Hell, I studied with people who are very well known in their fields. I have friends who are well known. So do a lot of us, I know. But my point is, none of these people, these well-known scholars, ever have ever given me the idea that there was a separation of teaching and learning, or that their expertise, especially the expertise attached to their rather extensive CVs, was enough to justify their continued employment or get them out of service or teaching or the exercise that is assessment. In fact, I just flashed on the fact that one of the best known of all of these folk was better-known on our campus for his teaching, which contained many of the best show-tunes-based historical filks I've ever heard. I'm sorry -- a song about Alfred the Great sung to the tune of "Mame"? How could you not remember bits of narrative when presented that way?
And yet, the more time I spend at SLAC, and the more I hear from friends at SLACs, that Ivory Tower phenomenon is not nearly as rare as I thought. Our brilliance is not something quantifiable, our lectures are well-prepared pearls cast largely to an audience of unappreciative swine, and any attempts to articulate our goals and whether or not we meet them is merely killing the program by reducing it to numbers and threatening our academic freedom. I used to think this was more to do with an older generation of faculty who didn't like all of that newfangled assessment stuff, and who hadn't been allowed any buy-in when it came to self-evaluation and the setting of assessment standards. After all, that's the message that we often get from news reports on the possibility of external agencies and the federal government imposing standards from above. But now, I'm wondering if it isn't something more to do with the culture of the Small (Private) Liberal Arts Colleague. Where there is a tradition of building a particular culture of 'we are special', are we more at risk for creating Special Snowflakes?
I leave you with a cautionary tale -- Here's what happens when people have elevated their quest to something that may exist only in legend, or at least when they can't articulate their quest very well!
I realize I haven't posted much of substance lately. Shoot, I haven't even commented much. There are reasons for this: Came home from the Zoo, graded, spent a week in training on critical subject #1; spent three days training in critical subject #2 (I know three ways of making podcasts now!); took last weekend off; spent two days this week on administrivia; spent today working on critical subject #1. Tomorrow, I have to do more on that and start on my Leeds paper.
So being busy is part of it. Also, I have a couple posts brewing, one on management style (I've realized mine has much in common with 'The Four Yorkshiremen'); and one on concepts of what it means to be an academic and to have academic freedom, especially in the context of assessment.
But honestly, I have to step back and gain a little objectivity for those.
In the meantime, I'm writing this on my iPod and it's a pain, so later, doors!!
It's up at Mercurius Politicus, and there are etchings to mark out each subject! Very cool. It's Early Modern this time, but number 51 will be Ancient/Medieval again, and will occur on or about the 20th of June at medievalist-sf/f author-food history maven Gillian Polack's Food History Blog. If you have suggestions, please send them to us -- you can leave a message here, or use the link to Carnivalesque at the right. Enjoy!
For those of you not on the list-serv circuit, JoAnn McNamara has died. I think most medieval historians are aware of her work, and I know that it has helped me to frame some of the questions I ask in teaching and in my current research. I met JoAnn only once, last year at the Berkshire Conference, and felt very privileged. She was very gracious to all of us junior scholars, and was funny and warm, and supportive. She was very much the person she seemed in her writing -- smart, vibrant, feminist -- and in fact, I was sort of shocked into accepting my own age when I met her and Natalie Davis. I'd always thought of them as just a tad older than me, even though intellectually I knew that they had to be around my mother's age (I have a young mother). They always felt like slightly older peers in my head. And that was how JoAnn felt to me in real life, during a dinner and a couple of conference panels. A slightly older peer, gently mentoring people like me, even while she did seem to carry the air of the grande dame of women's history that she was.
Her memorial will be at Hunter College in the fall.
x-posted
ETA: this discussion thread was posted on the LJ Medieval Studies community, and rather nice.
This Pinder bag in chocolate with the matching sleeve -- which I like, because it's big enough to carry stuff, and doesn't look too computer-case-y, but OTOH, I don't know how comfortable I'd find the straps, because I usually carry bags on my shoulder...
Now ... does anybody use Zotero and/or Scrivener? Can you use them together? I might as well start using new software for the new project and the new 'puter. Suggestions?
I know -- the semester is done and I am still busy. I've got training on new pedagogical techniques or some such this week. I am meanwhile thinking out a post on teaching. Not just about teaching the students we have, but teaching the students we have to be the students they need to be. But all of this thinking means that I need your help. I need a new bag for my new macbook. I remember Ancarett and New Kid and Tiruncula posting about such things lo, these many moons ago.
What I need:
Not too spendy, but I can live with reasonable
Small-ish. Big enough for the computer, cords, my wallet, and a makeup bag. I'm trying to lighten my load. Ok, and maybe a pad of paper, my moleskine, and a paperback to read on the Tube.
Something that doesn't shout, "LOOK!! I'M CARRYING A MACBOOK!! MUG ME!!!"
Something not Black or grey would be nice
Vera Bradley need not apply.
C'mon ... some of you are way better at shopping than I am. I HATE shopping. Even online.
Wow. That was a different Zoo. Really fun, but exhausting. And it definitely confirmed my theory that having papers entirely finished before the conference starts is really the best way of doing things. Still, the evil back-to-back panels went well (the panels were not evil, only the scheduling). Or so I'm told. A friend asked for a copy of my paper, so I am chuffed. The other papers on my panel were very good, and I especially liked the one with the number-crunching, because it was something we haven't seen much of in the past. The roundtable was also very good, and a couple people told me after that they had found it thought-provoking. Went to a couple of interesting medieval panels, where at least there was a Carolingian question, if no actual Carolingian papers. That needs to stop. Also went to a wonderful panel on antisemitism in the 12th C, where I heard three very good papers, one of which talked about revenants and mentioned vampires and zombies. I LOVED that paper. The rest of the panels were sort of blurry. This may have had something to do with the fact that I was still working on my paper and also dealing with lame SLAC business.
I also got to spend some, but again, not nearly enough, time with with my Beach U peeps. It was so very nice to see them, and again, to be reminded of just how very lucky I have been in my life. So many of the people I saw have somehow or other been instrumental in making me the person and the scholar I am, and having them in my life makes me want to keep up whatever good work I am doing, and fix the things I probably should. I also ran into other online friends, and missed some others. I never managed to see Jeffrey Jerome Cohen at the dance, and Scott Nokes was only there for a drive-by. Never did see Mike Drout. Many people asked where the hell Cranky Professor was, too.
I was also able to spend some time with a wonderful postgrad who convinced me to come to a conference at St Andrews this summer, and a dear friend with whom I always enjoy spending time. Plus, a bunch of us went out on Saturday night for dinner and talked slash and fanfic and sf/f for hours. Saw other colleagues I see only rarely, and one with whom I may try to plan a panel for next time. I should do it if only because he's an amazing dancer. In fact, at one point I was dancing with him and two other people who often work on things Carolingian, and two of them were really good and fun dancers. So basically, a very good conference.
And right now, I'm sitting in the lobby of the K'zoo Radisson, procrastinating on the marking. And just plain exhausted. Won't get home to Dabbaville till something like 1:00 in the morning. Ugh
Sorry for the late notice, all, but somehow I dropped this in the hustle and bustle of yesterday. Anyway ... a friend sent this to me to post, and I'm posting it!
If you're going to be in Kalamazoo this weekend, I'd like to invite you to the business meeting of the Lone Medievalists Society this Friday at 5:15, Valley II room 203, especially if you are the sole medievalist in your discipline and/or in your college or university. The Lone Medievalists Society is intended to provide support and a sense of community to any medievalist, particularly those who feel isolated at their institutions and would like to have a network of other scholars in medieval studies with whom to discuss research, pedagogy, and professional development. Though the society interacts largely digitally, we will schedule business meetings like this at conferences as often as possible to encourage face-to-face interaction.
Don't forget -- Mug Shots, 8:00 a.m., Friday. More information here -- leave a comment here or there if you think you're coming and haven't said yet -- it's looking like we'll have to grab lots of tables and chairs!
You know how sometimes, you write a paper abstract, and then put it away till a couple of weeks before the conference, only to find it's not exactly what you remembered saying you'd write?
Or does that only happen to me?
Anyway, I spent part of the day googling references for an upcoming paper, and midway through, realised that actually, I'd only been googling for a tangential part of the paper. Oops.
I have a fantastic blogroll here, and am planning on mining it. But if you can think of people not on that blogroll who are pseudonymous bloggers with a voice that you think of as a legitimate academic voice (and I'm all for a wide range of academic voices), please shoot their urls my way.
I'm as interested in blogs by grad students and contingent faculty as in blogs by full-timers. Blogs my junior people and those who are lone medieval (or other) people on their campuses are especially welcome.
I'll post about my feelings about the recent news when I've finally processed it, but thanks again, everybody, for the good wishes.
In the meantime, I have been mulling some things about in my head lately. This has been rather an interesting year, personally and professionally. And some of it is interesting in that Chinese curse sort of way. Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague that resulted in a disagreement over 'the real business of the university.' The real business is apparently scholarship, and the life of the mind. Now, let's all remember that SLAC is, well, a SLAC. There are graduate programs, but really, there's no crossover between faculty or students. For all intents and purposes, I teach in a SLAC. We have a standard 4-4 teaching load, and most of us have a 4-3 load due to one release for research time.* (I know!) Our promotion standards, unlike those at many similar campuses, are really commensurate with our teaching loads. They are achievable, but it's clear that teaching is our primary job. And for those who can really only manage the minimum requirements in scholarship, service can count for a lot.
And that's how we tend to think of our jobs, all of us. It doesn't really matter where we work -- we see our jobs as some combination of teaching, research, and service. But are those the real business of the university? I think yes, absolutely. And also no. I think that my colleague is right -- the life of the mind is an important part of the university. But I'd like to suggest that the life of the mind does not exist in a vacuum. Big surprise, right? The life of the mind doesn't mean a damn, unless it's part of a conversation. Not a bunch of people talking about what they do, and quietly researching away, and presenting what they find to others. Actually entering into a conversation that exists on many different levels is what I mean.
There isn't just one conversation, although I think there is also The Conversation -- the constant ebb and flow of thoughts and the articulation of thoughts, of new knowledge building upon and revising old -- but there is the sharing of our work and our knowledge with each other, crossing the boundaries of our own research and asking questions of each other. It's there when we work with our students -- I mean, seriously... well go to interviews and tell the nice people how our research informs our teaching, and how we all use the Socratic method, but how many of us really think about what that means? The best classes are conversations. Yes, we're the experts, and we are trying to make sure our students acquire content knowledge, and get the approaches of our discipline. But aren't the best classes the ones where our students make us think, that shake us up, that -- even if the students are wrong -- make us look at things in slightly different ways?
The conversation is there when we go to conferences, too. And blogs. You all know this -- you read blogs! But when we go to conferences, is the point to talk about our research, or to share it? Why do we do it? Ok, partially to keep our jobs and pad our CVs. But I know for me, it's more that giving a paper is a ticket to The Conversation. It's a chance to hang out with cool, smart people and share ideas. I want to hear about what other people are doing, and yes, tell them about what I am doing, too -- but mostly in the context of seeing how it can all fit together. What I do is dreadfully dull, unless it's part of a bigger picture. Blogs are just another kind of ticket.
We, and I think especially those of us who are medievalists and classicists, are often challenged, and challenge ourselves, about why what we do is relevant. Yesterday I had the wonderful experience of meeting a colleague in a very different field. The colleague presented some really interesting ideas, and was incredibly flattering to my departmental colleagues about medievalists and how versatile we are. Nice, when one is the only medievalist! The thing I liked best about this colleague, though -- a scholar from a strong research uni -- was that the colleague reminded me about the conversation. We were all over the place, picking each other's brains, suggesting approaches to his research, considering sorts of evidence to broaden the study... it was great fun. And my mind was alive.
Yeah. There's a subtext. I'm not going to go there at the moment, though. Realizing what this means to me is enough.
Caught the Provost's assistant coming out of today's Board meeting. She says they approved my promotion to Associate, and the permanent contract (we don't have tenure).
I still don't know that I'll believe it till I see it in writing, but ...
w00t!
ETA: Thank you so much, everybody, for the good wishes! It's finally starting to sink in. My dean told me I can order new business cards, so I guess it's real!
I think you are missing the point. It doesn't actually matter if in some cases, torture resulted in useful information. It's still torture.
Just as, if a person had had the chance to kill Hitler, or Stalin, or Pol Pot, or any of the other people we know were responsibility for the deaths of millions, and had taken advantage of the opportunity, it would still be murder.
We might feel it was justifiable. We might be grateful to that person. We might even consider it just, in a way. But, absent actual trial and conviction, absent a judicial process that we accept as necessary to our way of life, it would still be murder.
Hey everybody!!!! Carnivalesque 49 is now up at Muhlberger's Early History. It's a fantastic one, with lots of interesting stuff on women and by women! It's going to be my reading at breakfast tomorrow!
I understand that you are an Important Person at your institution, whose very nature is based on understanding hierarchy and conforming to it. But you have come to me asking a favor. It may be that, in the past, you have had similar favors granted by my predecessors. But we are in a new era of accreditation standards. So if I send you a very polite request asking for further information on which to base my judgement, and make it clear that I am consulting with other colleagues on your request while performing due diligence to make sure, if we grant that request, our accrediting agency will approve, let me give you a little advice:
Do NOT send a curt response to me that denies me my academic title, let alone my professional one (not that being department chair carries any extra rank at SLAC -- just more work!).
Do NOT spell my name incorrectly.
In short, do NOT write:
Ms. AMD
[insert grudging response to polite request for more information here]
[replacement of courtesy close with a statement that implies that I owe you your request]
Because seriously. Dude. Your insignia don't outrank my PhD. I don't owe you a thing, and I have every right to review your current connection with my department and see if we should discontinue that.*
no love,
ADM, PhD
Department Chair from whom you are asking a favor.
*I should point out that I will not be making this decision on my own, although that is within my rights. I will be consulting with 4 colleagues who have expertise, and then presenting my advice to my Dean. Because in ADM land, we consult and discuss and work for consensus whenever possible -- especially when there might be conflicts of interest -- and we document.
So a couple of weeks ago, I went to a Late Antiquity conference. It was much fun, and there were some good papers. Unfortunately, I missed a few good papers, too -- first because I missed my plane! and second because I decided that falling down a few steps was better than actually, you know, walking down them. But anyway, here's a summary from my notes. If you want details on authors, e-mail me:
The first paper I heard was on Evagrius of Pontus. I only caught a bit, but basicaly the argument was that Evagrius used the image of the exiled Odysseus in talking about monastic exile, and that Evagrius's letters were deliberately written in a 'this contains a secret message' kind of way, in which the intended reader would have understood three different levels of interpretation.
The seond paper was on Varro and his influence in Late Antiquity. Let's see -- we all know Augustine hates Varro, right (well, we do now!) -- and that antipathy is rooted well before Civitas Dei. Anyway, Varro's Hebdomades apparently had some effect on both of the Symmachi, especially the elder. And in general there's an influence in the late 4th C in terms of many things numerological. Oh, but we don't have any precise evidence that the Symmachi were inspired by the Hebdomades. Basically, I understood the argument to be that Symmachus' original letter collection was arranged in 7 books, like the Hebdomades, and that there is other evidence to show that the number was significant to both Symmachi, and the 10-book collection of letters we know was a later compilation.
After the break, there was a very interesting paper on Glycerios and the Dancing Virgins, in which it was argued rather well that early Christians really didn't object to dance, per se. In fact, the imagery and vocabulary of dance permeate much of early Christian writing, and there is evidence to show that virgins were considered especially well-suited to choral dance. However, in examples like that of Glycerios, who appears to have been a ne'er-do-well who led a troup of dancing virgins from town to town, we get a case where the conduct of the leader is suspect, and leads to much crankiness.
Next came one of the best papers of the conference, hands down. All about the prostitutes. Actually, it was about the shift in the perception of and rehabilitation of prostitutes as Christianity took hold. The paper argued that in pre-Christian Roman society, shame equaled social death; all prostitutes pretty much suffered this. But the focus on sin in Christianity meant that the idea of volition played an important role; one chooses to sin, and one can choose to repent and be forgiven, and be welcomed back into the fold.
This is especially problematic in a world where many prostitutes are slaves, and therefore their sins are not volitional. This situation is upsetting to many early church fathers. The presenter went on to draw parallels between Greek romances where boy meets girl, girl is cast into many misadventures, often including into a brothel, and then is rescued, virtue intact, just in time to marry the boy, and the lives of prostitute saints, where the brothel plays a part, but the prostitute is redeemed and becomes a saint. This marks a transition from the social death that accompanies shame to a partial redemption when sex is seen as a sin. I say partial redemption because all of the examples given were of women who are never really redeemed socially, and in fact seem only to regain any social status by redefining their positions by becoming anchorites, hermits, or other religious who cut themselves off from most of the rest of society. In the best example, the repentent prostitute actually dresses as a man and lives a semi-eremitic existence in the desert, so her 'redemption' comes at the cost of becoming a man, or the denial of her female sexuality, at the least.
The last paper of this, the second session I attended, was on athletics in Late Antiquity, and was also rather good. It compared athletics in Classical Greece, which often included people in the upper classes, and also allowed people who began fairly low on the social (and often economic) ladder to gain income and status, which could lead to political influence as well. Moreover, the focus of classical athletics was on glory and winning as intrinsic goods. However, by Late Antiquity (and Roman society), there was a decline in funding for civic games, and the financial prospects for athletes and the comcomitant reduction in opportunities for a rise in status and the chance of gaining political influence. As the benefits of participating in athletics declined, the sorts of people interested in participating also shifted -- as did the goals of the games. The shift was exemplified in an increase of professional athletes who worked for money and popularity (the income could still be good, but because the games were not tied to civic life in the same way, we're looking at merely a rise in economic status for very hard work), and games that focused more on providing spectacles for the masses.
Apropos of a conversation at Historiann's, this idea just struck me. I don't have time to go into it in great detail, and it might not even be original. But here it is:
The discussion of Judith Bennett's book last month focused in part on the idea of patriarchal equalibrium, and Bennett herself focuses a great deal on the consistant wage disparity between men and women. At SLAC, as at other universities all over the country (and possibly the world) -- at least where there is no union scale -- men tend to be paid more than women faculty of the same rank. I want to take that further, though. Those of us in Liberal Arts programs know that the folks in hard sciences are typically paid more than their peers in the humanities and social sciences. And hard sciences have traditionally been dominated by men.
Let's take that a step further, though. At SLAC, faculty in the (mostly male-dominated) professional schools make more than those of us in the Liberal Arts. Moreover, their teaching loads (and often service loads) are lighter, and publication requirements somewhat higher (although many of us in my school meet those higher requirements for scholarship even with our heavier teaching loads). We are 'teaching faculty' and they are 'research and professional' faculty. My question is this -- does the overt masculinization (is that a word?) of the 'research and professional' faculty that exists in terms of actual staffing lead to a de facto feminization of all faculty in the 'teaching' side? That is (partially), do even male faculty in Arts and Sciences get less respect and have they less clout because they teach and are willing to take lower salaries (because what man would do that? it's only natural that women do, but ...)?
So I'm getting a new macBook (the small one) in the next couple of months. This means I might really need a new computer bag. So if you're bored and want to do some virtual online shopping, give me suggestions!
I'm also looking for a pair of low-heeled black shoes to wear with skirts for teaching and such like.
I will blog about the conference I just went to as soon as I get caught up!
The final post of the roundtable on Judith Bennett's History Matters is now up at Notorious, PhD. It's a post by Bennett herself, and is well worth a read.
I am so behind on reading blogs. So I kind of missed this the first time around. But if you go over to Medieval Woman's blog, details are there. It looks like Friday morning at 8 in the coffee shop whose name we can't remember in whichever Valley it is. The one where we always meet. Considering how many of us there are these days, we it's a good idea to get there early, though (unless it opens at 8?), because we always end up begging for chairs and tables.
Hmph. Here's me, trying to think up something original to say, when Notorious, PhD, Historiann, and Tenured Radical have already covered most of it! Not to mention that this series has also created some wonderful spin-offs over at MagistraetMater. Let me tell you, these are tough acts to follow! But follow I must, so I'm going to revisit some things from the point of view of someone who comes at this from the perspective of the Early Middle Ages, who doesn't really have the chance to teach grad students, and who seems to be hitting every interstice possible in background and approach. I also freely admit that I may be opening myself up to criticism here, but there you are!
One of the first things that struck me about Judith Bennett's History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (besides the fact that I deperately want to call it "Feminism and the Challenge of Patriarchy") is how modern it all seems to me. Another is how good Bennett is at articulating clearly some of the issues that so many of us, whether or not we think of ourselves as feminist historians, need to deal with when we teach any history. Finally, I have to admit there was some, "but what about this???" going on, too.
In the discussion at Notorious, PhD's place, we turned to the issue of whether or not history should be political. I tend to think not, even as I admit that we all bring our own interests and beliefs to our scholarship and teaching. But I'm fairly uncomfortable with pushing a particular agenda with the idea that it will make a difference to how our students deal with the here and now, in part because I don't think that Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages really have much to do with the here and now, despite Bennett's arguments for continuity. I really do think that the study of history is every bit as much about acquiring a set of tools and skills for critical thinking and writing that transcends the study of the past, and that that is the continuity that is most important to us as teachers.
Having said that, Bennett's call to arms seems to me to be one that is natural. Bennett herself touches on this when recounting her experiences in re-writing Hollister's Medieval Europe. Adding more on women might be a feminist thing. It might be a response to half-hearted attempts to toss some more women into the mix because publishers feel they have to (who was it who talked about the 'chick boxes'?). But the reality is that adding women means offering a richer, better-developed picture of what was going on. While I certainly admit that it is down to feminist historians of a slightly earlier generation for pushing this aspect of history, for making it political, I think we may now be at a point where it is becoming much easier to include the history of women and minorities as necessities than it was even ten years ago. It occurs to me that in my own case, teaching about women allows me to engage students in things that they are interested in -- even though I teach at a SLAC where much of the student body is pretty conservative, the students, male and female, really do enjoy reading primary sources that have to deal with women's lives. And they often want to compare them in presentist ways. All I have to do is question their assumptions about 'choice' and 'oppression' -- and combat the "Oh, look! things are so much better now!" impulse. Which means, I suppose, that I've been pointing out the patriarchal equalibrium without the focus on the continuity that Bennett argues for.
About that continuity... Damn, but I wish that there had been more. I really enjoyed that section of the book, but it still seemed fairly narrow to me. All England, all pretty late. And I'm still leery of continuity when we can't really talk about the causation except in terms of general patriarchal equalibrium. This is a real problem for me, and perhaps for others. Patriarchal equalibrium feels like it exists. It looks like it exists. It explains so damned much. But I think Bennett shows enough evidence that it's an equalibrium made up of different factors in different times and places that it's ... hard to get a grip on. I want to dig deeper, splitter that I am. The continuity section also seemed to me to be begging for more in terms of both time-span and evidence. Most of the the evidence that Bennett uses is fascinating; I've used some 17th C English wills for teaching before, and am glad that some of my students noticed the disparities in how property was divided between men and women, and between widows and children, that Bennett mentiones (90). And obviously I can't fault Bennett for writing what she knows best. But as she admits, the continuity discussion is based mostly on wages and standards for working women in mostly urban environments. I wanted more. I wanted the laws, dammit!
The laws. They're problematic. If we look at women's legal status in the very long term, I think that examining various law codes supports the idea of patriarchal equalibrium in many ways. But it also throws a spanner into the continuity argument, if only because we have to unpack an awful lot that looks like (and sometimes is) transformation. But I think we have to do it. The fact that there are examples in so many law codes in the western tradition (including the Ancient Near East) of women-as-property, of violence against women punishable not because of the crime against the woman, but because a crime had been committed against a man and his family, seems to me an essential issue in teaching the history of women. I don't think anyone can argue with Bennett's evidence on the value of women's labour, but in teaching, at least, it seems to me that we cannot leave out the many ways in which women were themselves valued less. The problem is, I suppose, that we can look at the world around us and argue, as Bennett does, that the wage gap has been more or less constant for as long as we've been able to measure it. When we look at women's legal standing, there is difference. And in some cases, transformation. My question here is: how can we teach that transformation and still demonstrate that the idea of a patriarchal equalibrium really does hold true?
Another place where I feel we need more integration and study is on women and their ties to their birth families. Bennett's women are mostly defined as singletons, wives, or widows, i.e., their families are defined by their spouses. It makes sense when looking at the women she does. But from the perspective of someone more familiar with Rome, Late Antiquity, and the Early Middle ages, there is something lacking. The idea of husbands -- or even widowers -- blithely alienating away their wives' dowries may work well in the 14th - 18th centuries, but I'm not entirely sure that it works earlier on. The sorts of things I've been reading suggest that, at least before the High Middle Ages, there was an expectation among the elites (and who else owned and held enough property that their actions were recorded?) that daughters would act in the interests of their birth families. In these cases, patriarchy really did have to do with fathers. And again, I'm not sure that by looking more closely at how women were identified, or identified themselves, in terms of family we aren't opening up another can of transformational worms. It's always something, isn't it?
So ... even though I'm convinced by most of Bennett's arguments, and more convinced that there are ways to teach a stronger feminist history that is legitimate because it is interesting and necessary and just better history, I am not sure that it can be done as well as it needs to be, unless we get a bit messy, and figure out how all of these other things fit in.
Speaking of making things messy again ... I need to address the concept of "lesbian-like". I can see how it can be initially useful, but I think in the end it can distract us from a lot of questions that help us to write better history. As Magistra pointed out, if we use Bennett's definitions, we end up with Heloise living a 'lesbian-like' life, despite the fact that she is one of the most clearly self-identified heterosexual women in the MA! Hell, I fit in there, and there are women I know who identify as lesbian who don't fit Bennett's definitions. Tenured Radical deals with most of my concerns at length, so I won't go into too much detail here, except to say this: if we have to construct an almost asexual category of 'lesbian-like', how do we then deal with teaching our students about the differences in how people conceived of sexuality in the past -- at least of what we know? How do we deal with the idea that women in sexual relationships with women didn't exist in some people's minds because sex = penetration? And how do we deal with the growing corpus of evidence for ideas of masculinity where sometimes men having sex with other men is masculine and 'not gay' and sometimes it is gay and wrong? I think lesbian-like is a term that muddies the water more than it filters it.
So what's my point? I think it's that Bennett's book is an important starting point. I think it reminds us of many of the things that historians, especially younger women historians, often take for granted. The frameworks for dealing with women's history, especially the ideas of patriarchal equalibrium and remembering to look at continuities as well as transformations, are useful and can improve the ways in which we teach history. And although I think this is probably not what Bennett had in mind at all, I think that those frameworks make it possible to show that including women's history in the master narrative is necessary because the narrative is just plain better with extra! added! women!
Don't forget, the ultimate part of this discussion will take place next week at Notorious, PhD's place, where Judith Bennett herself will offer her own take on the discussion.
Because you want to know what I think about AIG, right?
And the rest of this financial SNNAFU, (that would be "not-normal") while I'm at it. Note -- I'm not an economist, and gods know, my pension is tanking, but I'm employed (yay) and my consumer debt is relatively low in comparison to the national average, I think. Higher than I like it, and I wish I'd downsized a year before I did. But I'm fairly sure I've got this year's England trip covered (maybe not if I go to St. Andrews, too), and part of me is still hoping to swing WorldCon/Anticipation -- if you are going, feel free to twist my arm -- mostly I am reticent because it's big and expensive, and I don't want to go unless I know I have people to hang out with).
So right -- I'm pretty normal for an employed recently divorced female academic -- If I lost my job tomorrow, I'd make it through another month, but then I'd be totally screwed. I'm worth more dead than alive.
So AIG. As I understand it, the bonuses are in their contract. So to me, that means they get paid. Period. This isn't up for argument. It SHOULD be up for negotiation, but the people receiving bonuses shouldn't have to give them up just because the taxpayer is paying them, rather than the customer. That's why we have contracts. I'd be very pissed if someone tried to not honor my contract.
And this newest attempt to tax the bonuses at 90%?? No, that's wrong, too. Federal laws should not be passed in order to punish/benefit one very small group of people. That's wrong. That's not the purpose of laws, although laws of those types are awfully interesting to historians. They really do provide a 'wtf?' quality to our research. So ... we get a law that taxes these guys 90%, and then there's a precedent to tax any bonus at 90%.
I've worked in sales, and earned commission and bonuses. Had my bonuses been taxed at a higher rate, I'd have made very little more than my base rate. But then, my commissions and bonuses were directly linked to my performance!!!
Having said all that ... I once worked for a company where we all took 10% salary cuts to help keep the company going. I'm wondering why this isn't happening at AIG. Honestly, I'm wondering how any of the AIG execs getting salary PLUS huge bonuses can live with themselves. Are they not ashamed? And I'm NOT sure that there shouldn't be more negotiations over reductions in pay for the execs at all of the companies getting the bailouts.
In the meantime, pay the bastards their money. It's a comparative drop in the bucket. Stop being distracted by this, and think about what is going on with the rest of the money -- where is it going, and what is it doing?? What safeguards are in place? And here's an idea for any of the people taking the cash -- name and shame. Publicize their names and pictures. hell, if you have the time, protest outside their homes and workplaces ...
And then think. Because what the hell allowed them to have contracts like this anyway? Anybody with half a brain should have been able to see that the kind of overextension of credit over the past 8-10 years was going to have some awful consequences. Anyone with half a brain should have noticed that top execs were making far more money than company profits -- real profits, not income -- justified. Hell, anybody could see that, when the people at the top are making hundreds of times what the people at the bottom are making, and there are still people in this country without health insurance and safe homes, that there is something just wrong with the world. Remember when suggestions that those people be taxed at even higher rates were dismissed (mostly by the GOP) were dismissed -- even attacked -- as a plot for socialist redistribution of wealth? You should -- it was happening as recently as ... last month?
The horse has left the barn. Congress, if you want to fix this, then put in lasting measures -- executives in any company or industry that gets a tax break can't get bonuses or compensation above 100 times the pay of the lowest-paid worker in the company, for example. And if a person makes over a million a year? Tax it at 50-60%. Own stock? Exercise your stockholder rights, and don't buy into this idea that you're paying for the best. Because if the best are stupid enough that they bought into the bubble? Maybe we need to redefine the best.
And by the way -- can somebody explain to me how having the federal government buy outstanding mortgages and re-finance them is not a smarter idea than just handing the banks some cash? Seems to me that the lenders would be out the interest, but would still be better off than having to unload property on a foreclosure market, and if the federal government is going to piss away taxpayer money, it might as well be on something that keeps people in their homes. But then, I want to see a new WPA and NRA. Some of my students would be better off working in construction.
So I have a facebook account, mostly so students can find me thre and don't look for me here. I don't put personal stuff up there, and am very careful even about my status, after a couple of students came by my office to check on me when I said I was depressed. But I have lots of colleagues and family, so they see a part of me. And occasionally one of my friends posts something a little unprofessional, but that's ok, too. I never look for my students, and only add them as friends at their request. I don't go to their Facebook pages and snoop. But ...
They sometimes forget that friending me means I can see stuff they do. So one of my advisees popped up in a photoalbum named after a local bar. And I clicked. And saw several students (a couple of my advisees) who are definitely underage getting blasted. Do I mention this to them? To anyone else? Or just put in a call to the alcohol board that they might want to do a check one of these nights? Or forget I saw it because there's a bar like that in every college town?
