PhDiva

Confession: I Really Liked "The Help"

2011-11-26T12:04:00.001-08:00

So, I finally got around to watching "The Help." I was on a transcontinental flight and it was free so I thought, "hey, what the hell? I liked the book." Surprise, surprise, I thought this was a great movie. Not great in a it's-going-to-stand-the-test-of-time kind of way. But it was well-made, beautifully acted and, contrary to a whole of criticism I'd read, assuredly NOT a white savior fantasy.

I think part of the problem is that people tried to make this a movie about civil rights. It's not. It's certainly part of the context (how could a movie about Mississippi in the 1960s NOT be kind of about civil rights?), but it's not the focus of the movie. Not at all. Rather, I would argue that it's about 2 things: how to be a good researcher, and how to build alliances. Maybe I'm just projecting too much of my own life onto it, but that's what I got out of it.

Skeeter (Emma Stone) does exactly what a responsible researcher should do: she presents her project up-front to her narrators, lets them set the parameters of the story, and gives them proper credit (and a share of the money she makes). It's apparent from the beginning that Skeeter is not your ordinary Junior League-er in Jackson. She got curly hair, for goodness' sake! But she also isn't a raging bitch.

The big point of antagonism at the beginning of the film (which is narrated by Aibileen (Viola Davis), a domestic worker in Jackson) is about whether or not the Black maids use the bathrooms at the houses where they work. Hilly (played with masterful hatefulness by Bryce Dallas Howard) starts a campaign to pass a law requiring separate domestic bathrooms for Black maids who, she contends, carry different diseases. Hygiene "concerns," of course, have been part of racist discourses going back at least a century at this point, and Hilly even says out loud that she has the support of the White Citizens' Council for her ordinance.

Skeeter, meanwhile, landed her first professional writing gig out of college: writing the domestic advice column in the local paper. Not really having learned a lot about cleaning the kitchen and doing laundry at Ole Miss, she asks Aibileen for her help in writing the column (Note: She doesn't ask Aibileen because she assumes Aibileen knows about domestic duties because she's a Black woman; she asks her because that's what she does for a living. Perhaps that's the only job available to her, and that's a conversation to have, but let's be real here.). Here she gets to see how the family Aibileen works for treats her, and this is the genesis of her book idea. Her editor in New York told her to find a story that hasn't been told, or a new way to tell an old story, and she thinks this is just that. Hmm. Sounds like EXACTLY what we're supposed to do in academia.

So Skeeter asks permission from Aibileen to interview her and to publish her stories. After a while, Aibileen agrees, making a point of telling Skeeter that this is a form of resistance against a system that abuses Black women. When another maid, Minny (Octavia Spencer), also starts interviewing for the project, this point becomes even more clear. Skeeter is not stealing their stories in order to make her own career, unless you actually believe that any researcher who uses interviews to write a book that will inevitably forward his/her career is a thief and an enemy of social justice. What's more, when Skeeter gets a book advance, she divides it equally amongst the maids who she's been interviewing. When she publishes the book, she does so anonymously, meaning that both she and her narrators are not identified by name, in order to protect everyone involved. When she and Minny disagree over the inclusion of a particular story in the book, Minny lays down an ultimatum: either Skeeter include the story in the book or she can't use any of the information she's gotten from Minny. Skeeter agrees. Again, this is responsible research, and the finished product is a synthesis of both the researcher and her narrators. This is feminist research at its collaborative best.

But even more so than this methodological lesson (which I think is pretty important) is the deeper meaning of the film: it's about building alliances for social justice. Skeeter doesn't become interested in the maids' stories out of nowhere: it's because she was raised by a Black maid, who her mother summarily dismisses just before Skeeter returns home from college. Her love for Constantine is deep and abiding, like one's love for a mother. She doesn't see Constantine as a servant or someone owned by her family: she loves her. Her life is important to her, and it breaks her heart when she finds out what her mother has done.

Love is the basis of the best alliances, according to Aimee Carrillo Rowe. Not just love in an intimate sense, but in a broader and more meaningful way. My concern for your life, your humanity, your wellbeing, is based in love. It's not just enlightened self-interest, but the conscious action of linking my life to yours, sharing your burdens and triumphs. That's what I saw going on in this film. Nobody "saved" anybody, or even tried to. Skeeter used the tools at her disposal to expose something she saw as wrong, and did so in a responsible way. But there are similar alliances built between the domestic workers, whose own alliances among one another are portrayed as vital to their survival. Aibileen is still dealing with the death of her son; Minny is trying to protect herself and her children from an abusive partner. Skeeter isn't involved in any of this, any more than either of these women share these concerns with her. Minny is able to take her children out of the abusive home situation because of the white woman she works for; but Minny has already saved her as well, helping her cope with her infertility and anxiety about being perceived as a social outcast.

The point is that nobody is a "white savior," and nobody is a "magical Negro," but these women have powerful, and complicated, bonds that entangle them in a web of mutual respect and obligation. They love one another, and that is what makes for the alliances that ultimately change individual circumstances and their community as a whole. It's not about "sisterhood": no one pretends that there aren't fucked up power dynamics at play. But they do choose to work proactively within the context in which they live, instead of allowing that context to divide them.

So I liked the movie. It wasn't some weirdo colorblind fairy tale like "The Blind Side," but actually a very authentic-feeling story about women's lives and the many factors that impact them. I'm not saying everybody has to like it or agree with me, but I think in the future it would be nice if the people who want to criticize something like this would actually take time to watch it first. I understand if you don't want to watch it, or if it's something that doesn't appeal to you. But if you're not going to take time to actually investigate what it is you're critiquing, then perhaps you should just keep your assumptions to yourself.

File Under "Things That Are Not Funny"

2011-11-06T08:38:00.000-08:00

So, this has been making the rounds with my Facebook friends. A man apparently suffocated his wife for damaging his collection of "Star Wars" toys, and because he was afraid she was going to leave him. Many of the comments I've seen (and I didn't look on the original article because I value my sanity) have been to the effect of, "Bitch shouldn't mess with my Boba Fett." Hardy har har.

I don't know how people can forget so quickly that a woman is dead because of intimate partner violence. I mean, I know it's "Star Wars," which I love too, but a woman died! Her husband killed her. He was able to forget, at least for a few moments, that a human life, the life of a woman he loved and who was his partner, was more valuable than some toys.

I don't know what made him think that. But whatever it was certainly wasn't unique in our society. This is the logical point of the continued objectification and dehumanization of women by commercial industries, and by the million tiny and almost unnoticed ways every single day that we reify kyriarchical structures.

A friend told me that while she was looking at pics of a friend's kids (2 boys and a girl), someone had commented on one of the pictures, "Oh, [Boy1] is going to be the quiet observer and [Boy2] is going to be the little activist. [Girl] is just going to be cute!!" Both of the boys are infants, while the girl is a toddler. This is a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

You may see that comment and say, "Oh, but what's wrong with that? I'm sure she's a beautiful little girl." And I'm sure she is too. It's hard for children to be ugly. But what the commenter, in all of his/her well-meaning idiocy is doing is saying that the male children will be valued for who they are and what they accomplish, for their personalities and politics, and that the girl will be valued for how she looks. What a horrible message to send young girls.

But this is precisely the message we send to girls in our society. You're only valuable so long as your conform to normalized standards of beauty (and if you don't do so naturally, you should do so surgically). Your intellect and personality and contributions to society are never as important as how "pleasing" you are. Your body is a plaything, a toy, an object to be used. Your companionship can be replaced, but valuable things like toys cannot be. You shouldn't expect to be a partner in a relationship, just an accessory, and not even the most important accessory at that because, hey, "Star Wars" memorabilia is really valuable!

Another woman is dead because we taught our society that women's lives don't matter. Hardy har!

Slate's John Dickerson Just Kicked Me in the Heart

2011-10-11T18:44:00.000-07:00

So, I am in the habit of listening to political podcasts on my errands around town. It keeps me kind of informed without me having to read the news, and it ensures that I won't accidentally burst into Lady GaGa on the bus. So, I was listening to last week's edition of Slate's Political Gabfest. John Dickerson, chief political correspondent at Slate, is one of my favorite political analysts, because he usually does a good job of keeping things in perspective.

On last week's edition, the panel was discussing potential Republican presidential candidates, including New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who has since said he wasn't going to run. A lot of the speculation about Christie revolved around his weight, which seemed to me an extremely stupid thing for pundits to discuss, as we've had plenty of fat presidents, and they all seemed to do just fine (and not a single one of them died in office, fyi).

John Dickerson commented that probably one of the things that stood in Christie's way was that he had to get his "body" back and forth from New Jersey to Iowa, New Hampshire, and potentially Florida. It was a weird way of phrasing it, since nobody every laments that Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry has to get his/her "body" around the country. But then Dickerson said that Christie was a "big guy" and so such a schedule could have ill effects on Christie's "health."

Let me say this succinctly: YOU CANNOT JUDGE HEALTH BASED ON A PERSON'S BODY SIZE. PERIOD. This is the most ignorant thing you can possibly say and it's disgusting that you would consider Christie's body size as an indicator of his fitness to run for president. When Christie declined to run for president last week, it was not because he was fat. If that issue came up in his political calculus, it's likely because he didn't want his body ridiculed, dissected, and otherwise discussed by members of the political elite who are, allegedly, journalists.

I shudder to think what would happen if it were a fat woman running for office instead of a man. We already have seen what happened to Hillary Clinton when she ran for president and now that she's serving as Secretary of State (she often looks "haggard"), and both Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor's bodies have come under scrutiny during their respective Supreme Court nomination hearings. But I can't think of a fat woman who has actually run for national office. This really makes me angry because lesser versions of this exist in many professions, including my own. And it made me doubly sad because the commentary came from someone I genuinely respect, and who usually really takes the time not to engage in this type of ridiculous personal attack in his political analysis.

I'm writing an email to Dickerson, and would encourage you to do the same. I think it would be awesome of one of Slate's podcasts, either the political one or the DoubleX feminist gabfest, would cover this issue and maybe talk about why our news media is obsessed with judging people's bodies. You can reach John Dickerson at slatepolitics@gmail.com, or on Twitter @jdickerson.

Coming Out: I Was a Patriarchal Statistic

2011-02-21T18:24:00.000-08:00

In honor of National Eating Disorder Awareness Week, I'm coming out to all of you: I had an eating disorder in college and at the beginning of grad school. Not a lot of people know, mostly because I've only been comfortable talking about it to much of anyone in the last year or so.

I don't look like the "type" to have an eating disorder. By that I mean that I've never been skinny. In fact, I reached my highest weight--267 and a size 22, to be exact--at the height of this eating disorder. For people who do not understand what an eating disorder is, I'm sure all of that sounds totally irrational. But if you understand that disordered eating is not just anorexia or bulimia, but a whole variety of other things commonly referred to as EDNOS (Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified), then it'll start to make some sense.

My eating disorder was rooted in much of the same stuff as the depression I went through around that time. I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I was going through a time of some really profound transitions and self-discovery, and contrary to what gets portrayed in the media a lot, my time of self-discovery wasn't all that pleasant. My religious beliefs were undergoing a pretty radical shift, and I felt groundless. I was getting ready to graduate college and I had no idea what I wanted to do next. But most of all, I had the realization that I really didn't like the person I was. Seriously. I would never be friends with me or hang out with me. I was hateful and spiteful and bitter. I was petty and cruel and derived joy almost exclusively from other people's misery. It's a really horrible and scary thing to wake up and realize that you're a bad person. And that's what I was. I felt trapped. Trapped in my hometown, trapped in my own past, trapped by expectations I couldn't meet. Most of all I felt trapped because I had pretty much alienated every single person in my life who might've been able to help me by being such a heinous bitch all the time.

I acted out in some really bad ways. Some of them I'm still not comfortable talking about, but I think the worst was how I took all of this out on my body. It's amazing how, when you feel like something is wrong on the inside, you'll immediately try and fix how you look on the outside, as though you can cover up the bad stuff. I would decide to go on a really strict diet or exercise regimen, and when I inevitably failed within 2 or 3 days, I would then proceed to "eat my feelings," to the tune of thousands of calories a day. Sometimes I got sick. I always felt like shit. This fed into an ever-growing cycle of feeling unworthy, getting more bitter by the day, and then promising I would be perfect again. I seriously have no idea how the friends I had at the time put up with me.

All of it got even worse when I graduated from college. I had just been fired from a job for what I still believe to be personally-motivated reasons, and I couldn't get another one. I'd just spent 5 years with everyone telling me how brilliant I was, and now I couldn't get a job. I was grasping at anything, including a bank teller job that paid $7.50/hr. I was at the interview for that job (which I didn't get) when my grandpa died. We were super-close and it was really awful to not be there. This continued to feed my growing self-loathing. I ended up working in a mall, 40+ hours a week, doing nothing but eating the entire time I was at work because I hated it so much, and then eating all the time when I wasn't at work because I didn't want to think about work. (Oh, did I mention I was selling jewelry? I study conflict in Africa, for heaven's sake. And I was hawking diamonds to working-class people in Southern Indiana.) I felt like I had no life, no future, no prospects. My friends went out on dates. The only attention I could get from men was the kind that basically amounted to sexual harassment. My friends had fun when we went out. I just hated it, and resented everyone around me for being happy.

The thing that started to break through this bad stuff was when another of my bad behaviors (not one I'm going to blog about today) brought all my messiness out in the open. My mom and my best friend found out about some stuff I'd been doing, and instead of completely writing me off as I'd predicted, they both immediately jumped in to help. I started going to therapy, and began the very, very long process of figuring out who I was and what I wanted to do. At that point, I just didn't want to do what I was doing anymore.

I started grad school about 6 weeks later. It was around that time that I discovered the Fat Acceptance Movement and Health at Every Size (HAES). It was a revelation for me. I had spent my life watching women that I loved and respected always on a diet, always doing a new thing, but never just being contentedly "in" their bodies. Maybe some of them were. I don't know. But the thing that all of their dieting and working out communicated to me was that there was something wrong with them, and it was something that never got fixed. Nobody ever stopped. It was ongoing. Grown women, when alone, always talked about food and dieting. If you weren't on a diet, you should be. If you were, how was it going? Diet talk, all the time. It meant you were a woman. It was a mark of maturity to hate your body. Finding a community of people who DIDN'T do this? It was equal to finding the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Grad school itself helped to. The women I encountered every day didn't engage in "fat talk." They talked about other things. They talked about liberation and politics and art and music. They didn't model the same type of body-hatred I'd seen before. This was a really crucial time in learning how to love myself and live in my body. And it didn't hurt to feel like I was actually doing something.

I stopped paying attention to what I ate or didn't eat. I almost completely stopped exercising (except for swimming in the summer, which I really really love). I didn't lose any weight or gain any weight. But this was an extremely important step in healing. In order to love your body, you have to accept your body. As it is. Right this minute. Not in 3 months when you've lost 20 pounds, or after you get laser hair removal next month, or when you get your boobs done. Now. You need to be able to look in the mirror and see that YOU are the body you live in. Hating your body is hating yourself. You are not a separate entity. I'm sorry that old-school thinking about the dichotomy of spirit and body has infiltrated our society so much that people walk around saying that their body is "just a shell." You're not a hermit crab. This is the medium by which you experience the world, that you touch it and smell it and hear it and see it. Your body is as identifiable and unique as your soul. It's a lesson I'm still learning.

Grad school, of course, is like a crash course in insanity. Nobody takes care of themselves in grad school the way they should, and I'm no different. So, I try to make good choices, and pay attention to what I'm doing to myself. The urge to be healthy comes from a different place now. In fact, it comes from a desire to be healthy. Not perfect, but healthy. This new emphasis is better in ways I can't even describe. I'm actually happy now. I don't walk around all bitter and hateful. I can enjoy other people's happiness. I can stand up for myself because I know I have worth. I don't have to walk around all the time lecturing people about my accomplishments or telling everyone how awesome I am. They can figure it out on their own. Learning to love my body taught me to love myself.

I know other people have very different experiences with eating disorders, and I would never try to say that my experience is representative. But I think this is one of those things we should learn to talk about, and not to be ashamed of. It's not a sign of weakness or insecurity (and isn't everyone insecure about something?). The more people talk about these things, the more we can combat a culture that hates women, and our bodies, and anything we do that isn't in the service of patriarchy (yeah, I said it). It frees us to love ourselves, to love the women around us, and to be loved. Have you ever tried to love someone who doesn't love him/herself? You can't. They won't let you. And it's tragic.

We have to talk about this. Talk about the fact that the media isn't real. You may feel like, "Duh, I know that." But maybe that's because you're a grown woman. Your daughter doesn't know that. Her friends don't. Maybe your friends don't. And even if they do, do you think that makes them immune to it? Are you immune to the 5000+ images you see in a day? There's a reason marketing firms hire people with degrees in Psychology. You have to fight back every day. WE have to fight back every day. We must be a community, a support network. You're not the only one. I wasn't the only one, but I felt like that for a long time.

In the immortal words of Harvey Milk, "Come out, come out, wherever you are!" I'm out. Are you?

On Mental Illness and Tucson

2011-01-10T11:43:00.000-08:00

Still getting my thoughts together on a lot of this, but I keep hearing about how he was just a lone crazy dude, and it was a tragedy, that there's no evidence it was politically motivated, etc. So, just a couple of things:

1. Having a mental illness does not mean a person is more likely to be violent. You are not a psychologist, Mr. Political Pundit or Ms. Lady on Twitter. You should not make diagnoses. Sometimes people with mental illness are violent, but it's because they are people and people are sometimes violent.

2. People with mental illness live in the same society as people without mental illness. They take part in the same political process, live in the same social structure, and are exposed to the same media. To behave as though someone with mental illness could not be reacting to hir environment is just ludicrous.

3. I wonder how different this conversation would be if instead of Jared Lee Loughner, the terrorist's name was Muhammad. Like, would the media actually refer to him as a terrorist? Because that's what he was.

Leftovers, and a New King

2011-01-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

So, I finally figured out today that I DID NOT make a humungous translation mistake in November; I just mixed up my timeline. Dissertation saved. Let's go have drinks! No, seriously, it was a good thing to discover, and provides a really good setup for the next chapter (which I'm not working on yet, but will at some point in this silly process).

It was a rainy day in SB, so I stayed in to work instead of trying to go to the office. It was head first back into the class reading today, because even though I would prefer to only be reading for exams right now, I have to take a couple of classes (for a variety of very boring reasons). It'll be OK, but kind of a pain in the ass.

Since we have about 10 pounds of ham left over from yesterday, I started in on some ham-related things. Today I made some really delicious bean soup in the crock pot. I highly recommend it. It's very wholesome and comfy tasting, and pairs well with French bread. Dessert, of course, was another oatmeal millet muffin, in all of its sugary, buttery goodness.

White Bean and Ham Soup

1 lb (2 cups) of dry white beans
8 cups water
1 cup minced onion
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup diced celery
2 cloves garlic, mashed
1 meaty hambone, or 2 hocks
2 tablespoons baking soda
salt and pepper to taste

Boil dry beans for 30 minutes; then drain and discard water. Add all ingredients to the crock-pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours. Sometime around hour 5, cut ham into smaller pieces. Serve with bread.

New Year and Stuff

2011-01-01T23:18:00.000-08:00

I had a super chill New Year's Eve that mostly involved watching "The Wire" and eating pretzels and drinking champagne. I thought about going out and stuff, even got dressed up, but damn. NYE is like doing the same thing as every other Friday night, but at 3x the price. Maybe I'm just getting old, but that doesn't sound like any kind of fun for me. And being away for so long, it was nice to just be at home. So that's where I stayed.

Writing is hard work, which some of you already know. This article/chapter is ridiculous. I sort of know what it's about, but it's crazy how hard it is to just sit down and write a story. To write good history, you have to write a good story. It's really hard to do when you're not sure what story you want to tell. Am I telling the story of a power struggle in the 19th century, or am I telling the story of how I'm trying to tell the story? Both things need to happen in this article, and I haven't figured out how to do that yet. This draft is due on the 17th, but for me will done by the 14th because I'm leaving for DC that weekend to visit friends. So we'll see what happens.

Today was a good cooking/baking day. I ended the year with a boeuf bourguignon and ricotta cheesecake, both of which I mastered in 2010 (much to the delight of my roommate and other friends). I started 2011 with fresh French bread, oatmeal and millet muffins, a baked ham, and some tomato mac and cheese (gruyere bechamel with a little paprika, sliced tomato pulp, and fusilli pasta. Textbook "Joy of Cooking.").

The muffins are some of my favorite that I've ever tasted. I got the recipe from a friend and today was the first time I tried them, mostly because it took me a while to find millet flour. Whole Foods finally came through for me, but it's pretty obnoxious that Ralph's doesn't have something so seemingly mundane. So instead of having to go to 2 stores the other day, I had to go to 3. There has to be a better way to do food in this country. Sigh. Anywho, I made them around lunchtime. They are definitely not for anyone watching their diet in the New Year, but anyone who knows me knows I don't support that shit. Be healthy, but don't police your body and shame yourself. Food is for nourishment and energy, but it's also for enjoyment. If it's not worth savoring and indulging a little, frankly, it's not worth eating.

I don't make resolutions or the like, but it's hard not to do a little reflecting and evaluating at the New Year, especially as I prepare for a year with so much transition. I'll turn 30 in a few months. I'll leave California for an uncertain and unclear future. I won't have a "home" for a while, something I've clung to zealously for the last 29 years. I feel like this year is when I finally have to jump off the cliff, and hope to Isis or Ishtar or Baby Jesus or the Black Madonna of Kibeho that I land somewhere, in one piece, and preferably with my cat, my mental health, and sense of who I am intact.

In that spirit, I guess I will continue to renew the promise I make to myself every day, to follow my instincts, to never talk shit about me, to forgive, and to love without regret. I hope you will do the same. And eat these muffins, because they're fucking delicious.

Oatmeal and Millet Muffins

You’ll need:

1 ¼ cups boiling water
1 cup uncooked instant rolled oats
½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter at room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 eggs
1 ½ cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
½ cup millet

How to make:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter muffin tin or line the tin with paper muffin cups.
Stir the oats into the boiling water, cover, remove from heat and let stand for 20 minutes. Cool.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt.
In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter until creamy. Slowly add the white and brown sugars, beating until smooth and creamy. Add the vanilla and the eggs and beat until well blended.
Add the cooled oatmeal to the butter mixture and stir well to blend.
Add the flour mixture and stir.
Stir in the millet.
Spoon the batter into the muffin cups, filling about 2/3 full. Bake for about 15 minutes, or until a straw inserted in the center of the muffin comes out clean.
Gently run a knife around the edge of each muffin, left them out and place on a rack to cool.
These muffins freeze well.

And we're done.

2010-11-27T23:30:00.000-08:00

Yeah, remember how I was all excited a couple weeks ago about my project coming together? I was wrong.

I mistranslated something a couple of months ago, and lo and behold, I'm 30 years and one king off. Not his wife, but his mother. Sigh. And now in the midst of changing my whole stupid thesis. Still juicy stuff, of course, but not the story I thought I was telling.

I had a quiet holiday weekend. I've been traveling so much the last two weeks, I really didn't want to go anywhere or do much of anything. It's been nice to just kind of chill at the house, commune with the kitty, and get some work done. And sleep. I felt like I hadn't slept in weeks, which I suppose I hadn't, really.

Connection!

2010-11-08T21:39:00.000-08:00

You know how sometimes it seems like you go ages and ages without making any progress? Like you're just slogging and slogging and never getting anywhere, nothing gets any clearer, you sort of feel like Sisyphus pushing that damn rock up the hill? Welcome to my first two years of grad school. I didn't understand ANYTHING. There were moments that I felt like I was sort of onto something, like something was going to click, but it never really seemed to happen. It was like living in a constant state of anxious anticipation. I felt like nothing so much as an academic charlatan, scared to death that at any moment someone would realize that I didn't belong there. (I am told that pretty much every grad student goes through this at various points in their career....but mine went on for a really really long time, especially if you count the murky darkness that was my MA programs.)

Well, it's all coming together now. I finally don't feel totally stupid in my classes. All the stuff that people told me during my first two years that I pretended to understand, I actually understand now.

It took me a really long time to get the point of historiography. I think you really just have to read a certain amount of stuff before you see that authors really are arguing with one another, and before shit like "the Dar es Salaam School" actually make sense. They finally do; I know what that is now. I just had to read enough stuff coming from it to get what it was.

And you know how professors make you write all those stupid response papers? They're not just teaching you how to get the point of a book. They're teaching you to write book reviews, because you have to know how to do that. It's super formulaic, and an incredibly vital skill.

Oh, and learning how to read a book without actually reading it. FINALLY able to do that. Now I love it when my professors assign 2 or 3 books a week. Seeing connections between different books and authors is really more exciting than mastering a single book (although some of them you just need to sit down and read every word; and you have to learn the difference). This stimulates your thinking and helps you to position your own work and ask questions in new and better ways.

But most of all, I see more and more the vital role of the historian in interpreting the present. A good historian always keeps one foot firmly in the here and now, because otherwise what we do is worthless. You don't have to make specific policy recommendations or anything, but remaining cognizant of how our work affects our understanding of the present, and how current events shape our interpretation is just about the most important thing we can do. Marc Bloch says it better than I ever could:

"Misunderstanding of the present is the inevitable consequence of ignorance of the past, but a man may wear himself out just as fruitlessly in seeking to understand the past, if he is totally ignorant of the present."

Ain't that the truth?

Grandma Watkins' Chicken and Dumplings

2010-10-17T23:20:00.000-07:00

So, as promised, here's how to make them. I made a couple editorial (i.e. based on stuff I already had in the house) decisions, but they turned out beautifully and, more importantly, deliciously.

I started with about 4.5 lbs. of chicken thighs. They were on sale. You can really use any chicken parts you want, or a whole chicken if the spirit moves you, but if you're like me, you buy what's on sale or, better, what's in the "sell it now or it'll give you food poisoning" section of the deli. That's where I get all my veal and stuff too. LOVE.

My mom told me to make sure you have a whole lot of broth, so I did about 12 cups of chicken broth, which was basically all my largest pot could hold once I also put the chicken in. One day I'll have a proper stock pot, but for the time being, it's casseroles all the way. So, 12 cups of chicken broth, salt and pepper, and chicken. I took the skin off the chicken, because it's gross. Well, I mean, not in certain contexts when you can make it all crispy and golden, but in this case it is.

Then you cut up the chicken and throw away the bones. I hate bones and stuff in my dumplings, so this is a crucial step. I imagine you would also hate bones in your dumplings. At this point, you can set the chicken aside or whatever.

Then you take some of the broth (I did about 2 cups) and combine it with flour (I did about 6 cups of whole wheat flour) and 2 tablespoons of shortening (don't screw around with oil; go get some Crisco). Make a dough ball that isn't sticky.

Then roll out your dough into a rectangular-ish shape. I'm still pretty terrible at actually getting anything into a rectangle, though I think I'm going to continue to make croissaints until I perfect that skill. You want to make it pretty thin, since you don't want gross dough-balls instead of dumplings. Then cut into sort of a New York-grid shape, like so.

You'll then want to put your dumplings on a cookie sheet or some wax paper. Mom said to put them in the freezer for a while you continue cutting. This is good if you're having problems with sticky dough, but if you're not (I didn't), then you don't really have to. This is lucky for me, because we have the world's tiniest freezer.

I had about 5 cookie sheets-worth. Then you just drop them into the chicken broth and cook it for as long as you can, adding salt and pepper to taste. I ended up having to put some into a small casserole, which is fine since it'll make it easier to take them to school tomorrow and share. I didn't do anything crazy with the seasoning, either, as I think the addition of cumin (woo!) or cayenne or oregano or whatever would probably kill the wholesome Southern-ness of this dish. I served it with some coleslaw, and made ricotta pound cake with fresh strawberries and cayenne whipped cream for dessert. (If you whip your own cream, add just a couple shakes of cayenne pepper to it. It's freakin' delicious, especially with something creamy and sugary like pound cake. H/T to Jill Briggs for that one.)

It's not an incredibly colorful dish, especially for someone who really likes cooking in color. But they're really delicious, and perfect for a gray and sort of rainy day like today.

The biggest thing about this dish, though, is that you can understand why it's a working-class Southern dish. It's ridiculously cheap to make, and you can readily get everything that's in it. If you need to feed a lot of people (I fed 7, plus however many want to partake tomorrow), and I think I spent about $10. It would be even cheaper if I engaged in the nonsense of urban chickens, but I'm not that much of a foodie.

All in all, this is a happy dish for a happy weekend. I feel like I've been bitching and moaning a lot lately, and I'm not gonna lie--I'm really tired and sort of mentally and emotionally drained. But life is really excellent right now, and I'm excited and optimistic about everything that's going on. More later. For now, a bitch needs to sleep.

Poulet Roti au Porto

2010-10-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

I roasted a chicken last night, trussed and all. It was hectic, as we were also making dinner to take to my friend and her husband who just had a baby, but all good fun. So Ryan whipped up an enticing concoction of sausage and peppers while I prepped the dark chocolate brownies (to take) and a ricotta cheesecake (to keep).

It was freakin' delicious. We had 6 guests, plus the 3 of us who live in the house, and we decimated that cheesecake in a matter of minutes. I served it with some fresh whipped cream (shown) and fresh strawberries. This will definitely be a repeat (although do you see why I need some more appropriate servingware? Absolutely shameful....)

The chicken was attended to mostly by Ryan and Reza, who have proven themselves masterful sous chefs. :) Roast chicken is kind of a blast because you have to smear butter inside the chicken, and then all over the outside, which is a grossly satisfying task that leaves your hands all buttery and slimy. Trussing was a bit of a challenge, as the trussing tool was a bit short, so the wings didn't really get trussed. Nonetheless, I like the silicone tool.

Now, as this was poulet au porto, there was also sauce involved. Sauces are my favorite, and everything so far in Mastering the Art of French Cooking is so delicious that I kind of want to just stick my face in it. This was no exception. You simmer the mushrooms (baby bellas in this case) in water, lemon juice and butter, then in heavy cream and a bit of cornstarch. After you roast the chicken, you add some of the fat from the roasting pan to some port and shallots and butter, and then the cream and mushrooms mixture. DELISH. I messed up this part a little bit, because you're supposed to mix this up in a different casserole, then carve the chicken into a separate casserole, pour cognac over the pieces, and then flambe the sucker. You can't really set it on fire if it's already covered in mushroom cream sauce. But I think that's OK. My eminently wise friend Jef says that the "setting it on fire" part is really just a bunch of show anyway. However, with 6 incredibly hungry dinner guests, maybe the show would've been fun. (FYI, chicken takes a LONG time to roast. Don't fudge with that.)

In addition to this, I made risotto, which turned out lovely, and some whole baked tomatoes. Ryan made some beautiful roasted brussels sprouts. We also had some of the french bread and some goat cheese and brie, provided by Reza. Oh, and of course, lots of wine and some sweet tea vodka provided by my friend Tim. There was bourbon-drinking a bit later in the evening, after the cheesecake. Altogether, a lovely and fun evening with fantastic people.

Highlights from Student Evaluations

2010-09-29T13:35:00.000-07:00

I have the best students. Seriously. This is the kind of thing they write on my evaluations.

"Sarah is a FOX!!"

"Best TA I ever had. Lively, entertaining, thought-provoking discussions; informative emails/communications rapport; clear syllabus; helpful feedback on hwk. Weaknesses: does not wear a top hat; does not appear to possess superpowers....?"

"YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!"

"Sarah Rocks!"

Yeah, the future leaders of the world love me.

Croissants Accidentelles

2010-09-28T22:04:00.000-07:00

Now, you may be asking how one makes "accidental" croissants. Croissants, clearly, take a bit of work. Well, I set out to make a french bread baguette. I usually just do the french bread in a regular loaf pan, because, well, that's what my bread machine has. But in honor of my friend Ellie's birthday, I decided to go ahead and do the baguette to go with an olive salad and goat cheese crostini that's absolutely delish (recipe below).

Unfortunately, despite being in my third year of a PhD program, I don't read or follow directions very well. So even though I thought "hey, this french bread has a lot of butter in it," I didn't read through the end of the recipe until I already had the yeast in the pan. Then I realized, oh, croissants. But I still wanted to make the baguette. So I just made both. There wasn't time before the birthday dinner to actually bake the baguette, but I froze it and Ryan and I are going to make it into garlic bread for tomorrow, when he's making meatballs and this delicious-sounding sauce (from his mom's recipe. Yum!).

At any rate, I did half the croissants just buttery and the other half have some Swiss chocolate in them that my friend Jill brought me from Geneva. We used the milk chocolate, which is ridiculously delicious, and I'm still hoarding the dark chocolate bar for something. Not sure what yet, but I'll be sure to let you know. I'm taking the buttery croissants to lecture tomorrow to share with my fellow TAs and our professor.

Here's the recipe for the goat cheese crostini and olive salad. Feel free to poach and elaborate.

Crostini:
Toasted French bread in baguette form, sliced
4.5 oz. goat cheese (I get the kind at TJ's that already has herbs in it and on it)
1 container light whipped cream cheese (you can use regular, but I like the texture of the whipped stuff, and I prefer it a bit lighter, it's still super creamy. you can also use neufchatel.)
garlic (i like crap-tons of garlic, but not everybody does, so you can adjust to your audience)
italian seasoning (either the premixed stuff or your own blend)

stir this all together and spread on the toasted bread

Olive salad:
1 jar pitted kalamata olives
1 jar pitted green olives (green olives stuffed with garlic are f'in delicious, but may put you in a garlic coma)
1 jar roasted red peppers (i used red and yellow this last time, it was awesome and more colorful)

chop these up together (i use a food chopper, it's rustic), and then spoon on top of the crostini. you can also use pesto sauce topped with sliced roasted almonds. absolutely delicious, and super easy to make. if you run out of bread, this also works nicely on triscuits.

French Immersion in Southern California

2010-09-26T08:50:00.000-07:00

It can be done. If you lock yourself in your house and chain yourself to Rosetta Stone. This quarter is seriously going to kill me. 2 lower-level French classes a day. I didn't make it to the one last week (my dentist appointment went way long), but the one I did attend will be completely in French. The TA seems to know what she's doing, and she has pink hair. I like her already.

Between these 2 classes, an hour or two of Rosetta Stone, the homework from said French classes, and my own translation reading, I'm literally doing 5-6 hours of French every single day of the week. That's how you learn a language, right? I even got a desk so I'm not sitting in front of the TV at home to work. Like, damn.

French cooking is also progressing. Last week I did two meals. One was a roasted lamb shoulder, stuffed with herb and garlic stuffing and topped with garlic sauce. I paired it with sauteed eggplant and stuffed tomatoes. It was pretty good, but I have to say, the stuffing was not my favorite. With a beautiful cut of meat like that, I think less is more.

The second meal was one I've done before, chicken breasts rolled in bread crumbs and cheese, with baked tomatoes and stuffed mushrooms. I also did a crostini with goat cheese, balsamic vinegar and figs. It's one of my new favorite things, a combination I picked up at my friends' wedding a week ago. I did a brown butter sauce with the chicken, but I didn't use clarified butter. Haven't quite gotten around to mastering that one yet.

But it's pretty, right?

This week I'm planning to do lamb chops with stuffed Greek portobellos (I picked up the recipe at Gelson's last time I was there getting ground veal or something else weird that Ralph's didn't have), and probably a very weird burger with cauliflower baked with tomatoes and cheese. Also going to do pork loin chops, casserole-sauteed, with some lovely ratatouille. And ricotta pound cake. Damn, this is starting to sound like a fun week!

It's felt like fall a lot lately (though not yesterday......yesterday was literally the only day that's felt like summer since I got home from Africa), and I'm thinking of doing some lovely soups soon. I have recipes for creamy tomato basil, butternut squash, and a roasted red pepper with feta. I'm also going to attempt some bread and rolls outside the bread machine (well, I'm making the dough in the bread machine, but then baking them in the oven). We'll see how that goes.

Also gearing up to possibly attempt a duck en croute for Thanksgiving. Anyone know where to get a duck in Santa Barbara? Does Gelson's get them for the holidays?

Stuff I'm Thinking About Today

2010-09-04T13:38:00.000-07:00

In no particular order:

1. Dammit, Julia Child taught me how to cook! It's so easy and delicious, and I literally have trouble not squealing in delight any time I take my beautiful casserole out of the oven and smell whatever decadent concoction I've made. That bitch was a genius. Maude bless her. I can blanch tomatoes all by myself now. Do you know what a big deal that is?

2. I enjoy watching "Inglourious Basterds" while I'm cooking, because I can't read the subtitles and it's fun to see how much of the French and German I can catch. (It's not much, but it improves each time...)

3. My friends are freaking awesome. If I end up with a research grant next year, it's because a whole lot of people can point out stuff about me that I have trouble seeing sometimes. It's amazing when your friends have insights into your life and personality that often escape you, personally. Much, much love and appreciation.

4. I really dig hanging out with my parents. We're having a really fun weekend, and I'm happy I've had the opportunity to get to know them both as people, because they're pretty rad.

5. I really need school to start to I quit being such a slacker.

6. I love cheese puffs. And 2-buck Chuck. Sometimes together. Don't judge me, haters.

I Hate Fellowship Applications

2010-09-03T10:27:00.000-07:00

I realize they're the bane of every academic's existence, but this is the first time I've really had to do a lot of them in a short span, and it's sort of starting to get to me. I kept hearing from people "oh, once you do one really well, then you just have to tweak it." Really? In what universe?

A regular Fulbright Research Grant is 3 pages: 2 pages for your research statement, and 1 for a personal statement. I can handle a research statement (though I'll explain my problems with that in a moment), but a personal statement? Really? I mean, I've only been studying this for 10 years, and I'll be ABD in May. That's why you should assume I'm an OK candidate for this grant. Because I know lots of shit. And I've been there. Sign me up, State Department. Why do you care about my life story? Why do you want me to write something about how I want to change the world through my love of hiking and kitties? You know what I love? Politics. You know what that makes me sound like in a 1 page statement? Either a militant radical communist or a man-hating feminist, or a bit of both. You may as well exclude me now, because I'm not the all-American girl. If I try to write a statement that makes me sound that way, it sounds disingenuous. Because it is. Suck it. I'm a political monster and I'm coming to eat your babies.

The Fulbright-Hays is another animal altogether. It's 10 pages and they want footnotes and a bibliography. Almost like a real research grant. I feel better about this one because I know I can write something useful. Also, I'll be workshopping this one in early October at an amazing weekend with other UC Africanists. And I already worked on it for the better part of 10 weeks in the Spring. My topic has changed pretty dramatically, but the bones are there.

The SSRC International Dissertation Fellowship is, again, an entirely different thing. It's social sciences which, in my case, is a bit outside my field. (History isn't a social science; it likes to masquerade as one from time to time, but when you do the stuff that I do, it takes a lot of masking. And pasties.) This is going to be an entirely different proposal, full of theory and references to Foucault. I realize that not everyone cares about Foucault, but they should. I'll tell you why. Someday. OK, a teaser: social construction of everything.

The NSEP Boren, finally, is about national security. Can you make a dissertation about gender in 19th century Rwanda relevant to contemporary US national security? I can. Well, I hope I can. It's not due till February, thankfully. And, now that I have the leaked draft of the UN Mapping Report on DRC in my hot little hands, my project has a lot more relevance.

My biggest problem with all of these is figuring out how to make a project on the 19th century into fieldwork. Real fieldwork, not bullshit fieldwork. I don't want to go to Rwanda and sit in a cafe reading all day. It sort of defeats the purpose of flying all that way, when I just sit there and do what I could do in my office. I've come up with a couple of different ideas, but I'm really attached to the project I've developed over the last couple of years, and I don't want to jettison it completely just because most of my sources are written and published and sitting on my shelves in my office (or being digitized by my kick-ass research assistant). Further, I have to have a significant amount of time in Rwanda to ever be taken seriously on the job market. Can I tell you how ridiculous that is? Not that expecting a person to have spent time in the place they're supposedly an "expert" on is ridiculous, but the fact that his expectation seems to only be reserved for US-ian people who don't study Europe or the US. The US part....well, I mean, if you study the South, but you're from New York, I think you need to live in the South for a year. 2 research trips to archives don't make you an expert; they make you a carpet-bagger. Likewise, people who study France are not expected to have lived in France for a year. I mean, it helps of course. But nobody assumes that you don't know anything about France if you've only taken a couple of summer, 6-week research trips, and spend most of that time sitting in an archive.

Fellowship apps are much the same; one of the reasons I went to Rwanda this summer was because I knew that if I wanted any chance at all of a Fulbright, I had to have some in-country experience. Not just for the purposes of obtaining an affiliation, but because there seems to be this belief that if you send a US-ian to an African country for a year, and said US-ian has never been to that country before, she may completely freak out when she gets there because......what? I don't know. I don't know what they think would happen. Did you know that people live in Rwanda ALL THE TIME? Like, that's where they live their whole lives? And they do things like eat and drink and sleep and go shopping and watch movies and hang out with friends and read and stuff? Like humans all around the planet? Did you know that Rwandans are, in many ways, just like US-ians? I mean, I've been to Germany. It's pretty damn different. Nobody worries that a US-ian might lose their shit in Baden-Baden. I'm just sayin'.

All this being said, I had a total brainwave about both of my Fulbright statements last night, and when I get home from wine-tasting with my parents later, I'm going to tackle them and make them badass. And then I'm going to get funded and move to Rwanda for a year and write an awesome dissertation and get a good job and write an awesome book and win a Pulitzer. And somewhere along the way, I'll learn to speak French like something other than a demented toddler.

Overheard at the Nail Salon

2010-08-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

(at a nail salon in downtown Santa Barbara just before the Old Spanish Days parade)

Grandmother (white, WASPy, trendy) to little boy: Look at those girls. Aren't they pretty? (referring to little girls dressed in "traditional Spanish dress")

Little boy (super blonde, big blue eyes): No.

Grandmother: Of course they are! They're so pretty.

Little boy: No they're not. The boys are pretty.

Grandmother, laughing: Boys aren't pretty! Boys are handsome. Girls are pretty. You're so silly.

In my head: Sometimes boys think other boys are pretty. You're gonna have fun figuring that out about your grandson for the next 10-20 years.

I kind of love seeing gay little kids whose parents/guardians don't know that they're gay. It's a little bit hilarious.

Raid on Entebbe

2010-07-23T11:34:00.000-07:00

So it's not that I've had writer's block. I've just been extremely busy thinking deep thoughts and networking at a truly outstanding conference in Entebbe. I'm headed back to Kigali tomorrow, and will process my thoughts a bit throughout the week. But suffice it to say that I've learned an incredible amount, met some really wonderful people, and have a lot of new insights into my own work as well as the current situation in the Great Lakes. I'll have quite a bit to say about Eastern Congo, and after the panel I participated in today, I'm going to have a long post about advocacy and activism for Africa.

Ugly Fucking Americans

2010-07-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

Is it bad that I would much rather associate with anyone but my countrymen when I'm in another country? US-ians are absolutely terrible international travelers. I'm not trying to be a hater, but why do you assume that everywhere in the world will take your dollars? Did it occur to you that there's a reason that there are forex bureaux all over the place? Could you not talk loudly about your sex life in the middle of a restaurant in which you are clearly making people uncomfortable? Yelling at people in English will get you no further. Maybe take some time to learn some French phrases? Or even better, Kinyarwanda? Being a US-ian doesn't entitle you to ownership of the rest of the world.

Part of me wants US-ians to get out of the country and see the world, because it should serve as a reminder that there are people who are not--and don't want to be--US-ian. But part of me wants most US-ians to stay at home so as not to make us more of a global humiliation than we already are. Ugh. (BTW, all of this is worse when it comes from someone who in the next breath declares themself to be a Peace Corps volunteer. SMDH.)

Why I Love Harry Potter

2010-07-14T06:24:00.000-07:00

(Spoiler alert, in case you haven't read the books or seen the movies or, perhaps, have lived under a rock for the past decade or so.)

I just finished my semi-annual "reading" of the Harry Potter series. I say "reading," because I don't actually read the books usually; rather, I have both the Jim Dale and Stephen Fry audiobooks, and I listen to them each once a year. They're both fantastic (Dale readings the US versions of the books and Fry the UK versions.....so there are slight linguistic differences that really make me happy).

A lot of people ask me, sometimes with a lot of skepticism, why I love these books so much. Perhaps it's because I'm almost 30 years old. Perhaps it's because I am really well-educated and people think it's weird that I love children's books so much. I don't really know. But I really thought through, with this reading, what it is that I like so much about this series, and I have a few thoughts.

I will begin by admitting that I was initially a skeptic. A lot of my friends got into the series from the beginning, and I thought they were crazy. A children's book, I thought, was totally beneath me and my intellectual capabilities (I was spending a lot of time with Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger during this time). But working in a video store, I had the occasion to watch the first two movies, which were entertaining enough (though woefully inadequate). It was the summer of 2003, and just before the fifth book came out, so I thought I'd see what all the fuss was about. I started the first book on a Tuesday. I was finished with the fourth book by Friday, and eagerly anticipating the fifth, totally dedicated by that time to finding out if Harry could ever possibly defeat Lord Voldemort. In the years since, I have taken to seeing all the films at their midnight premieres, in full Potter regalia, along with my sister (up to and including flying her to San Francisco this November, where I'll be attending a conference, just so we can see the 7th film together). Having been Sorted online, I am committed to showing my Ravenclaw colors, and was thrilled that Ravenclaw Tower played such an essential role in the ultimate downfall of He Who Must Not Be Named. I am full of useless trivia about the Potter series, and can answer pretty much any question you throw at me (seriously, go ahead, I am no mere Muggle. If there were an equivalent of Fang-Bangers in Potter World, I'd be one. My Patronus, in case you were wondering, is a werewolf, just like Tonks'.)

None of this, of course, explains WHY in the world I'm so into the series. I think there are a few reasons.

The books are extremely well-written. J.K. Rowling took it upon herself to create a world every bit as meticulously constructed as Tolkien's Middle Earth. Things are consistent in the magical world, there are not nagging concerns about continuities. The characters are well-developed and three-dimensional. There are things about Harry that I can identify with, and they're not only his positive attributes. He is flawed, for sure, as are the other main characters that you meet. The flaws and weaknesses of the characters sometimes have disastrous results (as is prone to happen when you are magical folks, engaged in a life-or-death struggle with an enemy who has gone beyond the bounds of what we might call "usual evil.") These characters are involved in a complex and rich story that highlights what I believe to be the most worthy and noble values of humanity, the things that, if they did not exist, would render our existence pretty base and useless.

Harry's journey is a personal one. It is the hero's tale, par excellence. He has to overcome adversity, combat injustice, endure mockery, and in some ways live his life as a symbol, rather than a human being. But the wonderful thing is that you never once lose track of Harry as a human being. He is wonderfully, beautifully human. It would be easy to focus on the tragic loss of his parents at a young age to a merciless and heartless murderer bent on power and personal gain. But that's not the whole series. Harry worries about his intelligence and abilities. He's nervous and awkward. He feels inadequate about things like making friends and asking out girls. He engages in stupid teenage drama. Sometimes he doesn't like people just because. It's pretty awesome, because he's a hero that you can relate to. Anybody could be Harry Potter. (I would add here that I do not mean this in the same way that Stephenie Meyer meant that "anyone" could be Bella in that Bella has no personality whatsoever, and is therefore a moldable girlfriend for Edward. That's a bunch of anti-feminist bullshit.)

This is, of course, what Lord Voldemort underestimates about Harry. He looks down on anything that is ordinary or that anyone can do. He continuously degrades sacrifice, loyalty, and selflessness as weak. And this is ultimately his undoing.

The things Lord Voldemort devalues, and the thing that Rowling highlights thought her book are the results of one singular and omnipotent force: love. These books resonate so much for me, and I suspect for so many others, because they tell an undeniable truth: that love is our most important power.

This comes back again and again, and love is not always pleasant or cozy. Love is sacrificial and sometimes excruciating, as Harry learns over and over as the people he loves are hurt and sometimes killed, usually in the act of protecting him. His parents, his godfather, his parents' friends, and even his favorite teacher all die to keep him safe. Dumbledore (the teacher) reminds Harry at the end of Book 5, after his godfather's death, that his ability to feel acute pain for the loss is a reminder that he is still human. How very true.

The immense importance of this reality is all the more stark when you consider the way in which Rowling has written the character of Voldemort. Why is he so evil? He also is the victim of profound neglect as a child, having been abandoned by his father before he was born, and then his mother dying during childbirth and leaving him to be raised in an orphanage. This becomes even more painful when Voldemort (or Tom Riddle, as he was called) learns that his mother was a witch, and could have saved herself with magic, but chose not to. This difference between Harry and Voldemort is fundamental and I think really sets up the rest of the books. Both boys are orphans, both subject to neglect and, in Harry's case, cruelty at the hands of the people charged to raise them. But Harry's mother died for him, whereas Voldemort's did not care enough to save herself for him. (There are a lot of reasons for this, and given her background, it's a wonder she didn't die earlier, frankly, but that's another post, perhaps.) Voldemort, then, spends his life in pursuit of worthiness, terrified of being dependent on anyone or anything, whereas Harry is imbued with intrinsic worth, and, even if the entire world seems against him (as it often does), he at least has the knowledge that his mother sacrified her life for him. It's a powerful difference.

Love, then, is partially about vulnerability. It's about allowing ourselves to be interconnected with others, dependent and also dependable. This is the message of the HP series, over and over again. It isn't an easy task; Harry is hurt again and again because of his love, either by betrayal, failure to live up to potential, or just by plain old mortality. But he is able to triumph in the end because of his love.

Voldemort strives for immortality, and in doing so destroys the thing about him that makes him human: his soul. What connects us to others, according to Rowling's vision in the books, is our intangible soul, the thing that survives us after death and the way in which we are most deeply intertwined with the people we love. Physical life is temporary; soul life is eternal through love and memory. In order to make himself invincible, Voldemort shreds his soul, hiding it away in earthly treasures. But Harry, the hero, keeps his soul intact, allowing him to do something that Voldemort cannot: love. Because he has a soul that is whole, he can sacrifice himself for the people he loves, which means he can inspire a type of loyalty that Voldemort cannot match. Even when his allies believe him to be dead, Harry remains a rallying point because he inspires love, not fear. With an intact soul, according to Dumbledore, death is not to be feared. It is simply another part of human life.

I suppose that I think this story is so awesome because I believe its central message to be both beautifully simple and demonstrably true. Love is what connects us and sustains us; it gives both life and meaning. It enhances our experience in the world and makes it worthwhile. It shields us from the fear of the unknown because it binds us, in a way that nothing else can, to those around us. It gives us a purpose, something worth fighting for, worth dying for. It also makes us value the life around us, inspires respect for our fellow human beings, and ultimately rescues us from the destructive qualities that are, unfortunately, such a part of our nature. Love is miraculous, in the face of the pain that we experience daily, too often at the hands of those who we choose to love. It is the only saving grace, the only source of mercy, and ultimately the only thing that can heal us from our deepest wounds. Only by loving, and allowing ourselves to be loved, can we be whole. It is our greatest struggle, but also that which yields the greatest reward.

And seriously, any book that inspires a series of movies with Gary Oldman automatically gets pushed to the top in my book, because he's the ultimate badass.

"People Fought and Died for your Freedom of Speech.....So Shut the Fuck Up!"

2010-07-04T08:19:00.000-07:00

I love it when people express the above sentiment. Let me break this down for you.

1. The US military has not been deployed to defend "freedom" in a very long time, if ever. (I am not saying that people do not volunteer for military service believing that they are fighting for freedom; the military people I have known in my life have, by and large, been very dedicated to expanding human freedom and defending the Constitution. But I'm talking about policy here, civilian political policy. Before you yell at me for being an unAmerican bitch, please think about that. Vietnam. Iraq. Afghanistan. The Phillippines. Anywhere in Latin America.) The US military defends US economic interests (i.e. global capitalism), often to the detriment of large numbers of civilians. If the US cared about freedom, no sitting US Secretary of State would ever brush off the deaths of 50,000 Iraqi children (like Madeline Albright. Look it up on YouTube, I can't get it to load). We'd deploy the military to protect the people in Congo who are being used as slave labor in the global mineral and cocoa trades. We'd have bombed North Korea by now. If the US military were only used to defend US citizens' freedom, we wouldn't be in Iraq or Afghanistan/Pakistan, or Germany, or South Korea. Our military doesn't exist for defense; it's a colonization force. This is fact, not opinion. It's the result of a military-industrial complex, precisely the one Eisenhower warned about. He was right. Yet again with Americans not understanding history.

2. You do realize that invoking my freedom of speech and then trying to revoke it in the same sentence is stupid, right?

3. Please realize that when you make an argument like this in conjunction with a statement dismissing "intellectualism," I'm immediately skeptical that you have anything of value to add to the world. Ignorance produces violence. It is at the root of all stereotyping and scapegoating, of racism and sexism and homophobia and transphobia and classism. Find something ugly in the world, and I guarantee you that you will also find anti-intellectualism and ignorance (if not outright willfull stupidity).

I engage in intellectual pursuits not because I like the sound of my own voice or because I like to be "superior," but because I want to understand the world in which I live in order to make it a better place. I have an intense dislike for ignorance because it kills people, quite literally. I'm sitting in a country right this minute where heinous acts of violence have been committed because of paranoid ignorance and a population that was able to be controlled through propaganda and misinformation. And that could happen absolutely anywhere, because human beings are the most barbaric and violent species that has ever existed on the planet. We delight in finding new ways to destroy and dominate one another. It is a miracle that we haven't extinguished ourselves. But fortunately we also have the capacity for rational thought and conscious action, and these, friends, are the aims of intellectual pursuit. When I lament the prominence of the likes of Sarah Palin, it is not because I disagree with them on policy. It is because I am diametrically opposed to their entire worldview, a worldview that disparages the only thing that has ever shown the capacity to rein in our mad lust for destruction. I am unequivocal in my opposition to that.

I love my country, but I do not love it at the expense of the rest of humanity. I also do not need my country to be "the best." It's not a zero-sum game. My country is awesome! I wouldn't choose to live anywhere else, or to be a citizen of another polity. I'm proud of my history, proud enough to be honest about it. We are not perfect, but we aspire to perfection. It's only by confronting our imperfections that we can get closer to that goal, one of true equality, absolute freedom, and peace. These are complex concepts, and often seem to be in conflict. It takes serious and dedicated people to face the challenges they present. Waving a flag and eating apple pie isn't going to do it, and neither is a blind faith in the "goodness" of Americans, or any human beings. It's a personal journey, and yes, an intellectual one. I will not apologize for being an intellectual American, nor will I apologize for challenging my fellow citizens to learn their own history, to be critical of their government, and to perfecting the values they purport to believe. If you let America off the hook, you've really missed the point of America.

Genocide Makes Me Sick

2010-07-02T06:20:00.000-07:00

At least, the smell of genocide makes me sick. My friends have often joked that I like genocide, one of them even threatening to get me a shirt that says "I genocide," because I talk about it so much, and it concerns me sometimes that perhaps I'm desensitized. Well, today I learned that at least one aspect of genocide makes me physically ill: the dead bodies part.

Today I visited the Murambi Memorial Centre, one of the newest genocide memorials in Rwanda. It just opened in March, and they are still doing work on the front gardens and some of the walkways. I had heard a bit about this one because it's very different from other genocide memorials. Whereas the Kigali Memorial Centre is mostly pictures and videos, Murambi's memorial is the dead themselves. Murambi was the site of a new technical school that opened in 1994; indeed, some of the construction wasn't even done yet. When the killings began in April 1994, a lot of Tutsis from the surrounding area were directed to Murambi in order to stay safe. They were able to bribe the killing gangs for a while, but ultimately, about 50,000 Tutsis were massacred over 4 days in the school. They were then put into mass graves surrounding the school buildings. When the French troops created Zone Turquoise, which was ostensibly to protect Tutsis in the southwest, they set up their camp at Murambi, sleeping in the school buildings and constructing a volleyball court overlooking the four largest mass graves. The French zone did little other than protect the killers who were fleeing into Zaire from the RPF (although they probably also saved a lot of Hutu civilians who were not genocidaires, but who also would have been targeted by the RPF for reprisal killings).

The memorial itself is a bit controversial because, unlike other genocide memorials, at Murambi you can literally see the victims. They dug up about 400 bodies from the mass graves and placed them in 22 classrooms where people were killed. The bodies have been sprinkled with lime, and therefore mummified, but the whole place smells like death. I never understood what people meant when they said that, but I figured it out. It's horrible, sort of sweet and putrid and pungent. There are entire rooms with only childrens' bodies, some of them very tiny babies, no more than a couple of months old. There are women's bodies in terrible contortions. Mouths are open, faces twisted in agony. There are massive holes in some of the skulls, where the person had been bludgeoned to death with a machete or club or hoe. It's just room after room after room. They also have signs showing where the French troops were (including their volleyball court, something that the guide really emphasized), as well as signs where the mass graves were originally. The bodies not on display were re-buried in mass graves in front of the memorial that resemble the ones in Kigali.

Murambi itself is well off the beaten path; I took a mini-bus from Butare (Huye) to Gikongoro, and then a bicycle taxi (yes, they exist) another 2.5 km to the memorial. There aren't paved roads yet, though I imagine the government will pave them soon, and it's up in the hills, so the bicycle ride was sort of an experiment in terror. There are also plenty of people who live just outside the gates, including a bunch of kids that followed me into the gates, demanding money. I told them that was very rude, especially inside a genocide memorial. However, I told them this in English, and I feel quite sure they didn't understand a word. The mini-bus was in terrible condition, and was overcrowded and full of bus fumes, so after a 35 minute ride, I was already feeling pretty bad. The bodies were just a bridge too far. I did, however, manage to not throw up actually in the memorial (that was quite a feat).

The guide was also sort of strange. She was nice enough, and spoke pretty good English (and seemed extremely happy when I spoke to her in my limited French), but the "tour," if you can call it that, was very rushed. After we went in the first room, the next several she'd just sort of gesture and say "and the same," and just keep walking. It's not like I was taking pictures (they will let you take pictures of the outside portions, but not the bodies, as if I would ever have taken pictures of those anyway), but it's complicated, and I felt like it was offensive to not take a few minutes in each room.

The idea for this memorial is certainly unique; I've never heard of another genocide memorial like this. There's certainly nothing like this in Europe, nor are any of the Holocaust museums this way. I don't think the Cambodian memorial is like this either. It is certainly impactful, but I don't know that I agree with it. It seems somehow....crass. Ogling the bodies, objectifying the dead. It's like genocide porn. I don't think it gives the dead their dignity, which they were already denied by being murdered. It felt voyeuristic and uncomfortable. I realize the point is to make people uncomfortable, to remember, but I'm just not sure this is the best way to do it.

I'm visiting another 4 genocide memorials over the next few weeks; all of them are government-sponsored and relate to the genocide of the Tutsis. Some politically-moderate Hutus (whatever that means) were also killed, including the Prime Minister in 1994. This is what the government is memorializing. However, I've noticed there are no memorials in the north to commemorate the deaths of the 350,000 or so Hutu civilians who were massacred by the RPF in the civil war between 1990-93, nor the Hutu victims of reprisal killings by the RPF when they "liberated" Rwanda from the genocidaires in 1994 (nor are there are genocide memorials for Tutsis in the north, which makes me wonder....). I'm not trying to take anything away from the Tutsi victims; what happened in 1994 was horrifying, and something I'm gaining a new appreciation for every single day here, with every person I talk to. But people don't talk about the civil war. It's as though the genocide happened in a vacuum instead of in a context of increased ethnic tensions that were expressed by numerous groups. (I'm also not engaging any of the capitalist motives behind the war/genocide, or the massive, ridiculously important involvement of the global community/UN/US. For that, go here. It'll fuck you up, but it's all meticulously researched and true. If you think it's useful, please contribute. Independent journalism is the only thing that can save us from fascism.)

So I'm back to contemplating, again, the usefulness of the concept of "genocide." I did this a lot with my students this spring, but I'm never satisfied with my own thoughts. What does it mean to label some killings "genocide," and some others just "mass killings" or "massacres" or "collateral damage"? How is "genocide" not implicitly political, and simply a history written by the victors? Are the Hutu victims of the RPF any less dead, were they any less innocent, are the RPF any less monsters (or the Hutu Power/interhamwe any MORE monsters? Hutus are about the most maligned people on Earth at this moment.)? Is there any side of this civil war that isn't sad and barbaric and horrible? I don't want to forgive the people who killed the Tutsis, but no more do I want to forgive those who killed the Hutus in the north; but wouldn't it be more "hopeful" to forgive them all, to learn some lessons and to make sure it doesn't happen again? And can we ever avoid making the same mistakes in our actions and perceptions, again and again (I'm looking at you, Save Darfur)?

Cold Like Ice Cream

2010-06-29T08:38:00.000-07:00

So the braids are gone. Too hot, too itchy, too heavy. They were keeping me from sleeping at night. Sad, really, but it's not nearly as hot or humid as I anticipated, so I think my real hair will probably do just fine.

Butare (Huye) is a lot cooler than Kigali. Maybe because it's not so urban, less cars and such, but I actually use a blanket at night. I love it. I don't know anybody here, and I don't really have any specific ways of meeting anyone, so it's a bit solitary. I suppose that's the nature of this kind of research, spending days in libraries and archives. Blech.

I arrived on Sunday, which meant everything was closed. I was out of internet airtime (which I use too much of anyway), and nobody, absolutely NOBODY was selling Rwandatel. It was kind of ridiculous. I bought a cellphone, though, on MTN, one of the biggest networks on the continent. It works in Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa, at least, so I feel pretty covered. I had originally not planned to buy a cellphone, since I'm not here for very long. I was basing this assumption off my experience in Ghana 7 years ago. Stupid. EVERYBODY has a cellphone. It was completely untenable to go without one. When people would ask me for my phone number and I told them I didn't have a phone, they'd look at me like I was a Martian (sort of like I look at people in the US when they tell me they don't have a cellphone). So I've joined the 21st century here in Rwanda, and just in time. A friend of a friend put me in touch with an historian at the university, and I'm meeting up with him later this week. I hope it will be a fruitful meeting, as I'm not finding much in the archives.

Archives, btw, is a generous term for what I've found here. It's pretty much all published sources that I either own or have on my shelf from ILL. Though I found a few things that I hadn't seen, I found them quickly online so I can read them at home, and therefore didn't spend much time sitting there, struggling through German while being ogled by university students in a stuffy room (nobody really ogles in an objectifying kind of way, just in a way that tells me it's a bit unusual to see a white woman digging through stuff in the library).

I've been told by more than one person that Rwandans don't like to read. The library here is nice enough, as compared to other African libraries I've seen (limited experience, but still). They have a very good, if small, section on African history, and I was happy to see a lot of the important stuff there (Cooper, Davidson, Isichei, etc.). They also have quite a few "revolutionary" texts, Cesaire, Malcolm X, Guevara, which I didn't expect to be in their library. All there. All not being read. They also have probably more books on Congolese history than UCSB (shocker). What they do not have, at least not in a place accessible to the general student population, is books on Rwandan history. They are kept in a separate section and you need special permission from the Director of Archives. It's really sad, because they have a lot of very good books. A lot on the precolonial and colonial eras (Vansina, Pages, both Newburys), and a decent-sized collection on the genocide (Mamdani and Straus most prominently, though with several others that I also found for sale at the Kigali Genocide Memorial). It's disturbing, though, that they aren't there with the rest of the history books on Africa, China, Russia, and the US.

Anyway, there's not much at NUR, so I spent the rest of Monday exploring Butare and doing laundry. My motel is really nice; it's very quiet and clean, and the staff is extremely nice. However, they don't have a restaurant (well, there's a snack bar/resto, but I've never seen any indication of food being served), so I've been taking most of my meals at the Hotel Faucon or this little place called Cheers that has really fantastic food. I'm learning quickly to order off the "snack bar" menu, because otherwise there's enough food for a small army and I feel like I have to apologize for not eating more, even though it's tasty.

Today I spent the morning deconstructing my hair and at Cheers doing some reading. I still have quite a bit of work to do in preparation for the fieldcourse in a couple weeks. I'm coming up with a lot of questions and ideas, though I still have no idea about my dissertation. I think I have it down to 3 ideas (which is a lot better), but I'll be interested to see what the next few weeks do to those ideas. I'd really like to have something narrowed down by the time I get back to the States.

At present, I'm sitting at a lovely little place called Inzozi Nziza, an ice cream parlor/coffee shop that overlooks the valley in Butare, and I can see terraced coffee plants. It's quite beautiful here. I can also see the local Muslim Center, which has been a highlight of my time here in Butare. The calls to prayer at sunrise and sunset are beautiful, and something I've never gotten to experience before. The Muslim population in Rwanda has grown a lot since the genocide, as Muslims were one of the few religious groups who didn't participate in the mass killings of their own comrades (unlike Catholics and Seventh-Day Adventists). Just another reminder that, despite what the US media would like us all to believe about Islam, it is, at heart, a religion of peace and love and compassion and that its adherents are some really fantastic people (the ones I know, anyway).

Inzozi Nziza, though, is a brand new venture from the Brooklyn-based Blue Marble Dreams, which supports entrepreneurship by women in developing countries. Pretty awesome. And good ice cream! That sure is granola and honey on my vanilla ice cream. Going back tomorrow for the strawberry.

Tomorrow I'm going to the National Museum, and then to the Abbe Alexis Kagame archives (which look positively miniscule, even though he's sort of the father of academic history in Rwanda). Thursday will be a visit to the Murambi Genocide Memorial, which I've heard is among the more graphic and disturbing. I'm sure I'll have lots of thoughts about that too, but probably not any pictures.

"African Tea" = Chai

2010-06-26T03:32:00.000-07:00

Does it get any more peaceful than this? I mean seriously. This is the view from my guest house. I am literally looking at this while blogging. Sigh. Yes, it's way out of town and nobody has ever heard of it. But 12 hours of uninterrupted, mosquito-free sleep and this view? I'll take it.

Yesterday was complicated. I went to the Kigali Memorial Center, the main genocide memorial in Rwanda. It was funded and built by the Aegis Trust in the UK, with government support.
I have a lot of things to say about it, but I'll save most of them for later. For now, it was a very moving and disturbing experience. The part of the museum that most bothered me was an exhibit about children who were killed during the genocide. Their families had donated pictures, in some cases the only ones they had. There were a lot of snapshots, but they chose about 20 kids and had the pictures blown up to poster size. Then they'd written the children's favorite food, favorite song, best friend's name, and then their last words and the way they were killed. So it would be something like this:
Grace, 5 years old
Favorite song: Jesus Loves Me
Favorite food: Chips and mayonnaise
Best friend: Her older sister
Final words: Mama, shall I hide?
Method of killing: Bludgeoned in the head with a club

Over and over and over again. (In a weird way, it sort of reminded me of Spickard's genocide lecture, for those who get that reference.) It made me cry, as did a few other parts, including the fountains and gardens. In some ways, I found it more moving than the Holocaust Museum. It's somehow.....I don't know the word. More graphic? There's a whole room of human remains. I realize that's pretty much impossible for the Holocaust, given the ways in which most of the victims were killed and disposed of. But there's something viscerally human and real about that. It hurts.

I walked around with my friend Dave after that and got some lunch. Kigali is going to kill me. When they called this "land of a thousand hills," they weren't just whistlin' dixie. I'm going to have an ass like Beyonce by the time I leave here. No need for spin or Pilates this fall, girls. 5 weeks in Rwanda will get you Olympic-ready.

Also read some of the New Times, a paper here in Rwanda. Eeeesh. You can check it out online if you want to know. I talked with a friend here about politics; the situation is not good, to say the least. More about that later.

Went to Hotel Mille Collines ("Hotel Rwanda") to watch the Brasil v. Portugal match. So boring! Badly played and just phoned in. I wish the Cote d'Ivoire v. DPRK game had been on, at least those players have some heart (though poor DPRK.....). Took a moto back to the guest house. I'm seriously becoming addicted to moto. Might have to buy a motorcycle now, it's way too much fun.

Hair and Language or, In which I am terrible at French and speak like a bebe

2010-06-24T05:10:00.000-07:00

Oy. I finally have wireless internet. I broke down and bought a USB modem through Rwandatel, the company for which my friend Bridget works. She and her friend, also named Bridget, have been so helpful to me, literally walking me to places so I don't get lost, making sure I have the stuff I need and that I don't get charged the "muzungu tax," as I've taken to calling it. (muzungu means "white person" or "foreigner" in Kiswahili, and Kinyarwanda/Kirundi. I literally could have bought a t-shirt that said that today. I'm still considering it before I leave.) This modem should keep me wireless-accessible throughout the country, since I can add minutes from a sim card anytime I need to. I can also use it when I come back to do fieldwork, so I think it was a good investment. Skype uses too much bandwidth, so I doubt I'll be engaging in any of that nonsense, but I don't Skype much anyway. :)

So yesterday I got my hair braided. I went the day before looking for a salon, and found a guy named John who worked at one on the next street over in Centre-Ville. He said his wife could do my hair at their house, and so I met him back at the salon yesterday morning. John is a refugee from Kinsangani, in RDC, and has been in Rwanda for about 10 years. He lives in Gikondo, a neighborhood in Kigali, with his wife, Diana. She is from Bukavu, also in RDC, but she refers to herself as melange, meaning that her father was Congolais but her mother was Rwandaise. (I've taken to writing in a weird pidgin English/French/Kiswahili, it helps me learn). They have 3 kids, a son whose name I didn't catch, an older daughter named Reise, and a baby daughter named Blessing. They were adorable, especially Blessing, who is learning to talk and knows about as much French as I do. We learned together, but there is really nothing cuter than a baby going around saying "Mama? Oui! Bonjour!" It cracked me up.

Diana and her sister did my hair. Diana has very little English, so I spoke to her in my very slow and broken French. Her sister had more, but it was very slow going. I finally got across to them that I am a student of Rwandan and Congolese history, which they both found interesting. During the course of the 10 hours or so I spent at the house (my neck was KILLING me by the end), several people came and went, including a man I think was their brother. He acted more like family than the others. They watched a satellite channel called Digital Congo, which was mostly a bunch of ridiculously melodramatic Congolais soap operas having to do with young girls trying to find a way to get their education, but being preyed upon by lewd men, or an entire program devoted to ogling women with really big asses. The "English" subtitles were riotous. Anyway, there were a lot of advertisements for the RDC's 50th anniversary of independence, which will take place next week on 30 June. It's pretty momentous, when you think of the centrality of the idea of the Congo to the idea of Africa. I watched Raoul Peck's "Lumumba" on the plane (shut up, it's a good movie), and these advertisements had a lot of clips from that, as well as stock footage of pro-Lumumba rallies and footage of speeches and things by the current president, Joseph Kabila. There were, of course, no references to Mobutu, even though he was the longest-serving ruler of Congo/Zaire since independence, and most of its history is intimately tied to him and his cult of personality. I got the impression that Diana's sister and brother (?) were discussing politics, and I was dying to ask them how they felt about Kabila, the Mobutist history, and whether they wanted to eventually go back to Congo, but I have nowhere near the language capability to do that. Which sucks a big one, since those types of questions are precisely the kind I need to be able to ask in order to, like, do my research. Soooooooo, French conversation club this year, guys? Oui?

They were very generous with their time and resources, and I ate both lunch and dinner with them, as well as buying a round of beer and soda for everyone in the house. Mutzig is a Rwandan beer, and I was told by Diana's sister that it is the "women's beer." Primus is the most popular beer here, and I haven't tried it yet. Heat and beer do not go well with me, and since I already had a headache, I only drank about half my beer. Dinner was, as I understand it, pretty normal Rwandan fare: rice, pomme frites, vache and soup, pomme de terre (baked) and some other concoction I didn't try. I got quite a laugh, because I apparently didn't eat much, but I explained to them that muzungu tend to not eat a lot when it is tres chaud.

We moved outside after dinner to finish my hair, and a bunch of men came over to watch the USA vs Algeria match. I, personally, won the match. :) It was well after dark by the time we finished, even though it was probably about 7pm, so Diana, her sister and brother walked me back up to the main road to help me find transportation back to Muhima (the neighborhood where my hotel is). I was a bit distraught to find that my only option was a Taxi Moto, or a motorcycle taxi. It's the way most people get around, as it's extremely inexpensive (700 rwf, a little more than a dollar), and you get your own helmet and everything. However, as some of you know, I have an irrational fear of motorcycles (though I think they're dead sexy), and am convinced that I will die or get burned if I ever get on one.

I am happy to report that I did not die, get burned, or throw up. It's kind of exhilirating, really, and I will definitely do it again. The only drawback is that you are at the mercy of all the car fumes, and we got behind a really disgusting truck for like 3 minutes. I thought I would die. Car fumes are a huge problem in African cities, and this one is no exception. But I got back safely to the hotel, took a large amount of headache medicine and a Coke, and slept pretty much through the night. The jet-lag is abating, though I woke up about 1:30am and listened to Harry Potter for about an hour before I fell back asleep.

I have many more thoughts, but I think that's enough for now. I think I'm going out with some friends of friends tonight, so I hope that will be fun.

An Uphill Climb

2010-06-22T06:19:00.000-07:00

Kigali is just a bunch of hills, all of which I have to climb to get anywhere. I think I'm rapidly becoming known as the sweaty, out-of-breath muzungu. Haha.

Flights went very well. Somehow I ended up being seated in the midst of all the children, so I still only have had maybe 6 hours of sleep in the last 48. I'm going to crash tonight like nobody, but I'm trying to stay up until at least 8. I don't know who the people were who blasted Ethiopian Airlines, but I have nothing but nice things to say. The food was good, the staff was helpful, and they didn't lose my luggage. In-flight entertainment left something to be desired, but that's why Baby Jesus gave us iPods.

Kigali is a very African city. While I'm going to enjoy it over the next few days, I really am looking forward to getting out and about in the rest of the country. I'm going to do a lot of reading for the field course while I'm here, hopefully dig deeper into some of this Newbury stuff.

I've already made a friend at the local telecom place, and will hopefully find a way to get hooked up with wireless internet. I've heard it's relatively cheap to get a USB modem that will work most of the places I'm going, and that I can use when I return in the future. I'd be willing to invest a little now in order to avoid being at the mercy of internet cafes (no disrespect to the lovely one I'm in right now).

Trying to find a place to get my hair braided, because the white-girl afro puff is in full force, and being held back only by a lone chopstick. Eek. Also, MASSIVE cockroach in my bathroom. I managed to not scream, and also to kill it, but I can't handle too much of that.

My language skills suck, something I knew, but am becoming more and more acutely aware of with each passing moment. I'm going to rectify that this year, even if I have to not do anything else. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, safely here, have a clean hotel room with hot water, and a nice little restaurant attached. Going back now to watch some World Cup.

Overheard at the airport...

2010-06-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

A woman having a convo with her friend, telling her:

1. to pray for her, for forgiveness, for overeating (i'm never gonna get over this one);
2. that she'll have even more opportunity to overeat while in a third-world country;
3. that she had a really hard time packing for 2 weeks and keeping her bag under 50 lbs.;
4. that she thinks it's really hard to shop for clothes in asian countries because everything is so small.

lordy, it is amusing and sad when white americans travel outside their country.

Travel Nausea....Yum!

2010-06-21T04:34:00.000-07:00

Turns out octopus and quinoa aren't quite as good the second time. Womp, womp.

The first leg of this trip totally sucked. I told The Princess when she dropped me off last night that I felt like I might throw up at the airport. I thought it was nerves. Nope. The SB-LAX leg of the flight was fine, and I had a lovely convo with Nicole, the flight attendant. It's nice to get votes of confidence from people I don't know.

The LA to DC flight was absolutely horrible, through no fault of the lovely folks at United Airlines, who gazed at me in pity every time I ran to the lavatory to puke. I have no idea why, but I've had a massive headache for about 12 hours now, and as anyone who knows me well can tell you, headaches and throwing up go hand-in-hand with me.

What's even more fun is that I had to gate-check my big backpack, which I've now carried on 3 different United flights, all the way to Kigali. The upside of gate-checking is that they manage to forget that they charge for checked bags. The downside is that a variety of things I'd like to have with me are in that bag, including my toothbrush and migraine medicine (it's just OTC, but I have yet to ever find it in an airport). So I'm popping extra strength Excedrin at the moment, trying not to smell food. It's also burning up hot everywhere I go. Apparently neither United, nor the DC airport believe in strenuous AC, a pity really.

Plus side: there's a cute kitty traveling with another passenger. He's on a leash, and meowing like crazy. It's pretty adorable.

To sum up: nauseous, scared about research, feeling as unprepared as a bad imperialist, headache-y, but all checked-in.

Travel-Inspired Insomnia

2010-06-20T06:29:00.000-07:00

Aaaaaaand I've been up since 4:30. It's not nervousness, per se, but a combination of excitement and profound amounts of medication, food and Coca-Cola. I don't have much left to do. One last load of laundry (sheets for the subletter), need to go to the grocery and get food for the kitty, need to run to the bank, etc. I can't do an online check-in since it's an international flight, although I'm obsessively checking my flight status, as though they're going to change it. The Santa Barbara airport has the exact same flight schedule every single day.

I'm entertaining myself by reading reviews of Ethiopian Airlines, which I'm flying. They are not good, to say the least. Bad food, bad service, massive delays, etc. Hrm. I'm glad I have my iPod.

And more yumminess....

2010-06-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

Tonight's menu: chicken picatta, mashed potatoes, buttered peas, and (theoretically), chocolate gateau with a lovely chocolate butter cream icing and almonds. Your mouth is watering, I know. I feel like I might take pics of this one.

Argh, packing

2010-06-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

HATE packing. Can't stand it. Was much happier last night when I was cooking. Why do airlines have to be such assholes about what you can and cannot bring on a plane? Dude.

For those who missed it last night, I made a Fondue de Poulet a la Creme (a la Julia Child), baked cucumbers, and some lovely buttery rice. It was decadent. For dessert, we had fresh whipped cream, angel food cake, and fresh berries. The company was awesome. I really love throwing "mash-up" parties, bringing together people from disparate friend groups and seeing what happens. Last night was AWESOME. Trying to do another Thursday night. We'll see what happens, or if it's as good when the food is Italian instead of French.

Stay tuned for more packing angst and cooking ecstasy.

In Which This Becomes a Travel Blog

2010-06-12T11:50:00.000-07:00

So, I leave in about 8 days for Rwanda. I'm going to the Great Lakes region for about 5 weeks (not Michigan, the African Great Lakes), and will spend most of my time in Rwanda, but also a week in Uganda (allegedly).

I'll fly into Kigali on June 22 and stay there for about 3 days. Then I'm planning to take off to Butare for a week, then Nyanza, then Ruhengeri, then Uganda. I say "allegedly" because I'm taking part in a field course through the Rift Valley Institute, and I don't know yet where in Uganda it will be held. It was originally supposed to be in Bujumbura, Burundi, but because of pre-election violence there, there's now a travel advisory. So stay tuned, I'll be in Uganda.

After that, I have another week left and I'm keeping it open. This is a very different trip than my previous ones to Africa, because I'm not going with a group or with any really specific agenda, other than to figure out if my proposed dissertation topic is viable. That makes it at once a little scary, but also really exciting.

I'm starting the packing process today, and attempting to get everything I'll need for 5 weeks into my backpack, so I don't have to check any baggage. Foolish? Perhaps. But I'm awesome, so I think I'll figure it out. If you want to buy me anything, check out my Amazon Wishlist. FYI, the Le Creuset stuff won't be of much use in Rwanda, at least not for this trip. :)

The Last Batch

2010-06-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

"Before the influence of Christianity came from Spain and Portugal, the Latin American population were formal Aztecs." (as opposed to the casual, part-time kind? idk...)

"Before the Europeans arrived in Latin America, the preformance of Sati was established as one of many degradations to women." (Followed by 2 full paragraphs on Sati and why it's awful...)

"The Europeans brought apartheid, and separated the Africans from themselves." (This reminded me of the Katt Williams bit where he says that Kevin Federline got Britney to break up with herself.)

"The Aztecs ended up getting concured by the Spanish."

"The Mongols who took control of sub-Saharan Africa again spread Islam throughout this region in their wake." (There are a lot of these. Who is teaching this????)

"The Ramada hotel chain developed from these Muslim traders who frequently stopped in the same place during the Islamic feast of Ramadan." (I think this kid had to be having a laugh, right?)

"The Mayans played a game similar to soccer with a twist, injury or death was a huge possibility." (Higher stakes than the World Cup, seriously.)

"During the twentyth-century Latin America was ruled by France until the Japanese came and help Latin America get rid of France. However the Japanese tried to control Latin America. Latin America then sought help from China. China came in and removed the Japanese. Unfortunately France regained control of Latin America."

"Cristian people belief in just god and don't like Virgin Mary. They say that Virgin Mary isn't Jesus mother they say it's someone else. They hate her because they say she had other Childrens." (There were a lot of students who seemed under the impression that Catholics and Christians were different things. Even apparently Catholic students like this one. Hmmm...)

Africans, also, are predominantly Buddhist, Daoist, Hindu or cannibals, depending on who you read.

Also, in response to a graph that showed that the Japanese produced 666 million tons of cotton in 1930: "The Japanese produced Satan's number of cotton, which is why we nuked them in WWII."

On that note, kids, I'm gonna go get my drink on. See you on the other side.

Things You Didn't Know About Religion in Africa and Latin America

2010-06-07T16:52:00.000-07:00

"When Judaism had arrived in Sub-Saharan Africa, it had attracted many Islamic followers because Judaism was just an extreme form of Islam."

"Although many Christian missionaries were sent to Africa and even Muhammad became a Christian at one point, it had never really attracted many people."

"Liberalists [in Latin America] in the government might have been the cause of them converting to Eastern Orthodoxy because there was much diversity in the religious ways of thinking."

"Sub-Saharan Africa was introduced to Buddhism by Mohammid who sought to reach Nirvana by spreading Buddhism to a new continent. Eventually this religion changed to Islam, and then to modern-day Christianity."

"This is because women were useless and were an invaluable source of income to a rural family."

"A overall continuity is the the major religion has always been Islam. The turning point is when the Islamic leader changed from Muhammad to Gahdhi."

This is our future. Be afraid.

It's that Time of Year Again

2010-06-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

Sadly, I am not grading the Africa question this year, so I have fewer crack-tastic quotes. However, a few gems:

"Maybe if Japan might of been colonized, they might of produced more cotton than they did."

"It's mainly women though and a couple of guys looking around while the women do the work." (Tell me about it, kid.)

"India was more calm and quiet, while China was the opposite they were loud and more workers."

"You can see in the people's faces that they a working really hard. In document 10 you can see that even though they have better manufactures from the Japan people they are also working hard."

"This show Japan's dependence on the pest class." (Termites are taking over, it seems.)

"They traded with camels because Africa was a stateless society and an undeveloped country." (So the camels are in charge now?)

"In the early 1400's, Africa had conflicts with the Palestinians and the Turks."

"Sub-Saharan Africa also change Christianity as people began to say that Jesus was a dark colored being." (PC has infected our children...)

"In the beginning, Africans were believed to be animalistic, meaning their belief was with spirits of animals and creatures. This was a major part of their society in that there were many animals surrounding their habitat." (Animalistic = animistic, I think...)

Also, the word "agricultorers" has come up a few times. China and Japan are roughly the same. I had one kid insist throughout his/her essay that the Japanese were strictly Confucian in the 19th century, and that Buddhism came much later.

If any of my students are reading this (and I feel like a few of you might be, 5pm Thursday section), please don't tempt fate and put any of this on your finals. Remember, I hold your destiny in my hands.

Have you Seen the New Slim-Fast Commercials?

2010-04-28T18:52:00.000-07:00

You know, the ones with the "sassy" lady comics (I pretty much hate "sassy" ladies....that's another post, though.)?

This one is the worst:

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A quick breakdown, since I'm procrastinating from writing an abstract:

1. Just because a woman is thin doesn't mean she doesn't have weight issues. She may have perpetually dieted her entire life. She may be naturally thin. You don't know. Also, I know a lot of thin women with horrible relationships with food and their bodies. We live in a culture that almost forces women to hate their bodies and then acts like that's normal, so if you don't hate your body then other women think you're weird. Come to think of it, that's pretty much what runs the diet industry. Hmmm..

2. When the horrible skinny woman asked where you wanted to be in six months, she was actually saying, "Hey, clearly you want to lose weight, so if I'm going to help you, I'm going to at least help you do it in a healthy way." I go to a nutritionist, and according to her, your body really isn't supposed to lose more than about a pound a week. If you're losing more than that, it usually means you're losing muscle tone. You can also really screw up your internal organs and cause yourself heart problems and all that stuff. While I generally do not support dieting and have my own set of issues about even making it a goal to "lose weight," if you're gonna do it, at least do it in a way that's going to make you more healthy, not less.

3. Slim-Fast, you are a horrible company. You play on the worst parts of our culture's diet obsession, you fat-shame and you normalize body dysmorphia. Congratulations on being everything I hate about capitalism and misogyny all rolled up into one. At least you started using a "sassy" lady to do it, so I can sit on my couch, eat a cookie, and hate you with my whole body for 30 seconds.

Back to writing my abstract.

Remembering Slavery

2010-04-18T18:44:00.000-07:00

So, this week is basically "slavery" week in my world, as I am both reading about Slavery and Subalternity for my graduate seminar as well as teaching Frederick Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass for my students. One of the chapters I read for this week is from Relocating Postcolonialism, and is entitled "Forgotten Like a Bad Dream: Atlantic Slavery and the Ethics of Postcolonial Memory," by Barnor Hesse. He uses the 1997 film "Amistad" to demonstrate and critique how we remember slavery in the US, and I found this passage to be particularly on-point, especially given that most states mandate that students learn about slavery. (In California, it's slavery and the Holocaust.)

"The main problem with this memorialization of slavery is its overwhelming erasure of any racialized sense of historical formation or degrading social process. Erased is the expansive, repetitive nature of enslavement, including the plantation work systems across the Americas and the centuries-long development of highly organized and systematic economic and racialized forms of governmentality. In the absence of these social encrustations being made explicit or explained, we are positioned to remember slavery as pathological ephemera, as if historically it was a minor crimogenic deviation from a progressive modernizing project. Remembering slavery through this cultural route becomes a reflexive excursion in the rehabilitation of the American dream, the restoration of reverence for the history that produced the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, and civil rights legislation. A history, the normative memory of which remembers slavery, together with the constitutive and ensuing contexts of racism, as exceptions to the democratic longevity of civil rule within the Republic. In other words, the memory of slavery is established as the memory of its heroic and inevitable absence." (149-50)

And hot damn, if that isn't the problem with how we teach history IN GENERAL. As though human history is a story of inevitable progress. If we don't teach an optimistic, almost Pollyanna-ish story, we're cynical or un-patriotic or, horror of horrors, un-American. Think about how you were taught about slavery: did you explicitly discuss racism as a part of the institution of slavery? I don't think I learned about slavery in that way until college. I wonder how many other things we gloss over.

I guess I've been thinking about this a lot because of all the recent grassroots, right-wing activism, a la the Tea Party. I know it's easy to make fun of these folks and ridicule them and make them into caricatures, but I think they're both terrifying and an indictment of our failure to adequately educate our citizenry. The way our education is set up, it's sort of an admissions process into citizenship. You go through school, learn (ostensibly) about who we are as a country, and then are supposedly qualified to vote. BUT.....we don't teach about who we are as a country. We teach about who we would like to be as a country (maybe?), but shit. We do teach slavery as a history of inevitable abolition, women's rights as a history of eventual equality and....well, we ignore indigenous folks, immigrants from brown countries, the horrors of migrant labor, internment camps, the oppression of workers....ewww. No wonder we have Tea Partiers! How in the world do we expect them to know any better when we're utterly failing to teach them anything? And then to whine about how other countries don't practice democracy? Please. If this is supposed to be the shining example of democracy, I'd keep my country as far away from it as I could, too.

Oh, week 6.....and OMG, SHOEZ!

2009-11-07T16:36:00.001-08:00

This week has been an exercise in terror. For real.

To begin, we had a Halloween part at the house last weekend. It was a resounding success. I was the Queen of Hearts, complete with red mesh petticoat and knee socks. Ryan was Mr. Smee (his Peter Pan and Captain Hook sadly did not make it down from San Francisco), and Vik was a kangaroo. As it was Vik, it was a slightly perverted kangaroo. We also had Imperialist Barbie, Wagnerian opera stars, the Virgin Mary (complete with Black Baby Jesus), a zombie MAC girl, and a startlingly realistic gorilla. I tapped out early, which is one of the perks of hosting a party when you have roommates. I was tired, and knew I had profound amounts of work the next day.

Sunday I locked myself in my office for about 7 hours and wrote 12 pages of my Rwandan independence movement article. When I got home, I sort of stared at the wall for a couple hours, and then went to bed. RIDIC.

Monday was not much different, only it was about 5 hours, and 7 pages. 19 pages in 2 days. I turned in my draft of 23 pages (incomplete, but better than the 10 page prospectus from June, which was the last I had produced on the subject) at 5pm, and went to see the Michael Jackson documentary to celebrate. If you haven't seen it, DO IT. There's only one more week, and it is so worth it. I saw it twice. That concert would've been phenomenal. Say what you will about MJ, but it's impossible not to love his music. When he was on stage, he had it all together.

This week was pretty much a nightmare. I had about 60 student papers and outlines to grade, and I didn't get them back on time, resulting in a lot of mad students. They have to deal with it, but damn. I hope the next batch of papers are better. I usually have a lot of A's, but my overall average on this last one was quite a bit lower. I don't know if it's that they didn't really understand the assignment or what. Most of them seemed to understand the material but had a really hard time expressing that. Organization was a problem. So was analysis. I hope it was just the assignment and not me being unclear. Sigh. I guess we'll see.

Also had to present on Durba Ghosh's Sex and the Family in Colonial India and Anne McClintock's Imperial Leather in seminar this week. If anyone would like to purchase me a copy of the former, I would happily accept. It's a very good book, thoroughly and meticulously researched, carefully argued, etc. It's exactly what one's dissertation should be. McClintock, on the other hand.....WOO. I love her. I know she probably went WAYYYYYYYY over the line with some of her critiques (the whole King Solomon's Mines male anal birth thing left me scratching my head with a disgusted look on my face), but she sure knew how to start a conversation. I think expressly political work has an important place in academia. I will come back to this in a minute.

My presentation, I felt, was a little haphazard. I thought my questions were a bit too broad, and I completely blanked on doing my own response paper, which I need to do because we're getting down to the wire. But I felt really lobotomized by Tuesday night (NOT a good thing), and just forgot. Talked to the prof about it, and she was super supportive and awesome. I've heard some real horror stories about grad school, but my own experience so far has been fantastic. I've gotten nothing but reinforcement and encouragement from the faculty I've encountered. The criticism has all been constructive, and everyone I've found has been really good at remembering that, even though we're students, we're also human beings with lives outside of academia, and while we need to focus on our work and be good scholars, we also need to be complete people. I don't know if it's just my department (or just the people I happen to work with), but it's really awesome.

I also had a meeting with my advisor and some other colleagues on Tuesday evening about our campus African Studies Research Focus Group. My friend Franklin (a brilliant anthropologist) and I are heading up the graduate group for the RFG this year, and we wanted to figure out what precisely our responsibilities were for the group. So we met with the two faculty conveners (my advisor and the very talented Christina McMahon) and planned a bit for the year. We're going to try and have a really great speaker this Spring. If we are able to get him to campus, I will certainly be writing about it (not least because I'd really like for him to be a dissertation reader down the road.....I have a title now, damn skippy I'm going to use it!).

I also had a meeting with my advisor on Wednesday about teaching next quarter. I'll be the only TA for his Survey of African History from 1800-present, which means that the class, which is usually over 100 students, will only be open to about 60. We were trying to find ways to accommodate a few more without me going over my union contracted hours. I HATE BUDGET CUTS. It's ridiculous that so many students are going to be left out of this course. I'm already getting emails from former students who want to take it and are asking to crash. I'm a sucker for former students and want to get them all into the class, especially now that I know so many are having trouble just getting the minimum number of credits to keep their financial aid. Oh, California, why are you so stupid? REPEAL PROP 13!!! (and Prop 8 while you're at it. I know it's not really economic, but it's bigoted and awful and makes a lot of my friends into second-class citizens and hates on them and their families, and civil rights should never be up for a vote anyway.) The fact that the state has systematically seen fit to divest from public higher education over the last few decades is becoming apparent; this is what happens when no one wants to pay taxes. Anyway, we talked about readings for the students, and I'm going to do a guest lecture on the last quarter of the 19th century in Rwanda and how it facilitated the encroachment of German power in the region by 1896. As I pretty much know this stuff like the back of my hand, I'm hoping to totally rock this. I just need to find the right reading for the kiddos. I really like having a little bit of creative input on the course; this is the advantage of TAing for a smaller course instead of one of the humungous ones (not that I'm not having fun this quarter too, though!).

Thursday was my biweekly meeting on the independence movement article. I was pretty terrified going in that she was going to rip it apart and tell me I had no idea what I was talking about. Let's face it, after writing 19 pages in 2 days, there was a distinct possibility that it wasn't even in recognizable English anymore. Fortunately, this was not the case. In fact, it was just about the best meeting I've ever had regarding my writing. While it is clearly a work in progress, she really thinks I'm onto something. It was some much-needed positive feedback. I have some theory reading to do this weekend, and then I can have another draft ready a week from Monday. I'm quite a bit more energized on it now.

There still remains the precolonial paper, of course, the abstract of which has now been accepted to 2 conferences in March. Eek!! It's crunch time (and not least because I currently have an "F" on my transcript....). So that's going to be my focus this week, especially on my glorious day off on Wednesday (Thank you, veterans, for the day off and, you know, the whole "serving your country with your life" thing....).

We're having a launch party on Wednesday for our new department t-shirt on Wednesday, which is, like, totes exciting. I'm going to wear the lovely shoes featured above. They are Michael Kors. I love them. They are exceedingly comfortable (not joking) and obviously dead sexy. Also having my voice midterm on Tuesday, the first time I've actually sang in front of people in a LONG time (other than weddings and karaoke, but this is a very different, potentially-getting-judged-in-front-of-professionals thing). Deep breath.

October 27: Tuesday

2009-10-27T22:26:00.001-07:00

7am, I hate you. 8:30 bus, almost late. Forgot the papers I've been grading, and therefore was destined to be no use at my TA meeting.

9am- TA workshop on student writing. It's really hard to grade student writing because, while we're responsible for teaching them history and grading history assignments, a lot of students cannot write at all. I don't know if this is a failure of the education system or if they're just lazy, but damn. Some of these kids just can't write. They have trouble with complete sentences, writing thesis statements, and understanding writing prompts. No matter how many times I explain that it's not a thesis, I will inevitably get "There were many similarities and differences between the Roman Empire and the Roman Republic that were both similar and different." NOT A THESIS. Argh. So basically any strategy that will help explain these apparently RIDICULOUSLY COMPLICATED concepts to students, I'm all about it. An hour well-spent.

10am- ran to the library to get some of the million and a half interlibrary loans that came in, all of which I really need to get through by this weekend. My estimate? 10 of them. None of which will be the ones in French.

11am- TA meeting. As I mentioned before, I was pretty much useless. Luckily, I have worked for this professor before and she thinks my grading is fine.

12pm- Lunch with the soon-to-be Dr. Bengry. Awesome, as usual.

2pm- Lecture. Students were exceptionally rude, as usual.

3:30pm- Lecture. Colonial masculinities and wage labor in Nigeria. Rawr.

5pm- went home and commenced studying. Finished reading for tomorrow morning's seminar. I think Nicholas Dirks' Castes of Mind is AWESOME. While he is writing about India, a lot of what he has to say is extremely relevant to colonial/postcolonial Rwanda, and I'm going to incorporate it into my article. I think it will make it even more awesome. Then read a bit of an MA thesis on Rwandan military culture through the colonial and postcolonial periods. It had a really helpful bibliography and some good summaries of historiography. It must go back tomorrow.

Now to study for my French quiz tomorrow, and mentally prepare for another ridiculously long day. But happily, I get to end the day tomorrow with dinner and "This Is It" with my Sweet Baboo. Definitely looking forward to that!

October 26: Monday

2009-10-26T20:59:00.000-07:00

Mondays are relatively calm days. Today a little more so because I was out of town this weekend and slept 14 hours when I got home yesterday after attending the kickoff event for our Center for Cold War Studies and International History. Fun stuff. (No, I don't really work on the Cold War. But the article I'm working on now is about decolonization and the UN mission in Rwanda, which does, in fact, involve paying attention to the Cold War. And, you know, my work is definitely international. so there we go.)

So....

8:30am woke up. Unpacked a bit, wrote out grocery lists, and checked a whole lot of email, as I've been away from my school email since Thursday. Ended up skipping French this morning because I didn't do the reading and I was sleepy.

Went to the office about 11, and scoured the music library for some scores to choose a song for my voice midterm next week, and for my recital at the end of the quarter.

Noon- had lunch with my favorite Anglo-Canadian. We talked a bit about terminology for writing about "gay" people outside of a contemporary Western context. This is a really contentious issue. "Gay" or "homosexual" mean very specific things, and using them in, say, a 19th century African context is really just inappropriate. So what do I say? Male same-sex relationships? Homosocial space? Men who love men? This particular friend has dealt with similar issues in his own work (which is fascinating, fyi), so I found his input to be really helpful.

2pm- Voice lesson. I really love this time every week. I'll be singing "The Man That Got Away" for my midterm and recital this quarter. It's super fun to do this kind of work, so different from what I normally do.

3:30- went home and to the grocery. Came home and made whole wheat bread in my bread machine (yummy!) and some cheese-crusted chicken, which turned out really well (props to my cousin Nada for the recipe and Penzey's Spices for the cheese).

There has not been much work done today. I skimmed a little of an MA thesis on the Rwandan armed forces today for some sources. I think it will be helpful and I plan on getting into it a little more tomorrow. I also found out that I can't ILL some of the UN documents I need, so I'm going to try and schmooze it up at the Special Collections department, and see if they can't help me get a few of these things. I'm planning on making a trip up to Stanford the week of Thanksgiving to dig a bit (they own Rene Lemarchand's papers), so hopefully I'll get a lot of info then too.

Going to grade papers now. I hope they don't suck. Seacrest out!

October 21: Wednesday

2009-10-21T21:20:00.000-07:00

7am. I hate 7am. Any day, doesn't matter. No French, as much as I need to. 8:30 bus, print out response paper....

9-11am, British Empire seminar. We discussed Edward Said's Orientalism and some of his critics, including Bernard Porter, who is a snarky douchebag. There, I said it. Why, you ask? His tone, his general dismissal of any responsibility for imperialism, and the fact that he thanked his dog in the acknowledgments. RIDICULOUS. Imperialism is bad. It sort of astonishes me how much people don't want to acknowledge that EVERYONE is implicated in imperialism, not just the elite politicians. European economic strength was built on the backs of slave labor. The working-class included. No one got to sit it out. (The American empire, fyi, is the same. You're reading this on a computer. You are implicated. I'm writing this on a computer. I'm implicated. There is no excuse for ignorance.) If Said was painting the "West" with too broad a brush, perhaps he was merely mimicking the main thrust of orientalist scholarship up to that point. If it makes you feel a little squeamish, perhaps you need to question the way in which you perceive the "East." We must constantly question our assumptions, our positionality, our privilege. It is the only possible way to be a responsible scholar. There is no way to not exploit, but at least freakin' acknowledge that you exploit. And then don't wallow in your guilt: do something constructive that has the potential to liberate. Rant over.

11-12:15, French class. Had a quiz today. TOTALLY mistranslated convaincu qu'aujourd'hui, but otherwise did OK. Translation ability will kick up when I start translating real documents next week when I get them from ILL. I'm pretty excited about that, actually. I am slowly becoming able to figure out sentences. It's really slow, but, you know, it's getting better. That class, on the other hand, is boring as hell. And I had a headache today, which didn't help. It's the only chance I really have at this point to be the smart-ass kid in the back of the classroom, so I sort of revel in it.

1-2pm, meeting for New Sexualities Research Focus Group. I'm really stoked about being a part of this this year, meeting other people doing sexuality research, and potentially getting some more feedback on my own work. I love interdisciplinarity, intersectionality....LOVE.

2-2:30pm, met with my advisor. We ragged on bridezillas for a while, then talked about work stuff. He's definitely on board with my idea to take Arabic next year, and we talked a bit about my two projects. I feel quite blessed to have such a supportive advisor. Seriously, it doesn't matter what kind of a hare-brained, half-thought idea I come in with, he always listens and then finds a way to make it sound totally rational. LOVE. It was a good meeting.

3-5pm, taught 2 discussion sections. Students were supposed to read Fichte, Daniel O'Connell, Stickney Ellis and Darwin. We talked about nationalism. They did a good job with the articles and parsing out what nationalism is and is not.

5-6pm, ate Wendy's and hung out with my favorite Anglo-Canadian. We keep each other from the edge of madness. I will miss him soooooooooooooo much when he finishes his totally amazing dissertation in December and leaves me for more civilized places that have universal healthcare. Or maybe just to hang out with monkeys in Borneo (there are monkeys there, right? I'm not making that up....)

6-7pm, taught last section. Only 9 students showed up out of 21. They were a good group, though, and several of them spoke for really the first time all quarter. I'm always impressed with the stuff this group comes up with. They keep me on my toes when I'm really dragging.

Meant to catch the bus at 7:24, but it was full. I mean, to the point of not letting people get on. The next bus wasn't until 8:23, which would mean that I wouldn't get home until 9:00, and since I had to pack to go home tomorrow, that was just not going to work. Luckily, my Sweet Baboo came and picked me up and took me home, because he is the best person in the world. No, he's not my boyfriend, we are not dating, and we don't even occasionally make out. Just friends. I call him my Sweet Baboo because, well, it just fits.

Now I'm packing, watching "Top Chef," and enjoying some red wine with my roomies and the cat. This weekend: grading, wedding, general debauchery in Louisville. Holler!

October 20: Tuesday

2009-10-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

Up at 7:30 (after being woken up at 5am by a text from my mother replying to a text I sent her 12 hours before, then at 6am by my credit card company thanking me for paying my bill....). No time for French today, too sleepy. Managed to eat some turkey bacon and a tomato. Hurriedly went over Weber notes. Caught the bus at 9:30.

Meeting with paper advisor at 10am, which didn't really happen until 10:15. She is on Latin American time. I'm not being racist, just repeating her excuse for being constantly 15 minutes late for everything. But I like her and we totally had girl bonding politics time today, so no worries. She's really into my project (the one on the Rwandan independence movement). I have a draft due November 2. That's kind of frightening, as I have like 10 pages of disheveled material at the moment. But here goes.

TA meeting at 11am. I was 5 minutes late. Talked about next week's teaching, and grading the papers we got today.

Went and got a Coke with Justin. Did not get run over by skateboarders. Filled out requisition forms (finally) to reimburse my fellow HGSA (History Grad Students Association) officers for expenses. Dropped off requisition forms at the org office and checked about how to access our online account, which I haven't been able to do since I was elected Treasurer in June (a job I am WHOLLY unqualified for, fyi).

Lecture, 2-3:15. Collected 60 student papers beforehand, 3-4 pages each. Checked off each student to make sure they were on time. I have 2 students out with some form of flu, and their papers will be late.

Seminar on Gender and Power in Modern Africa, 3:30-4:45. My advisor's class. Always gets me thinking and I have 4 million ideas that I have to write down right away so I can incorporate them later. MAJOR brain wave on the precolonial paper regarding the use of Weber and Arendt. HUGE, potentially game-changing. But only if it works. Am up to 11 pages on that paper, and still have 2 sections to write. Ideally will finish this draft by the first week of November. A big deal, given it was due in June. (FYI: there are no deadlines in grad school. just be a grown-up and do your work.)

Rode home on the bus and started reading response paper for tomorrow morning's seminar. Re-reading Said's Orientalism and getting pissy about imperialism. It is thoroughly impossible for me to read about imperialism without getting angry. In my opinion, I should be allowed to write "a bunch of greedy motherfuckers stole a bunch of shit from a bunch of other people, enslaved, raped and murdered them, and then got the hell out so they could watch the world burn" and be done with it. That does not cut it, however, in terms of sophisticated analysis. So 250 words later I am parsing Said's methodology and sources, which are perfectly fine, thanks. A little miffed at the continued assumption by every single freakin' scholar that British and French imperialism are the model by which all imperialisms should be judged, because, well, they were both exceptions. In fact, there is no rule. I don't know why people want to write a grand theory of imperialism. There is no grand theory of imperialism, other than the one I just crudely put out there. But oh well.

Watching "The Life of Brian" on IFC. Brain dangerously close to shutdown, and it's only 10pm. That is not good.

Tomorrow is my early morning, and longest day. 9am to 7pm, including 3 hours of teaching. So off to bed I go.

October 19: Monday

2009-10-19T18:47:00.000-07:00

Woke up at 8am. Checked email and sent feedback on 3 student papers, which are due tomorrow. Did 30 minutes of French. Got ready and caught the bus at 10:30am. Phone conference with BFF while on the bus, annoyed fellow passengers.

French class, 11-12:15.

Checked email and wrote back to 3 more students regarding papers. Worked for 5 minutes on revising a conference abstract. Completely blew a conference proposal deadline at noon. Boo. This one would have been a sure thing, and was really close.

Office hours 1-1:45pm. 4 students' drafts about the Industrial Revolution in 19th century Britain. Realized I hadn't completed my song list for my voice lesson. Quickly finished it and emailed it, as there was no time to print. Dashed across campus to voice lesson, which I was late for.

Voice lesson, 2:15-2:45. Got out late and was late for office hours. 2 text messages from colleagues about students lining up outside my office.

Office hours, 2:45-4:45. 12 more students. 2 of them have not started writing papers that are due tomorrow, and neither have any idea at all what the assignment is or how to write it. Not looking forward to grading some of these. Others are writing beautiful and creative papers. Those will be better. Checked and replied to 5 more student emails by 5pm and decided to go home and work for the evening.

Ate first food of the day at 6:08pm, a bowl of chicken noodle soup and some cheese.

6:15-7pm, checked and replied to 5 more student emails.

Still to do:
1. Finish reading intro to a bibliography on African governmental systems from 1968 and take notes on how it relates to Max Weber.
2. Read bibliography of books on Congo and Rwanda published in the US between 1940 and 1958.
3. Finish reading "Charisma" chapter in Weber's Economy and Society and take notes.
4. Go over all Weber notes to prepare for meeting tomorrow morning about article in progress.
5. 30 more minutes of French.
6. Hopefully get to bed before midnight.

Tomorrow is one of my 2 crazy days......more entertaining, I hope.

I actually do real work.

2009-10-18T17:25:00.000-07:00

So, one of the things that bugs a lot of academics is the charge that our work isn't "real" or "important." There are a lot of reasons for this, I suppose, but I think the biggest one is that most people outside of the academy think that we're all a bunch of overgrown college students. I would like to dispel that image.

I really loved college. I did not go to graduate school because I wanted to continue to be in college forever. I went to graduate school because I love what I study. I love it so much that I was willing to give up financial security in order to continue to study it. Graduate students, for the most part, live dangerously close to the poverty line. This is a choice we all make. Generally speaking, we will all make a decent living when we get out of graduate school. But academia isn't some sort of cash cow. For some reason people believe that college professors make tons of money; I'm not really sure why people think that, but it's untrue. Further, most of us will also be saddled with tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars of loan debt when we finally finish school. It's all well and good to look at salaries at the largest state schools in the country and say, "Oh, look, they make over a hundred thousand dollars a year." Well, that's true. A few very senior, very famous professors do make that kind of money, toward the end of their careers. The vast majority don't even come close. We make around what most high school teachers make, and we don't start earning that until well into our 30s or 40s, usually. It can take a really long time to finish grad school. (That's another post for another day.)

So what in the world do we do all day? Well, a lot of things. Academic graduate programs in the social sciences and humanities (as distinguished from professional graduate programs) are basically about becoming a scholar. That means you pretty much need to know everything there is to know about the field in which you specialize. So, first and foremost, we read a lot. I mean A LOT. Like, several books a day sometimes. Do we read every single word? No. Do we read them closely enough to know what the argument is, how it's structured, and where the author got their material? Yes. In my particular program, they test us on this around about our third year in a series of torturous things called "comprehensive exams." As I am only in my second year, I will not take these until next year. If you read this blog (the, you know, 3 of you who do), you'll hear more and more about these as they approach. That should be entertaining.

So I read a lot right now. Today, I've read about 7 government/UN publications on the structure of Belgian colonial rule in Rwanda. I'm looking for information on how the colonial government structured the society, how they defined ethnicity, etc. I'm doing this for a specific paper that I'm writing on the revolution that led to Rwandan independence between 1959 and 1962. This is really important because a lot of people who have written about Rwandan history since the 1994 genocide contend that ethnic divisions didn't really exist prior to colonialism, and that is is basically the fault of the Europeans that there has been so much violence in Rwanda since the 1960s. While you can certainly blame the Belgians for a lot of things, you can't blame them for the ethnic divisions. Not entirely, anyway. So I'm writing an article that basically argues that if you want to understand Rwanda since colonialism ended, you actually need to look at Rwandan history since the early 19th century.

That's all well and good, I can hear you say, but no one's going to read that. It doesn't mean anything in the real world, to working people and whatnot. Not so fast.

It's true that very few people will probably ever read this article, or my dissertation, or anything else that I write (and I'll get into the dissertation in a minute). However, there are some people who DO read this stuff, and what they read is very important. They are people in charge of making decisions about foreign aid, military strategy, international security, and other things that people generally consider "important." As a taxpayer, you want to know that your tax money (in the form of foreign aid) is going to actually do some good, right? It would really suck if all this foreign aid was being wasted on social and political programs that don't take into account the reality on the ground, right? Well, how do you think we know anything about the reality on the ground? Someone has to research this stuff. In this case, I'm that someone (at least, if this gets published).

There still seems to be a perception that History is supposed to be the study of old, dead white men and their wars. Don't get me wrong: that's what got me into History in the first place. Sometime in my college years I fell in love with Peter the Great and I've been hooked ever since. But I learned really quickly that what we consider important enough to study has a pretty profound impact on the world today. If the actions of white men are the only ones worth studying, what does that say about all the women in the world, all the POC in the world, etc.? Don't you think the majority of the world should matter? I do.

Academia isn't about navel-gazing or trying to be superior. It's about trying to understand the world as it is. It's realizing that everyone has personal experiences, and that those experiences shape the way they behave. It's understanding that we cannot address the world's problems without understanding the world. And sometimes it's about exposing the false perceptions we've been raised to believe are true. My work is unabashedly political: I have an agenda, and I'm not shy about that.

To wit, my major project (which will eventually be my dissertation, and hopefully my first book) is an investigation of male same-sex relationships in the Rwandan military in the 19th century. I realize that sounds really obscure to people outside the academy (and frankly, to most of the people in it). I'm used to that; we all are. But there are a number of reasons why this is actually important.

1. A lot of people believe that homosexuality is something new or contemporary, and that it is abnormal. It is neither. As long as there have been humans, there has been love and sex between people of the same-sex. It's recorded on every continent, in every time. The reason you probably don't know that is that nobody bothered talking about it or studying it for a very long time. Historians didn't really start asking questions about sexuality until the 1990s. When we did, we figured out pretty quickly that it was important. Human beings do a lot of things because they are motivated by sex. I'm not joking. And I find it really offensive that people act like homosexuals are abnormal or victimized or sick in some way. They're not. It's important to know that every society in the history of humankind has been comprised of both heterosexual and homosexual people, and that all those societies have grown and flourished just the same. In fact, the ones that have allowed for many variations of sexuality have often been the most successful, because they didn't stunt the happiness of their own people. A shocker, I know. Did you also know that many of the HIV/AIDS prevention programs in Africa completely ignore homosexual sex? It's one of the reasons that a lot of these programs haven't been very effective. A lot of people believe that there aren't any gay Africans, and that assumption has made its way into the scientific and medical community. Ignoring a reality like that has literally caused people to die, by the thousands. Might be a little important to correct that.

2. A lot of people believe that Africa doesn't have history before white people got there and enslaved them. That's a big fat lie. Africans all over the continent had political and social structures, family structures, architecture, religion, and all that other "civilisation" stuff way before Europeans got there. I'm not just talking about Egypt or the, you know, 2 other places in Africa that people normally learn about. I'm talking about all of it. Why should we care? Because the premise that Africa has no history or civilisation has excused the exploitation, degradation, and dehumanization of African people for centuries. I think it's a worthy cause to contribute to stopping that.

3. There is nothing un-manly about a man loving another man. In fact, in some societies, the height of masculinity was expressed through male same-sex love. Rwanda is one of those societies. The relationships I study were in the elite warrior class, the alpha-males of the society. This includes famous and respected warrior kings. This was not conquestorial or violent sex, nor was it rampant promiscuity. These relationships were premised on love and respect and devotion. All in the context of one of the most advanced warrior cultures on the African continent.

4. Europeans are not exceptional. Not in any way, actually. A lot of scholarship on Africa since the 1960s has vociferously argued that Europeans were not special in having advanced political or economic systems, or anything "positive." And they weren't. They also weren't exceptionally cruel or brutal or violent. Humanity, in general, is cruel and brutal and violent. We have been forever. Africans have never been any different. But we also know how to love, and in that, we are united as well.

Ultimately, then, I'm writing a dissertation about love and war, the two things that remind us that we're all human and deserve respect and dignity. Sort of important, maybe? Even to "normal" folks?

That's enough for the moment. I'm also planning a post on what a week looks like for me and other students, as well as something to address the whole "pretentious academic" charge. Stay tuned.

More Crackhead Student Quotes

2009-06-11T10:26:00.001-07:00

Oy, I've neglected my responsibilities. Here's the last batch from the grading. Some of these really hurt my head. I think we need to work on "critical thinking" as a necessary skill for these kids.

"The Europeans carved up Africa like children choosing the flavors of Jellybeans."

"Although Africa did not have structured military armies, the people of Africa were bonded through Nationalism and fought in rebellions as one." (No armies? There goes my dissertation...)

"The British in Africa really tortured there economy and political structure."

"So if man won't fight then leave to the woman to finish what they started on start what they need to finish."

"Because they watched their King get tooken. So she suggested that she would gather a group of women to fight. Since the mens won't do anything." (Apparently Mario Cantone is writing exams now.)

"The letter [from Menelik II] stated that they didn't want to start a battle or anything because they were a good island and stayed to theirself. They didn't want to be divided into something that they wasn't."

"European powers wanted to break up the [African] unit by colonizing different portions, but the African's strong instinct to fight back didn't allow it."

"Screw history." (Succinct, yet satisfying.)

"They were treated poorly, and even killed to some extent."

"But because the African people were semi poor, they only had little old guns while the British fought with big guns."

"African slave trade was started when Poland initially invaded West African shores."

"Document 5 is a picture showing how the Ethiopians beat the Italians; its a good source because it comes from a museum."

"The Germans thought killing Africans was a luxury." (This student got incredibly angry over this idea. I think the self-righteous ones were my favorites, like those students who take a college class in Women's Studies and suddenly realize that sexism still exists.)

"Africans want to maintain a stable relationship with Europe but to stay out of dangerous affairs."

"This process was called the Scrable for Africa. The African American people were not happy about this decision to interrupt their way of livign and corrupt their way of life."

"Africa could have made some sort of deal with Europe with the help of the Royal Niger Company. Instead of letting Europe take their land, Africa could have divided themselves in half. One half of Africa belongs to Africa, while the other half belongs to Europe. Maybe if the Africans did not have too much fear of the white men, they could have gained back some of their control." (I would advocate for putting this student in charge of the Middle East peace process. I think s/he's onto something.)

"In 1896, Italy attacked Ethiopia, but sadly lost."

"With these actions and reactions in effect, the European alliances went out on Africa and rebeled on their homes and land as well as being patience with their decision and the speeches to stop the Europeans."

"They lured the African nations into their web, and then milked them for everything they had."

"Kumalo says they were 'treated like slaves,' and they became pissed, so the Ndebele Rebellion sparked almost spontaneously, with a lot of rage."

"The Ashanti leader declined the offer and the reason she would know so much about a topic like that is because she is the leader of the kingdom and things like that offer would go to her." (Logic....nice.)

"Europe was a powerful colony. They had the guns, germs and steel to take over whatever colony they pleased."

"However [the Berlin Conference] was unfair to Africa because not one African was allowed at the UN meeting dealing with the division of Africa."

"African countries felt they were destroying their culture, killing their kin and they needed to fight back dispite their inadiquit equipment."

"The Ndebele Rebellion pushed forward against the British in South America in 1896."

"West Africa being more materartical, enjoying the protection of the queen."

"The country of Africa prospered in peace up until 1884-1885. The Berlin Conference brought many European visitors to the country Africa but to the Africans, the Europeans seemed more like invaders than visitors."

"Of course the British are going to want to colonize Africa because they're greedy people and they want all the money, land and natural resources they can get." (It's called "capitalism," honey.)

"In 1886 the Royal Niger Company peacefully invaded West Africa in hopes of improving the country."

"The Africans fought the Europeans with sticks and fire."

"It was probably intended as reverse psychology since men are all proud and would never accept a woman taking charge and join in battle."

"Well, a short distance from the strawberry farm , a man had found a map to the monstrous strawberry. So, men being inferior to cows, he decided to give the map to the strawberry-loving cow."

"During that time frame the holocaust was also happening or at least at the begining of the 1800s."

"It's no surprise to hear this because [Menelik II] is emperor of Ethiopia who is Christian. Christians believe in peace, not violence because it is not what God wants."

"During the age of imperialism the European powers spread around the globe like ants."

"Africa was turned into a smorgasbord of land, Europe scrambled for a piece of the omelet they called the goldmine of Africa."

"One European man discovered a new land. He saw naked women and men running around. All they had was a leaf to cover their breasts and other areas."

"We began this test after 9am."

"An additional doc should come from a soldier who was killed in battle so we would knew what he thought about losing to the Ethiopians." (As a historian, I have to say, communicating with the dead would make life SOOOOOOOOO much simpler.)

Ta-da. Grading finished. Will get back to odd grad school angst in a day or so.

Things I've Learned From Grading, Part Deux

2009-06-04T17:17:00.001-07:00

Here's today's batch. A few other graders are contributing as well, so it's getting good.

"Around 1884 there was a conference in England. It was called the Berlin Conference."

"The Africans were never a real warring nation because of their seclusion from the modern world. For this reason, they have always been peaceful, and generally left alone." (There goes my research...)

"The white men say their the bad ones but their the ones who have everyone running, in Africa."

(FYI, for those who don't know me personally, incorrect use of homophones is my biggest pet peeve.)

"During the time period of 1884 and 1885 the Europeans tried to take over the African state known as Africa."

"We all must fight in a rebellion for our land holding our nationalism strong. :)" (I love it when they use emoticons on exams.)

"We all have the same red blood pumping through our vains skin tone is a type of diverse beauty. Love is unconditional, African societies expressed their love in rebellions, fighting for their land and nationalism." (This one was such a hippie.)

"The mad Scramble for Africa resulted in a mixture of actions and reactions. Some get what they wanted and others were unfortunate but that's the way the cookie crumbles." (I have no words...)

"The Ashanti wanted to remain independent while keeping a platonic relationship with the British." (So no making out.)

"All Africans were opposed to Scrable in Africa." (They prefer Candy Land.)

"In 1886 the Royal Niger Company sent letters to African Americans, asking them to make a pledge not to enter themselfs into any war with other tribes." (Thanks, Jesse Jackson. I credit you also with the student who last year informed me that Nelson Mandela was the first African-American president of South Africa.)

"The Scramble for Africa was a scary time for Africans. Many of them didn't know what to do and completely freaked out." (Um, OK....)

"The Ethiopian painting depicts a victory of the colored men while the Royal Niger Company is making alliences to support colored men." (I think I preferred "African American" after all...)

"If I was to request a document, I would use thoroughly one stating specifics during the first years around 200 BCE as compared to 1450 CE."

"Without the Silk Road, travel to Asia would be really hard." (Since there are no flights from LA.)

"One disease that can attributed its major success to trade on the Silk Road is the smallpox, which was breed to the domestication of animals."

"The ideas and culture of China were able to escape into the world along the Silk Road." (Quick, somebody catch them!)

"Maybe since Marco [Polo] went there that might be why Mongollia didn't take over Western Europe." (One look at Marco and they were like, "Fuck that!")

"An example would be how Mongols spread disease in to China. Diseases such as sypholis, AIDS gonorrhea, and such. The disease spreading was living on through there people."

"As civilizations died and others were born, the Silk Road's took the journey with them."

Also, if African and Europeans had had the Torah, they would've known how to be peaceful.

Latin Americans are our friends from "down under."

Africa is a country.

More tomorrow, loves.

Things I've Learned From Grading, Part I

2009-06-03T17:14:00.000-07:00

I will update my, like, 2 readers on the rest of my academic life in a day or two. For now, I want to share some things I learned while grading today. I will be doing this until Monday, so check back every night for your dose of "What America's Future Knows About the Rest of the World"

"One should take in account such inference since he cannot be biased due to his disposition."

"After the Berlin Conference, many European powers divided up Africa as if they owned it. The Africans did not like this." (i'm shocked.)

"If all of Africa was so upset by the European Scramble why would they sign a form that binds them to a company commissioned by the British? This just shows that some Africans were all for Europe colonizing areas in Africa." (don't you love it when students become apologists for imperialism?)

"The Scramble for Africa seemed short-lived and unable to attain its ultimate goal of dividing up the nations among Europeans." (colonialism didn't work. who knew?)

"White people during the Scramble for Africa had no sense of indecency or justice." (Truth.)

"Several genders, including men, women, and sometimes children would do anything with in there power to fight back against the white people." (children constitute a gender....)

"Obviously the Africans were the least enthused by this hustle for their territory." (out of the mouths of babes, indeed.)

"A useful document that would have came to good use in this is an account of a slave. It would show how the servents of the devil (Europe) felt during this time."

"Multiple of Africans took action into their own hands."

"Islam had invaded Eastern Africa taking many cultures that Africans had followed for many years and thrown them in the trash." (Muslims are never Africans, fyi.)

Also, I learned that Ethiopia was, in fact, not part of Africa, and that Menelik II did not care what happened to the rest of the continent.

Favorite of the day:

"Africa went serious on Germany, which comes to be Europe." (Remind you of anybody?)

More to come, stay tuned.

Do you ever have those days....?

2009-05-28T22:31:00.000-07:00

OK, so I've already had like 2 mini-breakdowns today. I think I'm just really exhausted and feeling really overwhelmed. I feel like I've already done so much work, but there's still so much left to do, and I don't know how to handle it. On the one hand, it'll be nice to get away for a week and grade papers in which I have absolutely no personal stake. On the other, all the mental preparation is a little nuts, and thinking about grading papers for 8 hours a day, 6 days in a row is really daunting.

At the moment, though, I'm really stressed about this dissertation workshop. Not really sure why I'm going in the first place. My proposal was really quickly put together, and that's very obvious. Also, since this was 2 months ago, I've pretty much completely changed my topic at this point. Add to that the fact that pretty much everyone else is at a far more advanced stage of research, and I'm feeling really intimidated by the whole thing, and like I'm not going to handle criticism well, even though I know the proposal needs a huge amount of work. I hope I can learn a lot in this process, but right now, I fear I don't have the energy to get through it. I need to sleep for about a week, and then just watch TV for about 4 days. All "Golden Girls" and reality TV. I sort of feel like Blanche in this clip right about now.

All in all, today is epic suck. Hopefully I will have better things to report by Sunday.

Blah

2009-05-26T21:21:00.000-07:00

I hate days like today. I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep because my brain wouldn't quit working. I still have ugly-ass ringworm on my neck and it looks like I got bit by a vampire, and not the hot kind that drives a flashy car. I still have 50 midterms to grade by 3pm tomorrow. Which are not going to get done, since I left them at the office.

I spent the entire day revising a response paper that I'm fairly sure one of my profs will eviscerate, and then 4 hours in 2 different seminars talking about African cities and state-building in Burma. Ick.

And then my friend bailed on me after promising to take me to In-N-Out, so I had to make crappy pasta. If it weren't for Texts From Last Night, I'd just end it now. :)

Tomorrow, teaching about the Holocaust! Then just one more response paper and a prospectus and I am done with this hellish awful quarter.

Memorial Day 2009

2009-05-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend reading/writing about the Modern African City. I am not sure what precisely that entails.

What is modern? After 9 weeks in a seminar on modernity, I can honestly say that I have no idea. There is a level of industrialization and technological development that can be called "modern." But that does not seem to be what most modernization theorists (and, indeed, their critics) are writing about.

Democracy seems to be part of modernity, at least in its originally-conceived form. There has been a lot of debate over this. I tend to think that democracy has very little to do with modernity. In fact, I think liberalism has very little to do with it either, since liberalism doesn't seem to work in a lot of places.

Things associated with Europe and the U.S. seem to be part of modernity. However, this focus on a specific culture of modernity make me fairly sure that modernity should not be a universal goal. Though a lot of postcolonial theorists want to argue that there are multiple or alternative modernities, I am not so convinced. James Ferguson has a really interesting take on it, in that most of the Africans he encountered (he's worked primarily in southern Africa, Zambia, South Africa and Lesotho) subscribe to this more "western" definition of modernity and actually desire it, because it is associated with stability and luxury. In fact, Ferguson has argued, it's insulting to tell a person that their culture is an "alternative modernity," when the modernity they seek is one in which they are not starving (or something like that). He was our guest in seminar last week, and he has reaffirmed my belief that there are some good anthropologists out there. :)

Urbanization also seems to be an integral part of what most theorists would consider modern. My reading this week was about African cities, primarily Johannesburg and Kinshasa. Clearly the Kinshasa reading was a little more interesting to me due to my professional interest in Congo. I'm still working on my response paper for the week, and our discussion is Tuesday, but I see a pretty profound relationship between the way the city was constructed during colonialism and in the immediate postcolonial era and the overwhelming alienation that has plagued urban populations since. Mechanisms for constructing identity seem to be completely disrupted, forcing urban inhabitants to find new ways of belonging. While wage labor once served that purpose, in places like Kinshasa, formal wage labor doesn't exist anymore. Kinshasa is a city of lumpen. What's more, these cities are predominantly male, which creates the need for new forms of family structure.

What was perhaps most striking (at least to me) was the role of Western popular culture in how new social identities are constructed. Westerns were very popular in Kinshasa in the 1950s and young men fancied themselves cowbows in the Wild West. Indeed, Kinshasa (or Leopoldville, as it was called prior to independence in 1960) is a frontier. Today, those cowboys have been replaced by soldiers or hunters or the Terminator. I couldn't help but wonder what sort of impact these films had on the types of violence that have become so very prevalent in contemporary Africa (can we call it "postmodern"?).

I should confess that I really like post-apocalyptic movies, probably because I'm interested in how people construct social network and identities, and the idea of a tabula rasa really intrigues me. But I like them also because they are films. They are fiction. So much of Congo (and many other conflict-ridden African countries) are like real post-apocalyptic worlds, and this article about Kinshasa did nothing to alter this particular perception of mine. In this reality, I don't know that these films are good things. They glorify violence, simplistic ideology and, often, an extreme objectification of women.

I don't like censorship, and I think conversations about the effects of violence in popular culture in the U.S. are largely predicated on trying to control things we don't understand rather than actually protecting our children/their children/our women, etc. But in places where violence is so prevalent, what kind of impact do these messages have? The message of particular pieces of art largely depends on the context of the experiencer, right?

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about this weekend. Had a great time on Friday night celebrating my best friend's dissertation defense, and watched the first two "Terminator" movies on Saturday night (contributing, no doubt, to my processing of these readings). Partook in crepes at Coffee Cat on Saturday and Sunday. Yum. Hoping to hear something about the new place tomorrow so I can start packing.

2 weeks left in this quarter!! It'll be nice to have a little time to luxuriate and take my time going through 6000 pages of Jan Vansina's brilliance.

A Day without Nails

2009-05-04T21:17:00.000-07:00

The nails came off this morning. They will make a comeback on Friday, when I have time for a manicure, but they were just entirely too long and grown out to do much typing, and therefore, they had to be sacrificed.

I felt really tired and crappy today, so I didn't go to seminar this evening. I should have, because there's no crying in grad school, but I gave in and went home instead.

I finished Jan Vansina's Antecedents of Modern Rwanda: The Nyiginya Kingdom. Overall, an absolutely outstanding piece of historical scholarship. I'm really getting more into the precolonial history, and I think, ultimately, that's where my project is going to end up. Vansina is really challenging the "ethnic" reading of Rwandan history, much like David Newbury. It's really refreshing to read Rwandan history that is not about the 1994 genocide. Eventually I think we're going to be able to reclaim the historiography from all the pop historians who like to sell books by casting Africans as tribal and primitive and genocidal, and then we can view the genocide for what it was: an aberration, both for the continent and for Rwanda itself. Whatever the postcolonial history has been, it is markedly different than the precolonial.

Also graded a section of papers today. I'm underwhelmed. I have really smart students and am usually impressed with their work in class, but I just don't think they "got" the assignment. I think students really struggle with how to write a history paper about a novel. They always seem to do a literary analysis instead of placing the novel in a historical context. Boo. A lot of decent-to-good writing, which was a plus.

I need to start writing tomorrow, and getting some of this precolonial stuff down to paper, as my first draft of my historiographical essay is due next Thursday. Tomorrow I get to watch some colonial cinema, and then go have Wow-Cow. So even if the rest of the day sucks, yay, ice cream!

And it begins....

2009-05-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

So I'm going to use my blog as a bit of grad student therapy, as well as a way to keep me focused and accountable. Every day, I'm going to record what I'm reading, what I'm writing, and what I needed to read or write that I didn't. Maybe it will prove useful to someone considering grad school. Maybe it will give my colleagues a place to vent. Maybe it will just keep me sane. At any rate....

Today, I read Part I of Alfred Stepan's 1971 book The Military in Politics: Changing Patterns in Brazil. Not gonna lie, I don't understand much of this Latin America stuff. Well, I should say that I don't have much of a critical context in which to view it. Further, Stepan is a political scientist and BOY is that apparent.

I need to be working on my historiographical essay on the 1959 Hutu Social Revolution, but I did not this weekend. I was really tired and sort of run down, so I took some time off. It's really hard to justify this quarter, given the ridiculous amount of work I took on, but I had to. So, I drank a lot and went to a Derby party. Oh, and I ran on the elliptical for an hour today. I should do more of that.

Up for tomorrow: more Latin America and grading papers on the French Revolution. Ooo, party.

the chinese are pissed about hiroshima.....WTF???

2008-09-10T22:10:00.001-07:00

so, i'm watching "top design" on bravo, which is one of my favorite shows ever. one of the designers, natalie, was just giving her views on, if she could imagine the end of the world, she would want it to be over something "stupid." she hatched a scenario in which the chinese made transformers to bomb the u.s. because they were "pissed about hiroshima." i can't make this stuff up. stunning.

raise you hand if you think hiroshima is in china. those with hands up, please proceed to electroshock therapy. why do i think natalie is also a sarah palin fan.....

"made of honor"? puh-lease.

2008-09-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

so, i just saw a DVD ad for the movie "made of honor." now, y'all know that i love me some patrick dempsey (aka "mcdreamy"), come on. like this woman in the movie is gonna choose him over "luscious lucius" kevin mckidd. i mean, rawr.

(btw, picture credit to HBO, from "rome")

Sarah. Palin.

2008-09-07T21:27:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be as succinct as possible: this woman is Phyllis Schlafly, only vastly more dangerous. She must be defeated at all costs. To allow anyone to hold her up as a triumph of feminism is a profound insult to all those women who struggled before us.

In order to be feminist, one does not have to be a woman. In order to be feminist, one must do things that benefit all women. Sarah Palin's political beliefs (from what little we know of them) do not do anything to help women and, in fact, would hurt a lot of women. Specifically, poor women and women of color. I realize that the feminist movement has been derelict in its duty to help these women for a lot of its history, but that's no reason to totally abandon them now. Any public figure who endorses Bush's economic policies cannot be called feminist. Period. By increasing overall poverty, these policies have put more women in poverty, because there is a large proportion of women in poverty to begin with. Poverty is not good for women. Poverty is not good for anyone. And, for those who care, poverty is not pro-life. If you care about family values in the traditional sense, you should be doing all you can to lift women out of poverty.

Next, Sarah Palin is that girl who has gotten ahead based on the struggles of feminist women, but now spurns their sacrifice. She went to college. Do you know how many women had to fight so that she could do that? Sarah Palin got to marry for love. Do you know how many women never had that choice? Sarah Palin chose to have a large family. But that was her choice. Her daughter is having a child. Palin herself has described this as "Bristol's choice." She made a decision to carry this child to term and to raise this child. She was not forced into it by the government. But Sarah Palin would deny other women this choice, giving the government an astonishing amount of control over their bodies and reproductive capacities.

Finally, as to all the talk about whether it is appropriate to ask questions about Palin's family life: yes. In the first place, it's pretty much all we have to go on, as she has very little in the way of professional achievements. Secondly, SHE MADE IT AN ISSUE. When asked about her qualifications, she puts her family front and center. It's like giving testimony in court: if you open the door, don't be surprised when people walk through it. If you tout your experience as a mother as part of your qualification for a job, then it's going to come under scrutiny. We have every right to know as much as possible about someone who could potentially be the President of the United States (especially when the man at the top of the ticket isn't exactly a spring chicken). How dare the GOP call us sexist for wanting to know what qualifies this woman to be President?

Sarah Palin does harm to strong women anytime she refers to herself as a "pit bull" or "barracuda," because it implies that strong women are brutal, illogical or threatening. Thanks, Sarah, for setting us back 100 years. Thanks for showing us that women can be just as anti-intellectual as men. Thanks for showing us how hypocritical you can be, standing on the shoulders of generations of feminist activists to achieve what you have and then turning around and spitting in their faces by being a misogynist as any man. We all knew John McCain had women issues. But I don't think any of us expected him to find a woman who would reinforce them.

Ladies out there: you need to take this personally. This woman's rhetoric about being "everywoman" does in fact appeal to a lot of women (even though is totally delegitimizes the experiences of single women, women of color, poor women, etc.). You need to challenge this at every level. Talk to all the women you know and explain to them why Sarah Palin cannot be trusted. Explain why she is bad for women. Implore them not to waste their vote on someone who best exemplifies the empty promises that the GOP has made to women. Yes, we need female voices in our public life. But we need female voices that actually care about women. Feminism isn't about individual achievement; it's about helping all women, ending discrimination, making an equal playing field. Sarah Palin doesn't get that, and that she can't see the debt she owes feminists makes her even more dangerous than a misogynist man. Because she should know better.

Cookie-Gate

2008-06-16T17:04:00.001-07:00

WTF? Seriously. The first time I saw the story about Cindy McCain and her "stolen" cookie recipe, I thought it had to be a joke. I mean, if I want to make something, be it cookies, cake, beef stew or marinara, the first place I go is Epicurious. You know, like everybody else does. There are plenty of reasons to hate on Cindy McCain (like her whole hanging with John when he was still married thing), but give me a break. She's a busy woman. She can't sit around studying baking theory to create her own recipe.

Then, lo and behold, I come across this today in the Huffington Post:

Bill Clinton's Cookie Recipe Copied From Betty Crocker SERIOUSLY????

A. Betty Crocker was not a real person. "She" was created by people who wanted to make money off the notion of the "ideal" housewife, an idea which in itself is abhorrently sexist.

B. He got a recipe from a cookbook. SHOCKER! I doubt he was all, "I'm the only person in America who can make these cookies."

C. He's a freakin' former president. Don't you think he has better shit to do all day, like make racially-charged comments about Barack Obama or broker peace in the Middle East (or return my texts? WTF, Bill?)? Honestly.

What is it about presidential spouses that makes us expect the reincarnation of Donna Reed (who was, you know, a TV character)? Both Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain are educated, intelligent, accomplished women. We're asking them for cookie recipes???? How about asking them about education reform, healthcare, the epidemic of rape against women in conflict zones, reproductive rights, equal pay.....ANYTHING that actually affects women's lives! Perhaps we could get them to speak about their personal experiences as women, discrimination they've faced, even in their privileged lives, on the basis of their gender. Perhaps ask what they plan to do to be an advocate for women. Wouldn't that be a better use of their time than swapping cookie recipes that everyone knows you can get on the back of a package of chocolate chips anyway?

This stuff gives me a headache for real.

Observations of a Retail Wench

2008-05-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

After working my way through college working a variety of retail jobs, I’ve observed a lot of human behavior, specifically shopping behavior, but also some general stuff. There have been a few constants through working in jewelry, lingerie and clothing, and I will share them with you now. Perhaps they will illuminate, for those of you who’ve never found yourself employed in retail, certain behaviors of the associates. If you’ve worked retail, maybe you’ll find some points of commonality.

In no particular order:

1. I understand that you have to bring your kids shopping with you sometimes. It can’t be helped. You can’t always leave them at home with your husband, or with your mom, or with a babysitter. I realize that often you’d rather be shopping by yourself, getting some quality alone time, but that does not excuse you acting as though the children do not exist. They do. And they’re bored out of their caffeine-addled minds. See the mirrors and windows they’re pressing up against? I have to clean those several times a day. The glass jewelry cases? Gotta clean those too. Nobody wants to buy a $5000 pair of earrings that are in a case with your kid’s snot on it. The jeans they just ripped off the shelves and threw on the floor? I have to refold all of them, then resize them, then put them back on the wall. See that table they’re climbing on? Not a jungle gym. Hear that ear-splitting scream coming from your 18-month-old? I can too. Doesn’t help the migraine I already have to work with. And you screaming “shut up” at her doesn’t help anything. She’s a baby, yelling at her doesn’t work. Maybe this is one of those times you need to sacrifice a little for your kids and NOT be shopping. And, BTW, if one more of your kids pisses on the floor, I’m rubbing your face in it. That’s just nasty.

2. Don’t lie to me and tell me you didn’t wear these pants. Not only did you wear them, but you wore them out to the club, smoked 2 packs of cigarettes in them, and I have suspicions you wore them without underwear. Yes, I realize the customer is always right, and yes, I’ll let you return them because you have your receipt and tags, and I’m supposed to kiss your ass, but you should know that my coworkers and I are going to talk about your dirty ass for the rest of the day. If you do this on a regular basis, chances are you have a nickname and we talk shit about you to any new employees, who will know every dirty little thing you’ve ever done. Especially that time you brought back the bra with the body crumbs. Triflin’.

3. If I walk around the store behind you and straighten up the racks of clothes, it does not make me racist. Keep in mind, I can’t leave the store at night until it’s neat and tidy and ready to open in the morning. If you walk in 3 minutes before close and start messing shit up, you’re damn right I’m going to follow you around straightening up when you throw shirts any old place you feel like, putting pants in the wrong place, and unbuttoning the shirts it took me 3 hours to button 30 minutes ago. We both know you’re probably not going to buy anything, but I’m going to continue to ask you if I can help you find anything, because if, by chance, you are actually looking for something specific, it’s much more expedient for you to tell me and then I can show you exactly where it is, grab it in your size, take your money, and get you the hell out of my store. I want to go home/the bar/make bad decisions with questionable men/engage in seditious activities, basically anything other than stay in this store for another minute. Yes, I realize that I’m white and you’re not, and if you’d like, we can go have a drink sometime and talk about institutionalized racism and how we can work toward a society in which you are not oppressed. I don't want to make light of that. However, at the moment, I’m thinking that my feet hurt/I’m hungry/I’m horny/I’m bored/I hate this bitch I work with/I’m so sick of this song/I hate having to fold these goddamn shirts, and I can’t think lofty thoughts. You could be Michelle Obama, I wouldn’t notice. I’d just be thinking, “Please, why are you doing this to me?” And, BTW, I'd do the same thing if you were white and Barbara Bush. Although then, I'd probably find a way to kick you in the shins, too.

4. If you’re in a fitting room and ask for a size and I say I don’t have it, I know what I’m talking about. If I tell you that I just went to look for those particular pants in that particular size for another customer and we didn’t have them, I’m not lying to you, nor am I being lazy by not immediately running to the rack and looking again. I’m saving you time and me considerable irritation. If I offer to call another store for you, I’m being nice, so don’t give me attitude. If you do, I’ll talk shit about you to the girl at the register later. She’ll agree with me, and the next time you come in, we’ll both be like, “There’s that bitch,” and I’ll be much less likely to go out of my way to help you in the future. Sorry, that’s just how it is.

5. If you steal, we know it. I clean up the fitting rooms after people leave, and I can see if you leave empty hangers, sensors and tags in the room, and I know that you never went to the register. I’m not going to run out of the store after you, but I’ll sure as hell tell everybody else in the store, and from now on, we’ll follow you around and be inordinately attentive. If you bring your kids in to distract us, it won’t work. That’s why there are always 2 of us.

6. We are required, by our bosses, to ask you on a regular basis if you’re finding everything you need or if you need help. We’re not trying to be annoying or make you nervous, but if we don’t and a secret shopper comes in and reports us, we get yelled at. Anyone who’s ever worked in retail will be able to tell you this. I apologize in advance if you, like me, prefer to shop without assistance.

7. If you’re a skinny girl, don’t try to shop at the big girl store. We don’t have anything for you. Looking around with your curvy friends and going, “Oh, this is cute! I wish I could wear it!” doesn’t help anything. It makes us want to talk about you, which we’ll do later, after you leave. Also, if you’re a former big girl who has lost weight, you need to find another store. I know you’re comfortable here, but you’ve worked hard to get the new body you have, and there’s no sense in hiding it in clothes that are 3 sizes too big just because you don’t know where to go. Get a skinny girl to show you. Basically, you can go anywhere now. Congratulations.

8. The fitting room is not a confessional. I realize that doing a bra fitting is kind of intimate, and that I’m pretty much feeling you up, but that does not mean I need you to share Jesus with me. (This does not apply to women who have recently undergone a mastectomy. This is an emotional time, and if you need to cry or get mad or whatever else, that’s what I’m here for. You’ve earned it, girl.)

9. If you ever, EVER leave your 3-year-old in the car for an hour on a hot day so you can come in and shop, and then your kid leaves the car, almost gets hit in the parking lot, comes in the store and then you beat him in front of everyone, you deserve to have the cops called on you by the “meddling” woman outside. And, dear Jesus, we’re going to talk shit about you forever. In fact, you’ll probably find your way into some poor retail wench’s blog.

10. OK, so this one time, a woman was in the store and, in the middle of a conversation, her tampon fell out. And she continued talking like nothing ever happened, and then she left, leaving it to my manager to clean up. I can’t really generalize that one, but I have numerous questions for the woman. Did you notice that it fell out? If you did, did you feel it was appropriate to leave it on the floor, not offer to clean it up yourself? And how in the HELL do you see fit to come back to the store now? I’d never show my face again. Not that that would happen to me because, for one, I wear underwear. So many questions….

11. Yes, I said you’re a D-cup. Perhaps it’s a shock, because clearly no one has fitted you since you were a preteen AA, and you’ve been wearing sports bras for 15 years, but if you want your clothes to look good, do what I tell you to do, and wear a grown-up bra. Yes, underwires will serve you better, if you would like your breasts to stay above your navel. It is rude to ask for my help and then completely ignore or argue with what I tell you. You’re wasting time I could be spending straightening racks, hanging up clothes from the fitting rooms, or being a meddling racist.

12. If it’s Christmas time, regardless of how stressed you are, it is completely unacceptable to yell at me. Retail, by its nature, kills the Christmas spirits of employees and makes us dread trees and lights and candy canes and all that shit. You telling me how incompetent and stupid I am does not improve my mood, nor does it make me more likely to help you. In fact, this goes for all the time. I hope you realize that the vast majority of retail employees are students, and are, in fact, probably better educated than you. I myself have 3 bachelor’s degrees and 1 ¾ MA’s, not to mention the work I’m doing on my doctorate. I could kick your ASS in education, so talking down to me is not a good idea, because you might catch me on a bad day, and I’ll put your dumb ass in its place. Don’t do anything to remind me that I’m clearly superior to you. Besides, once you leave, we’ll all talk shit about you.

13. No, dude, you cannot go in the fitting room with your wife/girlfriend/baby mama/fuck buddy. I know what you’re going to do, probably because I’ve been tempted to do it myself. You can’t have a wilder imagination than me, I know what you’re up to, and the buck stops here. I just refuse to clean that shit up. Besides, some ignorant woman’s kid might crawl under the door and catch you, and then all hell would break loose. Though, it would make a good story…

This is what I have for the moment, but I’m sure more will occur to me in time. The moral of this post: don’t act a fool in a store, because you might become the subject of retail legend, and that’s not a good thing.

Fat Rant

2008-04-07T12:46:00.001-07:00

I’ve always been a chunky girl. I can’t remember a time I didn’t have a belly or kind of fat arms. This, of course, became more pronounced once I started college, quit dancing, and discovered Lambic. But I digress.

It never once occurred to me organically that there was anything wrong with my appearance, nor does it now. There is nothing even remotely unattractive about me, physically. I have a pretty face. I have great hair. Awesome, clear skin. Killer boobs. Curvy legs. Pretty hands (when I keep them manicured). My mother likes to point out that I have skinny wrists and ankles, which I do. They, also, are quite attractive. I’m curvy as hell. I know how to dress in a way that complements my body.

This having been said, it makes me exceedingly angry to ever receive the message that someone should be attracted to me “in spite of” my physical appearance. To love me for my intellect or personality, not for my body. Why in the world can’t it be all of the above?

I’m tired of living in a culture where I’m constantly separated from my body, or to have constant assumptions made that just because I don’t look like Angelina Jolie, I must somehow feel inadequate or have bad self esteem. That is, quite simply, the most ignorant thing in the world to assume. It may come as a shock, but I actually like my body. I enjoy looking the way I look. I see no reason to be ashamed of that. But on a regular basis, I am made to feel as though I should apologize for my body, to hide my shape, to cover up bumps and curves that “shouldn’t be there.” Who says they shouldn’t? What, precisely, is so offensive about love handles, or big thighs, or a belly?

This isn’t to hate on my thin sisters. Y’all can be beautiful too, with your washboard abs and tiny, perky boobs. Good for you. It’s not your fault we live in a culture that has chosen you as the ideal.

This is precisely to hate on all of you out there, male/female/otherwise, who glorify that ideal, even unconsciously.

This is for the bullshit TV shows who desexualize plus-sized women and make them cake-eating, simpering sidekicks to Christina Applegate. It’s also for the shows that star a slightly plump girl and are called things like “Almost Perfect.”

This is for the movies about the “Prince Charming” who falls in love with the girl’s personality, never giving a damn about her body. It’s also for the movies where the woman has to make herself over as a skinny blonde with contacts instead of glasses in order to get anyone to look at her. And the movies that use baggy clothes to make the skinny woman “plus sized” in the first place.

This is for mothers who tell their daughters they’ll do anything to help them lose weight, especially when the daughter has never asked for any help. And grandmothers who harp on about diets.

This is for clothing designers who fill “women’s” sections of stores with clothes cut exactly like the skinny girl clothes, but just with more fabric, completely ignoring that my body is shaped extremely differently from an athletic size 4.

This is for stores who only sell plus sized clothing online, because apparently big girls don’t need to try on the clothes they want to buy. Why don’t you just put us in shapeless potato sacks? Our bodies don’t matter anyway, according to you.

This is for all the commercials who wouldn’t think of putting an overweight woman in a role that isn’t “grandma.”

This is for you men who want a big girl as a fuck buddy and confidante, but won’t take her out in public around your friends.

This is for you skinny women who have fat friends you describe as having a “great personality,” and that you try to set up with guys who want you but aren’t up to your standards. Who believe that chunky women aren’t really competition for you. Who can’t stand it when you see a big girl with a man and have to try desperately to once again be the center of attention. Who feign empathy when you will never know what it is to walk into a room and be the last person anyone notices.

And finally, this is for all the big girls out there who apologize for what they look like. There is nothing wrong with you. There’s something wrong with the world you live in. You have the option to live in defiance of a culture that tells you you’re unworthy, that you’re ugly, that you’re weak and prone to temptation, that you make bad choices. You have the option to declare that you are beautiful, that you are complex, that you are not only a personality and wit, but a living and wonderful body.

What's Your Problem with Rev. Jeremiah Wright?

2008-03-17T20:09:00.000-07:00

I have found it difficult over the last few days to explain to people why I have little to no problem with Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright. So I’m going to expound on a few of the more controversial topics in an effort to do so.

The 9/11 comments: Since I’ve said (and written) publicly that I also agreed with Ward Churchill’s controversial piece on “chickens coming home to roost,” it should be no surprise that I have no problem with Wright’s perspective on this American tragedy. We reap what we sow, and we have sown a lot of pain and death and suffering.

Our policies in the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America have caused death and destruction on a nearly unimaginable scale. Part of those policies was allowing MNCs to have free reign to enslave and pillage throughout the developing world, tearing apart communities, destroying culture, and supporting sadistic dictators because it was more profitable. These were decisions we made in order to build our empire. There is always the inevitable reckoning, and this current “clash of civilizations” may be ours.

I am not excusing the actions of these terrorists; plenty of ostensibly innocent people lost their lives, and nothing was gained by the millions of poor and oppressed. US exploitation has not ended; in fact, our march to empire continues through Iraq. We have not reined in the MNCs that were stationed in the World Trade Center. Saying that we should have gleaned something other than “put a boot up their ass, it’s the American way” from the events of 9/11 is not saying that the terrorists were right; however, it is the kind of self-exploration that could allow us to continue to exist as a nation. Without it, we will fall just as surely as the hedonistic Roman Empire.

The “God Damn America” comment: There are a million ways to approach this. The context, if you don’t know, was Rev. Wright’s criticism of the racist American system. Since he was speaking to an audience of at least nominal Christians, I will not engage in a debate about how it is likely completely futile whether people ask God to bless or damn their nation.

America, in case you’ve been wondering, has not been kind to its Black citizens, or really any people of color, in it or outside it. I know white people hate to keep having this brought up, but slavery was kind of a big deal. Such a big deal that we’re still dealing with its affects. Even after the institution was abolished, it’s not like Black people actually had rights. Just because it’s on paper doesn’t mean it exists in reality. Nearly 100 years later, Congress finally got around to addressing the problem of voting and public discrimination. But look around you. Racism is still rampant. Black women are still relatively invisible in our society. Even within the feminist movement, Black women’s voices have been silenced any time they attempt to point out that they face discrimination not only as women, but as women OF COLOR. White feminists retort that trying to fight racism and classism alongside sexism just dilutes the feminist struggle and that race and class activists need to wait their turn. “We need to be equal with our unequal men before we can fight those battles.” Black men face their own host of challenges, from unemployment to a ridiculously high incarceration rate. Even Black men who “defy” statistics and get an education and a good job face the stigma of simply being Black men (and all the bullshit boogeyman PR doesn’t help. Just because a Black man is walking down the street toward you at night doesn’t mean he’s going to rob you. Get a grip, idiot).

From a Christian perspective, how do you rationally plead with God to bless this racist, classist, sexist society while never once questioning the righteousness of that society? Humility isn’t something Americans do well, and so we need consistent reminders that we’re not perfect. Wright was bringing this home with some powerful rhetoric, and, since he’s a pastor and not a politcian, good for him. Politcians have to use softer language or, worse, pander to the mindless patriotic crowd. Pastors and spiritual leaders in general are supposed to hold us to a higher standard, a standard of real righteousness, and to fault Rev. Wright is doing that just because it makes you and your white liberal bullshit uncomfortable is horrifyingly disingenuous. America needs a reality check. I’d rather have it in the form of words than as planes flying into buildings or a dirty bomb.

The “Hillary Clinton has never been called a N- - - - - -“ comment: Well, she hasn’t.

“Bitch” is not the same as the N-word (which I won’t type or say). The individual humiliation and intimidation of women cannot be compared to the wholesale terrorism of lynchings that is part of the history of the N-word. I’m not saying one is worse than the other; I’m saying they have very different histories, and to equate them is to play oppression olympics, and I’m not down with that. I’ve been called a bitch while walking down the street by a group of men, and I never felt afraid for my personal safety. I would submit that any person of color walking down a street that has been called an N-word probably was not unafraid. Why? It’s the battle-cry of white supremacists and lynch mobs. This is an historical fact.

I have no problem with Rev. Wright pointing out that Hillary Clinton grew up privileged and white in a country run by rich white people. Nor do I see why anyone else would have a problem with that. It’s true. He never said that she didn’t face discrimination as a woman, but since he was talking about racism and not sexism, I fail to see the issue. I feel uniquely qualified to comment on this, because I, too, am a middle-class, college-educated white woman. I am coming to terms with my white privilege, and I am doing what I can to combat ever employing it. Can Hillary say the same? I wonder.

Granted, Hillary Clinton has never claimed to understand what it is to be poor or Black in America. But isn’t it legitimate to ask whether or not someone running for President can appreciate the historic struggle against racist oppression in America? Are we not allowed to ask that of Clinton or Obama, or McCain for that matter? Especially in light of the fact of increasingly nasty racially-based attacks that are mysteriously linked to the Clinton campaign (with no official sanction), shouldn’t we be curious why the for mer First Lady of the “First Black President” has put together a campaign that has produced a culture that breeds these sorts of attacks? These are legitimate questions that beg answers. Black voters in America have been taken for granted by the Democratic Party establishment for far too long. Heaven forbid they actually start voting their best interests and find out that the Green Party is running Cynthia McKinney, a former Congresswoman who actually cares about issues that affect the Black popluation of the US.

the democratic math problem

2008-03-05T21:13:00.000-08:00

a response to the democratic math problem:

let me tell you my issues with this primary system:
1. caucusing is bad. yes, i know it favors the candidate i endorsed in this case. however, because i have gained an increased understanding of the process (because i'm a total news junkie), i have to say, it sounds like the most undemocratic system in the world. we don't need that.
2. i hate, HATE the superdelegate system. if you haven't read geraldine ferraro's op-ed from the NYT a few weeks ago, go do so now. her attempts to justify the system she helped create only convinced me further that it's a horrible idea. it's undemocratic and, worse, it's paternalistic. the voters aren't stupid (well, some of them are, but that's another article), and we don't need the elite to make decisions for us. screw you guys.

i don't like being disenfranchised, which is what happens not only in the primary season, but with the electoral college system. we need radical election change and we need it NOW. make a fuss, people. the time is now.

Lying White Women

2008-03-04T10:39:00.000-08:00

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/wireStory?id=4383753
"Woman's Gang Memoir Is Fake, Recalled"

I have many feelings about this, and all of them are negative. In no particular order:

Stuff like this makes me sick. In the first place, does this woman have no integrity at all? Plagiarism disgusts me. There are so many of us out here, doing real work, busting our asses to be innovative and original, to bring a new perspective, to contribute something to the ongoing dialogue. This hurts all of us. It puts us all into question. And by “us,” I mean writers and researchers in general, of any race, gender or orientation.

Secondly, this angers me as a middle-class, college-educated white woman. Thanks, Margaret, for perpetuating the stereotype that we all want to scramble over the backs of people of color to get rich and famous. We only do community work to make ourselves look good, or to get something out of it materially. We care nothing at all about the real lives of the people we’re supposed to be “helping.” I love being suspect every time I attempt to work in concert with my brothers and sisters of color because of selfish crazy women like you.

This next angers me as a white woman who researches the lives and experiences of people of color. I hate that something like this will continue to cast suspicion on my own work, which, by the way, is valuable. Why do I care to incorporate the experiences of people of color into my research? Because they don’t exist at the moment. Pick up a book about the Rwandan genocide. I’ll bet you that there’s virtually no mention at all of the civil war that created the context for the genocide. No words of the men and women in the north who were victimized by the RPF (the “heroes”). No mention at all of the Tutsi women corralled and kept to be repeatedly raped by the radical Hutu militias. Nothing. We know it happened, but their voices are completely absent from the literature. It is imperative to understand the events from their perspective because they have insights that foreign researchers, and even male researchers, will never have. Their words and voices (literally) are vital to our understanding of what genocide means, what civil war means, what neo-colonialism means.

What Margaret Seltzer did hurts what I do, and what many of my friends do. Will people want to even talk to us anymore, or will they fear that their experiences will be co-opted, yet again, by imperialistic white academics?

This angers me because it plays on our racist mistrust of one another. It is appalling how easily this white woman’s story was believed, how willingly her story of white victimhood by black gang boogeymen was accepted by the publisher. How interested would they be in her story if she was Black? Lesbian? Transgender? What about her “half-Native American” story? Is that true, or is it just another marginalized group she could use to make her life more “interesting?”

And for the record, why is her story so interesting? Why do publishers think that violence and corruption and the destruction of communities is interesting? “Oh, it’s so compelling! This little white foster girl got all caught up in the LA gang wars but was able to get herself out and go to college! Maybe we could make it into a movie with Ellen Page!” What about the countless women who every single day work to keep their families off the streets, keep their children out of poverty, to educate themselves and improve their communities? Isn’t that an interesting story? Wouldn’t that be a compelling memoir?

I hate this. I hate this lying little white woman for making us all look bad. I hate her for perpetuating the stereotype of violent and out-of-control Black communities when, as someone who worked for an anti-gang community organization, she should’ve known better. I hate that she felt the need to make this story about her instead of about the nameless and faceless women of color who live this existence every day. I hate that the publishers didn’t feel the need to fact check because she was this innocent little white girl. I hate that when focusing on this, we turn our attention away from the epidemic of gang violence that is the reality of so many lives in Los Angeles and so many other cities. I hate that I have to feel guilt by association because this woman shares my skin color. I hate that I have to go through another day angry at the blatant racism that permeates our world. And I hate that when I try to do something about it, I’m told that my efforts are futile or irrelevant.

Confessions of a Gender Traitor (or Why I Can't Vote for Hillary Clinton)

2008-02-28T20:49:00.000-08:00

I wish I could vote for Hillary Clinton. Seriously. I go through photos on all the network websites, and I see two men making victory speeches. It would be nice to see a woman doing that. Especially a woman who has championed a lot of great feminist issues.

Sen. Clinton never had a better moment than when she spoke at the 1995 UN 4th Conference on Women as First Lady. Even though I think her healthcare proposal involves way too much bureaucracy, her efforts to make sure every American has access to quality healthcare is admirable (and feminist). Her “95/10” proposal on abortion is fantastic, because it defends and preserves reproductive rights of women without being insensitive to the millions who see the fetus as a potential life (myself included). Her rhetoric about giving young girls someone to look up to tugs at my heartstrings a little bit: if I ever have a daughter, I want her to believe that she, too, can be anything she wants to be, even the President of the United States of America.

But I also have a problem making Hillary Clinton into a role model for young girls. I have problems holding her up as a feminist icon. I was on the fence for the first part of the campaign, though I must confess, I’ve had a pretty big crush on Obama since the 2004 DNC National Convention. But I had a Hillary sticker on my car. I even have a Hillary ’06 campaign t-shirt. But I started getting turned off when she would argue that she has a lot of experience and include her years as First Lady as part of that experience. I reject the idea of her taking credit for policy that, in reality, she really had no part in making. Perhaps Bill talked to her about it at home. Maybe she gave him some pointers. But her name was never on the ballot, she never signed the laws, she never sat in the Situation Room and ordered a bombing, nor did she ever haveto negotiate with congressional leaders about a legislative agenda (or the Israelis and Palestinians, for that matter). Yes, she has some good experience in the Senate. And she was a cracker jack lawyer. For Wal-Mart, a company that pretty much hates women, both as employees and consumers. She wanted to make a lot of money when she finished law school, and she did. It would be nice if she would own that and not pretend that she’s always been on the side of the worker or the poor mother of 4.

She’s never had any executive experience. However, if she wants to claim some credit for the successes of the Clinton presidency, she needs to own its massive failures. And not just the failures of the term in office, but of the divisive and corrupt politics that were part and parcel of the Clinton years. These are politics she is still practicing. The latest “plagiarism” accusations her campaign has thrown at Obama are only part of it. The hate-filled “Obama is a Muslim” emails were traced to someone connected to her campaign. These were not only offensive because they were a blatant lie, but they were also an attempt to play on fear of terrorism and anti-Muslim bigotry in this country. If I have to say one more time that all Muslims are not terrorists, I might just become a terrorist myself. Playing to the lowest common denominator is politics of the kind that Karl Rove advocates, but it’s also what the Clintons do. They have no more integrity than the Bushes when they’re running for the White House.

I want to vote for a woman because I’d love to feel like the gender double-standard was part of an ugly past that is resigned only to history books. But more than that, I want to vote for a candidate who shares my beliefs and whose vision for the future isn’t more of the past. I want inclusive politics that brings more than 16% of the electorate out to vote. I want a candidate who helps me see past my own gender, race, class and experience. I want someone who doesn’t play a gender card, a race card, or any other kind of card. I want to be challenged and moved. I don’t want to have to make excuses about how the ends justify the means. I don’t want to say “I’m voting for a woman.” I want to feel enfranchised. I want to have the motivation to donate money and time. I want someone who makes me want to knock on doors in the mugginess of August and the doldrums of October. In short, I want a change from the same old thing. I’m sad to say that our first viable female candidate just isn’t it. Would Sen. Clinton be a bad president? Probably not. Her policies would no doubt be better than the last 7 years (that’s setting the bar pretty low, I guess). But I don’t want “OK.” I want greatness. I think we deserve greatness, because it’s what our history inspires us to. It would be nice to come a little closer to living up to our potential. If that involves me voting for a man, so be it.