b l o g o s

feminism and lecture hosting

JM, the Bean, and I visited Philadelphia last week so that I could give a lecture at Temple's Center for the Humanities. Sue Wells, Eli Greenblatt, and Shannon Walters were such wonderful hosts. The usual food and conviviality were amped up on all sides.

But their hosting went beyond the usual. When they asked me to come give a talk, I was a little apprehensive, because I needed to bring JM and the baby with me, and we wanted to take the train, which adds further complications. But from the moment I mentioned these extra concerns, both Sue and Eli (the point people on the arrangements) helped make it not just possible but very easy to bring the Bean along. Sue very sweetly offered to borrow a car seat and meet us at the train station. Eli even arranged for a *babysitter* so that JM could join us all for dinner the night before the lecture.  

As a bonus, Sue took me and the Bean for a fun trek through the "Anatomy Academy" exhibit at the PA Fine Arts Museum. How lucky am I to get a tour of medical sketches, paintings, and displays from the leading scholar of rhetoric and medical training in our field! We peered at 19th century surgical instruments while Bean dashed from a bench to an electrical outlet, running out any heebie jeebies from the train ride. Here she is at right in the museum proper, taking off after my favorite fox painting (visible in the background).

The next day, when Sue and I were heading up to the building before my lecture, I mentioned to her that it strikes me as decidedly feminist to be so supportive of my little entourage. I feel very fortunate to have had a string of hosts this year who have been exceedingly accommodating: the Chicago Humanities Festival offered to pay for an extra room for my mother-in-law, who came along to keep the Bean while I gave a talk one day and interviewed KAJ another; folks in the Comm department at Pitt booked a larger room to allow for her pack-n-play, and welcomed the Bean to their happy hour. Such hosting graciousness is, yes, a feminist act--it makes it possible for me to say yes to a handful of invitations.* Or as Sue put it in her friendly, blunt reply to my gratitude, "what, are we just going to not hear from you for seven or eight years?"

While we were driving around Philly the next day, she told me about how she took her 6 month old daughter to a conference in Italy, and when she and her friend asked one of the conference organizers if it would be all right to have the baby at a session as long as they promised to rush her right out of the room as soon as she made a peep, he responded in Italian (Sue translated for me): "The baby needs to be outside. Fresh air is good for it." We had a little laugh about this response.

And while the Italian conference organizer's attitude is still, twenty years later, remarkably commonplace, it is refreshing to have flexible, accommodating hosts, hosts who recognize not all scholars fit into a standard itinerary, hosts who embrace the difference.

 

 

 *I would be remiss if I didn't mention the family members who have given so generously of their time to help make this year's travel schedule work as well: JM, JM's mom, my sister, and my mom.

 

netflix blogging: cyrus

This movie is very funny. I heart John C. Reilly, and Jonah Hill is fantastic. Here is my second favorite scene:

"no it doesn't."

Remembering Jada

  Our sweet, velvet-bellied whippet Jada died last night. She was fourteen or so and had congestive heart failure, but was in pretty decent shape until the past day or so, when her system just seemed to shut down. Last night we made a bed for her on the floor in the living room and took turns sleeping next to her. When JM woke up and didn't hear her rattly breathing, he knew she was gone. She was still warm when we wrapped her in a sheet and put her in the back of our car.

At left, she is pictured at a lake in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, listening to a loon.

When my niece and nephew were little kids, they gave her the giggly nickname "Jada Potato," and it stuck. She made all these crazy moves with me, as our two expanded to five--from State College (where I brought her after I rescued her), to Champaign, where our friends sweetly (and mostly) indulged her love for licking human skin, to Pittsburgh, where she would race JM to the top of Frick Park's stairs, (back) to Urbana, where we acquired Tillie, with whom she begrudgingly learned to share us, and then back to State College, where she loved to lie on the chaise longue in the morning sun. 

She kept me company through two books, countless articles, and now three revisions of the  textbook. She would always lie around while I read dissertations (see here, here, and the photo at right, with her beloved octopus).

When I was very pregnant--even in early labor at home--she quite literally propped me up on my side, tucked in behind me, warm and firm.

When we brought the baby home, Jada took one lick, scooped up the octopus, and began pacing around with excitement. She surprised us by making it through the first year of baby Bean's life, the past few months exchanging her gentle licks for bean's (mostly gentle) practice pats and subsisting on the tasty morsels of meat, macaroni, and peas that Bean cast off her tray, and even sometimes taking food right from her hand--always gently, eyes wide with pleasure.

So long, J. Potay. Our lives were fuller and happier with your company.

 

 

 

 

lessons about sex

When Northwestern psychology professor Richard Bailey allowed a sex demonstration in front of his lecture class last month, he "didn't see the harm in it." After the firestorm of criticism, he still doesn't seem to, despite his admission that he began to feel uncomfortable himself during the demonstration. His apologies have been, really, non-apologies.

At the end of a recent Tribune piece focusing on Bailey's response to the controversy generated by his, er, guest speakers, is this gem of rhetorical criticism:

Bailey also said he has not heard convincing arguments against what happened, echoing Morton's statement when he said arguments such as that the demonstration "was troubling" are too vague.

"If I were grading the arguments against what occurred, most would earn an 'F,' " Bailey said.

There are a number of things that are deeply troubling about the fact that you allowed a live demonstration using sex toys in front of your class, Professor Bailey. I will just name the one that I find the most enraging:the sex toy in question that the man used to penetrate the woman on the stage of your lecture hall was in the form of a POWER SAW that has a phallus-like protrusion instead of a blade.

This normalization of violent sex games is of a piece with the bland acceptance of violence against women in this culture, and it calls to mind this airtight argument about the sort of domestic violence Charlie Sheen has been allowed to get away with while people everywhere shake their heads and have a good chuckle over the drug addict from Bueller. Yes, presumably this demonstration was consensual, and yes, perhaps some couples find this sort of violent theme enjoyable. And yes, this issue sets off interesting arguments about academic freedom that I'm inclined to entertain.

The pedagogical gains from such a demonstration remain to me unclear, but I am certain about one thing: to eroticize violent acts toward women in front of a group of 18-22 year olds in an educational context is both irresponsible, and from my vantage point, reprehensible.

 

 

 

here's what's sacred about family time

The status update was going to say this:

"Debbie notices that 'family' is sometimes deemed a sentimental category at times when it is really a category of labor."

But I quickly realized that this was too cryptic, and that the update probably belonged over here at blogos. What I mean is this: JM and I are unable to meet requests to do work-related things on weekends [updated to add: and] between the hours of 5 and 7 pm (because this is when we are feeding and putting the Bean to bed, and that process is best handled by both of us and pretty much has to involve me at this point). My most immediate colleagues get this limitation, and we work around it. As an example, I am taking the Bean over to a colleague's house tomorrow afternoon (a Saturday) to talk with that colleague about promoting the English major. This is how we planned it from the beginning (at the colleague's suggestion).

Even so, others don't get it, and I suppose they wouldn't really have any good reason to get it. Weirdly, though, the way they don't get it is by claiming to get it, and then saying something about the sacredness of family. Sacred my ass. It's work.

Departing from carefully divided weekend childcare routines is not only difficult, it is often unfair in that it leaves the other person trying to take care of house-related stuff while keeping a toddler from falling down the stairs, and it means leaving the other person to do that without a break (which in our house means a break to go do work). It is difficult because "trading" time means losing double the amount of time one spends doing whatever one has committed to do. That childcare time needs to be made up in the name of equity. And without equity this whole family thing does not work--not for us, anyway.

So that's what I mean: it's not about a sentimental or sacred protection of time with family, it's about work and an insistence on familial equity. Which are, come to think of it, sacred.