I can’t believe I let six days go by without a post, so unlike me unless I post about not posting! Well, I was away during memorial day weekend, flying across the country to visit the inlaws in California. Whoever thought transferring through TX was a good idea was WRONG (ME!).  Whenever I return from being away, I need like a day to recover. With the time difference, I needed like three days.

On top of that, I am having foot trouble. Somehow, I have developed plantar fasciitis and a heel spur. What!!?!? Ugh! So uncomfortable. And now I think I have to have a cortisone shot on monday.

OK back to running around doing ridiculous errands!

The Bonds of Womanhood by Nancy Cott. I did read the part on education during my sophomore year for a research paper. I am glad I did read the whole study as it is one of those imperative books that should be read for someone doing gender history and/or gender theory.

Here is one new thing I learned: Imagery of women in the Christian Church changed dramatically from the late 18th century to the early 19th century. Women were usually portrayed in the image of “Eve” as temptresses, not to be trusted. However, preachers, reverends, and ministers soon turned to casting women as more benevolent participants within their practice as Christians. They turned away from depictions of Eve and turned to other, more complimentary, positive portrayals of women from the Bible to persuade female congregation and general Church member to lead an exemplary (Christian) life.

INTERESTING! A point worth more investigation from my end.

I haven’t done this in a long time but tonight I settled in to watch an episode of the Real World. It was hilarious mostly because one cast member stole another’s underwear. She got real pissed off and called her parents.

The conversation went something like this:

Girl: You know that underwear I bought with my Victoria’s Secret’s gift card. Someone stole my underwear.

Her mom: Maybe it’s a joke.

Girl: I shouldn’t live with a thief.

Her dad: The bible says to love those who do you wrong…

Insert more random dialog

Her dad: *mumble* the bible *mumble*

Huh what? What does the bible have to do with stolen underwear.

Therein lies the reason I don’t watch the Real World.

idea maybe?

I think about dissertation ideas all the time. I think this is probably normal for those of us who desperately want and know they need to go to grad school for whatever subject. My goal has been to read a ton of books. I just finished Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons. I was intrigued by the connections between the Shakers, Oneida Community and Mormons. But it wasn’t until the last the conclusion that I read something that got me thinking (again) about dissertation ideas.

The author Lawrence Foster made the assertion that Mormon literature during the Victorian era was much more Victorian in nature than the actual “Victorians.” This reminded me of an idea I had to trace the history of the Anti Mormon (aka anti polygamy) movement of the last part of the nineteenth century. As far as I can tell, there has not been a comprehensive study on this so far. The time is definitely ripe for such a study.

Of course, I am not sold completely on this idea. But it does have something to it. I know I will probably be completing research on gender and religions in the later part of the nineteenth century. This is the first time in awhile I’ve had such a revelation (yes to use a “Mormon” word) toward my future research. I am going to start seeing what this could possibly entail. I am very excited to have an idea that may have something to it.

But first I have to get through

• the first two to three years of course work
• TAing for the first time ever
• Comps
• Language requirements
• And the next few month before school begins!Here we go!

CA Supreme Court overturns Gay Marriage Ban!

This makes me so happy!

The California Supreme Court decided today that same-sex couples should be permitted to wed, ruling that gay unions must be given the “respect and dignity” of marriage.

In a 4-3 vote, the court became the first in the country to apply the constitutional protections reserved for race and gender to sexual orientation. The Massachusetts high court struck down bans on same-sex marriage in 2003, but under a different legal theory.

I must admit a slight guilt that I can be married to my true love because I am heterosexual (I hate defining myself in such binary terms), but my gay peers cannot. This is a great step for the future in equality for marriage.

So I FINALLY made it to Bay Ridge on Sunday.  My number two on “Things to do before I leave NYC List.”

Well, it was everything a girl could hope for, and I must admit I had the song “How Deep is Your Love” playing on  repeat in my mind. Ah I love the BeeGee’s!

View after getting off the subway

Now I’ve been to 100th street in Brooklyn and Queens!

There s/he is. (What gender is a bridge?) My mom told me she wanted to drive me there when I was a kid (after I became obsessed with Saturday Night Fever.) Unfortunately, we never got around to it. I told her last night, I finally went and she said “Why?” Guess the dream was more mine than hers! Duh!

It was very interesting to be in Brooklyn and have the closest borough be Staten Island.  I think the husband and I sat possibly, maybe where Tony Manero (aka John Travolta) sat with his lady friend in the movie. Or I could be horribly wrong. But visiting this site made me think back on the symbolism behind this bridge in the film. During the film, it is easy to make the assumption that the bridge leads to Manhattan…it does not. For years I thought that this bridge led to Manhattan then I got my hand on a map.

I think ultimately the bridge symbolized Tony’s desire to get out of Bay Ridge but also worked as a tie to his past, family, and tradition. Perhaps, this has been written up before, but I’ve never thought about the film I loved as a 13 year old in my 26 year old eyes. And I am also horribly unnerved by the “was it rape” scene.  Ugh. I don’t like how Tony wasn’t punished for that but then I guess it exists to make him more complex. Whatever. That film would have been made much more differently today.

I think my next stop is Wave Hill in the Bronx.

Why does Phyllis Schafly need an honorary degree from Washington University when she already has two real live degrees from that institution?

When I was getting my M.A. from my liberal arts alma mater, a classmate of mine did a research paper on Schafly. I was shocked at that age to learn that people were so strongly against the ERA.  Now, I am just used to it.

But seriously what’s the point of the honorary degree?

Jenna Bush is supposedly getting married this saturday in Crawford, TX. From an article about the town of Crawford’s role in the ceremony:

I asked ‘Oh, are you going to be going to the wedding?’” Judy asked. The woman replied: “No, I just want to be in town when it’s happening.’”

It wasn’t until late this week that the downtown began to show signs of the event, which will end up in presidential history books.

A white banner with red wedding bells on either side of “Congratulations Jenna and Henry” now stretches across a local storefront. via

“Happy Days” Jenna on left. The rest you can figure out yourself.

Interesting food for thought regarding past women in politics from this article, The Fight Stuff, in relationship to how men are and have been warming to HRC:

NOTABLE in the Indiana and North Carolina primary results and in many recent polls are signs of a change in the gender weather: white men are warming to Hillary Clinton — at least enough to vote for her. It’s no small shift. These men have historically been her fiercest antagonists. Their conversion may point less to a new kind of male voter than to a new kind of female vote-getter.
…

The specter of the prissy hall monitor is, in part, the legacy of the great female reformers of Victorian America. In fact, these women were the opposite of fainting flowers. Susan B. Anthony barely flinched in the face of epithets, hurled eggs and death threats. Carry A. Nation swung an ax. Yet they were regarded by men as the regulators outside the game. Indeed, many 19th-century female reformers defined themselves that way — as reluctant trespassers in the public sphere who had left the domestic circle only to fulfill their duty as the morally superior sex, housekeepers scouring away a nation’s vice.

What Faludi is actually promoting is a trend change toward male interest/acceptance of women in politics. Wonder what the historians think of her idea?

OK, this is a list of books I own that I want (need) to read before August.  There are a few themes going on here: books by faculty I will be studying under, topics I want to explore, communities defined by culture, and then religion and religious communities.

A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada by Mark A. Noll
Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, Latinos, and the Neoliberal City by Arlene Davila
Cultures in Babylon: Black Britain and African America by Hazel V. Carby
Forgotten Kingdom: The Mormon Theocracy in the American West, 1847-1896 by David L. Bigler
Indian Women and French Men by Susan Sleeper-Smith
Learning from the Left: Children’s Literature, the Cold War, and Radical Politics in the United States by Julie L. Mickenberg
Methodism and the Southern Mind by Cynthia Lyerly
Sisters in Spirit: Mormon Women in Historical and Cultural Perspective edited by Maureen Ursenback Beecher and Lavine Fielding Anderson
The Second Goldrush: Oakland and the East Bay in World War II by Marilynn S. Johnson
The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks, and Poor Whites in Texas Cotton Culture by Neil Foley
Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons by Lawrence Foster

Next up:

Books I have read that I should review
Books that every graduate student MUST read before they begin US History…like I can really read all of these but I will try. I am thinking books that summarizes time periods using gender, race and class as major categories of analyses.

Ambitious much?