Post-defense

I had the great fortune to sit down with six brilliant and generous professors for 2 hours today. I have loved my committee; their various strenghts have really helped me craft the dissertation I defended today.

I have a few revisions that I need to address before I can submit the diss to the grad school. All of the committee members signed off on the diss except my director, with whom I will follow through on the changes. I'm excited for the revisions-- the discussion today helped me see that I was not making the most use of my data. I need to incorporate those expansions an revise the conclusion accordingly.

It's midnight now. I have a cat on my lap and a vodka tonic on the table. I have time, now, to think about the future. It is a luxury.

Consumer capitalism vs. feminism

I was in Walmart earlier today, in the express line behind a thin, tall, high-school aged guy. The cashier scanned his bottle of vitamins, then asked for some ID. He said he didn't have any, so the cashier voided the item. I don't know exactly what was in the bottle, but the packaging was shiny gray, black and red. I'm guessing it was some kind of muscle-building supplement.

The cashier rang up the other two items: Men's Health magazine and Hawiian Tropic tanning oil.

Based on these three items, I created this guy's story-- young, thin, insecure about his body given the muscled messages he sees in the media. Wants to be bigger, stronger, and tanner.

It reminded me of myself at 16-- buying Seventeen magazine, Cover Girl eyeshadows, and cans of Slim-Fast.



Somehow, this isn't the equality we should want.

Segregated prom-- 2009

Via Jezebel, a NYT piece on this year's segregated prom.

The senior proms held by Montgomery County High School students — referred to by many students as “the black-folks prom” and “the white-folks prom” — are organized outside school through student committees with the help of parents. All students are welcome at the black prom, though generally few if any white students show up. The white prom, students say, remains governed by a largely unspoken set of rules about who may come. Black members of the student council say they have asked school administrators about holding a single school-sponsored prom, but that, along with efforts to collaborate with white prom planners, has failed.

As I've been revising my dissertation, I've revisited a number of articles that fall under the broad category of Critical Race Theory. The pieces I've been looking at seem to put forth one of the following two arguments (some directly, some implicitly):

- most whites are well-meaning and non-racist in intent, and believe that racism is gradually receding over time, but are generally unaware of systemic racism that continues to privilege whites over nonwhites.

or

- racism (overt and hidden) is just as alive and thriving as ever. The notion that things "aren't as bad as they used to be" is incorrect and distracting from the problems that exist.


Though I come across more examples of the first argument, the examples of the second argument leave me almost speechless. The segregated prom is one of those.

Job market advice

Collin has posted the job market advice handout he shares with his grad students. It's a great resource.

Go here for the pdf.

Intent/effect

Just came across another example of intent/effect in action. This blog entry is a couple of years old; I came across it when researching the controversy over the Clevleand Indians and Chief Wahoo.

From the entry:

So many folks still not getting it, eh? Sports fans’ claims to honorable intentions of the use of “Indian” imagery, intentions of being pro-”Indian,” do not dismiss nor outweigh the disrespectful effects that many native peoples experience. An example of one of those effects? Ironically, many pro-”Indian” mascot/logo/image critics verbally attack the real Native peoples who call for the eradication of such “Indian” representations. so, those critics honor their “Indian” images and “Indian” objects, their “Indians,” but they disrespect and dislike the real natives?

I'm excited to see other people interested in this distinction between intent and effect.

Do you watch Psych?

If you were born in the mid- to late- 70s, and you have a soul, you will probably find it as hilarious as my friend Leah and I do.

The two main characters are private investigators (of a sort) and in this clip, they're undercover in an American Idol-esque show. They end up reprising the duet they did in their elementary school talent show.

Enjoy!

Rhet/Comp Feminism listserv

I pulled this off the WPA:

From: Barbara L'Eplattenier

(Please feel free to crosspost/forward/distribute widely)


This year at C's, a number of scholars interested in feminism/gender
issues/rhetcomp issues realized there's no dedicated listserv to offer
people a place to connect.


As a result, The Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and
Composition and the CCCC Feminist Workshop have created
Rhetcompfem@cwshrc.org, a new listserv.  We hope this listserv will connect
feminist scholars in Rhetoric and Composition, as well as other scholars in
other disciplines. (We're going for inclusion, here, and the more the
merrier.)


It is an unmoderated listserv and we'd like to keep it that way, so please,
remember your manners!


General information about the mailing list is at:


  http://mail.cwshrc.org/mailman/listinfo/rhetcompfem_cwshrc.org



To subscribe, send a message


  Rhetcompfem-request@cwshrc.org

The weekend the dissertation crumbled

The last several days have been tough. Brief timeline:

Thursday: realize that bc of limitations on the data I collected, original plan for chapter won't quite work. Come up with revised plan pretty quickly.

Friday: lots of writing toward revised plan. Realize that's not going to work either. Do some freewriting. Reread some raw data (transcripts). Stop working Friday, unclear about go to proceed.

Saturday: rereading rest of transcripts. Identify highlights, write up a description of each. (at this point, I've just submerged myself back in the data, waiting for a new plan to form.)

Sunday: no new plan. Panicky. Start casting about through some related literature that I hadn't visited in a while. Looking for a lifeline. Nothing. Decide that maybe what I need to do is follow a path that I've been considering for future work (not for diss bc it would require a lit of reading in an area in which I am not well-versed). Spend the day reading, skimming, searching databases, freewriting. Still nothing. Go home exhausted and hopeless.

Monday: barely slept bc of fear, worry, preoccupation with diss problem. Go to campus, start freewriting by focusing on positives: What is unique about what I did and the results I got? What stands out as most interesting? Why?

This, dear reader, got me to a new plan. It is remarkably similar to where I was when I started, but with a few critical adjustments.

In hindsight, this process has been very beneficial. I forced myself through an aggressive review of literature that had become stale in my mind. I'm using this as I write- it's solid stuff.

But it wasn't any fun.

I'm a joiner

I'm twittering. For better or worse. Right now, I'm soliciting dissertation cheerleaders. I'm meaganrodgers on Twitter. Follow me!

(Sorry no link- my mobile blog app doesn't have many features.)

A double standard in the campus newspaper

This blurb appears on of A2 of Friday's The New Hampshire:

"Page 9: Male beauty pagent (sic)
A handful of brave frat brothers took to the stage to entertain the judges and audience Wednesday night. The hotly contested event featured live performances, clowns, and speedos. I'm fairly sure there is an unwritten rule, at each contest there must be at least one speedo. Brave, brave souls."

Why is it that men in a beauty pageant are BRAVE, while women in pageants are SHALLOW?

Nothing new here, I know, but this example stands out so clearly that I wanted to note it.

(Personally, I think it's both brave and shallow for anyone to be in a beauty contest. Fwiw.)