Ethos, Today!

North on the Fusion-Based Curriculum

2008-06-05T12:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I finished Refiguring the Ph.D. in English Studies by Stephen North. It's one volume in the NCTE series "Refiguring English Studies" (several works in this series populate my current "to read" list). An area I need more background and reading in is the history of English studies, hence the North book. North starts his first section by identifying a lack in scholarship and professional literature regarding the history of doctoral studies in English. Form there, he moves on to historicize what he calls the Magisterial Curriculum that appeared to dominate English doctoral programs from their inception through to the middle of the twentieth century: graduate faculty (who played the role of near mythological figures) allowed their students access to them so that those students might replicate the writing, thinking, and professional identity of the graduate faculty. This unstated but common curriculum served as the stage against which the explosion of heterogeneity in doctoral students (in race, gender, socioeconomic status, educational background, nationality) occurred. Such diversity and other changes led to what North characterizes as a "crisis" in English studies. He details the efforts at the Wye and Wayzata conferences to arrive at some coherent vision for English and those pursuing doctoral work in the discipline. Three apparent approaches, according to North, emerge from an examination of the discourse coming out of Wayzata: dissolution, a corporate arrangement, and fusion.

In the section, North and his collaborators study the doctoral program at SUNY Albany as an example of a fusion curriculum. They emphasize the fact that students are provided space and encouraged to write from their own developing professional perspective, which should seek to integrate the approaches and methodologies or literary theory and history, rhetoric and composition, and creative writing. After providing an abbreviated history of the program, the authors move into an analysis of student writing for courses, qualifying exams, and dissertations.

The final section serves as North battle cry for a fusion-based curriculum as the most viable solution to the continued crisis in English studies (loss of tenure-track positions and clout, a flood of folks on the job market, institutional devaluation, etc).

Reading and Spiritual Life

2008-05-31T17:51:00.000-07:00

Well, Ive been spending a great deal of time reading this (using the term loosely to mean the end of my spring semester) summer (not an unexpected activity, I suppose). For pleasure reading Kathleen Norris' The Cloister Walk reawakened in me a reverence for the varieties of spiritual journeys we all walk, the different directions they lead each sojourner. Her writing is also a cogent and gentle reminder to approach sacred texts (The Bible in her and my case) as beautiful, imagistically rich mythopoetic works, a reminder much-needed in this time of right-wing, literalistic orientations to scripture.

Her descriptions of Benedictine monastic life, its communal elements, fascinate me. The way they draw on and encourage individual talents in the service of their life together provides me with a renewed sense of the importance of community in personal and professional life. I've had the benefit of working these last two years in a caring community of English educators, scholars, and students. I look forward to participating in and helping to cultivate such sites wherever I am.

Why English?

2008-05-26T10:39:00.000-07:00

Why did I pursue graduate studies in English? And rhet/comp in particular?

After a painful, but brief stint as a public high school school English teacher--only one semester--I decided to quit. Through Teach for America, my teaching career began at a Title I high school, an institution charged with serving under-prepared with resources inadequate to meet the challenge--not an unfamiliar story. I realized that the job was not sustainable for me. I just simply could not be what the students needed. (Incidentally, neither could two other teachers. I stayed the full fall term. The lady who replaced me was a displaced university professor from New Orleans. She stayed about two months. The woman who replaced her resigned in May.)

Of course, I realize now that, despite the fact that I could have done more for my students, I really had no clue what I was doing. Though I'd taken pedagogy classes on general methods, rudimentary literacy acquisition, classroom management, etc (all as part of an alternative certification program), they were designed for general audiences, not English teachers. Also, while my mentor teacher came to my class a few times and gave useful feedback, the support I received as a first year teacher (and of English in particular) was not great. Excuses, excuses.

Coming out of this situation, what was I to do next? There was one thing I knew I was good at: studying English (even if I couldn't teach it well). In preparation for the end of the semester, on November 1, 2005, I sent an email to Chair of the English Department at the state university I attended as an undergrad. I asked if there was a possibility I could get an assistantship for the Spring if applied for graduate study there. Her reaction was something along the lines of, "Sure!" I was up front with her that I intended only to be there one semester while I finished applications for other grad programs. She had just dealt with the semester from hell--a hurricane shut the city and the university down for about a month and ravaged the building housing the English Dept.--and she was retiring as Chair in December.

So, I applied for grad school and was awarded an assistantship, which involved teaching basic writing. Given the flexibility afforded me as a graduate students not available to me as a k-12 teacher, I took it upon myself to read as much and talk to as many people about teaching composition as I could. The "practicum" I took in my first semester of grad school was not the best new teacher preparation I could imagine. (and the person who taught would probably admit that, too. He was transitioning into a new administrative position and I was the only new TA in the spring semester. Our practicum, which met 3 times, just was not a high priority. And understandably so.)

The self-education I undertook revealed to me the exciting world of rhet/comp. The MA programs I applied to for fall 2006 entry all had faculty or programmatic interests in rhet/comp. So, there's a winding, incomplete response to the question posed at the beginning. In brief, I undertook graduate study in English because of my initial difficulties as a classroom teacher. (As result of those studies and the training they provided me, I would contend that I have improved significantly as a teacher.)

Blogging Crisis and PhD News

2008-05-24T12:24:00.000-07:00

OK, as a teacher I know everything I do in class should be related to the larger purpose of achieving course objectives. That way class time is driven, activities are connected, and our interaction are never of a floundering nature.

Blogging, at least for me, at this particular moment, is less purposeful. Why do I keep this space? what purpose will it serve? Especially when I do not post here often? Oh well. Things to think about.

On different note, I was accepted into Syrcause University's PhD in Composition and Cultural Rhetoric! They also offered me an assistantship. I will start there in the fall

Memes are beautiful things

2008-04-28T18:40:00.000-07:00

I've wanted to post, but I haven't known how to begin after my last one. Here's a way I don't really have to start from scratch: a meme! Taken from I Have Spoken.

Five things in each of the following categories:
10 years ago, I was:
1. 12
2. Recently moved into the house my mother still calls home.
3. Best friends with John.
4. In 7th grade
5. A voracious reader of British mystery.

Today’s to do list:
1. Basically proctor my students as they do an in-class writing project.
2. Call Pat.
3. Grade above in-class writing.
4. Go to Starbucks
5. Do freewriting

Snacks I enjoy:
1. Chocolate chip mint ice cream
2. Cheese-Its
3. BBQ potato chips
4. Cereal
5. Bread

If I was a billionaire, I would:
1. Give to the church.
2. Pay off student loans.
3. Pay off my mother's house note.
4. Pay for the rest of my schooling.
5. Give to organizations that were in line with my values.

My bad habits:
1. I can be unkind on occasion
2. Procrastination
3. I don't speak my mind as often as I should
4. Messiness
5. I lose things

Pet peeves:
1. Dishonesty
2. Disloyalty
3. Deliberate cruelty
4. Thoughtlessness
5. Abandoning obligations

Places I’ve lived: (all in Texas)
1. Colorado City
2. Llano
3. Houston
4. Beaumont
5. Denton

Jobs I’ve had:
1. High school English teacher
2. Developmental writing teacher
3. Writing tutor
4. First-year writing teacher
5. Community college adjunct

Daddy

2008-01-05T19:33:00.000-08:00

Today, I flew from Dallas to Midland and back again. Today, friends and family gathered in Colorado City, Texas to scatter my father's ashes. My father died on Nov. 10. He hated funerals so much, so my mother decided against having one.

Instead we took him back to the earth of birth, the earth he and his father farmed and worked for so long, often yielding so little return. There is a plot of the family farm, 99 acres of dry land used for cotton farming, that he kept after his father passed away. Called the Rock Pile, the name comes from the 20-yard long pile of rocks, stacked about 2 & 1/2 feet high. That formation came from years of plowing the field for cotton planting and removing rocks that were turned up. A by-product of preparing the land now becomes...What? A memorial? Of lives' work (my father and his father's)? The futility and frustration of the traditional farmer's work?

My uncle, half-brother, and I were the first to scatter parts of the ashes, and then others were invited to do so. My mother was the last. She also left an old cap and an empty beer can. My father never went anywhere without a cap, and as an alcoholic, he struggled with liquor all his life. But he died sober, having gotten out of detox not a week before succumbing to a massive stroke.

I miss him.

MLA: Part 1

2008-01-02T19:32:00.001-08:00

Alas...Another long stretch of no blogs.

I recently returned from my first MLA. Given that I was not presenting and that I am not on the job market, I had a really enjoyable time. I went primarily because I'm in the process of applying to Ph.D. programs. My hope was that I would meet faculty and grad students in some of the programs I'm interested in. I was, more or less, successful in this endeavor with two programs: Penn State and Ohio State.

The cash bar session for Penn State allowed me to meet a couple of faculty members as well as four graduate students. They were able to sing the praises of their departments and to tell me, specifically about opportunities for teaching. Unfortunately, no Rhet/Comp people were there. But, the Lit grad students had nothing but good things to say about the Rhet/Comp folks. One was especially jealous of their phenomenal job placement rate.

Just before leaving to go to Chicago, I finished my Ohio State application. A few weeks prior to the MLA, I sent an email to Valerie Lee, English Dept. Chair at OSU asking if we could meet to discuss the program. She kindly agreed, and we had lunch on Saturday, Dec. 29. Dr. Lee has an incredible academic record that I am only a little familiar with. We talked for about 50 minutes. She invited me to meet two of her OSU rhet/comp colleagues who were with her, one of whom I had specifically mentioned as someone I was interested in working with if accepted. So, I briefly (for about 9 minutes) got to visit with Beverly Moss and Kay Halasek.

On the whole, a successful project.

Going to MLA

2007-09-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

The other night I got a call from Steve Zani. He basically served as one of my primary mentors during my undergraduate years. I took, I think, seven classes from him. I owe him for training me to think about cultural productions with deconstructive, comparative lenses. Really, that's a modest summation of what he helped me develop. Steve's contributions to my academic identity and work is immeasurable. While I was in Beaumont a couple of weeks ago, he and I discussed the possibility of attending the MLA convention in Chicago this December. I'm not thrilled at December in Chicago, but I am excited at the prospect of spending time with Steve. He called to tell me he is definitely going, so now I have to go buy my tickets!

I Be Done

2007-08-11T12:06:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday I sumbitted my last paper for the summer.

International Feminisms? Done! Detective Fiction? Done! MA? Done! PhD? Only just begun.

I'm revelling in the fact that I have 15 days between now and the start of the fall. It's not much of a "break," but it's enough. I will prep during that time for my next excursion into the world of first-year composition. I will teach two classes at TWU. One a MWF and the other a MW. AND I've been offered a class with North Central Texas College, teaching Comp I to dual credit high school students at Justin's Northwest High School. I'm not thrilled that it's at 7:30 am, but we'll see how it goes.

I Passed Comps!

2007-08-04T07:42:00.000-07:00

Oh my goodness. Another month of absence.

Well, first, the biggest news since last I blogged: I passed my MA comps! Regardless of the fact that I had studied well and intensely over the last year, there's always with me this nagging, irrational fear of failure and inadequacy. But, I took them July 9, the Monday after we finished Summer I, the day Summer II began. I was placed in a room with a computer and a prompt sheet with 6 questions, two in 3 different sections. I was to choose 1 question from each session and had 3 hours to compose my responses. I finished at 5pm. 25 hours later, on Tuesday 10 at 6 pm, I received an email from my advisor informing me that my committee determined my answers passed.

Random Synchronicity

2007-06-28T14:23:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, at the end of a discussion I had with someone whose opinion I value, she recommended two spoken word poets to me. One of them, Andrea Gibson, has on her website audio of her performing. Her work and the fierceness of her voice moved me deeply. She expresses rage and hope and reminds me of Ntosake Shange's statement, "I found god in myself and I loved her fiercely."

Just a little while ago I visited one of my fav feminist blogs Feministing and whose face should I find at the top of the page but Andrea Gibson's! I thought it looked like her, and I started playing the linked video of her performing. I knew it was her, but she wasn't identified in the credits.

I guess once something beautiful that was always there is called to your attention you begin to notice it at every turn.

Shakespeare is almost dead

2007-06-28T14:18:00.000-07:00

Shakespeare paper--Done! I just hope Dr. B. doesn't think me a fool or clown (haha) when she reads it.

So tonight I'm reading Farewell, My Lovely by Raymond Chandler so I can start posting about it for my online class.

Some Current Projects

2007-06-20T21:08:00.000-07:00

Current Projects (in order of pressing/approaching deadlines):

Paper on Fools in Shakespeare. This was a topic provided by Dr. Bridges. She has a great method of providing students with ready made topics that will focus student research on areas that will introduce them to hefty, established scholarship.

Paper for Fairy Tales. For this I want to examine three of Barbara Walker's Feminist Fairy Tales to determine how she imagines the world can be transformed into a more just place. Cristina Bacchilegga will serve as a model for how to talk about postmodern fairy tales. I want to incorporate Anzaldua's El Mundo Zurdo (a visionary, magical space forged through shifting consciousness) and Foucault's heterotopia (a site which inverts and contests social expectations and that produces some kind of power effect).

Hard-Boiled Detective Fiction Paper. I will explore the Walter Mosley Easy Rawlins series as a heterotopia that rewrites the hard-boiled tradition.

Revise my Sula paper to bring in how the two other examinations of African American literary productions using heterotopias were constructed.

Summer Courses

2007-06-15T07:06:00.000-07:00

OK, I've not blogged in awhile. But as always when I fail to do something, "good" excuses follow. For example, I moved and was without internet at home for two weeks. That's a decent excuse right? On top of that, I have started the Summer of Twelve Hours. TWU has three summer sessions: Summer I (5 weeks, June 4-July 6), Summer II (5 weeks July 9-August 10), and Summer III (10 Weeks, June 4-August 10). I'm working on three classes right now. Two (Shakespeare and Fairy Tales) are Summer I. Hard-boiled Detective Fiction is Summer III and online (Dr. Greer is wonderful). And in Summer II I'll take International Feminisms.

I needed the three English classes to graduate in August. The International Fems. is just something extra and it will help me determine if I want to pursue the Women's Studies certificate program.

In addition to this light coursework, I'm taking my comprehenisive final exams for my MA. I chose the coursework option, meaning I will not write a thesis but will be tested over my courses.

What I'm reading

2007-05-25T14:00:00.001-07:00

Since the end of the Spring semester, I've been reading, in a haphazard manner, essays and poems included in the collections This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color and this bridge we call home. This is in preparation for Women's Studies classes I will take this fall. I've long had an interest U.S. feminism, specifically Black feminist traditions.

What's been fascinating as I've read these two collections is the work of Latina activists and writers. I've not previously read anything by Gloria Anzaldua--she is remarkable. I'm particularly drawn to her El Mundo Zurdo, a visionary space where people struggle and live in community, celebrating their differences yet recognizing the commonalities that bind them together as co-participants in a cosmic creative process.

Oral Finals

2007-05-18T16:08:00.000-07:00

Last week, on Monday, I took my first oral final exam for a course (Foucault). Something like this would have terrified me just a couple of years ago. However, the professor conducting the exams is such a congenial and disarming fellow and I've grown confident enough in my own academic abilities that I was and am OK with the idea.

Dr. Greer started by speed reading, using a ruler to keep his eyes focused on each individual line, my term paper. He stopped a couple of times to ask a couple of general questions about how I developed such an intense interest in Black literature. Fair question I suppose.

As soon as he was done, Dr. Greer asked me the big, "So what?" What does it matter if you're reading Toni Morrison's Sula through the lens of heterotopia? And to be quite honest, I wasn't able to answer well at the time, but now I'm thinking that the answer may be, "It doesn't." I say that because all the conclusions I reached about the book were already made by others. Heterotopia just seems to be a different term for saying what's already been said. Depressing.

The rest of the session went really well in that I was able to adequately respond to all questions. I was supposed to go in with a list of 10 terms from Foucault and an identified discourse and be able to discuss how those terms and concepts worked with the discipline I chose.

Overall, a pleasant testing experience.

I'm Back

2007-05-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

I've been a bad blogger...

I'm going to play catch up over the next few days. First, I am just so glad the fall semester is over. It has just been an exceptionally crazy 4 and a half months! Four grad classes, working 20 hrs. a week in the Writing Center, two conference presentations and much, much more.

I got the biggest relief I've had in sometime on Wednesday when all of my grades were posted: all As. I tell you, there were times when I didn't think I'd do it this time. Half of this semester was lived in a great mess of ambiguity. But all of the fighting with Foucault, wreslting with OWLs, and struggling with silence paid off. I am on a steady course, marching quickly toward an August graduation. Thank you, Dr. Brdiges!

My papers this semester ended up being more interesting and manageable than I thought they would.

More to come...

Conference Acceptance!

2007-04-15T16:40:00.000-07:00

Last night at about 6:30 I sent the following abstract to Melissa Asher Daniels at Northwestern. She's assembling the panel "Teaching Toni Morrison" for this year's M/MLA. I met and got to spend some time with her at last year's conference.

"Missing the Living and Dead: Mourning, Memory and Healing in Morrison’s Sula and Sweet Honey in the Rock"

In 1973, Toni Morrison published Sula and Bernice Reagon founded the black women’s a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock (SHIR), both important events in the history Black and American expressive culture. Examining Sula and selections from the work of SHIR together forms the basis for a study of mourning and remembering the dead in the context of Black folk’s struggle to affirm their humanity and to maintain their dignity.

Morrison’s opening for Sula, a dedication, reveals that she seeks to reimagine “missing” as a practice which needs to take place before the death of loved ones for the purpose of deepening relationships among the living; dedicating the book to her sons, Morrison writes, “This book is for Ford and Slade, whom I miss although they have not left me.” Throughout the novel, from the funeral for Chicken Little to the closing image of Nel mourning Sula, Morrison weaves the fierceness of feeling associated with loss into Sula.

SHIR’s music calls communities to action through remembrance of those who have come before the present. For Reagon, “everything is political.” Using “Breaths” and Morrison’s notion of the ancestor, I will argue that SHIR and Morrison articulate a political aesthetic grounded in fidelity to personal and collective memory. With the significance of the past established, studying Sula alongside the songs “The Women Gather” and “Wanting Memories” opens discussions with students about the possibilities for individual and social healing that arise when Black people decide to love themselves and others.

Not terrible, right? But imagine my surprise and joy when I get home after the dance concert to find this email waiting for me:

Dear TJ,

It's wonderful to hear from you. Your abstract sounds really fascinating. Consider it accepted . . . Please send me a short bio asap.
See you in Cleveland in November.

Yay! It's as much about who you know as what you know. And there's some luck involved, too.

Ending Violence Against Women

2007-03-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

Last summer, Amy Goodman of Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now! spent an hour with two remarkable women: Eve Ensler and Kimberle Crenshaw. Ensler is the author of The Vagina Monologues and Necessary Targets, as well as the founder of V-Day--an important compent in the growing global movement to end violence against women. Crenshaw is a trail-blazer in the area of black feminist legal theory and Critical Race Theory.

Ensler tells us:

V-Day began essentially almost nine years ago. When I started doing The Vagina Monologues, at the beginning, I kind of was brought to very arbitrary places; just brave people would bring me to their communities. I performed in these kind of warehouses with light bulbs over my head. And what would happen, invariably, after those performances is, women would line up to talk to me.

And at the beginning, I thought, “Oh, great, they'll be telling me about their wonderful sex lives.” And, in fact, what 95% of the women were lining up to tell me was some story of how they had suffered abuse, whether they'd been raped or gang-raped or incested or beaten, and they had never told anyone before. The play had kind of opened that up and just kind of released memories and thoughts.

And after about five cities, I started to think, “I can't do this. I can't --” I felt the way a war photographer feels when you're witnessing something terrible and doesn't intervene on a person's behalf.

Ensler demonstrates that the women of America ache for opportunities and spaces to break the silence surrounding their abuse. I think her analogy is right on--she is a observing a war on women.

Crenshaw adds:

Eve is bringing to our attention is the relationship between violence and incarceration. I like to call this a tale of two movements, because, frankly, there's been an anti-violence movement that really hasn't dealt with the consequences of violence for women who are incarcerated or how incarceration is often a precursor to violence, so that whole relationship hasn't been explored. There's also an anti-incarceration movement that more or less just focuses pretty much on men, how men wind up being incarcerated, some of the consequences.
So this is an opportunity to actually look at women who fall between the cracks of both movements, who are the women who are both victims of violence, but also are victims of state violence, namely, because they have been subject to rape, battery, incest, a whole range of other things that happen towomen in society, are more likely to be incarcerated, right? And once they are incarcerated, they're subject to a whole range of consequences that are sometimes particular to women, so this is bringing attention to women, to issues that really haven't come up on the agenda of either the anti-violence movement or the anti-incarceration movement, so it's a dramatic radicalization of both of these movements.

It's a fascinating conversation with incredible music during the breaks (at one point they have Sweet Honey in the Rock singing "The Women Gather").

Snitching and a Feminist Curiosity

2007-03-25T07:35:00.000-07:00

I'm being lazy this morning and reproducing one of my best blogging samples from last summer. I put this note here in case you follow the links and notice the dates on the materials to which they lead.

One of my favorite blogs and my favorite dealing with Texas issues has posted about the growing dependence of law enforcement on confidential (often paid--either in cash or in reduced punishment) informants: snitches.

Grits for Breakfast discusses a Dec 2005 Slate feature by Prof. Alexandra "Sasha" Natapoff of Loyola Law School in the neighboring state of LA. She's made some to do about snitching and the over reliance of law enforcement on this "extreme form of plea bargain."

As a death penalty abolitionist, this bit from the Slate feature really piqued my interest:

Snitches are famously unreliable: A 2004 study by the Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions reveals that 46 percent of wrongful death penalty convictions are due to snitch misinformation making snitches the leading cause of wrongful conviction in capital cases. Jailhouse snitches routinely concoct information; the system gives them every incentive to do so.

Los Angeles snitch Leslie White infamously avoided punishment for his crimes for years by fabricating confessions and attributing them to his cellmates.

The leading cause from wrongful death penalty convictions. Those are pretty bad odds when the stakes (life or death) are so high.

Prof. Natapoff's Slate piece concludes:

While snitching will never be abolished, the practice could be substantially improved, mostly by lifting the veil of secrecy that shields law-enforcement practices from public scrutiny.

Trying to turn that reasonable assertion into a reality, Prof. Natapoff has posted an 11-page example of a Motion Requesting a Snitch Reliability Hearing (Word doc) in federal court on her faculty webpage.

One of the questions this raises for me is: What can a feminist curiosity bring to this information? Well, who comprises the fastest growing segment of the prison population? It's women. As of June 2005, women in prison numbered 106,174 (this is after the November 2004 DOJ information that women in prison topped 100,000 for the first time in US history). According to the Drug Policy Alliance, "Since 1986 the number of women in prison has increased 400%. For women of color, the rise is 800%." The bulk of this increase comes from drug-related arrests.

How does this relate to Prof. Natapoff's discussion of snitches? The "war on drugs" is the law enforcement quagmire that has given rise to the over-reliance on confidential informants. Women involved with (or coerced into--see "Drug Couriers and Mandatory Minimum Sentences") drug running or use become perfect fall gals. DPA goes on to say:

The same sentencing policies that are used to punish high-level traffickers-those policies that carry extremely harsh mandatory minimum sentences-are used disproportionately against these women. Since women, as drug couriers, are often the 'mules' of a highly elaborate and hierarchical drug trade, they rarely possess information useful to prosecutors. This precludes them from benefiting from mandatory minimum law provisions which allow for dramatic decreases in sentences in exchange for "snitching" - i.e. assisting in the prosecution of others.

So increasing numbers of women get punished in a disproportionate manner because they will readily be turned over by their "co-conspirators" and they lack access to information concerning drug "king-pins." On a related note, Elaine Bartlett, who was sentenced under the extraordinarily harsh Rockefeller Drug Laws in New York, said this in a 2004 interview:

I did 16 years in Bethel Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum facility for women. I have yet to meet one kingpin. That's not who is being affected by the laws.

I have a problem...

2007-03-24T12:37:00.000-07:00

with the abstinence movement and those who mock it.

A featured story on YahooNews earlier today dealt with True Love Revolution, the relatively new abstinence student organization at Harvard.

While not having sex is a sure-fire way of protecting one's self from STDs, much of the abstinence movement's rhetoric about sex is troubling. It tends to be Christian and subscribe to the notion of sex out-of-heterosexual-Christian-wed-lock as a sin. I love religious people ... Hell, I am one. But all of our hangs-ups about bodies and the idea that spirit and flesh make bad bedfellows need some reconsideration. I come out of the Abrahamic (Judeo-Christian) tradition, and, as I recall, God said of us when he was done, "It is good." We've got to get back to what ex-Catholic preist Matthew Fox calls Original Blessing.

Also, I take issue with what I think is the motivating idea behind the abstinence movement: the desire to continue to possess and control women's bodies. If the religious right can't stone or exile the Jezebels anymore, they can co-opt one of the central tenets of feminism: women's ability to choose what they do with their own bodies. The argument would go something like this: "Darling, you know you can choose not to have sex. It's empowering to not have sex because you're exercising control over your own body, and you're keeping those naughty boys in their place. And you're using your body as a space in which to give glory to God through your choices by following 'His' commands."

I'm also uncomfortable though when feminists make fun the abstinence folks, especially when it's women and girls who have decided to refrain from sex. If feminism celebrates women's choices, shouldn't it applaud the active avoidance of sex as much as sexual activity?

Of course, we could always promote my abstinence regimen: awkwardness and shear terror of rejection.

Introducing the Blog

2007-03-23T17:04:00.000-07:00

I'm starting again! Clean blogging slate. Like the title says, I'm not interested in yesterday. I want to ensure my ethos, my credibility, my style, my mad skillz carry currency today and are informed by the most recent developments in scholarship and cultural affairs.

This will be a space primarily for academic work (Really! It's work! See me sweating!?). However, given that the academy is my life and given the malleable nature of the word "academic," items of a personal and political (Don't feminist tell us they're related if not the same?) variety may well end up here also.

Stay tuned...