Friday, October 13, 2006

What the Well-Dressed Historian Is Reading this Weekend

So, since I actually sat down and wrote something in the chapter and thought deeply about it (which I often avoid because my mind goes on tangents), I'm rewarding myself with a little extra reading-while-I-write for this weekend. So, I went to the back of my closet last night and pulled out several things. And just because I'm smugly confident that y'all are way interested in what I read, I'm making a list.

For the Dissertation:
Ehrenreich- Nickeled and Dimed
Green- The World of the Worker
Foley- White Scourge
Meyerowitz- Not June Cleaver (Dorothy Sue Cobble's Article)
Janiewski- Sisterhood Denied
Sidel- Keeping Women and Children Poor
Kim- Koreans in the Hood
Ignatiev- How the Irish Became White

For Personal Enrichment (I have a grad certificate in Women's Studies and as part of the requirements, I had to take some classes outside history. I chose a social work class, "Women's Issues," an English class, "Feminist Theory and Methodology," and a sociology class, "Special Problems: The Family." I'm finally in the mood to actually engage these texts, as I think some will help with the dissertation and some will help me strengthen my self-definition as a scholar of women's history):
hooks- Killing Rage
Hesse-Biber et al- Feminist Approaches to Theory and Methodology
Findlen- Listen Up
Kemps & Squires- Feminisms

Just Because I Love It:
Gray-White- Too Heavy A Load

Will I get to all of these this weekend? Probably not, but I did learn a lot about reading quickly and for main points, arguments, place-in-the-historiography, etc., while I was taking my comprehensive exams. And some of these represent my simply revisiting texts for clarity and because I need them right now--actually, all the dissertation list except the Kim book fall in that category. So I probably will get through those. The feminist texts will be an ongoing thing, though I've already gotten back into hooks. And I'm delighted, because in an essay called "Beyond Black Only," she makes the following assertions:
Bonds of solidarity between people of color are continuously ruptured by our complicity with white racism. Similarly, white immigrants to the United States, both past and present, establish their right to citizenship within white supremacist society... through acts of discrimination and assault that register their contempt for and disregard of black people and darker-skinned immigrants. Concurrently, darker-skinned immigrants mimic this racist behavior....
And then she quotes Toni Morrison who says
In race talk, the move into mainstream America always means buying into the notion of American blacks as the real aliens. ...A hostile posture toward resident blacks must be struck at the Americanizing door before it will open.
So, I wasn't totally clueless when I was wondering and wandering in the post below currently above this one. And, while the book is a decade old, and this essay has probably been analyzed and deconstructed and whatever else it is we academics do, at least I found this.

And in my closet. That place keeps my fashionable trendiness and my academic sensibilities on point. ;-p

***UPDATE: Forgot to mention two things that I have read lately that 1) aren't related to the dissertation and 2) I really admired ("enjoyed" doesn't seem the right word, given the subjects) :

Colombus Day Observed 2006

An Angry Loveletter to WhiteSister

4 comments:

Abadiebitch said...

You plan on reading all of that, this weekend? I have one bell hooks book on my wish list...hold on I will go check and get back with you....
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okay I found it, but I'm a little embarrassed..it seems like a very very beginner's book. HAH!
Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics

Gwyneth Bolton said...

bell hooks is the truth. And Listen Up is a wonderful third wave feminist text, one of the first. Happy reading this weekend! I'll be preparing lectures for next week (I'm teaching Intro to Women's Studies. The good thing is I have TAs. The bad thing is I have to lecture...) I also need to get some proposals done... I'm going to try and find time for some pleasure reading though....

elle said...

Moksha, every time I read that first line, I fall out laughing. I imagine you standing, hands on hips and one eyebrow raised, thinking, "Girl, Please!" And I am a very beginner, so thanks for the suggestion.

Gwyneth, I can't tear myself away from the hooks even though my butt better be getting into that Kim book. Please be kind to your TAs ;-p And, if you don't mind my asking, what books are you assigning? You can e-mail me if you'd like.

Gwyneth Bolton said...

It's WSP 101 so I'm using one of the text books, Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives, Fourth Edition, edited by Gwyn Kirk and Margo Okazawa-Rey. It's really a great textbook and covers a range of issues... And as for being kind to my TA...
*evil laughter in the background*
But, of course...
*more evil laughter, and fade*

No seriously I'm really nice to my TA. I still kind of remember what it was like to be in graduate school. Although, I finished way back in 2000 and it's now 2006... the memories slowly fading...

Revelations and ruminations from one southern sistorian...