Gillian Polack's Blog, page 263
March 16, 2011
Quantum Poets
I meant to post earlier, but the last few days caught up with me in a whoosh and I have done some quality resting this afternoon.
Today we talked more about scientific method and about hypotheses and testing them and about the need to challenge intuition and test that, too, and about finding the things that influence experiments and affect results. I gave the worst explanation of the difference betwen mass and weight that I have ever given in my whole life, but one of my students stepped in and sorted it.
Today we talked more about scientific method and about hypotheses and testing them and about the need to challenge intuition and test that, too, and about finding the things that influence experiments and affect results. I gave the worst explanation of the difference betwen mass and weight that I have ever given in my whole life, but one of my students stepped in and sorted it.
March 15, 2011
Women's History Month: Patty Jansen
Gillian asked me to write this post, and I said yes before I had fully appreciated that it would involve me talking about myself, about being female. I have to admit that this is not a subject I like talking about.
Yet, I realise that in the (too many) years since I finished high school, a lot has changed. That year, when I and my class mates applied for whatever course took our fancy, I was informed that I couldn't apply for the commercial airline pilot course, since they didn't accept girls. That changed the next year, but by that time I had moved on.
Beer-guzzling jackeroos, mooing cattle penned up in groups of 25, barking dogs and an auctioneer blaring through a megaphone at a sea of hats. Dust, leery jokes, and utes.
What in her right mind would a young female student from the city do in such a place? Yet, there I was in the mid-eighties, at the Eidsvold cattle sale, with the contingent from the nearby CSIRO research station about 70k out of Mundubbera (which has since been sold). We were selling cattle, well, the technicians were. I came along for the ride and I was one of the very few women not behind a food stall of some sort.
Likewise, there have been many times in my life when I've been a woman in a man's world, the only girl in my physics class, one of the few female students in my agriculture course. Out of a staff of 300, I was one of the two only female scientists. Now I write hard SF. I suppose it's fair to say that I've spent a lot of time working at the frontier of female expansion.
Not that I've ever thought about it that much. I tend to view myself as scientist, writer, or parent way before I'll classify myself as 'woman'. For the sake of this post, I will make an exemption.
When I first walked into the CSIRO technician's labs in the 1980's, there were still pin-up girls on the walls in the odd office. I thought it was disgusting, but what could I do? The owners of the pictures were much older than me. I was a student and they weren't obliged to do anything for me. So I glared at the pictures a few times and otherwise ignored them. I tried to fit in. Talk the talk and walk the walk. Over the space of a few months, I found that, regardless of the pictures, the men were very accepting and they were fun to be with. To them, I was a new phenomenon, and while no doubt it took them time to get used to me, they never made a point of it. When I came back to work there later, the pin-ups were gone.
As several scientists have concluded before me, the integration of women in science is continuing apace, silently, and without many words spoken. You do your work and discuss the science, rather than a personal agenda.
Yet, there are two things in particular that have made an impression on me:
Firstly, these men are your colleagues and your friends. Your treatment of them reflects in their treatment of you. I've never made a point of being different in any way, and, apart from a few isolated incidences, have not felt that anyone has treated me differently, or should I say, has treated me in a way in which I didn't want to be treated. Stepping on every slight transgression hurts your relationship with them. Snapping at the gentle old fellow insisting to open the door for you does not make you any friends, never mind you think it's a tad patronising.
At the same time, it would be foolish to suggest differences don't exist.
I remember sitting in the tea room of the Agriculture Department in Sydney University (where I was doing my PhD) with an older scientist (male, of course—there was no other variety at the time). He recounted the names of all the female postgraduate students he remembered, and could not, a few years later, give me a single name of one who still worked in research. I don't remember him as being accusing, but I can easily see how statistics like this can be interpreted that way. What happens in exact science research, and other such workplaces, that makes so many women give up?
When I was discussing this with him, I guess I already knew I was going to be one of those women, albeit for different reasons than those that eventually made me leave. It was always my aim to do something more creative. Ultimately, like many before me, I found that work in science is something you do either 60 hours a week or not at all. You could go on and on about whether it should be the woman cutting back hours when children come onto the scene, but a few things won't change: the biological fact that it's the woman who gets pregnant and can get quite knocked-about, health-wise, by this experience. The fact that most people resent fully outsourcing childcare. The fact that the partner who scales back work commitment will be the one who has a job that can accommodate scaling back. Other things may change in the future, but haven't changed yet: the fact that the professional Australian job market is as inflexible as hell about people wanting to work less.
In answering the question: what makes these women give up, I wonder if they really have given up, something I very much doubt.
Yes, many have given up on corporate science, but not on science per se. I chose to vote with my feet and started a home business selling and publishing popular science books, where I still had plenty of opportunity to do science. I also maintained contact with the scientific community by continuing to work as reviewer and editor. Twelve years later, I am still in science, writing hard SF, and not regretting any of the decisions I made.
That said, I frequently encounter women deliberately turning away from anything that smells of science. They will shrug and throw up their hands and say it's too hard for them or that they're not interested. I get frustrated that young women reinforce the expectations of society not in becoming caring mothers and scaling back their work, but in primping and preening and wasting time and money on what they look like and declaring a self-imposed disinterest in the numbers, the facts, the dollars and the policies that make society tick.
If you know how the engine works, you will be much better at driving it, whether you do that in the cabin, in the office or from the sidelines.
Bio:
Patty is a writer and reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She is a coop member, editor and slush reader at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and member of SFWA. Patty has a professional background in science (agriculture and ecology). She has a postgraduate degree from the University of Sydney and worked for CSIRO (North Queensland). Other interests include natural history, marine biology and astronomy. She is married to an IT professional and now lives in Sydney. She has three teenage children. Patty blogs about science and writing at http://pattyjansen.wordpress.com/
Yet, I realise that in the (too many) years since I finished high school, a lot has changed. That year, when I and my class mates applied for whatever course took our fancy, I was informed that I couldn't apply for the commercial airline pilot course, since they didn't accept girls. That changed the next year, but by that time I had moved on.
Beer-guzzling jackeroos, mooing cattle penned up in groups of 25, barking dogs and an auctioneer blaring through a megaphone at a sea of hats. Dust, leery jokes, and utes.
What in her right mind would a young female student from the city do in such a place? Yet, there I was in the mid-eighties, at the Eidsvold cattle sale, with the contingent from the nearby CSIRO research station about 70k out of Mundubbera (which has since been sold). We were selling cattle, well, the technicians were. I came along for the ride and I was one of the very few women not behind a food stall of some sort.
Likewise, there have been many times in my life when I've been a woman in a man's world, the only girl in my physics class, one of the few female students in my agriculture course. Out of a staff of 300, I was one of the two only female scientists. Now I write hard SF. I suppose it's fair to say that I've spent a lot of time working at the frontier of female expansion.
Not that I've ever thought about it that much. I tend to view myself as scientist, writer, or parent way before I'll classify myself as 'woman'. For the sake of this post, I will make an exemption.
When I first walked into the CSIRO technician's labs in the 1980's, there were still pin-up girls on the walls in the odd office. I thought it was disgusting, but what could I do? The owners of the pictures were much older than me. I was a student and they weren't obliged to do anything for me. So I glared at the pictures a few times and otherwise ignored them. I tried to fit in. Talk the talk and walk the walk. Over the space of a few months, I found that, regardless of the pictures, the men were very accepting and they were fun to be with. To them, I was a new phenomenon, and while no doubt it took them time to get used to me, they never made a point of it. When I came back to work there later, the pin-ups were gone.
As several scientists have concluded before me, the integration of women in science is continuing apace, silently, and without many words spoken. You do your work and discuss the science, rather than a personal agenda.
Yet, there are two things in particular that have made an impression on me:
Firstly, these men are your colleagues and your friends. Your treatment of them reflects in their treatment of you. I've never made a point of being different in any way, and, apart from a few isolated incidences, have not felt that anyone has treated me differently, or should I say, has treated me in a way in which I didn't want to be treated. Stepping on every slight transgression hurts your relationship with them. Snapping at the gentle old fellow insisting to open the door for you does not make you any friends, never mind you think it's a tad patronising.
At the same time, it would be foolish to suggest differences don't exist.
I remember sitting in the tea room of the Agriculture Department in Sydney University (where I was doing my PhD) with an older scientist (male, of course—there was no other variety at the time). He recounted the names of all the female postgraduate students he remembered, and could not, a few years later, give me a single name of one who still worked in research. I don't remember him as being accusing, but I can easily see how statistics like this can be interpreted that way. What happens in exact science research, and other such workplaces, that makes so many women give up?
When I was discussing this with him, I guess I already knew I was going to be one of those women, albeit for different reasons than those that eventually made me leave. It was always my aim to do something more creative. Ultimately, like many before me, I found that work in science is something you do either 60 hours a week or not at all. You could go on and on about whether it should be the woman cutting back hours when children come onto the scene, but a few things won't change: the biological fact that it's the woman who gets pregnant and can get quite knocked-about, health-wise, by this experience. The fact that most people resent fully outsourcing childcare. The fact that the partner who scales back work commitment will be the one who has a job that can accommodate scaling back. Other things may change in the future, but haven't changed yet: the fact that the professional Australian job market is as inflexible as hell about people wanting to work less.
In answering the question: what makes these women give up, I wonder if they really have given up, something I very much doubt.
Yes, many have given up on corporate science, but not on science per se. I chose to vote with my feet and started a home business selling and publishing popular science books, where I still had plenty of opportunity to do science. I also maintained contact with the scientific community by continuing to work as reviewer and editor. Twelve years later, I am still in science, writing hard SF, and not regretting any of the decisions I made.
That said, I frequently encounter women deliberately turning away from anything that smells of science. They will shrug and throw up their hands and say it's too hard for them or that they're not interested. I get frustrated that young women reinforce the expectations of society not in becoming caring mothers and scaling back their work, but in primping and preening and wasting time and money on what they look like and declaring a self-imposed disinterest in the numbers, the facts, the dollars and the policies that make society tick.
If you know how the engine works, you will be much better at driving it, whether you do that in the cabin, in the office or from the sidelines.
Bio:
Patty is a writer and reader of Science Fiction and Fantasy. She is a coop member, editor and slush reader at Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine and member of SFWA. Patty has a professional background in science (agriculture and ecology). She has a postgraduate degree from the University of Sydney and worked for CSIRO (North Queensland). Other interests include natural history, marine biology and astronomy. She is married to an IT professional and now lives in Sydney. She has three teenage children. Patty blogs about science and writing at http://pattyjansen.wordpress.com/
gillpolack @ 2011-03-15T15:25:00
I read my two books yesterday and drafted my three articles. Those articles are now gone and my teaching preparation is done and I think I have deserved a break. It can't be too long a break, because I still have a bunch of things to do before Friday, but at least I'm a bit caught up with both review books and BiblioBuffet. If I can get my administratrivia done before I leave for teaching, then I get to work on my PhD ALL EVENING.
To celebrate time out in a busy week, I did a meme (which I snurched from![[info]](https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/hostedimages/1380449247i/1833871.gif)
queenoftheskies
:
You were born during a Waxing Gibbous moon
- what it says about you -
You love to let people in on the story of how things come together. You know the background of ideas and have a deep understanding of things others just touch the surface of. You can surprise people with your wide variety of knowledge, and they'll remember and appreciate you for it.
What phase was the moon at on your birthday? Find out at Spacefem.com
To celebrate time out in a busy week, I did a meme (which I snurched from
queenoftheskies
:You were born during a Waxing Gibbous moon
- what it says about you -
You love to let people in on the story of how things come together. You know the background of ideas and have a deep understanding of things others just touch the surface of. You can surprise people with your wide variety of knowledge, and they'll remember and appreciate you for it.
What phase was the moon at on your birthday? Find out at Spacefem.com
Women's History Month: Dianne de Bellis
Dianne De Bellis went back to study as a (very) mature student. Her PhD at UniSA is on finding, constructing and using stories of Australian soldiers in World War 1 who were sentenced to death for desertion. These contribute to revisionist Australian history and are used to interrogate the myth of Anzac as a foundation of the Australian identity.
Musings on the (non)-progress of a PhD
It does not matter whether the world is conceived to be real or only imagined; the manner of making sense of it is the same (Hayden White, 1978).
One day in the middle of my candidature….
OMG its March and the year is marching on. SP2 has started and I feel like I am still doing the same old thing I was at this time last year. I know I am not but it just feels like it. Am I any further on? I just want some coherent writing. I seem to get stuck in 2-3,000 word chunks.
Another Day
I am trying to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate (then and now) in the creation of a perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways the social phenomena are created, institutionalized, and made into one way of thinking, then and now. A socially constructed reality is one that is seen as an ongoing, dynamic process that is reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it. So how will I use the stories in this? Maybe I should just drop one in when it seems appropriate, or a bit of one anyway. Is it a case of show, don't tell? Or is that a bit ingenuous when trying to explain complex concepts? I think there needs to be some 'tell', even if I just write it and take it out later. I think the 'show' is the individual story but the 'tell' is the thesis. I think I have actually done something! Is it original? Maybe. It will certainly do for a start. And I have done my word quota for today. Yay!
Another Day
Now I am bogged down again in going over same ground. Should I read more? I am trying to talk about social construction. Well so what? Is it too simplistic? I need to spell it out more. I think I have the bones, now I need to flesh it all out—if only I could add electricity and create a living body (to really stretch the metaphor)—wait, then I would be Dr Frankenstein, not Dr Di! Well I don't think I'll ever get to Dr Di so maybe Dr Frankenstein would be OK! The theories of ID creation are the skeleton, the stories as the flesh and muscle and my analysis as the electrical current. That means my supervisor is Igor and the markers and the academic community are the angry villagers who brandish flaming torches at me in outrage.
Another Day
Well I suppose I will get it done somehow, sometime.
Another Day
I am getting nowhere. But at least I am getting there fast. That is a strange expression. I have to figure out exactly what I am saying and how it relates to my topic. I am keen to get to the next bit and I am sick of reading. Maybe the weekend will help. I am boring myself so that is a sign I need to move on.
Another Day
Still stuck, but at least I am doing keyboard practice—big deal! There must be a way of getting through this. How long can I have this block? Its not writer's block its more concept or ideas block. What am I doing and why? Do I review everything up to now or is that a waste of time? Do I need help? Do I need to talk to someone? I feel like I should be able to cope with this by myself—I am an intelligent self-sufficient knowledgeable person. Aren't I? I know my topic. I have a clear plan. I have a clear structure.
This a list of proper intellectual activities towards care of the self proposed by Hadot taken from the Hellenistic and Roman exercises in learning to live.
research (zetesis), thorough investigation (skepsis), reading (anagnosis), listening (akroasis), attention (prosoche), self-mastery (enkrateia), indifference to indifferent things, meditations (meletai), therapies of the passions, remembrance of good things, and the accomplishment of duties
I wonder what therapies of the passions are. If they are therapeutic then I'm in! That's what I need—therapy!
Another Day
OK. I have left the current chapter half done but I am really fed up with it. I am also trying to get through methodological reading to understand or justify something. I have to wriggle out of any history type analysis and any literary one. I sort of know what I am doing. A cultural analysis—yes. Discourse analysis? No, not really, but a lot of the CDA theory applies. Structuralist? No. Post-structuralist? Yes, because I am arguing that meanings change, attitudes shift and that they are still valid. Why? How? So what? Some days I have lots of strategies—the journal, going for a bit of a walk, keyboard practise, reading etc. but they just end up as displacement activities. Going for a walk now.
Another Day
I am thinking about the 'abject', but I can't quite get my head around the relevance. I know it is but I am not sure how. I guess I will have to read Butler.
Another Day
Again in a weird space—having the 'flu and in denial and feeling very woolly headed.
I have applied for leave to push out my finish date, but I will continue to try and write stories. At least it won't feel like a waste of time when I am struggling over them—things fall apart, the centre cannot hold and waiting for this rough beast to be born is driving me crazy.
Another Day
Existence is in the symbolic order so that we know what NOT to do. Or something like that. How will I spin that out to 80,000 words? How to write a PhD! Ha! Explain everything. Describe everything. Argue every little point. Reference everything. Now my typing is getting worse. It's time to do some touch typing practice—the ideal displacement activity.
Another Day
OK. The time has come to write this pesky chapter. Use the notes, use the story and just write it.
Another Day
I feel like I am running on the spot and not progressing (that's a tautology I think). I have a fine plan with the year mapped out and some chapters more or less written - not really - but at least I know the first chapter is the contextual one (or maybe it's the introduction or maybe method and methodology or…?) and I am sure about the narrative approach and the stories. Someone, a math post-doc friend, was pretty impressed that I even had a topic! I am now focussed on the stories themselves so I guess I have moved on a bit.
Another Day
Or I get stuck in planning. I do have a fine plan for the thesis (including word count), but it seems so empty, so thin. I know that it is how I work—sort of top down and bottom up. It's the stuff in the middle that is missing. So now I have the overview, the big, big picture and lots of tiny, specific details. I wonder if I am getting somewhere.
Another Day
Close annotated reading + improving keyboard skills seem to be grounding me somewhat and I now feel I am progressing.
Another day
It's a cop-out to turn random self indulgent thoughts into a pretend thesis (but isn't it fun?). I am not comfortable with self-ethnography presented as scholarship. Its boring, self indulgent and adds nothing to knowledge. Hmm where did that come from? This idea that individual selves are interesting by virtue of their 'selfness' – bah humbug I say. Tedious rubbish that is immature and lazy. If they are written well, it is the language that makes them interesting. Isn't that Lacanian? D&G? Language forms the self. Communication is important. None of the important theorists rely on self-ethnography, although there is a bit of it usually post theory. Who cares if Foucault's mother was in an asylum? What possible relevance does Freud's sexuality have? Not to mention Althusser….! These might be the materials they used or the path they came along, but their theories and models have to stand alone. I am also a bit fed up with the histories of the war, but can't really stop looking at it. Maybe it is the car wreck syndrome—it's awful but I can't look away—a fascination with horror. However the horror is not that of the trenches or the war, it is the horror of my own ineptitude and ignorance.
No wonder people turn to self-ethnography! It is so tempting to construct a textual self that is scholarly and 'ept'. A cute little reflective piece that amuses but also, more importantly elevates the writerly self. I could then, at least textually, live up to the 'big other' and the expectations of a doctoral student/slave. I could modestly claim a deep understanding of something at least, even if it is only the tiny, tiny immediate world. There is no self. The writer doesn't exist (thanks Roland). Perhaps it is too painful to not exist as an entity, but even that pain would be constructed. I (whoever that is) find it liberating. Well I say I do, but of course I am in a painful place trying to get things done. Well that was some weird vaguely circular or spirally logic. Sort of wibbly-whimey, timey-whiney existentialist stuff.
Another Day
What I want to say seems to be just on the edge of my understanding. At least my touch typing is much improved!
Another Day
I seem to moving further away from the work. At other times I seem to just swirl around the stories—I guess they are getting done—at glacial speed! What am I doing? Have I lost direction a bit? I am tempted to go back to my fave reading but I am afraid of just appropriating their approach. What about the theorists? They are a looming presence. I am a dilettante—skating quickly over the surface but not looking at anything in any depth. But I am still working on the same theme/idea. When I think about where I started I am still on the same track and I have advanced. I have enough data, I have a method and I have a theoretical approach (a bit murky). What am I worried about? I wanted to have written more by now. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I suppose that's why not everybody does it. Should I be doing it? Will it advance the progress of the human race or be part of the bog of useless historical analysis? I like this sort of cathartic journal writing better than anything else but it is just another form of distraction if it is all I do. Teaching is a distraction too, and I am afraid my existential angst might infect the students so I try very hard to be positive.
Another Day
Love Wikipedia!
Another Day
Well I suppose it is time for a review of the year—anything to divert me from actually writing the FaffD—the doctorate of faffing about. It has been a year of slow decline, gentle, but a decline nevertheless! Of course it takes effort then to get back. I think I am on track with the thesis, but I also think I am delusional about it. I just can't see it I guess. Teaching was fun and easily manageable but of course I used it as a significant diversion.
Another Day
Much encouraged after having a chat to supervisor about the structure of the analysis.
Another Day
I am going to have to put in what I am not doing and spin it into positives. I can do that in the method chapter. I am still surprisingly enthusiastic about the thing, but I have to improve my finishing-off skills. I feel positive and enthusiastic now that I have been away from it for a while. I am looking forward to getting back to it.
Another Day
It's March again and the first week of the University year. My big excuse today for not concentrating is the techno music blasting across the campus. Of course I could close the window but its fun, infectious and weirdly energising.
Back to work tomorrow.
Musings on the (non)-progress of a PhD
It does not matter whether the world is conceived to be real or only imagined; the manner of making sense of it is the same (Hayden White, 1978).
One day in the middle of my candidature….
OMG its March and the year is marching on. SP2 has started and I feel like I am still doing the same old thing I was at this time last year. I know I am not but it just feels like it. Am I any further on? I just want some coherent writing. I seem to get stuck in 2-3,000 word chunks.
Another Day
I am trying to uncover the ways in which individuals and groups participate (then and now) in the creation of a perceived social reality. It involves looking at the ways the social phenomena are created, institutionalized, and made into one way of thinking, then and now. A socially constructed reality is one that is seen as an ongoing, dynamic process that is reproduced by people acting on their interpretations and their knowledge of it. So how will I use the stories in this? Maybe I should just drop one in when it seems appropriate, or a bit of one anyway. Is it a case of show, don't tell? Or is that a bit ingenuous when trying to explain complex concepts? I think there needs to be some 'tell', even if I just write it and take it out later. I think the 'show' is the individual story but the 'tell' is the thesis. I think I have actually done something! Is it original? Maybe. It will certainly do for a start. And I have done my word quota for today. Yay!
Another Day
Now I am bogged down again in going over same ground. Should I read more? I am trying to talk about social construction. Well so what? Is it too simplistic? I need to spell it out more. I think I have the bones, now I need to flesh it all out—if only I could add electricity and create a living body (to really stretch the metaphor)—wait, then I would be Dr Frankenstein, not Dr Di! Well I don't think I'll ever get to Dr Di so maybe Dr Frankenstein would be OK! The theories of ID creation are the skeleton, the stories as the flesh and muscle and my analysis as the electrical current. That means my supervisor is Igor and the markers and the academic community are the angry villagers who brandish flaming torches at me in outrage.
Another Day
Well I suppose I will get it done somehow, sometime.
Another Day
I am getting nowhere. But at least I am getting there fast. That is a strange expression. I have to figure out exactly what I am saying and how it relates to my topic. I am keen to get to the next bit and I am sick of reading. Maybe the weekend will help. I am boring myself so that is a sign I need to move on.
Another Day
Still stuck, but at least I am doing keyboard practice—big deal! There must be a way of getting through this. How long can I have this block? Its not writer's block its more concept or ideas block. What am I doing and why? Do I review everything up to now or is that a waste of time? Do I need help? Do I need to talk to someone? I feel like I should be able to cope with this by myself—I am an intelligent self-sufficient knowledgeable person. Aren't I? I know my topic. I have a clear plan. I have a clear structure.
This a list of proper intellectual activities towards care of the self proposed by Hadot taken from the Hellenistic and Roman exercises in learning to live.
research (zetesis), thorough investigation (skepsis), reading (anagnosis), listening (akroasis), attention (prosoche), self-mastery (enkrateia), indifference to indifferent things, meditations (meletai), therapies of the passions, remembrance of good things, and the accomplishment of duties
I wonder what therapies of the passions are. If they are therapeutic then I'm in! That's what I need—therapy!
Another Day
OK. I have left the current chapter half done but I am really fed up with it. I am also trying to get through methodological reading to understand or justify something. I have to wriggle out of any history type analysis and any literary one. I sort of know what I am doing. A cultural analysis—yes. Discourse analysis? No, not really, but a lot of the CDA theory applies. Structuralist? No. Post-structuralist? Yes, because I am arguing that meanings change, attitudes shift and that they are still valid. Why? How? So what? Some days I have lots of strategies—the journal, going for a bit of a walk, keyboard practise, reading etc. but they just end up as displacement activities. Going for a walk now.
Another Day
I am thinking about the 'abject', but I can't quite get my head around the relevance. I know it is but I am not sure how. I guess I will have to read Butler.
Another Day
Again in a weird space—having the 'flu and in denial and feeling very woolly headed.
I have applied for leave to push out my finish date, but I will continue to try and write stories. At least it won't feel like a waste of time when I am struggling over them—things fall apart, the centre cannot hold and waiting for this rough beast to be born is driving me crazy.
Another Day
Existence is in the symbolic order so that we know what NOT to do. Or something like that. How will I spin that out to 80,000 words? How to write a PhD! Ha! Explain everything. Describe everything. Argue every little point. Reference everything. Now my typing is getting worse. It's time to do some touch typing practice—the ideal displacement activity.
Another Day
OK. The time has come to write this pesky chapter. Use the notes, use the story and just write it.
Another Day
I feel like I am running on the spot and not progressing (that's a tautology I think). I have a fine plan with the year mapped out and some chapters more or less written - not really - but at least I know the first chapter is the contextual one (or maybe it's the introduction or maybe method and methodology or…?) and I am sure about the narrative approach and the stories. Someone, a math post-doc friend, was pretty impressed that I even had a topic! I am now focussed on the stories themselves so I guess I have moved on a bit.
Another Day
Or I get stuck in planning. I do have a fine plan for the thesis (including word count), but it seems so empty, so thin. I know that it is how I work—sort of top down and bottom up. It's the stuff in the middle that is missing. So now I have the overview, the big, big picture and lots of tiny, specific details. I wonder if I am getting somewhere.
Another Day
Close annotated reading + improving keyboard skills seem to be grounding me somewhat and I now feel I am progressing.
Another day
It's a cop-out to turn random self indulgent thoughts into a pretend thesis (but isn't it fun?). I am not comfortable with self-ethnography presented as scholarship. Its boring, self indulgent and adds nothing to knowledge. Hmm where did that come from? This idea that individual selves are interesting by virtue of their 'selfness' – bah humbug I say. Tedious rubbish that is immature and lazy. If they are written well, it is the language that makes them interesting. Isn't that Lacanian? D&G? Language forms the self. Communication is important. None of the important theorists rely on self-ethnography, although there is a bit of it usually post theory. Who cares if Foucault's mother was in an asylum? What possible relevance does Freud's sexuality have? Not to mention Althusser….! These might be the materials they used or the path they came along, but their theories and models have to stand alone. I am also a bit fed up with the histories of the war, but can't really stop looking at it. Maybe it is the car wreck syndrome—it's awful but I can't look away—a fascination with horror. However the horror is not that of the trenches or the war, it is the horror of my own ineptitude and ignorance.
No wonder people turn to self-ethnography! It is so tempting to construct a textual self that is scholarly and 'ept'. A cute little reflective piece that amuses but also, more importantly elevates the writerly self. I could then, at least textually, live up to the 'big other' and the expectations of a doctoral student/slave. I could modestly claim a deep understanding of something at least, even if it is only the tiny, tiny immediate world. There is no self. The writer doesn't exist (thanks Roland). Perhaps it is too painful to not exist as an entity, but even that pain would be constructed. I (whoever that is) find it liberating. Well I say I do, but of course I am in a painful place trying to get things done. Well that was some weird vaguely circular or spirally logic. Sort of wibbly-whimey, timey-whiney existentialist stuff.
Another Day
What I want to say seems to be just on the edge of my understanding. At least my touch typing is much improved!
Another Day
I seem to moving further away from the work. At other times I seem to just swirl around the stories—I guess they are getting done—at glacial speed! What am I doing? Have I lost direction a bit? I am tempted to go back to my fave reading but I am afraid of just appropriating their approach. What about the theorists? They are a looming presence. I am a dilettante—skating quickly over the surface but not looking at anything in any depth. But I am still working on the same theme/idea. When I think about where I started I am still on the same track and I have advanced. I have enough data, I have a method and I have a theoretical approach (a bit murky). What am I worried about? I wanted to have written more by now. This is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I suppose that's why not everybody does it. Should I be doing it? Will it advance the progress of the human race or be part of the bog of useless historical analysis? I like this sort of cathartic journal writing better than anything else but it is just another form of distraction if it is all I do. Teaching is a distraction too, and I am afraid my existential angst might infect the students so I try very hard to be positive.
Another Day
Love Wikipedia!
Another Day
Well I suppose it is time for a review of the year—anything to divert me from actually writing the FaffD—the doctorate of faffing about. It has been a year of slow decline, gentle, but a decline nevertheless! Of course it takes effort then to get back. I think I am on track with the thesis, but I also think I am delusional about it. I just can't see it I guess. Teaching was fun and easily manageable but of course I used it as a significant diversion.
Another Day
Much encouraged after having a chat to supervisor about the structure of the analysis.
Another Day
I am going to have to put in what I am not doing and spin it into positives. I can do that in the method chapter. I am still surprisingly enthusiastic about the thing, but I have to improve my finishing-off skills. I feel positive and enthusiastic now that I have been away from it for a while. I am looking forward to getting back to it.
Another Day
It's March again and the first week of the University year. My big excuse today for not concentrating is the techno music blasting across the campus. Of course I could close the window but its fun, infectious and weirdly energising.
Back to work tomorrow.
March 14, 2011
gillpolack @ 2011-03-14T21:27:00
Can anyone think of any steampunk novels written by women? My brain has done the kind of slippage that all our brains do and all the names in it are from recent review books and publishers are sending me mostly books by men (I got a book by a woman today! but it isn't steampunk).
I am so beginning to see why it's hard to remember names of female authors come award time or analysis time. I'm not quite ready to sell my sul for some names, but I admit, I am a little tempted.
ETA: Gail Carriger and Cherie Priest are the names that escaped me. And my plea has resulted in me having names of authors I have not yet read! Yay!! And my article has been drafted and needs *much* revision. It won't be submitted today (which is what I wanted, if the world weren't so awry) but it *will* be submitted.
Would anyone like me to combine the names you've all supplied me with (here and on Facebook) so that you, too, can get steampunk'd.
I am so beginning to see why it's hard to remember names of female authors come award time or analysis time. I'm not quite ready to sell my sul for some names, but I admit, I am a little tempted.
ETA: Gail Carriger and Cherie Priest are the names that escaped me. And my plea has resulted in me having names of authors I have not yet read! Yay!! And my article has been drafted and needs *much* revision. It won't be submitted today (which is what I wanted, if the world weren't so awry) but it *will* be submitted.
Would anyone like me to combine the names you've all supplied me with (here and on Facebook) so that you, too, can get steampunk'd.
Women's History Month: Helen Lowe
Close Reading Between the Lines: Shining A Torch Onto Women's History
History has always been one of my great passions, so much so that I read both historical fiction and non-fiction in large quantities—ok, very large quantities—and have done so since I was a kid. I am fascinated by both the grand sweep of events, but also by the personal stories of the human beings caught up in those events, where these can be gleaned from between the lines. Usually though, it's only the big name players who get to walk across the pages of historical non-fiction; mostly, too, the big name players are men.
There are rare exceptions: Joan of Arc, Elizabeth 1, Catherine the Great, the biblical Deborah who judged Israel—these are all women who affected the events of their time. Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie were also women whose abilities and passion brought them into the spotlight, but still their numbers are very few. In order to get a feel for women's history in a broader sense, it is necessary to read even more closely between the historical lines—and also to look at alternate sources, such as oral histories where these are available, and the role of women in literature.
Obviously, the bulk of literature was also written by men and may have been coloured by other influences; for example, literature such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the plays of the Tudor/Stuart era were written primarily for the elite. Nonetheless, we have no reason to believe that all those male writers—in general and despite the usual human partiality—were any less acute observers of the human condition than writers in our contemporary era. So I believe it is fair to regard their work as one means of shining a torch on the experience of women in history.
And of course, there were some women writers. In Europe, Marie de France penned The Lais of Marie de France, while Christine de Pisan wrote The Book of the City of Ladies and The Treasure of the City of Ladies, amongst many others, and was recognised as a pre-eminent writer of her day. In Japan, Sei Shonagan wrote her famous Pillow BookTale of Genji is attributed to Murasaki Shikibu. Coming forward to the early modern era, women began to play a far more dominant role as writers, with Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot being amongst those who dominated English literature in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Male contemporaries such as Thackeray and Dickens shared Eliot's concern with social realities and their novels provide a vivid social record as well as being works of literature.
Historical and contemporary fiction both offer the opportunity to explore women's history, in addition to the primary and secondary sources that inform historical non-fiction. A great deal of how that source material is read will always be in the eye of the beholder, i.e. how we see and interpret "the facts", just as the social observation in literature will also have been shaped by the writer's eye. But they do help us to cast a small flickering lantern over the vast, unlit landscape that is women's history.
I would argue that speculative fiction, which is the field in which I write, takes us the next step. Through enabling first writers and then readers to speculate on the "why" and "what if", it also allows us to turn history on its head, if we wish, and explore alternative ideas of how a world or society might be. In doing that, we may—just may—be able, in a very small way, to help make future history new.
Helen Lowe is an award-winning novelist, poet and interviewer. Her latest novel, The Heir of Night, the first of the adult WALL OF NIGHT quartet, was published in the USA, Australia and New Zealand in October 2010 and is newly published in the UK. Helen's first novel, Thornspell, (Knopf, 2008) won the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Award for "Best Novel, Young Adult", and Helen was awarded the Sir Julius Vogel for "Best New Talent" in the same year. She blogs every day on Helen Lowe on Anything, Really.
History has always been one of my great passions, so much so that I read both historical fiction and non-fiction in large quantities—ok, very large quantities—and have done so since I was a kid. I am fascinated by both the grand sweep of events, but also by the personal stories of the human beings caught up in those events, where these can be gleaned from between the lines. Usually though, it's only the big name players who get to walk across the pages of historical non-fiction; mostly, too, the big name players are men.
There are rare exceptions: Joan of Arc, Elizabeth 1, Catherine the Great, the biblical Deborah who judged Israel—these are all women who affected the events of their time. Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie were also women whose abilities and passion brought them into the spotlight, but still their numbers are very few. In order to get a feel for women's history in a broader sense, it is necessary to read even more closely between the historical lines—and also to look at alternate sources, such as oral histories where these are available, and the role of women in literature.
Obviously, the bulk of literature was also written by men and may have been coloured by other influences; for example, literature such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the plays of the Tudor/Stuart era were written primarily for the elite. Nonetheless, we have no reason to believe that all those male writers—in general and despite the usual human partiality—were any less acute observers of the human condition than writers in our contemporary era. So I believe it is fair to regard their work as one means of shining a torch on the experience of women in history.
And of course, there were some women writers. In Europe, Marie de France penned The Lais of Marie de France, while Christine de Pisan wrote The Book of the City of Ladies and The Treasure of the City of Ladies, amongst many others, and was recognised as a pre-eminent writer of her day. In Japan, Sei Shonagan wrote her famous Pillow BookTale of Genji is attributed to Murasaki Shikibu. Coming forward to the early modern era, women began to play a far more dominant role as writers, with Jane Austen, the Bronte sisters, and George Eliot being amongst those who dominated English literature in the late 18th and 19th centuries. Male contemporaries such as Thackeray and Dickens shared Eliot's concern with social realities and their novels provide a vivid social record as well as being works of literature.
Historical and contemporary fiction both offer the opportunity to explore women's history, in addition to the primary and secondary sources that inform historical non-fiction. A great deal of how that source material is read will always be in the eye of the beholder, i.e. how we see and interpret "the facts", just as the social observation in literature will also have been shaped by the writer's eye. But they do help us to cast a small flickering lantern over the vast, unlit landscape that is women's history.
I would argue that speculative fiction, which is the field in which I write, takes us the next step. Through enabling first writers and then readers to speculate on the "why" and "what if", it also allows us to turn history on its head, if we wish, and explore alternative ideas of how a world or society might be. In doing that, we may—just may—be able, in a very small way, to help make future history new.
Helen Lowe is an award-winning novelist, poet and interviewer. Her latest novel, The Heir of Night, the first of the adult WALL OF NIGHT quartet, was published in the USA, Australia and New Zealand in October 2010 and is newly published in the UK. Helen's first novel, Thornspell, (Knopf, 2008) won the 2009 Sir Julius Vogel Award for "Best Novel, Young Adult", and Helen was awarded the Sir Julius Vogel for "Best New Talent" in the same year. She blogs every day on Helen Lowe on Anything, Really.
gillpolack @ 2011-03-14T12:01:00
More Women's History Month later (of course) but right now you get a link to my new BiblioBuffet piece which I have tastefully entitled "Marie Curie and the Death of Childhood."
ETA: I really need to add a disclaimer. Like all my BiblioBuffet essays, this was sent in ahead of time. That it was published the week of the earthquake and while we're waiting for news of nuclear disaster is a bit of a stunner, but was unavoidable.
ETA: I really need to add a disclaimer. Like all my BiblioBuffet essays, this was sent in ahead of time. That it was published the week of the earthquake and while we're waiting for news of nuclear disaster is a bit of a stunner, but was unavoidable.
March 13, 2011
apology
To anyone who noticed that the WHM post changed - today is so not a good day - I posted the wrong one. You'll see the other on 15 March. Not long to wait...
Women's History Month: Faye Ringel
My home town of Norwich, in Eastern Connecticut, has been home to many talented women whose prose and poetry have gone on to national and international fame. I recently spoke on this subject to the local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma International, an honor society for women educators. Even this audience of retired teachers and residents barely recognized most of my subjects. The most recent of the group is Greer Gilman, who won the Tiptree Award for Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales. But for this celebration of Women's History Month, I'll focus on two native daughters: Lydia Huntly Sigourney and Charlotte Perkins Gilman (no relation to Greer, by the way).
Neither is appreciated, honored, or even remembered in Norwich. Perkins Gilman (I will refer to her as CPG) has undergone a resurgence of interest (two biographies in two years!), but Sigourney today is mainly known as the source of the actor Sigourney Weaver's name. Lydia Sigourney (1791-1865) was a pioneering educator, a poet, one of America's first best-sellers, and arguably the first American to make a living by her pen. Her books are long out of print, but thanks to the magic of googlebooks, you can read her work for free. Among these is her memoir, Letters of Life published the year after her death. It is 400 pages long, but it exemplified the best of women's history, bringing to life a side of American history not found in textbooks—or even revisionist history.
Her poems show concern for the plight of the First Peoples: Not merely Romantic elegies to "The Last Indian" but condemnation of those who were killing them and taking their lands for profit. She was an early Abolitionist, and wrote much occasional poetry. But she wrote prolifically in many verse genres; quite a few will repay your time in reading.
No plaque marks the house in which she was raised, a house with a history worthy of a novel. Earlier in the 18th century, Benedict Arnold lived there as an apprentice pharmacist, mistreated, according to legend, by the Lathrops who then conducted their business on its premises. Sigourney's autobiography contains her memories of other legends about Benedict Arnold—that he was a rebellious boy who tortured small animals and birds—but she offers real evidence: one of her early schoolbooks had been the property of Arnold, who defaced it. Horrors!
The Wikipedia article on Sigourney, while reasonably accurate, omits some relevant local history, saying only "After conducting a private school for young ladies in Norwich, she conducted a similar school in Hartford from 1814 until 1819." What an understatement! Lydia Huntley (her birth name) was essentially driven out of Norwich because in that "private school for young ladies" whose location stands today, though unmarked by any historical plaque, she dared to teach them mathematics. The school lasted through two seasons, but by the second year, no parents could be found brave enough to patronize this radical enterprise.
Deprived of this small income, she moved back with her parents and began to teach poor children—including African-Americans, then a considerable population. She tends in her autobiography to gloss over unpleasant occurrences, which according to local legend were frequent, and notes only that "with me the habit of teaching seemed to have become an essential element of happiness. Therefore I procured a large room at a neighboring house, and opened a gratuitous school twice a week for poor children. My principal object was to impart religious instruction, Sunday schools not having then commenced in our country. It being understood that books, and also articles of clothing, were sometimes distributed, my apartment was thronged. As the comfort of a teacher does not wholly depend on the high erudition of the pupils, I found much gratification in this humble sphere of action.
One of my favorite classes was of sable hue. My dark-browed people were obviously grateful for common attentions, and being most of them quite young, and intellectually untrained, I felt no little pride in their progress."
There is no historical record of overt acts of violence, but the Negro Sunday School experiment ended swiftly, and Lydia Huntly removed herself to Hartford, where she found more enlightened patronage for her progressive school. She married Charles Sigourney in Hartford in 1819, retired from teaching and began writing professionally, the income being necessary after her husband suffered financial reverses (a common pattern for women writers in America). She became known as "The Sweet Singer of Hartford."
Charlotte Perkins [Stetson] Gilman
I'll be brief, since information on the life and work of CPG is once more easy to obtain, though such was not the case when I began learning about her in the 1960s. Since the publication by the Feminist Press in 1973 of her most famous work of fiction, "The Yellow Wall-paper," the story has become one of the most frequently-assigned subjects in secondary and post-secondary literature courses in the United States. Yet few readers of Gilman--even scholars!--know--that she lived for many years in Norwich, visited here frequently as a young girl, and that (this is my theory) the house in which her (mostly) autobiographical story takes place is a real house in Norwich. Or as she said in the autobiography The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935), about the visits she had made nearly 50 years earlier to her cousins, including Houghton Gilman, whom she eventually married: "Nice people, nice house. Little did I think I should come to live in it!" As you've probably guessed by now—it's the same house that Benedict Arnold and Lydia Sigourney occupied, the one without the plaque.
Back to "The Yellow Wall-paper": I'm assuming that LJ readers won't need a plot summary. Originally published in 1892 in The New England Magazine as a ghost story, the dominant--almost exclusive--reading of the story today is not supernatural, but a realistic account of women's fate in the late 19th century, trapped into domesticity and subject to repressive medical and psychiatric treatment if they rebel. I believe that both readings are correct, but that the story depends equally for its power and emotional charge on the possibility of the supernatural (the unexplained Gothic) and its realistic autobiographical elements. Rationalize away the supernatural, and it's a tract (as was much of Gilman's later writing).
I draw the curtain here on "The Yellow Wall-paper" and skip forward to 1920. Between the post-partum depression memorialized in the story, her divorce in 1893 from the husband who "enabled" the nervous breakdown, her escape with the child to California, and her marriage to her first cousin, Houghton Gilman in 1900, she sealed her bad reputation in Norwich by something more shocking even than divorce, feminism, or fiction-writing. She arranged for her best friend Grace Channing to marry her ex-husband--and shipped her daughter Katherine back from California to live with them. This sensible arrangement was so profoundly shocking that all the living Gilman relatives warned Houghton about what a scarlet woman he was marrying, and may have contributed to the local shunning of Charlotte, even in her "respectable" old age. Though Houghton Gilman inherited the "ancestral mansion" and he and CPG moved there permanently in 1920, they did not live happily ever after. Instead, CPG's brand of utopian and economic feminism was deemed "old-fashioned" in the Roaring 20s, her books fell swiftly out of print, her lecture income dried up, and the Crash took all their wealth except for the house. CPG particularly resented being ignored by local educational institutions, including Connecticut College for Women in nearby New London. She finally left Norwich in 1933 to spend her last years in California near her daughter: when the breast cancer she had been fighting became acute, she committed suicide in 1935.
Dr. Faye Ringel was meant to be a guest at Aussiecon 4, but a broken elbow prevented that from happening. In 2006, she was a scholar in residence at the University of Canberra, where she was warmly welcomed by Gillian and Kaaron Warren. She hopes to return someday! She recently was honored with the title of Professor Emerita of Humanities by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London, CT. She resides in the house in which she grew up in Norwich, Connecticut and lectures on New England literature, history, and legend. She regularly guides graveyard tours.
Neither is appreciated, honored, or even remembered in Norwich. Perkins Gilman (I will refer to her as CPG) has undergone a resurgence of interest (two biographies in two years!), but Sigourney today is mainly known as the source of the actor Sigourney Weaver's name. Lydia Sigourney (1791-1865) was a pioneering educator, a poet, one of America's first best-sellers, and arguably the first American to make a living by her pen. Her books are long out of print, but thanks to the magic of googlebooks, you can read her work for free. Among these is her memoir, Letters of Life published the year after her death. It is 400 pages long, but it exemplified the best of women's history, bringing to life a side of American history not found in textbooks—or even revisionist history.
Her poems show concern for the plight of the First Peoples: Not merely Romantic elegies to "The Last Indian" but condemnation of those who were killing them and taking their lands for profit. She was an early Abolitionist, and wrote much occasional poetry. But she wrote prolifically in many verse genres; quite a few will repay your time in reading.
No plaque marks the house in which she was raised, a house with a history worthy of a novel. Earlier in the 18th century, Benedict Arnold lived there as an apprentice pharmacist, mistreated, according to legend, by the Lathrops who then conducted their business on its premises. Sigourney's autobiography contains her memories of other legends about Benedict Arnold—that he was a rebellious boy who tortured small animals and birds—but she offers real evidence: one of her early schoolbooks had been the property of Arnold, who defaced it. Horrors!
The Wikipedia article on Sigourney, while reasonably accurate, omits some relevant local history, saying only "After conducting a private school for young ladies in Norwich, she conducted a similar school in Hartford from 1814 until 1819." What an understatement! Lydia Huntley (her birth name) was essentially driven out of Norwich because in that "private school for young ladies" whose location stands today, though unmarked by any historical plaque, she dared to teach them mathematics. The school lasted through two seasons, but by the second year, no parents could be found brave enough to patronize this radical enterprise.
Deprived of this small income, she moved back with her parents and began to teach poor children—including African-Americans, then a considerable population. She tends in her autobiography to gloss over unpleasant occurrences, which according to local legend were frequent, and notes only that "with me the habit of teaching seemed to have become an essential element of happiness. Therefore I procured a large room at a neighboring house, and opened a gratuitous school twice a week for poor children. My principal object was to impart religious instruction, Sunday schools not having then commenced in our country. It being understood that books, and also articles of clothing, were sometimes distributed, my apartment was thronged. As the comfort of a teacher does not wholly depend on the high erudition of the pupils, I found much gratification in this humble sphere of action.
One of my favorite classes was of sable hue. My dark-browed people were obviously grateful for common attentions, and being most of them quite young, and intellectually untrained, I felt no little pride in their progress."
There is no historical record of overt acts of violence, but the Negro Sunday School experiment ended swiftly, and Lydia Huntly removed herself to Hartford, where she found more enlightened patronage for her progressive school. She married Charles Sigourney in Hartford in 1819, retired from teaching and began writing professionally, the income being necessary after her husband suffered financial reverses (a common pattern for women writers in America). She became known as "The Sweet Singer of Hartford."
Charlotte Perkins [Stetson] Gilman
I'll be brief, since information on the life and work of CPG is once more easy to obtain, though such was not the case when I began learning about her in the 1960s. Since the publication by the Feminist Press in 1973 of her most famous work of fiction, "The Yellow Wall-paper," the story has become one of the most frequently-assigned subjects in secondary and post-secondary literature courses in the United States. Yet few readers of Gilman--even scholars!--know--that she lived for many years in Norwich, visited here frequently as a young girl, and that (this is my theory) the house in which her (mostly) autobiographical story takes place is a real house in Norwich. Or as she said in the autobiography The Living of Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1935), about the visits she had made nearly 50 years earlier to her cousins, including Houghton Gilman, whom she eventually married: "Nice people, nice house. Little did I think I should come to live in it!" As you've probably guessed by now—it's the same house that Benedict Arnold and Lydia Sigourney occupied, the one without the plaque.
Back to "The Yellow Wall-paper": I'm assuming that LJ readers won't need a plot summary. Originally published in 1892 in The New England Magazine as a ghost story, the dominant--almost exclusive--reading of the story today is not supernatural, but a realistic account of women's fate in the late 19th century, trapped into domesticity and subject to repressive medical and psychiatric treatment if they rebel. I believe that both readings are correct, but that the story depends equally for its power and emotional charge on the possibility of the supernatural (the unexplained Gothic) and its realistic autobiographical elements. Rationalize away the supernatural, and it's a tract (as was much of Gilman's later writing).
I draw the curtain here on "The Yellow Wall-paper" and skip forward to 1920. Between the post-partum depression memorialized in the story, her divorce in 1893 from the husband who "enabled" the nervous breakdown, her escape with the child to California, and her marriage to her first cousin, Houghton Gilman in 1900, she sealed her bad reputation in Norwich by something more shocking even than divorce, feminism, or fiction-writing. She arranged for her best friend Grace Channing to marry her ex-husband--and shipped her daughter Katherine back from California to live with them. This sensible arrangement was so profoundly shocking that all the living Gilman relatives warned Houghton about what a scarlet woman he was marrying, and may have contributed to the local shunning of Charlotte, even in her "respectable" old age. Though Houghton Gilman inherited the "ancestral mansion" and he and CPG moved there permanently in 1920, they did not live happily ever after. Instead, CPG's brand of utopian and economic feminism was deemed "old-fashioned" in the Roaring 20s, her books fell swiftly out of print, her lecture income dried up, and the Crash took all their wealth except for the house. CPG particularly resented being ignored by local educational institutions, including Connecticut College for Women in nearby New London. She finally left Norwich in 1933 to spend her last years in California near her daughter: when the breast cancer she had been fighting became acute, she committed suicide in 1935.
Dr. Faye Ringel was meant to be a guest at Aussiecon 4, but a broken elbow prevented that from happening. In 2006, she was a scholar in residence at the University of Canberra, where she was warmly welcomed by Gillian and Kaaron Warren. She hopes to return someday! She recently was honored with the title of Professor Emerita of Humanities by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, New London, CT. She resides in the house in which she grew up in Norwich, Connecticut and lectures on New England literature, history, and legend. She regularly guides graveyard tours.
gillpolack @ 2011-03-13T12:01:00
My cousin's funeral is on Friday, so life should begin to improve a little after that. The burning off has abated and my inflammation is finally beginning to properly subside. What I'm trying to do now is catch up with everything that was done badly on went too slowly during the last week. If there's anything I promised you, let me know, because I may have forgotten.
Also, Melbourne friends - I'm very sorry, but there won't be time to see you this visit. I won't be down for Passover or for Continuum, either (no money! - I'm channelling a very particular King John with "Christmas is cancelled."). I'll try to get there in September. Promise.
Also, Melbourne friends - I'm very sorry, but there won't be time to see you this visit. I won't be down for Passover or for Continuum, either (no money! - I'm channelling a very particular King John with "Christmas is cancelled."). I'll try to get there in September. Promise.
