Celebrate International Women’s Day

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womentalking

Today is International Women’s Day.  Here is the official website.  For more on the origins of IWD and National Women’s History Month, go to the National Women’s History Project.  They also have sent out the following proclamation from President Obama:

Presidential Proclamation on Women’s History Month
Obama pays tribute to women who helped preserve, protect the environment
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
March 3, 2009

WOMEN’S HISTORY MONTH, 2009
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
With passion and courage, women have taught us that when we band together to advocate for our highest ideals, we can advance our common well-being and strengthen the fabric of our Nation. Each year during Women’s History Month, we remember and celebrate women from all walks of life who have shaped this great Nation. This year, in accordance with the theme, “Women Taking the Lead to Save our Planet,” we pay particular tribute to the efforts of women in preserving and protecting the environment for present and future generations.


Ellen Swallow Richards is known to have been the first woman in the United States to be accepted at a scientific school. She graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1873 and went on to become a prominent chemist. In 1887, she conducted a survey of water quality in Massachusetts. This study, the first of its kind in America, led to the Nation’s first state water-quality standards.


Women have also taken the lead throughout our history in preserving our natural environment. In 1900, Maria Sanford led the Minnesota Federation of Women’s Groups in their efforts to protect forestland near the Mississippi River, which eventually became the Chippewa National Forest, the first Congressionally mandated national forest.

Marjory Stoneman Douglas dedicated her life to protecting and restoring the Florida Everglades. Her book, The Everglades: Rivers of Grass, published in 1947, led to the preservation of the Everglades as a National Park. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1993.


Rachel Carson brought even greater attention to the environment by exposing the dangers of certain pesticides to the environment and to human health. Her landmark 1962 book, Silent Spring, was fiercely criticized for its unconventional perspective. As early as 1963, however, President Kennedy acknowledged its importance and appointed a panel to investigate the book’s findings. Silent Spring has emerged as a seminal work in environmental studies. Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously in 1980.


Grace Thorpe, another leading environmental advocate, also connected environmental protection with human well-being by emphasizing the vulnerability of certain populations to environmental hazards. In 1992, she launched a successful campaign to organize Native Americans t o oppose the storage of nuclear waste on their reservations, which she said contradicted Native American principles of stewardship of the earth. She also proposed that America invest in alternative energy sources such as hydroelectricity, solar power, and wind power.


These women helped protect our environment and our people while challenging the status quo and breaking social barriers. Their achievements inspired generations of American women and men not only to save our planet, but also to overcome obstacles and pursue their interests and talents. They join a long and proud history of American women leaders, and this month we honor the contributions of all women to our Nation.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 2009 as Women’s History Month. I call upon all our citizens to observe this month with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities that honor the history, accomplishments, and contributions of American women.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this third day of March, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-third.

BARACK OBAMA

Book Club double shot: Netherland and The Women

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Regular readers of this blog probably noticed that there have been no book club entries for quite some time (the last one was back in December).  That’s because this week was the first time we’ve been able to meet.  The January meeting got postponed so that folks could watch the Inauguration festitivites, and February got cancelled because of snow.  So, we decided to discuss two books — bad idea as it turns out because only a few of us (including me) were able to finish the second one.

First up was Joseph O’Neill’s outstanding novel Netherland, which just received the Pen/Faulkner award (nah, nah to the 14 publishers who foolishly turned O’Neill’s manuscript down before Random House picked it up).  My first reaction when we selected this one was, “not another novel about 9/11.”  Well, this is one of the best — it perfectly captures the sense of alienation and moorlessness that this event created in many New Yorkers.  Of course, it’s also about a lot more than the terrorist attacks — the central character, Hans, is a Dutch financial analyst who came to New York for a plush job and found his life turned upside down by the attacks. His English wife leaves him, taking along their young son.   This catapults Hans out of what appears to have been a pretty complacent life.  He finds some sense of community among his oddball neighbors in the Chelsea Hotel, as well as a multicultural community of fellow cricket enthusiasts. The one who most shakes up Hans’ life is the Trinidadian Chuck Ramkissoon, who introduces him to the weird side of New York immigrant life that wealthy residents (and tourists) seldom encounter.  Critics have called Ramkissoon “Gatsby-esque” — since my memories of that novel come mainly from the movie with Robert Redford and Mia Farrow, I really don’t see the connection.  Like Gatsby, Ramkissoon meets an untimely end (we know this from the beginning of the novel so this is no spoiler), and he’s basically a fraud and an operator, but otherwise there is little resemblance to Fitzgerald’s character.  I enjoyed this book tremendously and may even re-read it so I can savor it all the more.

The other selection was The Women by T.C. Boyle.  This book has received a lot of positive buzz, and frankly, I don’t understand all the fuss.  Maybe I was spoiled by reading Loving Frank before this one, but honestly this is not Boyle’s best work. He uses the awkward device of having the story of Frank Lloyd Wright’s various wives and mistresses told through the point of view of Tadashi Sato, a composite character who works as an apprentice under Wright at his famed compound Taliesin.  Boyle does a good job of capturing Wright’s arrogance and cluelessness to the feelings of others around him, but his treatment of the women is rather shallow.  I think the novel would have been much better had he focused on developing his treatment of the eccentric community at Taliesin — i.e. did a midwestern version of Drop City — or had Sato play a role similar to that of Charles Ossining in The Road to Wellville, i.e. a naive young fellow who watches chaos erupt around him.  As always the writing is fabulous, but the structure of the book just did not work for me.

Lizzie Simon at CCSU: Stigma Busting Par Excellence

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detour Wednesday night I had the pleasure of attending a talk by  Lizzie Simon

author of Detour: My Bipolar Road Trip in 4D.  The talk was organized by the Central Access and Student Development office at CCSU, NAMI On Campus, and the Farmington Valley Chapter of NAMI-CT.   She started with describing how she explained mental illness to a hockey team — the person with mental illness is like the goalie, but instead of one team charging towards him/her, there are three: the disease itself, the mental health system, and stigma.  So, the goalie needs support from the rest of his/her team.  Great analogy!

I wish some of my students from my disability history class had been able to attend.  I think it would be helpful for them to see a young person  who is more typical of the majority of students with mental illness — i.e. neither violent nor weird.  Maybe her book will be as useful as Clifford Beers’ memoir from the early twentieth century.

Respecting Choice

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Since my work is on contraception, not assisted reproductive technologies (ART), I’ve been hesitant to weigh in on the controversy surrounding Nadya Suleman.  Since this has come up in my course on disability history — in the context of eugenics (especially sterilization of women deemed “feeble-minded”) and “freak shows” (step right up and see “Octuplet Mom” folks), I thought I would just make some comments.   Two recent posts at GlobalComment and Reproductive Health Reality Check express most of my thoughts on the issue e.g. it revives the “welfare Mom” stereotype, and echoes historical discussions about who is fit to reproduce.

To these I would add the various strains of disability prejudice — e.g. that Suleman has “cheating” on her disability claims, that if she is disabled, why is she reproducing, she must be “crazy” to have so many children,  and so forth.    It seems that little has changed when it comes to the sexuality of women with disabilities.

Women’s History Nostalgia Trip: Classic feminist programming for children

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A group of friends and I are having a great time swapping favorite clips of children’s programs with feminist themes on Facebook.  So that my technophobic colleague out West can join in the fun, here are some of the highlights.

The first is a clip from Sesame Street, proclaiming the various careers women can pursue:

Next is a repeat from last year, the Schoolhouse Rock classic, “Sufferin ‘Till Suffrage”:

This prompted a reply reminding me of the children’s special, “Free to Be You and Me”

My favorite song from that show is this number by former football player/bodyguard and now Christian minister Rosey Grier:

Rev. Grier is not a knitter, but he showed men you could do needlepoint and still be manly.

This all leads me to wonder, what happened to all the great feminist children’s programming from the 1970s?

Women’s History Month Blogfest: Book Discussion of Judith Bennett’s History Matters

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historymattersSeveral of my feminist blogger colleagues have decided to host a blog-based discussion of Judith Bennett’s book History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.) Each Monday in the month of March, one of them will write a post to her blog and each will comment on each others postings.  They invite others to join in on the fun.

The first post, by The Adventures of Notorious Ph.D., Girl Scholar, is Should politics be historical? Should history be political?

Speaking of women’s history and blogging, Tenured Radical announces that  The Journal of Women’s History will be hosting a round table on this subject.  Here is the call for proposals:

Call for Papers: Feminism, Blogging and the Historical Profession. The Journal of Women’s History invites submissions for a round table on the emergence of blogging as a location for critical thought among women in the historical profession; historians of women, gender and sexuality; and feminist scholars who may, or may not be, historians. Participants may wish to address one or more of the following questions in an abstract of no more than 250 words: What role does self-publishing on the internet play in a profession where merit is defined by scholarly review and a rigorous editorial process? What are the intellectual benefits, and/or costs, of blogging? What are the ethics and consequences of blogging under a pseudonym? What kinds of electronic acknowledgement already correlate with established scholarly practices; which can be discarded; and which need to be attended to, perhaps more rigorously than in printed publications? If many scholarly publications and organizations have already adopted blogs as a way of spreading news and inviting conversation, is blogging itself developing rules and practices that will inevitably produce intellectual and scholarly hierarchies similar to those that blogging seeks to dismantle? Does feminist blogging offer particular opportunities for enhanced conversation about race, sexuality, class and national paradigms, or does it tend to reproduce existing scholarly paradigms and silences within feminist scholarship? Finally, are new forms of colleagueship and scholarship emerging in the blogosphere?

The round table will consist of a short introduction, several essays of 2 – 3,000 words, and a concluding comment/response. Abstracts should arrive no later than July 15, 2009, and can be submitted electronically to Claire Potter at tenuredDOTradicalATgmail.com. Final submissions are due October 1. Pseudonymous bloggers may publish under their pseudonyms, but must be willing to reveal their identities to the editor of the round table and the commenter. Bloggers based outside the United States are particularly encouraged to contribute.

Post Oscars disability blogging

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Media dis&dat has some great posts on disability themes in oscar-nominated films, as well as excellent coverage of the protests against the humanitarian award for Jerry Lewis.   I haven’t found any substantive commentary on the Oscar-winning performance by Penelope Cruz in “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona,” so will say a little bit here.

First, I have to say that I was surprised that Cruz was nominated at all — it was not her best performance although it did stand out because the film as a whole was so dull.  By giving her the best supporting actress award, I think the Academy is validating a stereotypical view of persons with mental illness.  Then there’s the underlying current of misogyny that runs throughout this characterization — but that’s become pretty common for Woody Allen nowadays.

I thought Ann Hathaway’s character Kim in “Rachel Getting Married” was a much more nuanced view of a person struggling with addiction and emotional problems.  We get to see raw emotional pain and the family conflicts that ensue — but she’s not demonized either.

Anyway, I’d be interested in hearing other reactions to these performances and others I missed (e.g. “Revolutionary Road” and “The Changeling.”)  As to the Oscar ceremony — BORING!!!!  The only entertaining part was the bit with Tina Fey and Steve Martin (Ben Stiller’s impression of Joaquin Phoenix was entertaining for a bit but got old fast).  I think Fey and Martin should  host next year.

BBC Booklist

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From Clio Bluestocking.

BBC Book List — the beeb came up with this thinking that the average Brit has only read six of these.  Let’s see how well this Yank does.

Instructions:

1) Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read.

2) Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.

3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.

4) Put a minus (-) next to those you never plan to read because life’s too short  to waste time on stuff you don’t like.

1) Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen: *

2) Lord of the Rings – J.R.R. Tolkien: –  Tried to, just couldn’t get into it.

3) Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte:

4) Harry Potter series – JK Rowling: X (just the first one).

5) To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee: X+.

6) The Bible: X.

7) Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte:

8) Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell: X.

9) His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10) Great Expectations – Charles Dickens: X.

11) Little Women – Louisa M Alcott: X.

12) Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy: X

13) Catch 22 – Joseph Heller: X+

14) Complete Works of Shakespeare:

15) Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier: X.

16) The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien: -.

17) Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18) Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger – X:

19) The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger.

20) Middlemarch – George Eliot:

21) Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell: X.

22) The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald: X.

24) War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy: -.

25) The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams: X+.

26) Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh:*

27) Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky:

28) Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck: X.

29) Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll: X

30) The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31) Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy: X.

32) David Copperfield – Charles Dickens: X.

33) Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis:

34) Emma – Jane Austen: *

35) Persuasion – Jane Austen:*

36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis:

37) The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini: X

38) Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere

39) Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden: X.

40) Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne: X. Of course!

41) Animal Farm – George Orwell: X

42) The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown: X.

43) One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez: X+.

44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving: X

45) The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins:

46) Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery:

47) Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy:

48) The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood: X+.

49) Lord of the Flies – William Golding: X.

50) Atonement – Ian McEwan: X+

52) Dune – Frank Herbert: X.

53) Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons. *

54) Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen: *

55) A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth* (actually started it, left it in the Dallas airport)

56) The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57) Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens: X.

58) Brave New World – Aldous Huxley: –

59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon: X.  Liked A Spot of Bother

60) Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez: X+.

61) Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck:

62) Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov: –

63) The Secret History – Donna Tartt: X.

64) The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold: X.

65) Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas:

66) On The Road – Jack Kerouac:

67) Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy:

68) Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding: X.

69) Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie: X

70) Moby Dick – Herman Melville.

71) Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens: X

72) Dracula – Bram Stoker: X.

73) The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett: X+.

Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson X

75) Ulysses – James Joyce:X+ — did the walking tour in Dublin too.

76) The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath: X.

77) Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78) Germinal- Emile Zola X

79) Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80) Possession – AS Byatt: X+.

81) A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens: X

82) Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell

83) The Color Purple – Alice Walker: X+.

84) The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro X+

85) Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert: X.

86) A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry

87) Charlotte’s Web – EB White: X

88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom. Gag! No.

89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: X.

91) Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad: X.

92) The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery: X.In French

93) The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94) Watership Down – Richard Adams:

95) A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole: *

96) A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute. X

97) The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas:

98) Hamlet – William Shakespeare: X

99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl: X.

100) Les Miserables – Victor Hugo: