Having a swell time in Northampton -- Wish you were here!
(Photo Credit: Willa Cather Archive [Image Gallery]; Louise Pound and Willa Cather at the University of Nebraska, 1890s.)
Pardon the radio silence, kids. The moms have been away at Cather Camp for the past several days, making their debut as co-authors and collaborators with a paradigm-shifting (that's academic-speak for, No one in the audience audibly snored) plenary address called "Cather, Dickinson, and Sexuality." The conference was focused on novelist Willa Cather's roots in and connections to the nineteenth century (she was born in 1873), so Moose seized the opportunity to get Goose to pay her back for delivering a paper at last year's Emily Dickinson shindig in Oxford. They did indeed have a swell time hanging out with old and new friends on the bucolic campus of Smith College, which is as crawling with fiercely adorable young dykes as their fevered, middle-aged imaginations had hoped it would be. Moose used the photo above of Cather and her college crush Louise Pound to illustrate a point about how different literary history would look if women's affective and creative relationships were brought into the picture. (Goose had a similar Dickinson image, but we are not at liberty to show that to you yet -- Stay tuned!)
Anyhoo, while Roxie's World was as deserted as the executive suite at Gingrich campaign headquarters, some of our very favorite blog pals were hard at work, making news and waves and paradigm-shifting announcements of their own. We'll toot their horns as a way of getting back to regular programming. Go read 'em, and tell 'em Roxie sent ya.
- Tenured Radical announced on Wednesday that she's pulling up her virtual stakes and moving to the big stage of The Chronicle of Higher Education. We couldn't be happier for TR and look forward to seeing her wise-cracking, professionally savvy self shaking up and queering up the sometimes stodgy Chron. We are also crossing paws, fingers, and a variety of other appendages in hopes that her great and powerful blogroll will migrate with her, on account of we totally heart the hits we get by way of her influential sidebar. Love you, TR. Need you. Mean it.
- Meanwhile, in today's New York Times, our favorite queer legal eagle Katherine Franke, who runs the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia (and its blog) has an op-ed bravely arguing that marriage will be a mixed blessing for same-sex couples if it means losing some of the rights that have been gained for unmarried domestic partners and effectively forcing "people to marry — whether they be gay or straight — to have their committed relationships recognized and valued." It's a great piece and a timely one, as New York seems poised to become the sixth state in the nation to offer civil marriage to same-sex couples. Of course, as we learned in Maryland recently, there is a world of political difference and distance between being poised to become and actually being a state that offers complete marriage equality. We look forward to seeing what happens in Albany, but in the meantime we recommend reading Franke's op-ed as a way of saying, again, Be careful what you wish for, darlings. I mean, yes, equality is swell -- but compulsory marriage? Uh, not so swell, if you ask us. And you should.
- Finally, speaking of surprising news of a queer sort, our beloved blog buddy Historiann, who recently publicly confessed to being a breeder, has now announced that she has gone gay! We are delighted, of course, to welcome her to the fold and the team. We even offered to declare her male husband an honorary lesbian so she could continue to keep company with him while pursuing her new
lifestyle choicesense of queer alliance and comradeship. We always knew, girlfriend, and we are here to help. Now, tuck in that flannel shirt before we slide your pisco sour across the bar. We're running a classy joint here, you know! (Srsly, kids, go read that gone gay post. It's hilarious, but it and the comment thread that follows raise some great questions about identity and conversation online.)
Paws up to all of our wonderful sister bloggers and to you, our loyal readers, who have been so patient with our sporadic attention lately. It has been and will continue to be a busy summer, but we will do our best to keep you up to date on how the view looks from the ridiculously large backyard of Roxie's World. Peace out, and a sweet summer weekend to you and yours.
Smith College is in fucken Nebraska?? I always thought it was somewhere in New England. Shows how little I know.
ReplyDelete"Moose used the photo above of Cather and her college crush Louise Pound to illustrate a point about how different literary history would look if women's affective and creative relationships were brought into the picture."
ReplyDeleteAwesome topic! (Was Louise any relation to Ezra?) You should do an essay on the college girlfriends of famous 19th C writers or women connected to famous 19th C writers. (I just learned in an M.A. exam a few months ago that Mark Twain's beloved daughter Susie had a girlfriend at college. I suppose I should be more scrupulous with my lesbian history now that I'm a lesbian.)
I'm off to the library to check out Cather's The Professor's House. I have to confess that I still haven't read Shadows on the Rock either, although it too is eerily relevant to my interests.
@Historiann: Oh, you baby dykes have so much to learn! Louise Pound was not related to Ezra Pound, but her brother Roscoe would become a law prof at Harvard. More importantly, though, Louise herself would have a distinguished academic career. She was an English prof who taught for decades at Nebraska and -- in 1955! -- became the first woman president of the MLA. She's a fascinating figure whose biography has never been written. Moose has toyed with taking on that project, though she can't wrap her mind around the idea of moving to Nebraska in order to do it.
ReplyDeletePound was a tennis champion, too -- a true New Woman!