Category Archives: linkspam

five books

12 Wednesday Aug 2015

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goodreads_aug2015I can’t seem to get it together to write reviews I haven’t promised to third parties this year. So in lieu of a subject/verdict post here’s a list of five books I’m currently reading, five books I’ve read recently, and five books I cannot wait to read.

You’re also welcome to stalk me on GoodReads if that’s your kind of thing. I’m ahead on my goal for the year! That’s what reading a lot of novellas will do for you, I guess. I’m still irritated there’s no good way to count fan fiction toward the total…

currently reading

Delirium
by Lauren Oliver

The Feminist Utopias Project: Fifty-Seven Visions of a Wildly Better Future
edited by Alexandra Brodsky and Rachel Kaunder Nalebuff

Orphan Number Eight 
by Kim van Alkemade

The Red Heart of Jade
by Marjorie M. Liu

Reflections (Indexing serial #2)
by Seanan McGuire

have recently read

Everything Leads to You
by Nina LaCour

Lafayette in the Somewhat United States
by Sarah Vowell

Never After (short stories)
by Laurell K. Hamilton, Yasmine Galenorn, Marjorie M. Liu, and Sharon Shinn

This is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture
by Whitney Phillips

The Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels
by Valerie Weaver-Zercher

cannot wait to read

Archival Desires: The Queer Historical Work of New England Regionalism (November 2015)
by J. Samaine Lockwood

Chapelwood (September 2015)
by Cherie Priest

A Red Rose Chain (September 2015)
Seanan McGuire

Reforming Sodom: Protestants and the Rise of Gay Rights (August 2015)
Heather Rachelle White

Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel (October 2015)
by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

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an eclectic list of delightful things [summer 2015]

27 Monday Jul 2015

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IMG_20150724_184838It’s a busy summer around these parts, and while I have a lot of blog-worthy thoughts in my head I haven’t felt much like blogging. Go figure. In the meantime, I thought you might like a rather eclectic list of things which I am enjoying this summer.

1. Today’s defeat of the bid for Boston to host the 2024 Olympic games.

2. Gardening at our community garden. We have two babby pumpkins growing bigger by the day!

3. My #365feministselfie project (now on day 120).

4. Welcome to Night Vale.

5. A great deal of the Hawaii 5-0 #fanfic on AO3.

6. The Plaid Jacket latte at Voltage Cafe.

7. This list of needed words.

8. The fact that Seanan McGuire is coming out with a second Indexing novel (!!!).

9. The Farmer’s Lunch sandwich at City Feed & Supply.

10. Reading books and reviewing them.

11. Magenta. As a color one can wear.

12. @HorribleSanity‘s Twitter feed.

13. Looking forward to the release of Carol in December.

14. Having borrowing privileges at the Harvard libraries again.

15. English muffins.

16. Walking Boston.

17. Being married in all fifty states.

18. Being protected from workplace discrimination by existing law.

19. Our cats being ridiculous.

20. @EarlGrayTea’s epic Inception AU.

21. My #RelentlesslyGay umbrella.

 

recommended reading on #obergefell

03 Friday Jul 2015

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obergefell_smIt’s been a week since the Obergefell v. Hodges (pdf) decision came down from the Supreme Court. I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to quit sporting the rainbow-hued lenses of the past week. On this 4th of July eve, as made out with my wife on our back porch in full view of the neighborhood I thought to myself that today I agree with President Obama that “our union is a little more perfect.”

Still, a lot of excellent commentary has come out in the last seven days — not all of it joyous. And I thought I would take a moment to share some of my favorites. Every major legal and social change has its complications and landmines — and no, I’m not talking about the feelings of anti-gay Christians forced to reckon with the fact they share this country with people whose values differ from their own. Below are the perspectives I found eloquent, entertaining, or otherwise useful in placing Obergefell in perspective.

Continue reading →

linky links that have caused thinky thoughts: urban life edition

06 Monday Oct 2014

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I had a two-day migraine last week and now seem to be battling a cold, so — suffice to say writing energy and focus is low, and time scarce. In the meantime, here’s some stuff I’ve been reading on the internet I’ve been thinking about when not following #teamharpy.

Jacobin Magazine recently published a bitter analysis of the forces of gentrification by Gavin Mueller that has returned my thinking to urban history and politics:

Gentrification has always been a top-down affair, not a spontaneous hipster influx, orchestrated by the real estate developers and investors who pull the strings of city policy, with individual home-buyers deployed in mopping up operations. …

“What choice do I have?” ask the liberal gentrifiers, if you press them a bit. “This is the only place I can afford to live!” This sums everything up perfectly, puncturing the bubble of individual choices that make up liberal politics.

You have no choice; everything’s been decided ahead of time. If you want the American dream of a middle-class life with a home you own in the city in which you work, you have few other choices than to join the shock troops of the onslaught against the urban poor. Align with big capital and the repressive state in the conquest of the city, and maybe you’ll have enough equity to send your kids to college.

Maybe because of the Jacobin piece, or because of the series on Uprooting Racism I’ve been doing over at the Amiable Archivists Salon, I’ve been thinking about gentrification a lot lately. This piece by Dannette Lambert on “20 Ways Not to be a Gentrifier” from the Oakland Local is always worth a re-read: Continue reading →

cfp: religion and fat

31 Friday Jan 2014

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This call for papers came across my desk this morning and sounds fascinating! Please, someone who reads my blog be doing research in this area (or know someone who is!). Because SO VERY COOL.

~Anna

CFP—Special Issue of Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society on Religion and Fat, guest edited by Lynne Gerber, Susan Hill and LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant. 

This special issue of Fat Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Body Weight and Society explores the relationship between religion and fat. The editors invite papers on a variety of topics that address, for example, how particular religious traditions engage the fat body, or how religions define, circumscribe and/or understand fatness. We seek to answer questions such as: How is the fat body read in religious ways? What kinds of socio-cultural spaces do religions offer fat people? 

Potential topics might include, but are not limited to:

  • Fat bodies as religious bodies
  • The use of fat or fatness in religious texts
  • Use of fat in theological discourse
  • Fat in world religions
  • Religious and/or moral dimensions of fat or fatness in popular culture
  • Fat bodies and lived religion
  • Religion and weight loss/weight gain
  • The fat body as moral or immoral body in religious texts or objects

To be considered for inclusion in this special issue, please send a 200-250 word abstract and a current c.v. to Susan Hill (susan.hill@uni.edu) by March 31, 2014. 

Any questions about the topic can be directed to this e-mail, as well. Final submissions should be between 3000-6000 words, including all notes and references. If you wish to include reproductions of visual images with your essay, you will need to receive permission to do so from the artists/copyright holders of the image(s). All authors will need to sign a form that transfers copyright of their article to the publisher, Taylor & Francis/Routledge. 

Fat Studies is the first academic journal in the field of scholarship that critically examines theory, research, practices, and programs related to body weight and appearance. Content includes original research and overviews exploring the intersection of gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, age, ability, and socioeconomic status. Articles critically examine representations of fat in health and medical sciences, the Health at Every Size model, the pharmaceutical industry, psychology, sociology, cultural studies, legal issues, literature, pedagogy, art, theater, popular culture, media studies, and activism. 

Fat Studies is an interdisciplinary, international field of scholarship that critically examines societal attitudes and practices about body weight and appearance. Fat Studies advocates equality for all people regardless of body size. It explores the way fat people are oppressed, the reasons why, who benefits from that oppression and how to liberate fat people from oppression. Fat Studies seeks to challenge and remove the negative associations that society has about fat and the fat body. It regards weight, like height, as a human characteristic that varies widely across any population. Fat Studies is similar to academic disciplines that focus on race, ethnicity, gender, or age.

quick hit: a must-read piece on ex-homeschool activists

04 Wednesday Dec 2013

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The American Prospect has a most excellent article up today, The Homeschool Apostates, by Kathryn Joyce, exploring the growing visibility of young adults who are organizing and pushing back against their parents’ decision to use home education as a tool for familial control:

Even conservative Patrick Henry felt like a bright new reality. While much about the college confirmed the worldview Lauren grew up in, small freedoms like going out for an unplanned coffee came as a revelation. She describes it as “a sudden sense of being able to say yes to things, when your entire life is no.”

Family ties began to fray after she met John, a fellow student who’d had a more positive homeschooling experience growing up; he took her swing dancing and taught her how to order at Starbucks, and they fell in love. Her parents tried to break the couple up—at one point even asking the college to expel Lauren or take away her scholarship for disobeying them. Their efforts backfired; soon after her graduation, Lauren married John and entered law school.

As someone who grew up within the early unschooling wave of the modern home education movement, and thrived within it, I often find myself frustrated by most media coverage of homeschooling — it is too often simplistic, judgmental, one part awe (such well-behaved children!) one part hysteria (equating home education, per se, with child abuse). In contrast, Joyce does an excellent job of covering a specific type of homeschooling, as well as teasing out the highly gendered nature of Christian homeschooling culture. She also foregrounds the thoughtful, passionate voices of home-educated young people who look back on their childhoods and the Christian subculture they were immersed in with a critical eye.

While I don’t agree with everything these ex-homeschoolers have to say, I think their voices are crucial ones for us to listen to — particularly those of us who have benefited from the low level of state oversight that enabled our families to do our own thing while these controlling parents to did theirs. I don’t always agree with the remedies these ex-homeschoolers propose, but I do believe their experiences must be taken seriously. We can’t in good faith build a culture of learner-led education on the backs of young people who have been denied a very basic level of self-determination and autonomy.

Anyway. Go read the whole thing.

thanks for the liebster love; let’s have some more!

28 Sunday Jul 2013

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Thanks to follower .breaking into blossom., I’ve been nominated for something called a liebster award: a sort of  blog-based chain letter which encourages small bloggers to give a shout-out to/for other small bloggers.

I don’t normally do chain-letter type things, but 

a) it was sweet of blossom to think of me (thank you!),
b) I just got back from vacation and I’m bored,
c) I like that the Liebster Award shares the same first letter as Lesbian.

So here goes.

It seems there are multiple versions of this “award” going around, but the one blossom is following instructs me to:

a) nominate eleven blogs with under 200 followers (I honestly don’t know how you’d determine that, so I’m just gonna take a stab at it by choosing from the “smallish personal blog” category in my Feedly list)
b) notify said bloggers they’ve been nominated (hey bloggers! thanks for existing!)
c) provide answers to the eleven questions blossom posed in her own Liebster post, and
d) ask eleven questions of my own nominees, to answer if they so choose, along with posting their own eleven nominees (excluding the blogger who nominated you).

My Nominees in Alphabetical Order are…. (drumroll) … 

  1. The Dirty Normal
  2. Eat the Damn Cake
  3. Fannie’s Room
  4. First the Egg
  5. I’m Unschooled. Yes, I Can Write
  6. The Lesbrary
  7. New Porn By Women
  8. Radical Doula
  9. The Thang Blog
  10. Undercover in the Suburbs
  11. Walk the Ridgepole

My responses to blossom’s questions…

  1. What comforts you most when you’re sad? Touch, particularly from my wife (doesn’t have to be sexual). And reading familiar books.
  2. What would you do on a dream day where money and travel time were no object? Enjoy leisurely meals in the good company of friends and family (who are scattered across the continent), go walking in Cumbria in ideal weather, read intellectually engaging things in books, and enjoy unhurried sexytimes with my wife.
  3. Favorite drink (with or without alcohol)? Summer: Elderflower gin & tonic, Winter: Goat’s milk hot cocoa made with belgian chocolate.
  4. What character trait (of yours) do you most struggle to accept about yourself? The fact that physical activity and exercise are not second nature to me.
  5. How much water do you drink in a day? Typically not as much as I should.
  6. If you’re a parent, what has surprised you the most about the gig? If you’re not, what do you like best about not having kids (right now or at all)? I feel uncomfortable framing non-parenting in terms of what’s “best” about that aspect of our family life. In part, we’re non-parents because we can’t picture having enough hours in the day (around work) or emotional resources to parent adequately. So I guess I’d say, “it’s good having enough sleep and down-time that we can function”? But I’d rather say that what’s surprised me about non-parenting is that I’m okay with it. Growing up, I assumed I would be a mother. Life hasn’t turned out that way, and it’s surprising me that I’m as comfortable with that as I am.
  7. What (if anything) makes you feel insecure about either being a parent or not being a parent? Insecurity may not be the right term…but I worry about how to maintain cross-generational connections in the absence of parenting, as that is the clearest model I know.
  8. Top three four television shows of all time? Firefly. Mr. Rogers. Torchwood. The West Wing.
  9. Specialty dish (or baked indulgence)? Something you’ve made time and again. Moosewood brownies.
  10. Favorite thing about the person you’ve grown into? That I can always find something to be interested in and ask questions about.
  11. One simple, happy memory. Stepping off the plane in Redmond, Oregon, en route to visiting my grandparents and smelling the scent of juniper and lava rock dust.
My questions for the Leibster nominees … (should they choose to answer them) … 
  1. First library?
  2. A favorite childhood book or movie you’re now a bit cringe-y about having adored?
  3. Earliest memory of the internet?
  4. Food you disliked in childhood but appreciate now (and why)?
  5. Books currently on your nightstand/active reading pile?
  6. A might-have-been from your twenties (job not taken, relationship not pursued, trip aborted) that you find yourself wondering about?
  7. Favored toothpaste, toothbrush?
  8. Have you ever burned/shredded/junked a piece of personal history you now regret destroying (if so, what and why)?
  9. Have you ever burned/shredded/junked a piece of personal history you have no regrets about (if so, what and why)?
  10. A strong childhood memory of world events?
  11. A project you hope to finish some day (but has currently fallen by the wayside)?
If you (the nominees) choose to spread the liebster love, now or at some later date, please link the post you create back here in comments so others can enjoy!
Again, thank you all for thinking and writing and sharing.

    BREAKING: new zealand lawmakers burst into song upon enacting marriage equality

    17 Wednesday Apr 2013

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    (thanks to Hanna for the link!)

     On Wednesday, local time, the New Zealand House of Commons Representatives passed a bill allowing same-sex marriage (they have had civil unions for same-sex couples since 2005).

    Upon declaration of the passage of the bill, the chamber burst into song. Here is a video, which I think is adorable and absolutely made my day.

    Congratulations New Zealanders of all sexual identities and relationship types!

    cross-posted at the family scholars blog.

    quick hit: "in loving memory of her little girl: past, present, and place in the gladys potter garden"

    21 Thursday Mar 2013

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    My former professor, mentor, and friend Laura Prieto has recently published an essay in the digital humanities project Subjecting History titled “In Loving Memory of Her Little Girl: Past, Present, and Place in the Gladys Potter Garden.” The piece explores how a memorial garden in Laura’s neighborhood came to be, and what it has meant over time:

    Surely I cannot be the only person who has noticed the pair of stone plaques outside one of the heavy wrought iron gates. The inscription on the left side reads: “The Gladys Potter Garden. Dec 4, 1883 – Nov 16, 1891.” Its companion plaque on the right is much more weathered and thus harder to read. But if one squints a bit, one can make out the explanation: “This garden was given by a mother in loving memory of her little girl, who loved this spot and who loved to walk here with her father when it was part of an attractive ravine. MCMXX” [1920].

    I am a historian. I am a mother. The inscription knocks the breath out of me. Among so many boys and girls who have played here, there was Gladys Potter, and she died at my own son’s age. I know how frequently parents have suffered the deaths of their children throughout history. I can prepare myself for these awful object lessons in a cemetery (where I’ve also been known to walk and explore the past). But I do not expect this sharp announcement of grief, this intimate and generous act of mourning, to arrest me at the gates of my children’s playground.

    Hanna and I first heard this piece when Laura read an early version of it as her presidential address before the New England Historical Association several years ago. We are so happy to see it find a home!

    Please go enjoy the essay in full at the Subjecting History interface. The digital volume is currently open for comment and will eventually, with revisions guided by that commentary, be published as a physical print volume. The scholars who are participating hope for broad public involvement — go help them hone their work!

    quick hit: american sociological association on same-sex parenting and child outcomes

    01 Friday Mar 2013

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    cross-posted at the family scholars blog.

    via Religion Dispatches.

    The American Sociological Association has filed an amicus brief in the Proposition 8 case pending before the U.S. Supreme Court strongly supporting marriage equality as a positive step for child well-being. They also offer an extensive critique of the Regnerus study used in other amicus briefs as support for upholding the ban on same-sex marriage.

    You can read the entire 32-page brief here (PDF) and Peter Montgomery at Religion Dispatches, above, discusses the critique of the Regnerus study specifically, with lengthy excerpts.

    Here, I thought I would share the succinct conclusion from the brief itself:

    The social science consensus is both conclusive and clear: children fare just as well when they are raised by same-sex parents as when they are raised by opposite sex parents. This consensus holds true across a wide range of child outcome indicators and is supported by numerous nationally representative studies. Accordingly, assuming that either DOMA or Proposition 8 has any effect on whether children are raised by opposite-sex or same-sex parents, there is no basis to prefer opposite-sex parents over same-sex parents and neither DOMA nor Proposition 8 is justified. The research supports the conclusion that extension of marriage rights to same-sex couples has the potential to improve child wellbeing insofar as the institution of marriage may provide social and legal support to families and enhances family stability, key drivers of positive child outcomes. The Regnerus study and other studies relied on by BLAG, the Proposition 8 Proponents, and their amici provide no basis for their arguments, because they do not directly examine the wellbeing of children raised by same-sex parents These studies therefore do not undermine the consensus from the social science research and do not establish a “common sense” basis for DOMA or Proposition 8.

    While I would be the first to agree that just because something is said by a professional organization that doesn’t make it true (exhibit A: the classification of homosexuality as a pathological disorder), it is true that professional consensus backed up by a body of literature that consistently demonstrates a set of outcomes requires an equally strong body of evidence to refute. And the anti-equality spokespeople are not offering up that body of evidence.

    I encourage those interested to at least skim through the ASA brief.