Tag Archives: blogging

@feministlib: joining the twitter bandwagon

24 Thursday May 2012

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So I’ve been on Twitter for a couple of years now, but in a very private-personal way. I keep my Twitter account locked down to followers who are close friends and family.

In my headspace, Twitter and email are the two online spaces where I don’t have to worry about presenting myself as I want the world as a whole to see me. I’m not a very private person — and as readers of this blog are aware, there are few topics strictly off-limits. But in spaces where the whole world (potentially) has access, I do try to turn on the Articulation Meter and the Civility Filter rather than hanging out in the Accusing Parlor or the Angry Dome.

I use Tumblr to share links of note (and pictures because what’s Tumblr without pretty things?) but when it comes to sharing my own writing on the interwebs, or quick action alerts, etc., I increasingly find myself wishing I could just make a single tweet or two “public” without losing the privacy of my locked account.

You see where this is going, don’t you?

You can now find the feminist librarian on Twitter: @feministlib.

My plan is to use @feministlib primarily to share links to stuff I’ve been writing in various online spaces. I’m also going to sync it to my (heretofore moribund) Facebook status updates, so for folks whose social networking drug of choice is the Book of Faces (as my friend M. calls it), you’ll be able to find me there.

My Facebook account is closed to non-friends, but I’ll pretty much “friend” anyone who isn’t obviously schilling and/or trolling. I use my metered-filtered voice there and everything!

guest post @ the last name project

11 Friday May 2012

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I have a guest post up at from two to one today as part of The Last Name Project (co-hosted by Danielle of from two to one and Shannon of The Feminist Mystique). The Last Name Project profiles “an array of individuals and couples about their last name decisions upon marriage or what they expect to choose if they marry. The goal is to explore how individuals make decisions about their last name, and to highlight the many possibilities.” For my contribution, I wrote about the decision Hanna and I made to combine our middle names when we register our marriage:

This solution felt right to us because it doesn’t privilege either person’s family name. It adds to, rather than erasing any aspect of, our (linguistic) identities. As a feminist and queer woman, I think extensively about mainstream notions of marriage, family, and identity, and I knew that I wanted a way to honor my individual self and family history alongside incorporating my partner into who I am and will become. Weaving Hanna’s middle name together with mine feels like a positive way to entwine our individual selves together without losing those other strands of who we are and have been.

Check out the whole piece over at from two to one.

comment / captcha note

18 Wednesday Apr 2012

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Hi all,

Friend and fellow blogger Danika let me know that there have been some problems with the captcha word verification system on Blogger not allowing legitimate comments through. So I’ve shut the word verification requirement down, and also tweaked the comment format a little so that you can comment right on the post (rather than the system taking you to a whole new page). Hope this makes commenting easier for everyone! If it turns out a lot of spam is coming through, I’ll probably have to think again about moderation — but we’ll give this a shot!

Please let me know if you’re having any technical issues … I don’t mean to discourage folks from participating in the conversation!

~Anna

me –> writing elsewhere: springtime for harpies! edition

08 Sunday Apr 2012

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Blackthorn Fairy*

Here’s what I’ve been “writing elsewhere” since the 5th of February. Yep. It’s really been that long!

At the corner of your eye:

  • I wrote a joint review of In Search of Gay America (1989) and Art and Sex in Greenwich Village (2007).
  • I reviewed Seanan McGuire’s new Discount Armageddon (2012). 
  • I shared a list of books read, not yet reviewed (sensing a theme at all?).
  • I posted the second episode of Ivor the Engine (1958), a children’s television show from England. Oliver Postgate wins the things.
  • I reviewed six books at once in a pre-vacation round-up on subjects ranging from last year’s best sex writing to the nature of identity in the twenty-first century.
  • I shared a list of ten books purchased but not yet read (randomly chosen from the many titles on our shelves!).
  • I reviewed The Hound of Conscience (1981), a history of English conscientious objectors of the First World War.
  • Also Bachelors and Bunnies (2011), a history of gender relations as articulated in the pages of Playboy through the 1970s.
At The Pursuit of Harpyness (excluding cross-posts):

Hope y’all are enjoying a long and fruitful spring. Can’t believe we’re heading back into baseball season already here in Boston … that time of year when you have to calculate the options for your commute home based on the relative number of Red Sox fans crawling around the neighborhood!

*Before you ask, yes. I was completely besotted with Cicely Mary Barker’s flower fairies as a wee one. In my defenseI think I assumed they all behaved a bit like Tiki from The Fairy Rebel.

the feminist librarian is off to michigan!

01 Thursday Mar 2012

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So it’s that time of year again, and Hanna and I are off to Michigan for a week of vacation (for her) and vacation/work (for me). I’ve been invited to give a couple of presentations at my alma mater, Hope College, one on my life as a feminist and one about my life as a librarian. As my friend Molly pointed out on Twitter recently, I have a whole blog to pillage for subject matter!
lemonjellos (holland, mich.), May 2011
Seriously, though. If you’re a Hope College community member, I’ll be on campus Monday, 5 March, 4:00pm, in the Granberg Room, Van Wylen Library, to give a talk on my emerging career as a professional librarian. Then on Tuesday, 6 March, 7:00pm, I’ll be part of a panel of Women’s Studies Program graduates discussing how the program affected our lives and our work. The Tuesday event is part of a longer program celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Women’s Studies program at Hope.

that would be me on the left, circa 2005

This is my first real visit back on campus since graduating, and while I have a contentious relationship with the college as in institution, I’m looking forward to getting a sense of how current students and faculty are feeling about the direction of the college and the role of feminist thought and practice in that space.

I’ll be taking lots of notes and look forward to sharing my reflections and experiences with y’all upon my return. In the meantime, I anticipate posting will be light-ish while we’re on the road.

notes on reading "the secret lives of wives"

17 Tuesday Jan 2012

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Over the weekend, I read an advance review book from LibraryThing called The Secret Lives of Wives: Women Share What It Really Takes to Stay Married by journalist Iris Krasnow (Gotham Books, 2011). Hanna wasn’t happy with me since I spent most of Saturday ranting at the book. I find this satisfying; she finds it anxiety-producing. At least when I use words like “heteronormative” and “shallow bitch.”

I’ll be writing a review of this book, where I try to be slightly more measured in my criticisms. You know: balancing those out with the fairly innocuous observations Krasnow makes about what it takes to maintain strong interpersonal relationships with those truly heinous arguments grounded in gender essentialist bullshit. But for now, I thought readers of the feminist librarian might be amused at the notes I took in preparation for writing said review, scrawled in the front and back cover of the book. So here they are verbatim:

Inside the front cover:


     no brownie points for
     heteronormativity
     evopsych bullshit
     gender/sex essentialism
     focus on women — makes it women’s work
              — p. 66, p. 119, p. 135-36, p. 138, p. 202-08 HARMFUL, p. 219.
     concern trolling — p. 37, p. 12
     “secret”
     “surrender”
     “males” and “females”
     “divorce epidemic”
     “me decade”
     not getting [that] this book isn’t universal!!!  
     describing physical appearance –> [ran out of room; continues below “points for” list]

points for  
     acknowledging agenda, limits [of study]
     no one-size-fits-all, to a point
     self-responsibility for happiness
     outside relationships
     aloneness = positive
     “who are you beyond Mommy?” (101)
     activity, engagement, etc. duh
     p. 198 friendship    

[no brownie points for, cont’d]
     “gay best friend” stereotype
     feminist hate-ons
     privileging marriage relationships
     not recognizing economic privilege
          — travel, house, etc. professionals. p. 140
     negotiation isn’t possible? wtf?
     all couples w/kids?? — p. 145
     Depression-era idealization

*compare to marriage across cultures book*

Inside the back cover:

relentless heteronormativity — relentless
“need”
“essential”
good marriage = lasting marriage
marriage vs. dating, no other options
“women need marriage” O_o … (p. 8)
“marriage = sex” O_o … (p. 9)
better than the crazy therapy lady?
evopsych bullshit ARGH
p. 57 aloneness + self-awareness (duh)
p. 40 network of support and fulfillment (duh)
reading this book made me so grateful for my parents
any dads as primary parent??
p. 257 ARGH

gender essentialism
oppositional binary
ageism – against youth, against age
tokenism

So there you have it folks. That’s the raw material from whence my review will spring. Although I admit to being puzzled by a couple of these notes myself (who the heck is “the crazy therapy lady” I was thinking about??). Still, I hope you enjoyed this rare opportunity to observe the inner workings of a book review in process. It’s a public service after all: I read books like this so y’all don’t have to!

new blog launched: the corner of your eye

05 Thursday Jan 2012

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I warned you it was coming, and now it’s here! Hanna and I have started a new joint review blog, the corner of your eye* , which can be found at corner-of-your-eye.blogspot.com. or via the link on the left-hand sidebar under “find me elsewhere online.”

the corner of your eye

I know, I know … like either of us have scads of free time going to waste. But none of our existing online spaces are really dedicated to arts and culture reviews per se, and we thought it might be fun to experiment with joint blogging. Really, it’s pure indulgence for us both in terms of letting us opinionate about the books, movies, and television shows that occupy so much of our discretionary time (when we’re not writing fan fiction or trawling the interwebs).

Our goal is to put up two posts a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I’ll likely be cross-posting some content here, particularly when the creative juices are running low.

We’re still tweaking the visual look of the blog, so please feel free to comment re: accessibility and all the rest.

*bonus points for anyone who can identify the allusion

looking back/looking forward (from where we are now)

31 Saturday Dec 2011

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it’s been a busy and oft-times exhausting year!

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve been feeling more aware and more thankful than usual of all the ways our life feels more settled than last year and — while still containing its stresses — just generally better on the well-being front. So here are a few notes on what happened in the Cook-Clutterbuck household this year.

The Good:

  • Last December I completed my library science degree which, hooray!
  • On the first Monday after New Years, I began my full-time position at the MHS.
  • Hanna took the leap of leaving a workplace that had been steadily eroding her health — a particularly brave move given the current economic climate — and has been rewarded by steady gainful employment at the Center for the History of Medicine and the related Medical Heritage Library with a fine group of fellow archivists. As I type this, she’s looking forward to two more years of grant-funded archival processing and digital projects.
  • I’ve been blogging at The Pursuit of Harpyess since January 2011, an opportunity that has led to slightly more active participation in the feminist blogosphere than I had the energy for during graduate school — and certainly kept me more engaged during my first year of post-grad employment than I might otherwise have put in the effort to sustain.
  • I finished my thesis in May 2011 and brought my graduate school career to a thankful close. 
  • Also in May, I finally had a chance to take Hanna to visit my hometown in Michigan.
  • With neither of us in school, we’ve had more time to settle into life here in Boston, which appears to involve a lot of coffee shops, used bookshops, libraries, and hosting dinners for a few close friends.
  • 2012 will mark the fifth year of living in this apartment and neighborhood, both of which we’re pretty happy with. We keep talking about moving at some point (a bigger kitchen would be nice; and space for more bookshelves), but thankfully moving isn’t an urgent need.

The Not-So-Good:

  • In the event anyone wants to know, depression still sucks. I’m so, so thankful for Fenway Health and the wonderful medical and mental health care providers we work with there. And I am continually amazed at Hanna’s strength and patience, with her willingness to put one foot in front of the other (particularly on the hard days), and her determination to hold onto hope we’ll build a life worth sharing.
  • While Hanna and I are more securely situated than many vis a vis our employment and financial stability, carrying a joint burden of some $160,000.00 in student loans — even if they’re our only form of accumulated debt — is a vulnerability we’re just learning to live with. Even as we scrabble around to start long-range savings and consider the possibility of paying for things like travel abroad or a mortgage. I’m thankful the issue of educational debt continues to be a topic of conversation and concern on a national (and international) level, since it’s not going to get better without significant structural change.
  • Given our limited ability to travel, living far away from family and close friends continues to suck. We’ve got loved ones in Texas, California, Oregon, Michigan, and Maine. All of whom are missed dearly. Social media helps, but I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the distance between us.
The Possible Future:
  • Thanks to Hanna’s continued employment in the Harvard University library system, she’ll be eligible to take a history seminar in the spring, virtually free of charge (hooray!). While they don’t offer courses specifically in her area of interest, Irish history, she plans to enroll in a course on intellectual history that she hopes will give her a chance to continue her research on the history of Irish nationalism.
  • I’m working on a paper for the New England Historical Association and the MHS on a 1914 case of alleged sexual assault here in Boston documented by the New England Watch & Ward society as part of their ongoing efforts to eradicate vice. 
  • In March, I’ll be traveling back to Michigan (hopefully with Hanna for company!) to take part in the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the Hope College Women’s Studies program, of which I am a proud graduate.
  • Hanna and I are knocking around the idea of starting a joint review blog, tentatively titled stuff + things, which will roll out in January. Watch for further details coming soon.
  • As if that weren’t enough, I’m still working on oral history transcription and hope to start posting final versions of interviews on the project blog later in the new year.
I’ll obviously be writing about all of this as time and energy allow, so stay tuned … I look forward to sharing all that’s to come in 2012 and beyond. 

in which we write letters: stop SOPA

18 Sunday Dec 2011

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Depending on your level of involvement in things internet-political and techy, you may or may not be aware of the Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) now making its way through congress. Introduced by representative Lamar Smith (R-TX), this bill mandates widespread monitoring of internet activity and has the potential to cause the internets as we know them to be fundamentally altered as blogs and other social networking sites are shut down for supposed acts “piracy.” You can read more about the act at the Organization for Transformative Works, TechCrunch, and the American Library Association. The letter Hanna and I sent to our representatives is heavily cribbed from the ALA talking points.


Find your U.S. Representative here. 

Find your U.S. Senators here.


18 December 2011
Dear Representative Capuano,
As librarians, bloggers, and registered voters in Allston, Massachusetts, we are writing to ask you to vote against the proposed Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA), H.R. 3261.
This bill, if it becomes law, will cause a widespread “chilling effect” on use of the Internet for commerce, communication, and participation in democratic society. The bill strikes at copyright protections currently granted to libraries and educational institutions by creating the possibility of criminal persecution of institutions and institutional representatives. for online streaming and other use of online resources in library and classroom space. SOPA’s requirements to monitor internet traffic violate free speech and privacy protections and may create new forms of government surveillance of private activities within and outside the United States. The predicted consequences of SOPA are far-reaching. If passed, the potential for new jobs, innovative new ventures, and economic growth will be stifled.
Citizen engagement in online spaces depends on the ability to share and discuss a wide variety of media content across multiple social networking and other Internet platforms. SOPA will effectively shut down the vibrant creativity and vital political discourse that has been made possible by the World Wide Web. On behalf of ourselves, our online community of bloggers, and our library patrons, we ask you to vote against H.R. 3261, and support alternative ways for protecting legitimate copyright interests online.
Sincerely,
Anna J. Cook & Hanna E. Clutterbuck