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Why they only need little houses on the prairie now: reproduction politics in...
Charles Ingalls (1836-1902), hipster You might have wondered why I found myself driving across South Dakota recently. I’ve heard for years about the DeSmet annual Laura Ingalls Wilder Pageant, in...
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Sexuality and power in recent novels and recent history
Oh, professor! In a review of two recent novels that feature professor-student affairs, reviewer Michelle Dean asks where is the frank discussion of power? She writes, The professor-student romance...
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All the single ladies, part ZOMGeleventy!!111!!!
Psssssst! This is a clue. UPDATED 8/3/2013 WITH THE ANSWER BELOW THE FOLD!!! Today’s post is about all of those “ZOMG college women having sexxay sexxxx with totally undeserving d00ds!!!! (and p.s. I’m...
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Nelson Muntz has the last laugh.
HA-ha!: Geoffrey Miller, a psychology professor, has been censured by the University of New Mexico, two months after he sent out a fat-shaming Twitter post that caused an angry Internet uproar. It may...
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An invitation, or performance art?
Photographed today at 4:35 p.m. scrawled on the wall of the west side of the A-wing of the Andrew G. Clark building at Baa Ram U.: Does anyone remember that punk band from the 1980s called the Circle...
View ArticleSmell you later
In a daring experiment, Slate’s brilliant legal analyst Dahlia Lithwick spent a week wearing Axe body wash, shampoo, and spray: My own boys, at 8 and 10, are too young for Axe. . . or so I shall insist...
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Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood, Disability, and Discovery by Rachel Adams
The offending photograph of “privilege.” After reading Cristina Nehring’s breathtakingly nasty review (described in the previous post) of Rachel Adams’s Raising Henry: A Memoir of Motherhood,...
View ArticleJFK puts the zap on Peggy Noonan’s brain
Peggy Noonan desperately tries to find something nice to say about John F. Kennedy, because he was assassinated and because he was the only Roman Catholic U.S. President: Two small points. It is...
View ArticleWay-out gear for mod maidens
I like these styles, although catsuits are very impractical when nature calls. (I remember these from the early 1990s–did anyone else have a velvet catsuit back then?) Furthermore, I don’t think it’s...
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What I saw at the AHA 2014: Who are the ladies?
Howdy, friends! I spent last weekend at the American Historical Association’s annual conference in Washington, D.C. Here’s what I saw & did, at least the not-unbloglich parts. Tenured Radical and...
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Victorian Secrets by Sarah A. Chrisman (2013): perhaps some things are better...
Because of my clear fascination with historical shapewear and undergarments, a number of people have recommended that I read Victorian Secrets: What a Corset Taught Me about the Past, the Present, and...
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Free speech and bad art at Wellesley
Wake up!!! Have any of you been following the fracas over the temporary installation of Tony Matelli’s “Sleepwalker” statue on the Wellesley College campus? Lenore Skenazy published a faux-outraged...
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What I learned from the comments thread at Tenured Radical
Why weren’t we on the cover? Did any of you see Tenured Radical’s post yesterday about the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue 2014, “Happiness is a Cold, Plastic Doll?” This year it features Barbie on...
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How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail? The “big questions”...
“How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail, and pour the waters of the Nile on every golden scale?” It’s that time of the year, friends. Why does every spring semester feel so damn busy?...
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Shorter Margaret Wente: porn fine by me, just leave it unexamined.
Here’s my brief summary of Margaret Wente’s predictable, by-the-numbers shot at the academic study of pornography: Provocative lede! Bad puns. Academics write only jargon-filled articles that no one...
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Spring!
Homo Signorum, ca. 1486, from Guild Book of Barber Surgeons From The Husband-Man’s Guide (Boston, 1712): April In this month sow Hemp & Flax, pole hops, set and sow all kind of tender herbs and...
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In memorium: Stephanie M. H. Camp, 1967-2014
Stephanie Camp died two weeks ago. I know many of my readers know this already, as a few notices have appeared on Twitter and other blogs as well as everywhere on Facebook. I wanted to wait to post a...
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Saturday: Thank Dog.
Lucky dog! My weekends are just too freakin’ short this semester, as I’m teaching two lecture classes on a MWF schedule. I honestly don’t mind teaching three days a week–I’m just frustrated that I...
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“Maternal Solicitude,” or, how to avoid both infanticide and suicide!
From the very first paragraph of Mary Watkins’s Maternal Solicitude, or Lady’s Manual (New York, 1809), h/t to my graduate student, Clarissa: WHEN a mother does not nurse her own infant, she, in many...
View ArticleRight wing minority wields disproportionate influence over the NWHM, and why...
Via a retweet by Modupe Labode on Twitter, I found this fascinating essay by Manon Parry, who tells of her experience as a recent Ph.D. who had an informational interview with a staff member from the...
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