Book 'em, Brontës!

If you don’t have a sense of humor, skip this post.  And stop being such a stick in the mud.

My favorite lines:

• “It's the Brontë sisters, super powered English authors from the nineteenth-century!”

• “Girls can't write books, ha, ha, ha!”

• Sisters: We're boys.

          Evil literary male critic: Guys, your books have revolutionized 

          the Gothic Romance novel!  They're awesome.

          Sisters: Well, the jokes on you, narrow minded cur.  We are women!

          Evil literary male critic: What?  No one wants to read books by girls, get out of here!

• “Book 'em, Brontës!”

• “Together the Brontës wrote books about confident, independent women.  Now they join forces again to become the all-powerful BRONTËSAURUS!”

• “Brontësaurus comes with barrier-breaking feminist vision!”

Advice for Young Girls

Presented, without comment, for your enjoyment.  


PS - I am not responsible if you spit your drink all over your keyboard from laughing while watching these videos, so do us all a favor and put your drink down now.  Thanks.

Advice for Young Girls From a Cartoon Princess: The Little Mermaid

Advice for Young Girls From a Cartoon Princess: Belle

Advice for Young Girls From a Cartoon Princess: Snow White

Tweet, Tweet

The following articles came from my Twitter feed, and are posted in no particular order.

• From Cat in the Stack: “Learn Intellectual Property By Doing It” by Cathy Davidson

• “That's a fabulous learning experience by any estimation, but the HASTAC way is to not just create new technologies but to think critically about those technologies, what they mean, how they apply to society or to individual rights and aspirations.   It is also important to transform creating and critiquing into pedagogical practice” (Davidson).

• From You Can Teach Writing: “When writing a literary analysis: Use thesis + support (persuasive pattern)” by Linda Aragoni

• From Stuff.co.nz: “E-book limit upsets apple cart for local iPad users” by Claire McEntee

• Just a quick reminder that the (technological) world apparently revolves around the United States, as illustrated by Australian and New Zealanders’ frustration over time lags for e-books.

• From StatesmanJournal.com: “Video: What eReader is right for you?” by Barbara Curtin

• From Doyce Testerman: “The Life of a Furtive Writer” by Doyce

• From The New York Observer (Media Mob): "Jane Pratt Teams Up With Teen Blogger For New Magazine” by Hunter Walker

• From The Spy Report (News from Media Spy): “US: Amazon to increase Kindle royalties to publishers” by bacco|007

• From Miami Herald: “In digital world, Miami’s book fair still bedazzles” by Connie Ogle

• From PCMAG.com: “Our Favorite Blogs: 2010” by Eric Griffith

• Sweet Valley Confidential (Book Excerpt – Chapter One) by Francine Pascal

• From copyblogger: “How to Put Yourself into an Effortless Writing Zone” by James Chartrand

• From Whatever: “The Man in the Frey Flannel Suit” by John Scalzi

• From New York Magazine (Books): “James Frey’s Fiction Factory: The controversial author is hiring young writers to join him in a new publishing company.  The goal is to produce the next Twilight.  The contracts are brutal.” By Suzanne Mozes

• From hindustantimes: “Is your child a hypernetworker?” by Sanchita Sharma

• From HASTAC: “Digital Humanities Sessions at the 2011 MLA” by Mark Sample

• I might have had to wipe the drool from my keyboard after reading through the panel descriptions.  And in the words of Liz Lemon, “I want to go to there.”

The following articles came from friends, Facebook, and my own web browsing.  These too are posted in no particular order.

• From MatadorNetwork: “20 Obsolete English Words that Should Make a Comeback” by Heather Carreiro (Thanks Jessica for the link!)

• From The Huffington Post: “An Appeal From Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales” by Jimmy Wales

• From Guardian.co.uk: “What’s on the next page in the great ebook race?” by Justin McGuirk

• From The New York Times: “Great Holiday Expectations for E-Readers” by Julie Bosman

• From Lost Angeles Times: “Libraries reinvent themselves as they struggle to remain relevant in the digital age: They’re preparing for a future in which materials can be checked out and read from a home computer, smart phones or e-reader.” By David Sarno

• From lifehacker: “Top 10 Tips for Better Writing” by Whitson Gordon

• From BitchMedia: “Past Imperfect: The Feminine Mystique and the persistence of nostalgia” by Eryn Loeb

• From BitchMedia: “House Proud: The troubling rise of stay-at-home daughters” by Gina McGalliard

• To quote Battlestart Galactica, “All this has happened before, and it will happen again.”  That quote was running through my head as I read this article, which provoked a riot of emotions and to be honest, made me queasy.  The attitude of the fathers (and husbands) in this article immediately made me think of Cotton Mather, feme coverture, and the idealized motherhood of the republican mother from post-Revolutionary America.  This is not good, not good at all.    

• From Jezebel: “Popular Female Evangelist Claims That What God Really Wants Is For Women To Shut Up” by Morning Gloria

It’s Complicated

Friendships are complicated.  

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I found these on today’s PostSecret.

• From Jezebel: “The Televised Guide to Teen Girl Friendships” by Ryan

I recommend reading through the user comments on this post, which expand upon the list by Ryan.  I love how people commenting are so willing to share their personal experiences – my cousin was a Rayanne, I was a Daria and my friend was a Jane, I love Buffy/Willow!, “His list is so limited…so…gringa upper middle class” etc.  Make sure you click on “earlier discussions” to get all the comments, they’re worth reading.

Oh Sucker Punch, how do I love thee?  Let me count the ways….


But first, watch the trailer.

The movie is set up as quest: Baby Doll and her friends have to find map, fire, knife, and a key.  We are told, “the fifth thing is a mystery.”


Let’s take a closer look at the trailer.


Written words in the trailer: 

• “Reality is a prison.”
• “Your mind can set you free.”

Spoken words in the trailer: 

• “To reach your own paradise, just let go.  What you’re imagining right now, you control this world.”
• “I’m going to help you to be free.”
• “Begin your journey, it will set you free.”

I love it, absolutely love it.  Although, I have to admit, I’m a sucker for girls who kick ass, especially if they have guns, knives, and flame throwers.  I wonder if this film could serve as an example of the female homosocial – Baby Doll must work with her asylum inmates in order to achieve her quest – her freedom.  I guess we’ll have to wait until March 25, 2011 to find out.   


In the meantime, you can watch IGN’s Rewind Theater and see what they have to say about Sucker Punch.

Vive La Revolution!

As a future educator in the making, I found this video incredibly important and informative.  I can’t take credit and say I found this video on my own – friends posted it to Facebook.

My breakdown of the video:

1. Public education – economy link
2. Public education – cultural link
3. Past vs. Future (methods of education)
1. 18th century / Enlightenment
2. 19th century / Industrial Revolution
4. Gene pool of education
1. Academic = smart people
2. Non-academic = not smart people
3. This model causes CHAOS
5. ADHD issue – a modern epidemic?
1. Standardized testing – ADHD link?
2. Geographic (increases as you move toward the east coast)
6. The Arts are victims of this mentality
1. Aesthetic experience: senses operating at peak
2. Anesthetic experience: senses shut off/deadened
1. ADHD drugs do this (deaden the senses)
7. Education modeled as interest of industrialization and image of it
1. Like a factory / production line mentality
2. Standardization – getting away from it is the key
8. Divergent thinking ≠ creativity
1. Divergent thinking defined: essential capacity for creativity
2. Test for divergent thinking in Break Point & Beyond
9. Gene pool of education (academic vs. non-academic) = MYTH
1. Collaboration: great learning happens in groups; the stuff of growth
2. Culture of our institutions: 
1. The habits of our institutions
2. The habitats they occupy

What do you think about this video?  Are the arguments Ken Robinson make valid?  What do you think of his criticism of schools as factories?  Why do we group children by age in the classroom instead of by their individual progress?  How many of us knew a classmate who skipped grades?  What will it take to overhaul the current education system?  Who stands to lose and who stands to win by not making or making radical changes to America’s educational structures?


Some articles related to America’s school systems:

• From The Chronicle of Higher Education: Innovations (blog)

• From Cat in the Stack:  by Cathy Davidson
• “We The Teacher” 

• “Four Indispensable Methods for Organizing Group Attention”

• “How To Crowdsource Grading”

• From Ed.gov (U.S. Department of Education): “U.S. Department of Education’s Open Innovation Portal Hosts NEA Foundation’s Challenge to Innovate”

• From Slate: “A Private Matter: Am I hurting my local public schools – and hurting America – by sending my kids to expensive private schools?” by Patty Stonesifer and Sandy Stonesifer

• From Slate: “The Educated Child: Keeping Public Education Vital” by Peggy Kaye

• From Slate: “Rethinking the School Desk: Is the best way to fix the American classroom to improve the furniture?” by Linda Perlstein

• From Slate: “Classrooms With a View: Innovative school design is hard, but it doesn’t have to be.” By Ronald E. Bogle

• From Slate: “Brilliance in a Box: What do the best classrooms in the world look like?” by Amanda Ripley

[Edited on 13 November 2010 to add 2 more articles from Slate.]

• From Slate: "The Fifth-Grade Exploration Studio: the winner in Slate's contest to reinvent the American classroom." by Linda Perlstein

• From Slate: "The '21st Century Classroom' Finalists: The 10 finalists in Slate's competition to improve the American classroom." by Linda Perlstein

Sites:

• Open Innovation Portal

• Challenge.gov

• DonorsChoose.org (My absolute favorite charity.)

Raise Your Glass

“So raise your glass if you are wrong in all the right ways” (Pink).

Let’s be honest.  Most little girls, teenagers, and women don’t learn how to be feminists from reading scholarship.  They learn from each other, from mass media (TV, movies, magazines, websites, radio, plays, etc), from their parents and family, and from social experience.  And while some girls and women do seek feminist scholarship to guide their experience, I venture that most don’t – academic scholarship is usually written in intimidating jargon and unless published as a book, is inaccessible to elementary, middle and high school girls.  


Of course, there are exceptions, especially girls who create their own zines and websites (think LiveJournal), or write for feminist sites like Bitch Media (established 1996) and Jezebel.com (established 2007).  But let me just say, neither of these existed when I was in middle school and high school (I graduated in 1999 – but I didn’t find out about Bitch until college*).  Instead, like I said above, girls and women learn from their social experiences, which for better or worse are highly shaped and influenced by social media.


*I bought my sister a year long subscription + a journal for her Christmas present after I discovered Bitch.

Growing up, I was influenced by female musicians – Madonna, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Salt-n-Peppa, TLC, Janet Jackson, En Vogue, and more.  Later in high school, I adored Gwen Steffani and despised The Spice Girls.  And if you told me back in 2000 when Pink’s first album debuted that I would tell you today that Pink is my new feminist hero, I’d probably laugh in your face.  


Here’s the deal.  I am obsessed with the song “Glitter in the Air” and I didn’t realize it was Pink who sang it – my sister clued me in.  So last week I purchased my first CD in roughly two years, Pink’s Funhouse.  I can’t lie – I’ve listened to the whole album, all the way through, at least four times in less than a week while driving in my car.  Last night I spent two hours watching all of Pink’s videos on her YouTube Channel.  I know, I have no life.  While watching her videos, I realized that Pink is a feminist, albeit a slightly unconventional one.  I’m going to direct your attention to two videos in particular, “Raise Your Glass” and “Stupid Girls.”      


Briefly, the issues raised/addressed in “Raise Your Glass” video: female obesity, gay marriage, feminist icons (Rosie the Riveter), animal cruelty (protesting of killing bulls, milking cows), race issues, outcasts, culture clashes (gangsters, skateboarders), beauty ideals, religion, sex, and education.  All of this in less than 3 minutes, 22 seconds.  Damn, she’s good.  


A portion of the lyrics:

So raise your glass if you are wrong

In all the right ways

All my underdogs, we will never be

Anything but loud

And nitty gritty

Dirty little freaks

Won’t you come on, and come on, and

Raise your glass

Just come on and come and 

Raise your glass

Watch it for yourself.

The “Stupid Girls” video cracked me up, I couldn’t stop laughing.  It’s rather scathing in its condemnation of stupid girls (Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, etc.).  My favorite part of the lyrics:

I’m so glad that I’ll never fit in

That will never be me

Outcasts and girls with ambition

That’s what I wanna see

I love the image of Pink, dressed in a rather conservative outfit with glasses, standing behind a podium – insinuating that our fight for a woman president is far from over.


Watch it for yourself.

So while academic scholarship might not agree with me, I think Pink can and does act as a feminist hero.  What do you think?  You can check out the rest of her videos on her YouTube Channel, or visit her official website to read through her song lyrics.  Let me know.

Location! Location! Location!

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[© Jorge Cham, PhD Comics]

I was unhappy with my paper proposal, so I asked Dr. Logan if I could meet with her to go over it (on October 25).  After a productive brainstorming session, she mentioned that my proposal would be a good fit for a conference presentation, specifically the Florida Consortium for Women’s and Gender Studies Conference at Florida Atlantic University.  


So, I’m excited to announce that I will, after revisions, submit my abstract/paper proposal for the conference in April 2011.  My previous conference experience is limited to Sigma Tau Delta’s International Convention in 2004 (“A Pleasant Walk, A Pleasant Talk”) – I did not submit a paper.  I attended with another officer of our chapter for the workshops and paper presentations, which were amazing, and I greatly enjoyed our guest speaker Sarah Vowell.  To be honest, at the time, I didn’t even know that undergraduates could do such a thing – submit papers for conferences.  I plan on rectifying that misunderstanding during my graduate study career.


Below is the call for papers for the conference, courtesy of Dr. Logan.  I hope that some of my classmates will submit their proposals too.


CALL FOR PAPERS


Florida Consortium for Women’s and Gender Studies Conference
Florida Atlantic University
Boca Raton, Florida
April 1-2, 2011

Gendered and Racialized Technologies of Change: 

Moving Discredited Knowledge from the Margins to the Center

We understand “gendered and racialized technologies of change” to comprise the techniques and practices through which feminists and queer activists generate change in the organization of social, political, and economic relations. The purpose of this conference is to cross disciplinary boundaries and bring together feminist and queer discourses regarding these technologies. 


We welcome individual papers, panels and roundtables or workshops as well as innovative presentational formats from scholars, activists, and graduate students addressing, but not limited to, the following issues:

• Activist Strategies
• Civil and Human Rights
• Sexual Bodies, Sexualized Bodies, and Body Politics
• The Military Industrial Complex
• Corporate Culture
• The Feminization of Poverty
• Migration and Globalization
• The Changing (and Same Old) Faces of Oppression
• Intersections of the Local and the Global
• Environment
• Health and/or Women Healers
• New Media
• Popular Culture
• The Sacred and the Spiritual
• Visual and Performing Arts
• Science and Technology
• Pedagogy

Selected conference papers may be included in the Consortium anthology published by Cambridge Scholars Press. Past anthologies of conference papers include: Many Floridas: Women Envisioning Change (2007), Florida without Borders: Women at the Intersections of the Local and Global (2008), and Femininities and Masculinities in a Global Context (currently in press).


To apply, please submit a 250-500 words double-spaced abstract. Abstracts should include the presenter’s contact information and brief vita. Deadline for submissions is January 15th, 2011. 

• Graduate Student abstracts should be sent via e-mail to Megan Halena at mhalena@fau.edu . 
• All other abstracts should be sent via e-mail to Josephine Beoku-Betts at wsc@fau.edu. 
• Final decisions on submitted abstracts will be sent by February 28th, 2011

For more information on the FAU Center for Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies M.A. degree program, please visit our website: http://www.fau.edu/WomensStudies/




Works Cited:
Cham, Jorge. "Call for Papers!" Comic strip. PhD: Piled Higher & Deeper. 25 June 2010. Web. 9 Nov. 2010. <http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1335>.

You Are Not Alone

Remember the Cosmo PostSecret card I posted about in October?  Apparently, it gets a lot of mileage.  This article at Bitch Magazine made me smile - I hope you enjoy it too.

• From Bitch Magazine: “I <3 Bitch For Creating a Community” by Sara Stroo

Bits and Pieces

Articles:

• From The New York Times Review of Books: “Toward ‘the Digital Public Library of America’: An Exchange” by Tony Simpson and Robert Darnton [original “Can We Create a National Digital Library”] 

• First of all, I love that Jessica saw this article and thought of me.  

• Second, yes, we can and MUST create a national digital library.  One thing that stood out to me, and maybe this is because I’m so incredibly immersed in women’s writing, the female homosocial, and the lesbian continuum because of this project, is that Robert Darnton only quotes MEN in his original article – Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams.  And to that, I call shenanigans.  Last time I looked, plenty of women in our past wrote about the link between shared knowledge, literacy, education, and the democracy (and we continue to do so to this day!).  And in fact, women are completely absent from his article, unless we are counted under the gender-neutral umbrella of “citizenship.”  

• Despite my anger at the distinct lack of women, past and present, from Darnton’s article, yes, I agree – a national digital library, connected to a larger international library (an index of ALL digital libraries) needs to happen, as soon as possible.  Cooperation is needed on all levels – state, federal, private corporations, universities, colleges, the government – I think you get the picture.  And obviously, copyright is one of the biggest hurdles we face, so why not start with texts with expired copyrights, or texts that reside in special collections?  You can see that Darnton has the same idea in his reply to Simpson.  Anyways, read the articles and tell me what you think.   

• From Gizmodo: “Attention: The Web Is Not Public Domain” by Brian Barrett

• From Mashable / Social Media: “7 Fantastic Free Social Media Tools for Teachers” by Sarah Kessler

• From Jezebel: “What Facebook Does to Teenage Girls” by Irin Carmon
• Remember the articles about the Facebook movie, The Social Network, as a male homosocial network?  I thought this article was an interesting contrast.

• From The Frisky: “’I Am A Girl’ Documentary Looks Like A Sobfest” by Jessica Wakeman

• From Slate: “Who Gets To Be a Feminist?” by DoubleX Staff

Cool sites:

• The University of Michigan: Eighteenth Century England: A Site Created by and for Literature Students at the University of Michigan

• I found this site by accident the night my contextual documents assignment was due, Friday the 5th.  I Googled something like “essays on female friendship by women” and this popped up in the results.  It’s amazing!  I already posted the link to our WebCourses discussion board so my classmates and Dr. Logan could see it.  I’m hoping that Dr. Logan and our English Department will grant us permission to create a shell page on the UCF server that will link to all of our projects, as well as Dr. Logan’s students’ previous digital projects (whew, that was a mouthful). 

• The University of Michigan site is cumulative – so far, 143 students have contributed 54 projects, working in groups from 1999 through the present.  It’s quite impressive, especially when you see the levels of cooperation – professors, undergraduate students, graduate students, and doctoral students, as well as interdisciplinary cooperation (different departments).  

• What I love most about this site is that it is student driven and created – these are our peers, our equals.  I think sometimes that scholarship can seem intimidating because of the author, or difficult to understand (or unpack as Dr. Jones says) because of all the jargon most of which as students we’re still learning about.  These pages, on the other hand, are written in the same language and style that we are familiar with because it is our own.  So please, take a couple of minutes to explore their site and let me know what you think.

• Beeskep: 18th-century American Women

• This site also popped up in my Google results for “essays on female friendship by women” and I thought my classmates would enjoy looking through it.  The author, Beeskep, has three other sites that straddle the time periods of our class, which I’ve listed below.

• Beeskep: Early American Gardens

• Beeskep: 17th-century American Women

• Beeskep: 19th-century American Women

Contextual Documents

The assignment from Dr. Logan:
By 11/5/10 submit a list of contextual documents and information to me with explanations or rationale.  Post links or documents to your blog.  Think about this assignment as creating an online space for understanding your text fully and as preparation for your Undergraduate Study Guide.



[Submitted 5 November 2010]

Primary Sources 
Please note that some of the biographical, historical, and cultural sources will overlap the boundary between primary and secondary sources.  Also, some of the sources blur the line between historical and cultural studies.  Lastly, the sources listed below would not be reprinted in their entirety – passage length would be determined by its importance and contribution to the overall theme of female friendship.

Images:
Blecki, Catherine L., and Karin A. Wulf, eds.  Milcah Martha Moore's Book: a Commonplace 
Book from Revolutionary America.  University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997.  Print.

• Since Blecki and Wulf could only include three images of Moore’s commonplace book, I have to assume the text is too fragile for photographic reproduction, which is a shame.  These three images – the title page, and entries 81 and 82 – would be included as part of my contextual documents.

Howland, Gulielma M.  Papers, 1700-1867 (bulk 1750-1840).  MS 1000.  Haverford 
College.  Tripod.  Web.  5 Nov. 2010  <http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/record=b2132024~S12>.

• Photographs of Hannah Griffitts’s letters to her friends and family on the subjects of friendship and family serve to expand upon themes in her poem and prose entries in MMMB.  Both photographs and transcriptions of the letters would be included. 

Male authors:
Lockridge, Kenneth.  The Sources of Patriarchal Rage: The Commonplace Books of William Byrd and Thomas Jefferson and the Gendering of Power in the Eighteenth Century.  NY: NY UP, 1992.  Print.

• Short excerpts from William Byrd’s commonplace book are helpful because it too is “unruly” – instead of presenting a variety of topics, as dictated by tradition, it goes “on at great length, almost obsessively, about a single, emotionally laden subject” (5).  Unlike MMMB which focuses on female friendship and supportive connections, Byrd’s commonplace book is a prime example of “private patriarchal rage and public and private misogyny” (x).

Biographical:
Ousterhout, Anne M., Joseleyne A. Slade, and Susan M. Stabile.  The Most Learned Woman in America: A Life of Elizabeth Graeme Fergusson.  University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 2004.  MLA International Bibliography.  Web.  23 Sept. 2010.

• The life of Graeme Fergusson directly contradicts the gendered standards of behavior for single and married women of her culture.  By choosing selections from her biography, I can consider her strategies of resistance and non-compliance and extend these real life examples to her prose entries in MMMB.

Blecki, Catherine L., and Karin A. Wulf.  "Preface."  Milcah Martha Moore's Book: a Commonplace Book from Revolutionary America.  University Park: Pennsylvania State UP, 1997.  xi-xviii. Print.

• Blecki and Wulf provide short, succinct biographies of Moore, Wright, Griffitts and Graeme Fergusson that shed light on the experiences that shaped these women’s lives.  Because the commonplace book is intensely personal, biography cannot be ignored or excluded from the discussion of the text.  

Historical:
Hayes, Kevin J.  “Preface.”  A Colonial Woman's Bookshelf.  Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1996.  ix-xv.  Print.


Hayes, Kevin J.  “Reading Women.”  A Colonial Woman's Bookshelf.  Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1996.  1-27.  Print.

• A combination of history of the book and biographical approach allows Hayes to fill in the blank spaces of colonial women’s reading habits – how they read, what they read, why they read.  Hayes provides both the norms and deviations of reading practices, allowing the reader to differentiate between the fantasy of idealized feminine readers presented by men in literature and historical reality. 

Cultural:
Stabile, Susan M.  “Pen, Ink, and Memory.”  Memory's Daughters: The Material Culture of Remembrance in Eighteenth-Century America.  NY: Cornell UP, 2004.  74-125.  Print.

• The descriptions of Deborah Logan’s writing process are not only beautiful, they are highly descriptive and provide an accurate picture of how women approached writing in their daily lives.  Namely, the hurdles they faced in finding enough time, a space of their own, proper paper, quill pens, and ink are provided for the reader.  These obstructions were also possibly faced by Moore, Griffitts, Wright, and Graeme Fergusson.

Ya-Ya Sisterhood

I voted today.  Not because I’m a woman.  Not because my feminist sisters of the past fought for the Nineteenth Amendment.  I voted because it’s my civic duty.


And while I will forever be grateful for those women (and men) who demanded equality for the right to vote, I think the emotional blackmail and guilt-tripping about “women have to vote or they’re a traitor to their sisters-in-arms” needs to stop.  Nothing angers me more than someone telling me I have to do something, or not do something, because of my gender.  


Instead, tell me I should vote because it’s my civic and patriotic duty.  Remind me that when I vote, I am participating in the checks and balances placed in the system by our founding fathers (who were often advised by their wives, sisters and daughters – Abigail Adams ring any bells for you?).  If I don’t vote, you should tell me, I am not exercising my constitutional rights.  Don’t vote and give up your voice, you should chide me.  Voting is empowering, you should advise me, no matter your gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, or race.


I think you get the point.  


And in case you think I’m being ungrateful to the sacrifices made by women who fought for my voting right, I’m not.  I cried while watching Iron Jawed Angels (HBO), especially during the force-feeding scene.  But I think that even these women would agree – stop holding gender hostage when it comes to the right to vote.

Feminine American Myth-Making

During our class discussion on The Female American (10/12/10), Dr. Logan asked us if American myth-making can ever be independent of colonization, decimation, and eradication.  My answer was an emphatic “no.”  Despite the blood-free colonization that Unca Eliza Winkfield enacts upon the natives of the island, she still decimates their religious way of life, destroying their sun idol and converting them to Christianity.  Even the idealized female utopia portrayed in The Female American involves colonization, decimation, and eradication.  

What does occur, in American literature, is the pretense of emptiness, an imaginary lack of native people already occupying the Americas.  This, of course, is one of the strategies of American myth-making – pretend that the land was un-occupied when in reality it was occupied by a large amount of Native peoples.  Reality (historical fact) vs. fantasy (what authors wrote) in American literature is incredibly fascinating and requires careful reading to know when you’re being duped by the author.  Another strategy is religious justification.  Edward J. Gallagher has a digital archive dedicated to the literature of justification, aptly titled The Literature of Justification.

Imagine my surprise when I found an example of (feminine) American myth-making by Hannah Griffitts in MMMB, signed with her pen name Fidelia.  And by feminine, I mean written by a woman.  The entry is “The Review of past & present Times in Pennsylvania.  June 1776,” MMMB # 91 (not available in the GoogleBooks preview).  

Rather than retype the entire entry, I’m going to post small sections that I belief best represent American myth-making.