Inching along

Ah, that last post looks so optimistic. I have made progress on revising the article, though--just in rather small segments. I have a list of things that need to be done to the thing, and I manage to knock off one or two of them each time I sit to work on it (not more than once or twice a week, though). So it is inching along. I am so tired of it that I have to talk myself into working on it, even though I would dearly love to send it back. It was sent back to me last fall, so it feels as though I've been working on the revisions for way too long. Now that I think about it, I did write and submit another paper during that time, plus did a job search and a chunk of editing work. Of course, this journal editor doesn't know that, and what if s/he thinks I'm a slacker? (Such is the paranoia of journal submission.)

Oh well, if they don't take it, I'll just have to submit it elsewhere. So be it.

A little research, at long last

Between teaching and job market stuff, I haven't had much opportunity to write since January. I have this long-lingering revise-and-resubmit which is turning into something of an albatross, poor thing. I was going to work on it last Friday (my non-teaching day of the week), but my computer chose that day to malfunction, preventing me from accessing the relevant files. 

Today I finally took a look at it: first the list of tasks I still need to do to finish the revisions, and second the article itself. Since I've let it sit so long, I really needed to reread it. I made some minor edits as I went along, and noted a couple of other places that need fixing. I think the article now beats around the bush too long before getting to the main idea, and some of the transitional paragraphs are kind of clunky. So, progress, hurray. I hope now that I've looked at the piece I can get back to it quickly.

Teaching and pre-teaching

I may be getting better, but my second class resumed last week, and teaching both classes seems to distract me thoroughly.

Today I taught the Black Death. Students always get into this topic, sometimes with a level of glee which is slightly disturbing if you think about it. I raised the theory of some scholars that the Black Death was not actually the same disease as modern bubonic plague. This sparked a discussion which was lively, if somewhat ill-informed (none of us being really qualified to deal with some of the medical / biological ramifications of that issue).

I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about next year's courses. in some ways this seems premature, since I won't start teaching them until September. I keep telling myself that it makes some sense, though--there will come a point when my time is thoroughly taken up with logistics related to moving. That's not the case now, and if I have some pre-class preparation done, I won't have to try to do it while packing / moving / unpacking and so forth.

At least I don't have as much grading?

I am not interested in adjudicating students' requests for extensions. I just have no interest in deciding whether the reason for an extension request is a good or bad one. So instead, the policy in my course is that they can have [x] number of extensions per semester, no questions asked, as long as they inform me in writing that they're taking the extension. Still, I was somewhat startled yesterday to find that, of the 36 students in the class, only 6 actually handed in the essay, and the rest requested extensions. Hm. 

In other news, it turns out I don't have pneumonia. In fact, the cold seems to be going away, and the cough seems less frequent, so I may actually be getting...better!

End of spring break

Back to work today, though as I mentioned only one of my two classes resumes this week. Maybe that means I can ease back into the routine?

Unfortunately, my dr. thinks I might have walking pneumonia. And over the weekend I developed yet another cold. Joy.

Spring break progress report

More than midway through now--how am I doing?

Writing:
1) Finish revisions on long-suffering article so I can resubmit it: not at all. Bad academic.

Teaching:
2) Write recommendation letter for student mentioned in last post: drafted
3) Grade small stack of papers: not actually due until Mar. 31
4) Write comments I promised to a few students ages ago: mostly done
5) Figure out how to rearrange the rest of my course schedule to make up for our snow days: done
6) Skim/peruse books that I'm considering for next year's courses: only a little

House:
7) Tidy up and dust: made some progress
8) Clean the bathroom and kitchen: partly done
9) Clean up my desk: nope


10) Hang out with the spouse (also on break): Yes! Hurray!
11) Visit nearby exhibit: on tomorrow's docket
12) Whatever else strikes my fancy: have done plenty of whatever!

The article is the major failing here. I'm just having trouble getting back into it, after shelving it to deal with the job search and being sick much of the winter.

Next week I have kind of an odd half-break; of my two teaching jobs, one resumes next Monday, and the other will still be on break next week. That should give me some extra time to finish up the revisions and the grading as needed.

Were medieval nuns "lesbian-like"?

This post is building on the ongoing conversation about Judith Bennett's History Matters. See part 1, part 2, and part 3. Thanks to Notorious for starting this up--great idea!

First off, I think this is a great book, immensely thought-provoking. I should also clarify that I read the book a year or two ago, and now can't find my copy, so I haven't fully refreshed my memory.

But, as I remarked in the comments to Tenured Radical's post, I have some concerns about the use of "lesbian-like" to describe medieval women, particularly medieval nuns. I can see the attraction to the term: nuns did, after all, live in primarily-female communities, and so often had their closest relationships with other women. Bennett's discussion of the term also reminds me of the need to avoid heteronormativity, which can be easy to slip into.

Nonetheless, I have some qualms. One is that I've encountered a number of people who were already eager to assume that medieval nunneries were hotbeds of women having sex with each other. Many of them were undergraduates, true, but not all; I fear that introducing "lesbian-like" only reinforces some of the more titillating notions about medieval nuns. That alone wouldn't put me off, though.

Second qualm is that women's monasteries in the Middle Ages were, in fact, not always, or even typically, female-exclusive communities. Nuns had male chaplains, confessors, and other priests on hand; some nunneries had attached communities of lay brothers; lay men did construction, farming, or other manual labor around nunneries. So, at many communities, men went in and out quite regularly. Plus, while many nuns, perhaps even most nuns, did have their primary emotional relationships with other women, there must have been many nuns who viewed men as their primary friends and emotional supports. Hildegard of Bingen's male secretary, Volmar, seems to have been a trusted aide and confidant; Elisabeth of Schonau was very close with her brother; numerous later medieval nuns had strong emotional ties to their confessors. So even on the level of emotional, rather than sexual, intimacy, many medieval nuns had important relationships with men.

Even beyond that, nuns were supposed to direct their energies--emotional, sexual, and spiritual--toward God. Much spiritual literature aimed at nuns invoked the image of a nun as Christ's bride. As I've discussed before, this was not just metaphor, but literalized. Many people, including a great many nuns and their spiritual advisors, viewed nuns as the literal brides of Jesus, the heavenly bridegroom. Nuns' relationship with Jesus could be somewhat eroticized as well as emotionally affecting and intimate. (A digression: what would that have been like for a nun whose sexual desires were for women? would she have found the bearded Jesus on the cross alienating rather than fulfilling? might she have fixed on more feminized aspects of Jesus in her personal spiritual journey?) The generally masculine figure of God was, then, theoretically at the center of nuns' existence, which perhaps makes them seem not so lesbian-like after all.

In the area of sexuality, I think a case can be made that, in the Middle Ages, virginity was a sexual identity. Whereas modern secular culture tends to view virginity as a temporary phase of life, to be moved past in one's youth, for medieval people it was a state to aspire toward, to protect vigilantly, to be constantly aware of. The preservation of virginity (or chastity) was a vital part of nuns' identity. How would this affect any sexual orientation on the part of nuns? If a nun had taken vows as a young girl, to what extent was she even aware of her other sexual preferences?

As discussed by Bennett, the term "lesbian-like" does raise some important issues of interpretation and things to think about. But for all the above reasons, I think it's too easy to apply to medieval nuns, and doesn't do enough to reflect the real complexities of nuns' daily lives.