Sunday Radical Roundup: Bones, Dykes and `Toons

Bones:  Where I went to college, when someone said "Bones!" legend had it that various men soon to be employed by the national security apparatus would leap up and leave the room in a huff.  Myself, I never saw it happen.  But in the History Department at Brigham Young University they probably do run out of the room when someone says "bones," just for good measure.  Radical readers recall that week before last, a box of human skulls arrived by USPS.  They have now been partially identified, according to KSL-TV's website, as being the remains of people who lived between 1100 and 1300 A.D.  This means they are probably not former history professors, but probably the ancestors of native people.  For future reference:  according to my local expert, it is illegal to buy or sell human remains as souvenirs, and if you happen to locate unidentified remains in a house you are cleaning out, it is also illegal to mail them across state lines.

KSL still does not know why these remains were mailed to BYU.  Revenge perhaps?

Dykes: Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.  However the exciting news is that DYKE: A Quarterly, described as "a magazine of Lesbian culture and analysis" that was published by Liza Cowan and Penny House between 1975 and 1979, is building an online archive.  So far only a few issues are up, but it's like getting a breath of fresh air from the past.  Put on your overalls and bandanna and beam yourself back to the past, Scottie.  "What is DYKE?" issue one asks. "DYKE is a magazine for dykes only!  We will speak freely among ourselves.  We are not interested in telling the straight world what we are doing.  In fact, we hope they never even see the magazine. It is none of their business.  If they chance to see it, we hope they think it is mindless gobbledygook.  We are already thinking in ways that are incomprehensible to them." (4)

'Toons:  Followers of Tenured Radical were pleased, appalled and/or frightened last Monday to see that we have a whole new way of expressing ourselves through Xtranormal's animation program.  The series "Planet University" was launched with the pilot episode, "I Want A Raise."  As one anonymous commenter pointed out, "'I want a raise' voiced in slightly stilted British accent [is] a catch-phrase just about to take off on my campus." Soon I could be the academic version of the Rickie Gervais character on Extras who can't get a job in a real movie, but then writes a horrible, and horribly successful, sit-com where he has to wear a fluffy wig, squint and say "Arr ye 'avin' a laff?  Is 'e 'avin a laff???" 

In addition to the several thousand hits "I Want A Raise" received in the course of a week on one of your favorite academic blogs, people who while their lives away on the Xtranormal website seem to be finding it too.  Let's hope to God it doesn't inspire them to go to graduate school.   The big news is that Roxie's World has now taken up the challenge with:  "I Want To Be Promoted."  Sing it, Roxie!

Sunday Radical Roundup: Marry That Book Before She Gets Much Older!

Despite the strange weather, and an oil spill in the Gulf as big as Rhode Island, it's the beginning of summer break and you know what time it is! Time to get gussied up and get hitched to that book manuscript again! This time the relaitonship will work, I swear: there has been counseling, there are promises not yet broken, and for some of us a new computer will get things started on the right foot. So in the interests of a proper, Connecticut-style traditional wedding, the Radical recommends the following news items to you this week.

Something Old: Looking to warm up by writing an article? Well, look around you and check out who the buildings are named for. At UT-Austin, there is a dormitory named after a member of the Ku Klux Klan, so says Thomas Russell (who used to teach there.) The dorm was built in 1954, and named after a former UT law professor, William Stewart Simkins, who used to boast of his time defending white womanhood in formal speeches on campus. While students don't seem to have been aware of Simkins' white supremacist past scratch the surface of many buildings in the former Confederacy and see what you find, children; then start on the other parts of the country), the UT administration is. Russell has recently posted his research on the topic. Not accidentally, Russell argues, the dormitory was named shortly after Brown v. Board of Education. "During the 1950s, the memory and history of Professor Simkins supported the university’s resistance to integration," Russell argues. "As the university faced pressure to admit African-American students, the university’s faculty council voted to name a dormitory after the Klansman and law professor. The dormitory carries his name to the present day. During this time period, alumni also presented the law school with a portrait of Professor Simkins. Portraits and a bust of Professor Simkins occupied prominent positions within the law school through the 1990s."

Something New: And it is so rare in the historical profession! We've got a new journal out published by Routledge called Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice that is devoting itself to out-of-the-box historical writing. As the website describes it, the journal "allows historians in a broad range of specialities to experiment with new ways of presenting and interpreting history. Rethinking History challenges the accepted ways of doing history and rethinks the traditional paradigms, providing a unique forum in which practitioners and theorists can debate and expand the boundaries of the discipline." Hat Tip.

Something Borrowed? Somebody said to me the other day that a certain fabulous feminist scholar was toying with the idea of ditching Nirvana and heading to one of the best Little Women's Studies Ph.D. programs in the East. No, no, no it ain't me babe, although for a few months the door was cracked open and I appreciated the peep inside. Back to the real news: even if this scholar is just a loaner, this university continues to make a serious effort to recruit and retain the best feminist faculty around.

Something Blue: Or at least I find this depressing. For those of us who write about the political history of pornography (is there more than one of us? enquiring minds want to know) we will probably have to start calling it "sex porn" soon. The Week writes that Americans are becoming addicted to "war porn," combat images and video from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that critics charge are no more than snuff films. "No one loves this kind of footage, says the military blog Mudville Gazette, more than the mainstream "news" business, which gets a ratings boost whenever they employ it, too."

Sunday Radical Roundup: White Men Do The Right Thing, California Dreamin' and Asian American Studies Fun

Department of Southern Discomfort: Think what fraternities could accomplish if they wanted to. The Kappa Alpha Order ("inspired by Robert E. Lee," says the Associated Press) has recently banned its members from wearing Confederate uniforms to "Old South" parties. Such parties are a tradition that has ended on many campuses already because of protests about the uniforms. KA acknowledges that Confederate dress may be a "tradition" but that it's a tradition that is hurtful to those students who perceive it as a celebration of slavery.

"The decision, announced in an internal memo posted on the group's website, followed a flap last year at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where a black sorority complained after a KA parade stopped in front of its house on campus. KA members were dressed in the gray uniforms of Confederate officers, and young women wore hoop skirts," writes the AP's Jay Reeves. "More than 70 alumnae of the sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha, sent a petition to Alabama President Robert Witt complaining about the use of Confederate flags and uniforms on campus.

"In the memo to chapters, Kappa Alpha's national executive director, Larry Wiese, said such displays had to end.
'In today's climate, the Order can ill afford to offend our host institutions and fend off significant negative national press and remain effective at our core mission, which is to aid young men in becoming better community leaders and citizens,"' Wiese wrote."

The fraternity is also part of an important anti-hazing initiative.

Hat Tip.

Pack Up The Car and Move To Bever-lee (Hills, That Is. Swimmin' Pools. Movie Stars): Or Merced, which is nice too, and has A Job. One of my favorite and most faithful commenters passes on this ad for a one year visiting gig in sunny California: "The School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts at the University of California, Merced invites applications from exceptional scholars and teachers at the Visiting Assistant Professor level in US History with a focus on Comparative Race and Ethnicity. We particularly seek candidates with expertise in Chicano/a-Latino/a topics and capable of teaching the following subjects in the 2010-11 academic year, along with an additional course in their area of expertise: The Modern United States (1877-present), Topics in the History of Migration & Immigration, and Comparative Race and Ethnicity. The anticipated start date is July 1, 2010." Click here for the full ad.

New Anthology in Asian American Studies: Thomas Chen, a Ph.D. candidate in American Civilization, announces "We would like to announce the publication of Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader (Rutgers University Press, 2010), edited and with an Introduction by Jean Yu-Wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen, a new anthology that collects both seminal articles and exciting new scholarship in the field of Asian American Studies.

"Ten years have passed since Jean Wu and Min Song edited Asian American Studies: A Reader (Rutgers University Press 2000). The Wu and Song Reader brought together essential readings in the field, and we believe it remains an excellent resource for students and teachers. However, the field has been flooded with outstanding new scholarship since 2000, and an updated introduction to Asian American Studies seemed appropriate. We designed this new anthology to be used as both a companion to the earlier anthology and as a stand-alone introduction to the field.

"We also used the compiling of this new volume to reflect on the state of the field now that it has established a significant presence in the academy. What has Asian American Studies achieved? What has it yet to accomplish? Indeed, what do we want Asian Americanist research, writing, and teaching to accomplish? We include pieces that discuss critical pedagogies, provide models of effective social justice work, and raise questions that we believe the field must grapple with if it is to survive as an effective site for political struggle and social transformation. Our goal is to urge those active in the field to consider with a new sense of urgency just how Asian American Studies relates—or should relate—to the work of anti-oppressive social transformation today."

Sunday Radical Roundup: From The Sublime To The Ridiculous

OK, it's senior honors thesis week, so you cannot really expect much. Thanks to the East of California List Serve I have some real news, and the rest is just grab-bag city.

Fabulous In All Ways: CFP of the Week. "Consuming Asian America," 2011 Association for Asian American Studies Conference, New Orleans, Louisiana, May 18-21, 2011.

The theme for the 2011 AAAS conference “Consuming Asian America” is inspired, in part, by the site of the conference itself—New Orleans, the city that measures the success of its Mardi Gras celebration by weighing the garbage collected the morning after and whose shopping and nightclub district for locals is called “Fat City.” We invite proposals to engage with all aspects of consumption, such as excess (after all, New Orlean’s tradition of Mardi Gras suggests an excess of consumption), labor material culture, technology, marketing, identity, assimilation, gender, popular culture, religion, music, or tourism.

The title “Consuming Asian America” has a double sense, referring both to the consumption performed by Asian Americans and the consumption of objects, people, and practices that are marked as Asian American. We are interested in the material practices, actions, and cultures of different versions of the consumer, such as eating, buying, viewing, as well as the larger metaphor of consumption.

For example, proposals might examine the material reality of food and its cultivation, production, labor, and marketing: agribusiness, the restaurant industry, our current fascination with television food shows or “authentic” ethnic eating. Others might examine consumption, purchasing, and power by examining chains of production, from the unseen labor of overseas and domestic Asian workers to how the advertising of various products specifically employs or ignores Asian and Asian American bodies. This topic also encompasses the widespread consumption of goods and services identified as Asian or Asian American. These might include religious iconography, such as Mehndi and the Buddha, artistic traditions such as haiku, martial arts, or manga), or language and writing, such as Chinese writing in keychains, home decor, and body art. Consumption also can be thought of as a means of absorbing, reformulating, or challenging culture through various technologies: how images of Asians, from the yellow peril to the model minority have been circulated and consumed by a multi-racial America, and how one might control or resist the consumption of Asian America.

This is the first time AAAS will meet in New Orleans. Accordingly, we are interested in the ways in which New Orleans (and the Gulf Coast more broadly) has been the object of consumption post-Katrina, as well as the relative invisibility of Asian Americans in the public attention following the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. How might this conference steer us away from being unthinking consumers of New Orleans culture and instead engage us with the possibilities of critical activism?

Submissions due by Monday, November 1, 2010: submit online here Hat tip.

Job of the Week: Who says the job season is over? "The 4th Psychological Operations Group is seeking highly qualified applicants for a two-year (renewable for up to 3 years) Intelligence Analyst position focused on the eastern Black Sea/ South Caucasus region. Work with other civilian specialists conducting research and writing 20-40 page studies, work closely with U.S. and possibly foreign military personnel, travel within the United States and abroad in order to conduct research and support military operations. A strong background in study and research of the history, politics, and culture of the region of specialization is required. Prior residence in the region of specialization is extremely desirable." Must be a U.S. citizen and be able to obtain and keep a SECRET level security clearance." Oh yes -- must speak Armenian, Azerbaijani, Georgian, Kurdish, or Turkish. Russian is acceptable, but only if you are really, really good.

Otherwise, there are really no jobs this week.

Hip-Hop Artists Of The Week: Have you ever wondered what it would be like for a Tea Party Rally to feature a white, anti-tax rap group? Thanks to We Are Respectable Negroes now you know!

Sunday Radical Roundup: Inability To Type Coherently Edition, With An Addendum On A Missing Post

Due to jet lag and a persistent failure of my fingers to connect to my brain, today's roundup is confined to three items, two of which I did not have to think at all and one of which is a Serious Matter.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation: At Legal History Blog Mary Dudziak offers a few tips on how to get an article done over the summer. This will, perhaps, be most useful to old fogies like me who don't have to publish anything if they don't want to, but are always open to suggestions for how to use their time well; those of you who just finished a book and can't imagine using the summer that way again right away; or those of you who have just finished your first year of teaching and are figuring out which dissertation chapter should be offered up to the rest of us. To give you a tasty preview (that exactly corresponds with my own writing experience this spring at Zenith's wonderful Center for the Humanities:

Pick a time of day that is your writing time. Spend that time in a space that is reserved for writing. You go to your space at the designated time, and then all you can do is write. No phone, no email, nothing else. If you're at your office, put a "do not disturb/available after __ p.m." sign on your door. You might feel that you should spend 8 hours a day doing nothing but writing, but that is unrealistic (unrealistic for every day, as compared w/ days when the momentum is going, and you can't seem to stop). To really protect that time, it might need to be 2-3 hours. If you need to make a lot of progress in a short time, perhaps schedule two writing blocks during a day. But I think you'll find that if you actually spend 2-3 solid hours writing every day, with no email and nothing but writing, you will have an article by the end of the summer.

For more hints, go to The Faculty Lounge.

Cool (Or Cold?) Conference Announcement of the Week: Well, I'm going with "Cold War Cultures," Transnational and Interdisciplinary Perspectives Conference at the University of Texas at Austin September 30 - October 3, 2010. Perhaps an excuse to go to the Berkeley of the Southwest doesn't strike you as a reason to participate, but the CFP might:

If war is the continuation of politics by other means, then Cold War politics can be seen as a continuation of war by other means. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to explore these means in the context of global encounters between states and "Blocs" as well as engagements with "East" and "West." Indeed, after the end of the Second World War, a new kind of "war" continued and expanded as governments and/or interest groups created and continually reshaped institutions, media, popular
culture, and various elements of social and political life. Globally, these broad-based transformations took place in the shadow of Cold War politics, especially as expressed through rhetoric of threat and mutual annihilation. In particular, cultural phenomena shaped by Cold War power conflicts take on myriad forms in a host of geographic contexts, both in and outside the Bloc, from iconic public representations to distinctive media advertising, memorable political speeches, world expositions, spy novels and films, and a plethora of official and popular modes of expression. In some places, of course, military or paramilitary conflagrations translated Cold War politics into "hot" wars, which further fueled the fire of Cold War imaginations.

Go here for details and the full call.

Department of Blog Revisions: Early in my blogging career, I took down several posts about my life at Zenith that, when I became more experienced in the genre, I came to believe might cause students and colleagues to worry that none of our interactions could be private. For a different reason, today I removed a post from late February, 2010: Annals of Contemporary History; or, Queering the Klan. The post was illustrated with a mock photo of "Klansmen" dressed in lavender robes, and -- in blogger tradition -- I linked to the sites I was drawing evidence from. It was a discussion of homophobia on the far right wing that relied for its evidence on a website and a discussion board maintained by US-based white supremacists. However, comments I have received in my Gmail account (and several that I removed from the comments section) caused me to retire the post.

The misunderstandings that prompted these negative responses were, in my view, a symptom of what everyone who writes on-line knows: people read blogs and other web texts hastily and are not always fully aware of the author's tone and intention in sensitive or controversial matters. Clearly this phenomenon was a particular liability in a post about right wing extremism that relied heavily on irony to make a point, delivered in the last line, about homophobia among mainstream conservative policy makers. People who do not read my blog regularly (and perhaps did not even make it past the first link), many of whom appear to have viewed the post through forwards from Facebook and Twitter followers of Tenured Radical, were offended and injured by what they saw as my obliviousness to the real harm white supremacist groups do and have done over the course of the last century. I got a few --er, lively -- emails from them upon returning from my research trip last night. Therefore, although I don't think the post supports the view that I take violence, racial discrimination or anti-semitism lightly, in the interests of not putting my scholarly or moral integrity needlessly at risk, I have removed Queering the Klan from public view. Tenured Radical is, and always has been, an anti-racist blog. While I believe in free speech, the principle at stake in the post -- that the absolute stigmatizing of queer people by the "respectable" Republican mainstream is far more extreme and less nuanced than it is among their counterparts on the openly racist and anti-semitic unrespectable right wing -- my experience in the blogosphere is that some posts are worth fighting for and others are not. And for the edification of other, less experienced bloggers: if a post has to be explained at length, it probably wasn't well-crafted in the first place.

Photo Credit.

The Sunday Radical Roundup: Libraries, Lefties, and Lonely Lovelorn Ladies

This Week In Library Fun: Amidst the excitement about the reopening of the St. Agnes Branch of the New York Public Library, other libraries in the system are slashing their hours on February 16 in response to budget cuts from City Hall. (Why does the mayor always take out the neighborhood libraries in a budget crisis when he could fire twenty or thirty cops and get the same $$? I ask you.) Changes affect nearly all branches except those on Staten Island and the privately endowed research libraries in Manhattan. Go here for new hours. At least for now, scholars and organized crime families will continue with the service they have, but there could also be no starker example of the distance that is growing between the actual public sphere and the privatized public sphere.

On The Left, On The Left: Tom Manoff, a former civil rights activist who has been the classical music critic for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered since 1985, has a terrific interview with feminist author Jane Lazarre up on his website. Lazarre, the author of numerous works of fiction and nonfiction, is currently working on a book about her father Bill, who fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War. Not only is Lazarre (the author of Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons) her typically thoughtful self about writing, race and politics, but the interview also gives a few hints about what I predict (you heard it here first) will be a blockbuster book about the American left. Want to interview Lazarre yourself, or better yet, book her for a reading during Black History Month or Women's History Month? You can reach her through her agent, Wendy Weil.

While We're Still On The Left: Go here to sign the petition to the American Historical Association Council, asking them to use INMEX, a conference booking group that works with unions "to ensure its clients are booking their events in destinations that are free from labor disputes and helps steer professional associations away from meeting venues that are likely to be disrupted by a boycott, a picket line or a strike." I know this makes INMEX sound like a protection racket, but trust me! It's the right thing to do. If this works, all we need now is to make conferences more affordable -- I know more than one graduate student who bled green in San Diego without being offered a single flyback. And has anyone looked at the rates that are being charged for rooms at the OAH annual meeting?

That Ever-Elusive M.R.S. Degree Just Got Tougher: I am waiting for Historiann to fire with every muzzle-loading fowling piece at her disposal on this story by Alex Williams from today's New York Times. It's about the the woes suffered by female college students who can't find a boyfriend because -- there aren't enough boys on many campuses to go around! At the 60% female University of North Carolina, Saturday night "has grown tiresome: they slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another, Ms. Andrew said, 'because there are no guys.'" And the ones that are available, it appears, are a little soiled, since they are either previously owned or are cheating on the girl friend they have. Tales of taking what you can get and having the man you did catch snapped up right under your eyes help Williams sing the heterosexual blues: "Thanks to simple laws of supply and demand, it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box." Worse, girls feel terrible pressure to -- what do they call it now? Give it up? -- in order to seal the deal.

I mean, please, Alex: this is a throwback to Cold War domesticity, where we pretended there were no gay and lesbian people on campus and that if a girl didn't leave college with a ring on her finger she was damaged goods. In the face of budget cuts, tuition increases, a market crash that took college savings with it, and a crisis in lending to college-bound students, could you have written a more shallow piece about higher education? Could you? And girls, if the details of what you are doing at college are not as (or more) important than what you are doing on Saturday night, and you really can't do without a man, swap that English or psych degree for a Physics major, why dontcha? Boys never make passes at girls who sit on their asses. Or do what both genders do at Zenith and other liberal arts colleges -- keep the English major and trade in your sexual preference for a couple of years. Or trade in your gender!

Finally, For Those Of You Not On The CLGBTH Listserve: How many times do I have to tell you to join? Sheesh. This week, we have a CFP for a conference in Vancouver, BC, “'We Demand': History/Sex/Activism In Canada," August 25-28, 2011. From the organizers:

On August 28, 1971 over two hundred lesbian and gay activists gathered on Parliament Hill to demand the federal government bring an end to laws and practices that criminalized, marginalized, and stigmatized lesbians and gays. Acting in solidarity with their central Canadian allies, Vancouver activists staged the same action on the steps of their city’s Court House. It was the first recorded national political action undertaken by gay liberationists and lesbian feminist activists in Canada.

”We Demand” marks the fortieth anniversary of the 1971 action. The conference seeks to showcase current work on all aspects of the history of sexuality in Canada, from pre-contact to present times.

Keynote speaker: Ann Cvetkovich, author of An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures.
Other confirmed speakers include Mary Louise Adams, Karen Dubinsky, Gary Kinsman, and Steven Maynard.

We are currently accepting proposals for panels, individual papers, roundtable discussions, poster sessions, and other means of communicating ideas and generating discussion. We welcome submissions from scholars, archivists, educators, public historians, and past and present political activists from all sexual fronts.

Panel and round table submissions should include a session title, a brief description of the panel or round table, abstracts for each paper of no more than 250 words, and a brief biography or one-page c.v./resume for each presenter and for the session chair. Individuals should submit a 250-word abstract plus a brief biography or one-page c.v./resume. Those submitting proposals for other types of presentations should contact the organizers for further instruction. The deadline for submission is 1 June 2010.

Please send queries and submissions to: wedemand2011ATgmailDOTcom.

Sunday Radical Roundup: Spring Is Coming, The Scholars Are Blooming

If You Can Rip Yourself Away From The Political Train Wreck In Massachusetts: New Englanders, you may want to put the following event at the Mashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center (Ledyard, CT) on your calendar for Saturday, Feb. 27, 1 pm–4 pm: "Sovereignty and Indigenous Rights. Dr. J. Kehaulani Kauanui, associate professor of American Studies at Wesleyan University, moderates this important discussion. Panelists include John Echohawk, president and founder of Native American Rights Foundation; James Jackson, Mashantucket Pequot tribal councilor; Jackson King, general council for Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation; Betsy Conway, legal council for Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation; and Dr. Cedric Woods, director (interim) of the Institute for New England Native American Studies, UMass. Boston. For ages 16 and older. Free with Museum admission, free to Museum members. High school and college students receive $2 admission discount with student ID." Kauanui is the author of the extremely well reviewed Hawaiian Blood: Colonialism and the Politics of Sovereignty and Indigeneity (2008), part of the Narrating Native American Histories series at Duke University Press.

Wuzzup, diplomatic historians? It is an oft-repeated complaint that graduate students specializing in the history of United States foreign relations are marginalized within doctoral programs more tuned to cultural history, gender history and the new political histories that these methods have produced. Well wise up, guys and dolls, and do what the women's historians did back in the 1970s and 1980s when they were on the margins -- find people who actually do give a damn about your work and will give you honest feedback about it in venues where what your field is privileged. In that spirit, I pass on this notice from the Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University: "Every spring, the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations hosts the Whitehead Colloquium at Seton Hall University (South Orange, NJ). The Whitehead Colloquium brings students from all across the the Northeast to present their research on topics related to international relations. Graduate students earning degrees in international relations, international affairs, diplomacy, economics, area studies, or other related topics are invited and encouraged to present their research. There are no limitations on the topics to be presented and there are no requirements on the length of the paper. The 2010 Colloquium is a day-long event scheduled for Thursday, April 15. Refreshments will be available, prizes will be awarded, and the winner of the best presentation will have the opportunity to be published in the Whitehead Journal. Students are responsible for their own transportation. Interested students are asked to send their papers to thewhiteheadcolloquiumATgmailDOTcom by March 1, 2010. Students will be notified whether they have been invited to present their research by March 15."

This week in women's history: Just in case you have wondered whether there is still a "women's history," given the important turns toward the history of gender and numerous interventions by theorists that suggest there are no "women," this week marks the 35th anniversary of New York Times reporter Robin Herman being granted access to the NHL all-star team locker rooms in Montreal. As Herman said when interviewed, at the age of 23 she became the first female-bodied person to be granted access to a North American professional sports team, making the game itself even more irrelevant than an All-Star game of any kind normally is. “I kept saying, ‘I’m not the story; the game is the story,’ ” Herman said, reflecting on the night. “But of course that wasn’t the case. The game was boring. A girl in the locker room was a story.”

Meanwhile, back in the girl's locker room: "The Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender invites proposals for sessions in its 2010-2011 series. Programs take place alternately at the Schlesinger Library of the Radcliffe Institute and at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Seminar's steering committee welcomes suggestions for papers dealing with all aspects of the history of women and/or gender in the United States and will also consider projects comparing the American experience with that in other parts of the world.

"Each session focuses on the discussion of a pre-circulated paper. The essayist and an assigned commentator will each have an opportunity for remarks before the discussion is opened to the floor. Papers must be available for circulation at least a month before the seminar date.

"In developing its 2010-2011 series, the Seminar's steering committee will fill some sessions through invitations and others through this call for papers. If you would like to be considered for a slot, please send your CV and a one-page précis of your paper by March 15 to Conrad E. Wright, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215,or to cwrightATmasshistDOTorg. In your proposal, please indicate when your paper will be available for distribution. If there are special scheduling conditions, such as a planned trip to Boston or an extended period when you cannot make a presentation, please so indicate in your proposal."

Want a notice included in the Sunday Radical Roundup? Send it to me, why dontcha?