The Gift of Open-hearted Awe
passion and scholarship
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When I interviewed Rebecca Maillet for Honing In, I was moved by the awe she experiences working with the land and growing the beautiful flowers she works with in her business. That open-hearted, full-of-gratitude experience is how I feel about consuming and producing public scholarship.
I am amazed by the ways education can empower people to have greater agency and creativity. I don’t think teaching or learning is limited to the classroom; yet interestingly, my own obsession with public scholarship was sparked during graduate school.
I took a Writing Women’s History class my first semester in my Master’s program and was introduced to feminist historiography (the study of how history is recorded, but through a critical and feminist lens).
Feminist rhetoricians argue that women have always utilized rhetoric to educate and build community outside of institutions like academia. Depending on what century you’re studying, women’s rhetoric might have taken form at home or in consciousness raising groups or at music festivals—and a lot of it didn’t make it into history books or university archives. This exclusion is exacerbated for women of color, disabled women, queer and trans women, and others voices that didn’t align with the story patriarchy wanted to tell.
In one of my classes on feminist archival methods, I read a chapter that claimed a shoebox full of your grandmother’s letters under your bed is an archive. I might be getting the family member or the box’s location or even the contents themselves incorrect, but the lesson forever shifted the way I thought about scholarship. We curate archives all the time that are full of seemingly insignificant yet important records of what it means to learn and create and connect.
My feminist historiography studies led me to research lesbian periodicals, and I was fascinated by the ways folks built community from thousands of miles away via letters to the editor or personal ads. In early 2014, I discovered Vice Versa, the first lesbian magazine in the United States, published in 1947-48 by Edythe Eyde, who went by the pseudonym Lisa Ben (an anagram for ”lesbian”). This was my seismic shift as a scholar, one that created a Kate-sized space I wanted to explore forever.
I devoted myself to studying Ben’s work and wrote a dissertation that centered on her rhetorical contributions—but I knew even before I graduated that I wanted to build a publicly accessible website to write about Ben so everyone could learn about her.
If an archive can be a box of letters, or a stack of magazines, or a photo album, how magical is that? If public scholarship can be shared for free, circulated to folks who don’t have access to an academic library or expensive subscriptions to scholarly journals (raising my hand here!), or who can’t fly across the country to visit a brick and mortar archive—how magical!
Rebecca shared in our podcast episode the reverence she feels working on the farm with her team when they pause their labor to observe a praying mantis. I felt that awe when I learned that Ben parodied a song about marriage to warn her gay friends about raids by the vice squad. I don’t know if my public scholarship can transfer that awe from my heart to yours, but trust me when I say that trying is my most precious honor.
Curiosities
My favorite band, Bon Iver, just dropped a new album! It’s a little more folksy than electronica, but it’s growing on me. I’m also really into Lucy Dacus’s new album, which is very queer and super sweet.
Laura Portwood-Stacer’s interview with Dr. Hannah Zeavin is an awesome discussion about public scholarship for academics who want to publish trade books.
I love to make this recipe for Chicken, Olive, and Lemon Tagine when Kris (who doesn’t like saffron) is traveling for work. It’s such a fancy, warming meal that heats up well for leftovers.
For the handful of you who are also into romantasy: I finished A Court of Thorns and Roses and thought it was just okay. I started the second book in the series, A Court of Mist and Fury, and I’m much more into this one.
Take care and talk soon,
Dr. Kate
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I appreciate you. Listening to Bon Iver now as well.