Want to get caught up on some feminist theory and history over the summer?  (“Yes, Erin, of COURSE I want to spend my summer vacation voluntarily saturating my psyche with the systematic oppression and sexual violence of kyriarchical cultures.  Duh.”)  Well, in case you’re my kind of masochist, here’s a decent reading list of texts to keep your brain occupied while you sit on the beach/Metro.  There’s not too much queer stuff in here ( Lame. I’d supplement this list with some Halberstam, Baldwin, and Lorde at the very least), but a lot of these seem pretty accessible in a non I-have-to-read-this-for-my-women’s-studies-seminar kind of way.

Here’s a sampling of the list:

Women of Color:
Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism – Bell Hooks
Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today’s Feminism – Daisy Hernadez
Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black – Bell Hooks
Undivided Rights: Women of Color Organize for Reproductive Justice – Jael Silliman
Virginity or Death – Katha Pollitt
Words of Fire: An Anthology of African American Feminist Thought – Beverly Guy-Sheftall
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape – Jaclyn Friedman

Go read the whole thing here.  From www.care2.com.

From Ms.

“She’s rich, she’s beautiful, she’s smart. She has everything…but does she have everything? Not if she doesn’t have a Rusco American Bidet!”

This ad was reprinted in the June 1978 No Comment section of Ms.

San Jose State University has finished a two-year grants project that has allowed them to process 73 new collection inventories!  They are available on the Online Archives of California, and include the Glenna Matthews Oral History Collection and the South Bay Second Wave Feminist Oral History Collection.  If you’re in the area, you should definitely check these out.

From the Women’s Collections Roundtable.

A Stonewall Veteran, 89, Misses the Parade

There’s an article in The New York Times about Storme DeLarverie, one of the LGBT movement’s earliest activists.  Some people believe she was the lesbian who fought back with the police during the Stonewall riots of 1969, while others remember her as a fierce bouncer at The Cubby Hole, one of New York’s lesbian bars.  I first discovered Storme when I was reading JEB‘s “Making A Way: Lesbians Out Front,” one of the first visual texts documenting and making visible the lives of lesbians.   I haven’t checked out Michelle Parkerson‘s film about her, “Storme: The Lady of the Jewel Box,” but I’m looking forward to checking that out soon.

From Alison Bechdel.

Wow, my summer is flying by.  In addition to working, I’ve been taking a class in archival practices at the Archives Center at the National Museum of American History with the former President of the Society of American Archivists, John Fleckner.  The course is fun and interesting, and I am working on John F. Grace’s papers of the Worthington Corporation collection, which was a 19th and 20th century industrial manufacturing empire that created steam pumps, engines, and other hydraulic machinery.  I’ve found some interesting anecdotes within the papers, including the fact that one of the presidents of the corporation drowned on the Titanic and the elevators at the Eiffel Tower were constructed with Worthington machinery in 1900 at the Exposition Universelle.  The photos of 19th century machine shops and workers are also fun to look at.

(The photo was taken with a phone – sorry about the quality!)

Another thing I get to do in the class is be crafty!  Sink mats are used to protect fragile artifacts while providing researchers access to them.  I made this sink mat out of  layers of cardboard, mylar, canvas and tape.   The items being displayed in this mat are paper, flower, metal and glass notecards, maybe late 19th c?, that say “I love thee” and “Forget me not.”  I’m so spending the rest of the summer dorking out and making these for my stuff.

Posting may be scattered while I’m finishing up my coursework, but I will try to post some images, advertising, and other visual odds and ends.

(Also – shameless plug: check out Smart Chicks Commune for more fun stuff from a band of three awesomely smart chicks.)