Feminism

You might have noticed that I've added a link at the top of the site to my essays, research, and conference notes. It's something I've been meaning to do for some time now; I was thinking that if anyone came here only wanting to see my essays and representations of my research interests, a portal to those would be in order so that sifting through everything in the Rhetoric and Feminism categories wouldn't be necessary. I've been admiring Andrew's "Recent Essays" section of his sidebar and Anne's research section for ages, and finally I've done my own. I'm still working on it; I probably need to break it down into shorter essays and longer essays in each category, and I think I'll take a cue from Anne and include an abstract (or annotation for the shorter essays) of each piece. I also need to put them in some order--chronological, reverse chronological, or alphabetical. Come to think of it, this is a great opportunity for me to write a statement of my research agenda.


Edited to add: I meant for this to be a request for feedback. How do you think I should arrange the work here? Would you like to see it divided into short essays/long essays, rather than rhetoric and feminism? Reverse chronological? What?

Now that I've secured approval for my technical communication theory & research reading list, I thought I'd post it. Yeah, I know the formatting's not great; I used the OpenOffice html editor, since there was no way I was going to hand-code all that. Behold, my summer:

The new issue of thirdspace on Representation and Transgressive Sexualities just went live, and now they're featuring PDFs of each issue; Laura Gurak has noted that we're seeing this trend of both PDF versions and html versions in electronic publishing because if it looks like print, it's better for a tenure portfolio. She chalks it up to the fact that we're in a state of transition right now in terms of academic publishing.

Another cool little thing...I received an email from the program coordinator of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society's Internet Law Program May 13-15. Apparently I am one of a group of bloggers they're inviting to the program with a tuition waiver (the tuition is $1995, but for me it technically would have been $895 since I'm a student--hey, either way it's free). I'm excited about the opportunity to learn more about internet law than I ever could have imagined. Plus, I've never been to the Boston area before, so that will be nice. I'm still pinching myself with disbelief that they would invite me to this thing. I can't imagine who would have recommended me, but I'm grateful! Part of me still thinks this is a scam, a Who's Who Among American High School Students type of scheme. At any rate, I'll definitely blog my notes from the program and make sure Drupal and the progressive IP/publishing model we're adhering to for Into the Blogosphere get some attention.

I hope lots of demonstrators and D.C. observers blog about the march this weekend. At any rate, I'll be looking forward to reading Rad Geek's thoughts about it when he gets back. Anyone else going and planning on blogging it?

Edited to add: I'll check La Di Da when she gets back too.

On the radio this evening, I heard that they found the body of Dru Sjodin. I was saddened all over again. I had followed the case with much concern, knowing that what happened to her can happen to any woman, at any time. This society is not safe for women. Not at all. I know that men are often victims of violent crime too, but not as often victims of the double horror of rape and murder.

Edited to add: I don't believe they've confirmed, based on forensic evidence, that Sjodin was raped, but the man charged with her murder is a convicted sex offender. Even if she wasn't raped, I stand by my point.

From my old college buddy Charges comes a sad story: Porn actor Darren James has tested positive for HIV. They're afraid of that pyramid effect:

The Los Angeles-based industry, which normally films three to four films a day, must now wait 60 days to learn whether the deadly virus spread to 14 actresses who had onscreen sex with James, or to the 35 sex partners the women subsequently had.

Porn star Lara Roxx has tested positive as a result. I don't exactly embrace porn, but it seems insensitive to put a critical spin on this. It's just sad, and I hope no one else is affected. Maybe Lauren or someone at Alas will have thoughtful and appropriate comments on the matter. (Edited to add: Or Christine.)

Holy crap! I was just doing a little research for my dissertation (I'm interested in looking at blogs by mothers) and ended up at the site for the Hip Mama (a magazine, in case you didn't know). I hadn't been to the site in a while, and I'm pleasantly surprised that they are now running on Drupal. It looks like they aren't running version 4.4, though, since my hub username and password didn't work when I tried to login. They hope that the site will have more of a community feel now. 8)