I'm finishing up my thesis (Jewish identity in 1930s Germany) right now, and there's a story in one of the memoirs I'm using that I keep going back to... seriously, it breaks my heart every time I read it. A little background: Gad Beck, the man who wrote this memoir, was a gay Jew from Berlin, born in 1923. In 1942, his boyfriend (ish) and his ( Read more... )

I just un-came out to my professors, i.e., I emailed them asking to go back to being called Ellen. In some ways, this "uncoming out" is a lot more liberating than any other coming out.

The text of my email is below the cut.

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hey everyone ( Read more... )

1. When one of your professors (who is also your advisor) says this about your writing: "The problem you have is completely the opposite of what I have to say to almost all of my students.  Your analysis is wonderful -- you know your material and can apply it well.  It's some of the best analysis I've seen at Manchester, especially since you're 19 ( Read more... )

I'm just finishing up the citations (damn you ASA) for a paper I'm writing about the relationship of anthropology and colonialism, and I thought that I'd post an excerpt from it to see if any of you all out there had thoughts on what I've written.  I think it's relatively clear even without the 750-1000 words that come before it, but if you want ( Read more... )

A lot of people talk about their maternal instinct and how it flares up at certain times. I can relate to that, although mine is not as much maternal as it is domestic ( Read more... )

i can't sleep right now, and in my insomnia, realized that some information i might need could be in my sent mail folder ( Read more... )

Hello, friends! Once I'm gone and lots of hours ahead of most people on my flist, and hopefully online less and doing things more, be said things reading or doing homework or knitting or doing things with people, I really do intend to update this more frequently, as well as the Northern Ireland blog that I'm going to be setting up in the ( Read more... )

I feel like I should update this here LiveJournal, but I somehow don't have much to say.  It's definitely not for lack of happenings, though... in the past seven weeks, I've started dating someone new (whom I mentioned vaguely in my second-to-last post, I do believe), worked at my job a lot (I'm a theatre tech!), knit about 1/3 of the body of a ( Read more... )

I'm listening to This American Life, one of my favorite radio shows right now.  I'm listening to an old episode called Brother's Keeper.  The first act is a retelling of the story of Cain and Abel from the Bible, and there was something in it that struck me as intensely beautiful.  (This is when Abel comes running to Cain and says that he has ( Read more... )