Since reading Replaceable You by David Serlin last semester, I've been interested in exploring the various masculinities that were jockying for position in the 1950s, most notably the tension between working-class laborer and white-collar businessman as the two dominant constructions of (white) masculinity. So I'm considering a paper that would take a look at 1950s covers and contents of Esquire Magazine (the bachelor/style/white collar representation) and Argosy Magazine (for the working-class, hunting and fishing crowd). Below are the two magazines' covers from March 1950.
In continuing to consider paper topics for my gender/queerness class, I have come across the topic of women's involvement in rent strikes - particularly in the rent strike of 1969 in St. Louis. It seems that, historically, women have played a larger role in rent strikes than in strikes of the usual (factory) sort. Unfortunately, I don't think it's entirely appropriate for this class - there isn't a tie-in to popular culture that I can think of off-hand. Maybe if I'm nice, D will let me take this one on...it would fit so well into my work on working class resistance, and it involves women, so...
The other idea I have is to examine the film Spicebush, directed by Kevin Jerome Everson, for signifiers of constructed black working class masculinities. It's the story of a working class black family, their efforts to get by, etc. I'm interested in how Everson portrays the men (and the women...the focus could easily shift to an examination of working class feminities); as an independent, academic filmmaker, Everson may have created images that challenge dominant conceptions of black working class men and/or women.
Here's the challenge: I haven't actually seen the film and I can't figure out how to get a copy. It's a small budget, Sundance-screened film from last year and it's not available anywhere online. Perhaps I could call and request a copy from UVA, where Everson is on the art school faculty.
I could also follow an earlier idea and deconstruct working class masculinities in Deer Hunter. I just recently watched it again (J hadn't seen it yet) and I was struck by the overt, grotesque mannishness, especially in the first half before the POW scenes. That work would inform my interst in representations of white working class men as in opposition to representations of black working class men...which would be a topic for a second article.
And I'm still interested in taking a look at how working class women of color are excluded from "pink collar" occupations, often relegated to service and jantorial (housekeeping) work.
All of this takes so much time, just trying to figure out where to start. It's 2:30 and I'm starving, but I've been sitting here scrolling through JStor articles, searching for something to hang my hat on.
I've spent the morning reading selections from our good buddy Karl Marx, whose stunning portrait you see on the right. Look at that beard!
While much of it is, in a practical sense, outdated, the general flavor of his ideology still hits home. What would it be like to live in a world where your sense of self was not defined by your occupation, by your earning power? Where the work you performed benefitted you directly, rather than someone else? Where "stuff" didn't matter quite so much and there was more time for fresh air?
I know this all sounds fairly reductionist, and I don't really believe that a truly socialist state could exist in a healthy, civil manner considering our avarice and lust for product. Appetites have been whetted, consumerism has been the driving force for more than fifty years in this country, and powerful people really like being identified with their work (or, more accurately, with their ability to harness the work of others for profit...). But Marxist ideology is still valid and useful. The working class still resists, most often in a surreptitious, unsanctioned, unorganized manner. What they do is not considered political. But it is, deeply.
Put on your sci-fi caps, folks. Pretend I'm trying to answer that question in September, like a space-age time traveller whose sense of duty to build an impressive CV has taken over a small portion her brain. It's only January, but these summer programs are quickly filled by eager beaver grad students and postdocs.
There's a paid internship available at the Missouri State Archives, but the pay only amounts to $7.50 per hour for ten 40-hour weeks of work...low pay for potentially boring (mind-numbing, eye-watering) work and the lost opportunity to take a trip with the man this summer. Not so great. There's also a week-long summer institute in Dublin, but I would have to get there and back and pay an additional $600 to participate. Pretty steep, and there isn't a seminar offered that fits my interests well enough to spend $2000 for the pleasure of joining in.
I will probably wait tables or bartend for cash. But I can't put that on my CV. Unless the chair of a particular department values the nuance of a finely poured highball. Not likely.
So, I write so irregularly now that I suffer from guilt every time I even consider looking at my blog. I have so much going on in my brain, what with all the readings for class, but I can't ever think of anything worthwhile to write about. So I've decided to drop the pretense that anyone reads this thing but me and a few close compadres. Which means you're in for some brain-dump posts: ideas for research, thoughts about my current work, as well as the usual musings.
Whenever I'm writing, keep in mind that I'm procrastinating. I should be reading a book about gender concepts for my class on Monday. But I'm not.
On the topic of that class, however, I have a few ideas for articles. The class focus is gender, queerness, and popular culture...I'm thinking of ways to work this up to fit in my research on the working class. I could research the transition of the masculine ideal from pre-WWII labor to post-WWII white-collar spiff; I could take a look at the exclusion of women of color from women's working class "pink collar" occupations; I would love to take a look at "prosperity theology" and the effective depoliticizing of the black working class, but I don't think I could put a gender lens on that. I could examine the exclusion of women from "Black Leadership" (capital B, capital L) and, in a related sense, from church leadership. Hmmm...
I am revising my Homer G. Phillips Hospital article from last semester - preparing it for submission to the Journal of Social History. It would be such a boost to have the article selected - even for review, never mind publication. Publication in that journal would be so great as to almost be unthinkable. But I've been encouraged. So I'll give it a go.
I have been immersed in a theory course for the past couple of weeks, taking a good hard look at the concepts of literary theory and historiography - both sound exceptionally boring but are actually exceptionally engaging. I can now win friends and impress neighbors with my adept use of such high-dollar words as poststructuralism, hermeneutics, dialectic, and semiotics. Oh yeah. Come on, feel the noise.
Next week: my new love affair with three big-brained cultural critics. You know you're excited.
